You'd be mad to renationalise the railways ...

[Stillhomewardbound]

and here's the plain black-and-white truth ...

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-A3rVNEF_7n0/U-rk5DXvx5I/AAAAAAAAoU0/n3Xi2pJ17M8/w881-h541-no/rail.jpg

I recently saw this graph posted by a pal who suggested it was proof that the railways ought not to be re-nationalised. Well, it very much seems to make a strong statistical case that, historically, the railways have attracted much greater passenger numbers under private than public ownership.

Or does it?

Take that first big climbing curve (private ownership). Well that can't be counted as evidence of a popularity of private ownership as such. All that graph shows is the arrival of the railways and their great popularity as the only available way to travel long distances in comfort. Previous to that it had been only the horse-drawn coaches, pony and trap, or walking. As the infrastructure expands more journeys are possible hence the rise in numbers.

Next we see the stage at which the railway system is effectively rationalised into four monopolies and we can see that between 1923 and 1947 it all looks a bit higgledy piggleday. The railways, harnessed by a pre-privatisation programme of sorts, are seeing serious dips in journey. A case of passengers losing faith with the railways? Well, hardly, when you consider that that period covers the depression era and the catastrophic effect of the Second World War. The two spikes in this period by the way are owed, firstly, to the country emerging from depression and there being a bit more money about and, secondly c.1941, to the huge number of troops being transported on the train network.

So, then we get to the period of full nationalisation and we can see that until privatisation in 1995 the whole picture is horrid. 'Yah boo hiss! Nationalisation has killed the railways!!' the graph seems to tell us. Not quite. More a case of the state having had to step in when the entire system was on the verge of collapse. You can see in that era also the arrival of the motorways, the growth of car ownership and the decline in subsidy as funds are diverted into road building*. The dips there can also be evidenced in the Oil Crisis and the recessionary 70s , but notice the lusty rise out of that period at the start of the 80s as Peter Parker comes on board and introduces a new era of rail travel with the highly popular and well marketed Intercity 125 network. It's a new era for rail travel and the numbers are there to prove it, so what goes terribly wrong about '87.

Well, it's another crash again and we're headed into the doldrum of the 90s. Not to mention the fact that the politicians haven't invested in the railroads for decades. Moving on, the graph apparently suggests that as of full-scale privatisation in 1995 the nation so endorses the return of the rail network to private ownership that it simply can't get enough of choo choos and its use of the system just grows and grows. Or, any the other hand, people just don't stay at home any more.

And anyway, if a privatised railway system is so great, how is it so expensive and how is it that the taxpayer still subsidises it?

All this graph does in fact is remind us of the old adage ... there are lies, damn lies - and statistics.



* Honourable mention here for Ernest Marples, Minister for Transport, who commissioned all those thousands of miles of motorways and who, er, owned a huge road construction company (commissions included the Hammersmith and Chiswick flyovers) . Natch. But of course, he sold that company during his time as Minister to avoid ANY conflict of interest. Yes. Yes, to his wife who apparently was most insistent that he buy back the company from her as such time as he was no longer transport minister and at the very same share price despite the value of the stock having soared.

[teamsaint]

very interesting post, SHB..
here is a chart of crude oil prices. does the shape of the graph from around 2000 to 2008 look familiar? !

http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/crude-oil/all/

not saying, of course, that this is directly correlated, but it does look a bit more than coincidental.
From 2008 you might substitute world recesion, which certainly led to more young people sticking with rail rather than taking up driving. (Numbers taking driving tests dropped 250k per annaum around this time).

so, have to agree with you about statistics. Personally speaking I would suggest that in terms of reliability and customer service, not everything was rosy under nationalisation.

Labours recent plans look to have a bit of merit, though I haven't looked in detail.

[Petrushka]

As one who travels to work everyday by train as well as fairly frequently to the Great Metropolis, the difference between now and 20 years ago is a staggering improvement in terms of punctuality, cleanliness, considerate staff and train frequency. My only area of complaint is the Byzantine ticket price structure and now, with my Senior Railcard, even that's less of an issue. Back in the early i970s to the early 1990s British Rail was a complete joke with everything possible wrong with the system. So much better now.

Re-nationalisation? Not on your life!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The period leading up to privatisation is considered by Christian Woolmer, railway historian, to be something of a golden age. The gigantic British Rail had been broken down into more workable smaller units, so deficiencies could not be buried so easily. Yet it was still under public ownership, so there were no shareholders to add to the losses made. Immediately after privatisation, Railtrack sat back and let the system deteriorate. The Hull-Scarborough line became overgrown with weeds and beaches of trees obstructed trains form time to time. The terrible rail crashes were a wakeup call and since then the railway system has improved vastly. Even my father, who was a hard-line socialist, believing in state ownership of public services, thought that privatisation hadn't been so bad after all.

[Dave2002]

* Honourable mention here for Ernest Staples, Minister for Transport, who commissioned all those thousands of miles of motorways and who, er, owned a huge road construction company (commissions included the Hammersmith and Chiswick flyovers) .

Ernest Marples, surely!

[aeolium]

As one who travels to work everyday by train as well as fairly frequently to the Great Metropolis, the difference between now and 20 years ago is a staggering improvement in terms of punctuality, cleanliness, considerate staff and train frequency. My only area of complaint is the Byzantine ticket price structure and now, with my Senior Railcard, even that's less of an issue. Back in the early i970s to the early 1990s British Rail was a complete joke with everything possible wrong with the system. So much better now.

Re-nationalisation? Not on your life!

As someone who used the old BR as a student in the early 70s and later travelling a fair bit between Dorset and London in the 80s and early 90s I didn't think the old system bad at all. The inter-city trains I mainly used were comfortable and generally not overcrowded, and the ticket system was far better. Food was rubbish and staff could be surly, but train reliability and punctuality was often better than what it has been, on average, since privatisation (it was around 90% punctuality for intercity services in 1992, a figure only recently matched by some of the operators).

But what ought to be recognised is that the privatisation was not a proper privatisation at all - i.e. the train services are not being wholly privately run, since the Train Operating Companies (TOCs) are heavily subsidised directly and indirectly by the taxpayer, mainly through the curious not-for-profit Network Rail setup which maintains the track and supposedly leases it for use. This Cresc report on rail privatisation shows the wretched shortcomings of the franchise system, not least in the way it has led to a massive, and ultimately unsustainable, debt through loan guarantees for Network Rail (about £30bn and rising). The report, which I don't expect many here to read, shows that the TOCs benefited from a continual level of direct and indirect subsidy and investment (e.g. the huge investment in the West Coast Main Line upgrade, and all the maintenance post-Hatfield) for almost no risk; TOCs were perfectly able to walk away from franchises and avoid paying the back-loaded premium loan repayments if they felt like it, and several have done. Needless to say, the taxpayer underwrites the debt. It's no accident that several of our franchises are run by foreign state railway companies, and they aren't doing it for charity but because they can make an easy killing (which they can then, ironically, plough back into their own state systems). Even if you don't read the report, have a look at some of the tables contained in it. On customer satisfaction, TOCs like to quote that they are getting ratings in the high-80% for customer satisfaction although another survey in which satisfaction related to value for money shows results that are much lower, with several services receiving below 50% and in some cases below 40%. We have higher fares (much higher in some cases) than France, Italy, Germany and Spain - and across every type of ticket. The report shows that with the level of subsidy, and high fares increasing by above the rate of inflation, the TOCs now have several times the level of investment that BR had in the early 90s: the rail system ought to be better than BR's! But that isn't to say that BR could not have improved it with even half the extra investment - that was really what held them back in the later years.

[Stillhomewardbound]

Ernest Marples, surely!

Apologies for that error, which has now been corrected. I keep making that mistake somehow mentally translating the name into Staples a la Staples Corner!

[Stillhomewardbound]

... the difference between now and 20 years ago is a staggering improvement in terms of punctuality, cleanliness, considerate staff and train frequency.

The very same sentence could be applied to the London Underground which remains in public hands.

It is a persistent myth that public ownership equates to poor services and bad management. Certainly, in terms of my overground commute in London I can honestly say that that I have not noticed any discernible difference. Much of the stock is pre-nationalisation and the company which was awarded the franchise (Connex South Eastern) had it removed by the SRA in 2003.

You see, railways don't make great business sense and as much of Europe recognises, they shouldn't be expected to. They are services and to envisage them as cash cows is just delusional.

A further myth of privatisation is that the public sector unburdens itself of the risk and the private sector takes on the liability. In the case of the railways, most franchises went to established companies with some connection to the transport, however they took these on as separate, limited companies and when it all went bad on them they simply walked away.

Meanwhile, all the time the public burden is there with us doubly, both in terms of the ridiculous level of fares and the continuing necessity of subsidy.

It's an imprecise analogy but it could be said that under British Rail the public had the equivalent of a Civic Honda rust bucket and now they have a Saab or Volvo. Hurrah, except that they are paying the price of a Rolls Royce.

[Serial_Apologist]

Many thanks for putting the picture right, aeolium and SHB.

[Petrushka]

It's an imprecise analogy but it could be said that under British Rail the public had the equivalent of a Civic Honda rust bucket and now they have a Saab or Volvo. Hurrah, except that they are paying the price of a Rolls Royce.

That's a very good analogy and one I agree with.

I first started travelling by train on a regular basis in 1970 so I had the worst of the unpunctuality, endless cancellations and even more endless strikes from the start. You never knew when you left home in the morning whether a train would turn up or not. I now travel to and from Derby every weekday by East Midlands Trains and I genuinely can't remember when we last had a train cancelled or even significantly late on my line. I think it might have been when someone was threatening to jump off a bridge and they had to shut the station and that was several months ago.

[P. G. Tipps]

Petrushka is absolutely correct (in my extremely humble opinion, I hasten to add!). He has highlighted all the obvious advances in passenger experience made since 'privatisation'.

Of course the current rail system isn't "perfect" but it's so vastly improved from the old British Rail model that I'm astonished anyone could seriously talk about renationalisation.

In any case, the current system is really more of a public/private joint venture than being truly privatised, and the State is ready to take over if private companies are unable or unwilling to tender suitable bids for various parts of the network. However, up until now it seems to have worked pretty well and the comparative lack of strikes compared to the British Rail days alone justifies its existence, I'd have thought!

Yes the ticket system can be confusing but you can't half get some great advance bargains on-line and/or enjoy a wide variety of options which you can consider at leisure.

Rail nationalisation/privatisation, like the NHS, has long been a 'political football' for some but for many of the rest of us it's simply a question of arriving at the most efficient, cost-effective system possible?

[ahinton]

Petrushka is absolutely correct (in my extremely humble opinion, I hasten to add!). He has highlighted all the obvious advances in passenger experience made since 'privatisation'.

Of course the current rail system isn't "perfect" but it's so vastly improved from the old British Rail model that I'm astonished anyone could seriously talk about renationalisation.

In any case, the current system is really more of a public/private joint venture than being truly privatised, and the State is ready to take over if private companies are unable or unwilling to tender suitable bids for various parts of the network. However, up until now it seems to have worked pretty well and the comparative lack of strikes compared to the British Rail days alone justifies its existence, I'd have thought!

Yes the ticket system can be confusing but you can't half get some great advance bargains on-line and/or enjoy a wide variety of options which you can consider at leisure.

Rail nationalisation/privatisation, like the NHS, has long been a 'political football' for some but for many of the rest of us it's simply a question of arriving at the most efficient, cost-effective system possible?

Given that, as already been noted, a rail service cannot be a cash cow in the sense that, by nature and definition, it's never going to turn in a massive profit, full privatisation without the safety net of some kind of governmental support is unlikely to materialise.

What matters, howevere, is that the rail system be operated as efficiently as possible whoever in in charge of it. Yes, there aren't the strikes that there use to be and some things have certainly improved since the days of British Rail but, without taxpayer investment, the necessary development and maintenance simply won't happen (and I wrote "necessary" so as to exclude reference to the LMS2 - i.e. Low to Medium Speed 2 - project)...

[amateur51]

Petrushka is absolutely correct (in my extremely humble opinion, I hasten to add!). He has highlighted all the obvious advances in passenger experience made since 'privatisation'.

Of course the current rail system isn't "perfect" but it's so vastly improved from the old British Rail model that I'm astonished anyone could seriously talk about renationalisation.

In any case, the current system is really more of a public/private joint venture than being truly privatised, and the State is ready to take over if private companies are unable or unwilling to tender suitable bids for various parts of the network. However, up until now it seems to have worked pretty well and the comparative lack of strikes compared to the British Rail days alone justifies its existence, I'd have thought!

Yes the ticket system can be confusing but you can't half get some great advance bargains on-line and/or enjoy a wide variety of options which you can consider at leisure.

Rail nationalisation/privatisation, like the NHS, has long been a 'political football' for some but for many of the rest of us it's simply a question of arriving at the most efficient, cost-effective system possible?

I do wonder sometimes if you actually read what others write.

Shb has made several important points in his message #8 that blow your complacent thoughts out of the water and yet you continue to peddle them. For example the present 'scheme' is fabulousdly expensive to the tax-payer & ticket-holder, making massive profits for often foreign companies. Tis madness.

Edit: ooops cross-post with ahinton but at least I got this lot off my chest

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The present system may have benefitted from greater state intervention since privatisation. When publicly owned, there was a tendency for governments to let BR "get on with it", while cutting their subsidies. Now, the government is ploughing investment into widespread electrification, and possibly new lines.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes the ticket system can be confusing but you can't half get some great advance bargains on-line and/or enjoy a wide variety of options which you can consider at leisure.

But this is one of the most infuriating/frustrating aspects of post-nationalisation practice by the railway companies. Surely if it remains profitable to buy one's way across the country at fare rate equivalents of those of the BR era, it is possible to have the same charges at any time of one's choosing to travel, a seat being what it is. The only conclusion one can reach is that the public transport system has become a profit making machine for exploiting people who have no choice where or when they have to travel, and is no longer the service it once was and should return to being.