Why calls for rail nationalisation miss the point

[Pickman's model]

You said that central government can interfere with it. Central government can interfere with pretty much any organisation. So what's your point? My point was about the way it's managed and regulated, which is different from the way National Rail is managed and regulated.

I didn't say can i said has.

 

[davesgcr]

Well, that's just something that can be argued about endlessly, because neither side of the argument can really prove anything.

The fans of privatisation will say that profits are pretty small as a proportion of the overall turnover and that in return for these you get the benefits of commercial incentivisation.

The disbenefits of fragmentation are perhaps clearer to see.

As I've probably said a hundred times already in this thread, I was strongly against rail privatisation when it originally happened, and in particular I was against the way in which it was done. All of these consequences of fragmenting the system were pointed out by those arguing against it back then, and most of them have been proven to be true.

There are all sorts of other ways of structuring a privatised or part privatised railway, some of which might be quite sensible - if they deal with those multiple issues of fragmentation.

It's kind of interesting to look at how things worked in the early days of rail, when there were multiple companies, who mostly each owned their track & infrastructure. For example Railway Clearing House - Wikipedia

It shows that some kind of institution is always needed to co-ordinate the system at a higher level - this is intrinsic to the way railways work. In Europe there are similar institutions, set up to deal with traffic using multiple (originally mainly state owned) systems, such as Intergovernmental Organisation for International Carriage by Rail - Wikipedia

You can argue of course that the 121 private companies pre 1921 - left a legacy of inefficient and wasteful "competition" (through pointless duplicate lines all over - bar the Cambrian and Hibernian vastnesses which left a legacy downstream of higher costs and much worse) - many shareholders lost virtually everything as a result of "Railway mania" in the 19thC. Though great of course for "railwayacs" as the hopeless romantics and fans were called. The Railway Clearing House - a well staffed organisation with staff nationwide on recording vehicles , train mileage , and even wagon sheets /ropes to the nearest farthing in costs and of course revenue.

Consider much of mainland Europe - where main lines were planned strategically from the start "by the State" (though built by regional operators" - which much better , but eventually being nationalised before WW2 - e.g the SNCF in France by 1938.

Britain of course , after WW2 in 1947 - and then badly done and managed - the great experiment of 1994 ended up in costs more than doubling , and otherwise cost neutral operations being gifted huge subsidies to deliver much less in many instances ...BR in the late 1980's was really costing about a £100,000 a day to bridge the gap - and of course starved of a lot of investment which could have led to cost reductions and better services.

Not to worry said the Adam Smith Institute and similar theroticians - the ultra efficient private sector will show these useless national basket cases how to deliver a "better railway" ......(eyes rolled again)

 

[teuchter]

There is loads of interesting stuff in this interview, for anyone willing to spend an hour of their time listening to it.

Quite a bit of discussion of what happened at privatisation, and attempts at vertical integration between Network Rail and the train operators. The role of government in everything.

One of his points is that turning a fragmented railway back into something more like a national entity is going to be much harder work than it was turning BR into the fragmented railway.

 

[davesgcr]

There is loads of interesting stuff in this interview, for anyone willing to spend an hour of their time listening to it.

Quite a bit of discussion of what happened at privatisation, and attempts at vertical integration between Network Rail and the train operators. The role of government in everything.

One of his points is that turning a fragmented railway back into something more like a national entity is going to be much harder work than it was turning BR into the fragmented railway.

An excellent listen and very much a thorough analysis of what is wrong , and what is right about the industry going forward. (particularly good bits on electric train usage and so on , and how it can be encouraged as a "good thing".)

Tim is an outstanding character with masses of experience and a thorough and comprehensive knowledge on not just running a railway, but a very progrmatic view on strategy. An awful long time ago. in the last century he was one of my driver managers on what I prefer to call North London Railways. He moved onto Eurostar as I recall and much else.

BR managed it's own fate very well , leading up to the disaster of 1994 and later - hard now to remember how bad things were in the early to mid years of Railtrack (when for example everything was deemed contractual , and official meeting between operators and RT's account managers had to be have a HQ minder present) , the Train Operating companies were given a particularly hard time as cost pressures (driven by tight franchise specifications) , caused large reductions in middle management with inevitable results in performance and morale etc. Admittedly , the split of the business caused the build up of management structures which were often duplication between operations and engineering - the Divisional managers in the late days of BR had tremendous and wide responsibilty but they had "control" - all split into various pieces.

BR was by no means perfect , but it had to sort things out internally - any major disputes not resolved , and possibly ending up on the desk of one Robert Reid mk 2 - the chairman - would not end well for the individual. So it never did !

 

[teuchter]

I hope some people in government listen to that interview.