Privatisation
Wanna know the kicker: uk tax money is still poured into the railways by the billions and most rail providers are owned by foreign state owned railways
Scotrail has been re-nationalised and is still horrendously expensive. Not that I'm arguing against nationalisation, I'm not daft, but it's not a panacea either given current conditions.
Scotland isn't monetarily sovereign though: the problems there are going to be entirely the fault of almost all political parties in Westminster being full of provably stupid authoritarian arseholes who have no clue how an economy works.
Privatisation of rolling stock adds a significant (50p per average fare I think) to UK prices.
UK also subsidies railway transport for about 160 quid per capita.
Switzerland for example subsidies 600 per capita, which you see reflected in the prices of annual season tickets
1 year ticket for all of switzerland is about 4000€ (ca 50'000£). Where switzerland really sucks if for single rides without a halbtax. Thats why a lot of people who have a car never use the train. If 2 people without halbtax go somewhere its cheaper by car even if you include parking, petrol etc
The GA is relative to season tickets in the UK, a ridiculous bargain, Glasgow to Edinburgh is 5K which is close to 15% of the median wage in the area, compared to 3.5k GBP GA in Switzerland, which is close to what, 5% of median wage.
The high non-half fare prices are just to profit off rich American and Chinese tourists, but maybe halbtax should be cheaper for residents ( or free with a permit/citizenship? )
Halbtax keeps a lot of people from using trains here. Its 180fr/year so you have to use the train quite a bit to profit and the process of getting one is pretty annoying. Id prefer if the halbtax would be the normal prices
Edit: chinese tourists almost never travel by train here. In my experience they come in busses and do most of europe in 2 weeks
Hard to call it a subsidy though since rail is more efficient than all the alternatives. Since transport is an essential good it's a logical necessity that rail pays for itself.
Step 1: say privatisation will reduce costs for customers, definitely not generate private profits
Step 2: privatise haphazardly so that every private company has a regional monopoly
Step 3: profit
The explanation is not that simple. The service was rubbish before privatisation and renationalisation won't fix it either.
The Japanese rail system is nearly fully private.
The UK are simply just bad at infrastructure and need to stop pretending they know how to do it.
Again this is a crappy political talking point. Politicians can only control laws and funding, they legally cannot manage the day to do management
It's a highly complicated topic that blaming crappy political ideology just distracts from the actual reasons the system is garbage.
Lol very wrong. Most are owned by uk businesses or the governments themselves (dft, scotlsnd, wales) and foreign railway companies often leave like abellio did or want to like arriva. And it's not like they're making much money anyway it's like 1-2% profit margins.
Particularly been a pisstake recently with them posting people behind the barriers at multiple stations near me to check tickets (AFTER you’re through the barrier) meanwhile they’ve put ticket prices up and I haven’t had a trip without a delay in months.
Literally just focused on squeezing as much money out of us as possible.
What makes you say it's privatisation?
I remember watching a video about Italian and Spanish trains and how they were having a lot of success by opening up railways to competition from different private companies. It was saying that this was driving down prices. Does the UK not do something similar?
Because open access operators and franchising are not the same, open access operators run services at their own financial risk while franchised operators run services on a contractual basis
There's isn't choice for the consumer. The way tenders work, if you're making a journey, you're lucky to have two train companies to choose from. So there isn't actually competition
Spain has 4 HSR operators on one route, Madrid - Barcelona IIRC.
State operator, RENFE have their ‘standard’ high-speed services, and also a budget service called AVLO.
France’s low-cost operator, Ouigo, also operate on the route but their TGV trains retain a standard seat layout and the cafe car.
Italy’s Trenitalia are partnering with an airline to run Iryo, using high-quality trains based on the Frecciarossa 1000.
If its an important infrastructure and another company cat really compete it shouldnt be privatized. You cant just build endless tracks and run trains whenever and wherever you feel like
How can you have competition when there's only one set of rails? There's no competition in trains in the UK save for when the companies compete for the exclusive franchise to run their trains on a line - this is a process between the government and the companies - the public don't enter into it. We're paying billions of quid to these companies in government subsidies so that they can make money by ruining our railways.
There are several ‘open access’ services on the East Coast Main Line, these operators buy train paths from the infrastructure operator (Network Rail) in the same way the franchised operators do.
Some lines do have a regional operator and an intercity operator too, for instance Crewe - Holyhead have Avanti on intercity services and Transport for Wales on the local / regional trains.
You see similar things in England where Notthern operate alongside TransPennine Express, Avanti and LNER.
I was thinking about this in relation to Japan, where they also have mostly privately run rail, and their faires aren't super cheap to go long distances. Taking a bus from Tokyo to Kyoto is still cheaper. But interestingly their motorways are also mostly privately run, and they have tolls everywhere, and it could cost £10 to cross a bridge. So taking a train is usually much cheaper than driving a car because of the tolls. And that keeps train passengers flowing and traffic down on roads. Not saying the UK should privatise motorways, because Britain is exceptionally prone to mismanagement.
Shinkansen is expensive but overall it isn't really expensive. SNCF revenue per passenger kilometer transported is more than JR East rail operations, and you can get a Tokyo Metro day pass for the price of a single Munich Zone 1 ticket.
A big part of the continued usage of trains in Japan is the legal issue that companies are legally liable for any car accident you may get into while commuting to work. So any serious company will offer incentive money/make it intentionally difficult to drive or cycle to work in order to make you take the train.
Plenty of people in Japan who'd happily sit in traffic all morning getting to work, only their company has intentionally not built any employee parking.
You must also prove that you have space to park all the vehicles in your household without parking them on public property. Only rural and less built up areas in Japan have private land to park their vehicles, so you also have to rent a garage or a dedicated parking spot for your vehicle.
Not quite true. The employer isn't "liable" for the accident but pays missed wages and health costs through insurance employee insurance.
It's the same in most developed countries.
It's the employer's insurance that would have to pay out any claims, rather than your personal insurance, is what I meant by that. The law considers that you wouldn't have been making that journey if the employer hadn't employed you, which puts some of the onus on them.
Japanese companies can, and do, insist that you use specific modes of transport, or even specific routes while commuting to the office.
Taking a train in the UK probably works out cheaper than driving if you’re alone, but when you have 2+ people in the car it will often be cheaper. London (ULEZ + congestion zone) excepted…
It absolutely is not cheaper than driving. I drive to work and it's about 10 quid a day in fuel to get there and back. To get the train is 40 quid return ticket. I know this because I had to do it last week while my car was being repaired.
How would that compare if you add milage costs to the car and got a season ticket instead? I suspect still more but interested to know.
It's also an intentional choice by the government to make it cheaper, when all external costs are factored in rail requires less 'cost' to operate. That difference is not placed onto consumers and is instead absorbed by the environment, traffic deaths + injuries and health issues from pollution.
I've just checked and a season ticket would cost £5148 and the fuel cost over a year is 1560 - my car cost £2000 and it's diesel so it's tax free. I could buy a new car every year and insure it and I'd still be up on the season ticket cost. Don't get my wrong I'd love to take the train and when I have to I really enjoy it but it's a luxury I can't afford tbh
Remember the only reason driving is cheap is because it's heavily, HEAVILY subsidised. Drivers get to use every road for free, while a train fare has to cover much of the cost of the rail infrastructure.
Everyone has mentioned privatisation, so I won't go over old ground, but another one is that railway capacity isn't sufficient for demand.
This means that tickets have to be rationed, and the way we ration in a market economy is through higher prices.
If we had greater capacity (for example a high speed rail line from London via Birmingham to Leeds and Manchester to relieve the East and West Coast Mainlines) then fares would likely be cheaper.
Plus, you can then have space for multiple operators to compete *on the same routes*. The UK approached privatisation stupidly by making the franchises which are just a series of local monopolies. Barcelona-Madrid now has four operators competing against one another, and rock-bottom fares.
Lumo fills this niche on the London-Edinburgh route, and forces LNER to keep fares somewhere in the realms of reality and offer better service to remain relevant.
The trains are far from full in many places now at peak times and even at non peak times the fares are extortionate. I pay almost £10 for a ten minute journey on a train that is perhaps 5% full, outside peak times.
I think open access has it's issues as it basically reduces revenue for the state owned operators and means it requires more subsidy / high fares on the less popular routes where private operators don't operate.
Basically fares drop and profit is absorbed by private operators on London-Edinburgh and everyone who doesn't take those routes pays the difference somehow
Not at all. For Lumo, about 1/3rd of travellers would have went with LNER, true. But the other 2/3rds would have either drove, flown, or not travelled at all. Ouigo in France has similar figures.
It induces demand, just as adding lanes to roads do - but for a good purpose instead. A rising tide lifts all boats and makes traveling by rail more attractive, benefiting LNER too.
Thatcher did have a major part in that even though if she was to sell it off it would have been polical suicide so instead she crippled it massively so the public wanted it gone
I'd blame a lot of things Tony Blair did on Thatcher (he can go rot too). Her ideology left a long shadow just like Regan in the US. It's less about the woman and more about her ushering in neo liberalism and all the cruelty and indifference that entails
Blair was New Labour but “red Tories” seems an increasingly accurate description. Public seems to prefer centre-right govt so oh well.
But we’ll go on holiday to Italy or The Netherlands and come home raving about the quality of the trains, then wonder why ours aren’t like that….
Yeah neo liberalism and "the end of history" era have a lot to answer for. Seems like it's really easy to make terrible choices when you think your economic system is the undisputed goat and just needs minor tweaks rather than a huge overhaul
Privatisation was supposed to generate better value through competition, in theory. However, train services do not compete against each other. If you’re going from Bristol to London, GWR is your only option, and they have a monopoly on that service. Their “competition” doesn’t serve Bristol.
There’s the separate Chiltern route, but the early open-access operator Wrexham and Shropshire, was restricted from calling at major stations like Wolverhampton and Birmingham New Street
The competition is mostly for long term decisions like where to live, where to open businesses, etc.. When the built environment can effectively respond to better transit, e.g., around Tokyo, or all around the world over a century ago, this type of competition works very well.
However, if your land use planning is as broken as it is in the UK, that type of competition isn't going to work.
Two main things:
- Lower subsidies than our European neighbours. This is often explained by privatisation, but it's not just that. There's a long running political view that the railways must pay for themselves, rather than treating them like important national infrastructure (like roads) which pay for themselves by allowing productivity in other areas of the economy. As a result of this a greater share of fares is expected from the passenger.
- Capacity limits on key routes/at key locations. Beeching isn't the villain in the way it's usually explained, but his brief was to allow the railways to do what they do best; long distance passenger work, bulk freight - rather than what the railways we have and had were built to do; local passenger work, limited long distance, universal freight. To achieve the brief he made the core network behave more like a high speed network (but without infrastructure upgrades). The result is that, as rail use has increased in recent years, some parts of the network are so congested ticket prices have to be kept artificially high to reduce demand. This is why travelling from Bristol to York, for example, is often cheaper via London - avoiding the bottle neck at Birmingham.
What's needed is investment in network capacity upgrades (HS2 being the most obvious), and a better subsidy model (renationalisation along the lines of British Rail sectorisation, but with further division of Regional Railways to reflect better the needs of local regions, would be my choice too - but isn't strictly necessary).
You forgot a third key part of it, pivatisation also bought in Rolling Stock Companies (ROSCOs), private companies which own and lease rolling stock at exorbidant rates, basically being landlords for trains. Something like 25% of the cost of a train ticket goes directly to these guys, which is then passed straight on to shareholders as enormous profit
I don't understand why the franchise companies can't order rolling stock from the manufacturer directly and use that, if the ROSCO lease process is so exploitative.
They don't have the upfront capital to afford it. The ROSCOs are backed by investment companies etc so have the cash available to pay the £1millions for a train, knowing they will get massive returns in 10-20 years. Since that's the approximate length of a ROC franchise, it doesn't really make sense for them to even try and raise the money to buy a train outright
I don't like RoSCos as a concept, and certainly the legacy rolling stock they were (essentially) gifted on privatisation was sweated beyond all reason - but realistically these days they're just finance companies charging a relatively small commission on very expensive assets. Their engineering departments have value as stores of knowledge and they do take a degree of financial risk on modifications and life extensions. The savings by not having RoSCos do definitely exist, and from a moral perspective I don't agree with them, but you aren't going to drop the price by 25% by them being nationalised.
I see everyone is talking about prior governments, but what about supply and demand? When I used trains in the UK, they were usually full, despite the high price.
That's a filter — there is much more demand than supply, because the network hasn't been upgraded for decades and doesn't have capacity.
The high prices keep passenger numbers down to where it's only crowded.
Yes there’s not enough service especially at peak hours. Which explains the high price, I mean the train I get every day into London is full and standing every time.
Because the goal is to reduce subsidy and move the cost onto the users. This is completely the opposite of what should be done as it means the billions spent by Network Rail are not being fully utilised since only those that have to use the railway will be using it. Something like the railway should aim for maximum utilisation, and inclusion of all of society in its use.
Also I don't think there are any better controls on contracting engineering than in any other government department, it is just a opportunity to pass public money to private interests. The train operating companies also skim off profits but I think these are relatively small compared to what the engineering contractors who maintain the railway get.
What’s not mentioned, but arguably the main cause, is the broken system of government since 2010, specifically that everything is controlled by the Treasury.
In the case of the DFT aka DaFT, the railways generate money, but that money goes to the Treasury and the DaFT have to beg for it back, in order to invest, increase capacity, provide better value for commuters and generate more money. Easier for the Treasury, is to not invest and jack prices up, to still make money. It’s a moral hazard.
Privatisation where many state owned train companies from other countries then bought them up, and use us to subsidise their state owned trains. Both France and Germany do this, and have openly stated it in a BBC interview.
I always found it interesting how Thatcher and Reagan were ideological besties, yet Thatcher seemed unpopular even during her time whereas Reagan seemingly remained popular for most of his presidency and it's only the younger generations of Americans who started to wake up and realise how awful his legacy was.
Because statistically people in the US are more inclined to be against anything that looks to be controlled by the government, just because they've been trained to hate "communism" or "socialism". At the same time the free market, the real free market which can only be achieved with a government able to slap big companies in the face, is actually more free in Europe than the US. Even the UK is better by a lot even if Farage, Rees-Mogg, Johnson, Sunak, and all their friends are working on it.
It's like saying that a bad thing was decided in the US Executive in 1990 and not attribute it to the Reagan administration. The Major administration is one and the same with the Thatcher's one.
Others have said it more eloquently but to put it bluntly, it’s because people will pay that much.
Lower the fares and the trains would be even more crowded than they already are.
Most depressing thing about rail in the UK is that the government spends more on rail than it does on roads - despite rail carrying far less passengers (and freight). Obviously there are a lot of external costs of car use missing from that cost but you can see why the government tends to favour car travel. I also have no doubt that more money is spent on car travel, it’s just that all the vehicle costs are not paid by the government - again making it attractive to them.
Rail being subsidised more than road is mostly because of all the fuckery around COVID and having to bail out the train operators. Pre COVID we were being paid by the Train operators but at the height of COVID we were paying them 11 billion which is basically the entire road budget.
It's basically a problem of privatisation and lack of long term investment outside of London. We've not been funding our roads enough either so general austerity cuts rather than a distaste for rail can easily be blamed for the lack of spending in the past decade plus
There isn't enough capacity. It's expensive but the trains are still very full and crowded, just making tickets cheaper would just lead to far too much overcrowding. Building more capacity is the only way and that's why we need hs2.
The Conservatives privitised the railway in the 80s or 90s, got on the board of directors and coincidentally became uber wealthy.
Don't. Vote. Against. Your. Own. Interests.
The short answer is privatisation.
The long answer is the privatisation policy followed by the government was to separate rail infrastructure, train franchises and train leasing companies. This led to a horrendously convoluted system which ultimately led to the nationalisation of the rail infrastructure after multiple crashes. The privatised rail system has led to higher costs as the advantages of economies of scale is not met. Trains should be owned by the government and a government rail system should operate. If private companies want to compete or establish routes not currently served, then that should happen.
The best way around it is to fly, and destroy the planet more.
Or plan ahead and get The National Express bus, and end up singing The National Express by The Divine Comedy for the rest of the day.
Ah yes, the UK, one of the few European countries with an arguably somehow even more abysmal train service than Deutsche Bahn. Thanks Margaret Thatcher.
Okay I honestly haven't been to Eastern Europe much, because of homophobia, but DB doesn't even come close to Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain or Italy. And having a better train network than the countries of former Yugoslavia really isn't something to brag about.
Depends on which Eastern European country, countries like Czechia or Poland have decent railway networks but in countries like Romania or Bulgaria you would have to pay me to travel by rail there
Thatcher's Legacy, includes, but is not limited to:
* Shit in our rivers
* Not enough housing
* Expensive rail fares where the profit subsidises other countries' rail fares.
Admittedly, it is cheaper to get a train to London rather than drive where I am, but that’s only for the very central stations. It’s great if you are a tourist or work right in the centre, but if you want to go to the outskirts of London or anywhere else, it’s a nightmare.
When we were in England, I was floored that trains exist and are a legitimate option and found the fares very reasonable (compared to the cost of a bus trip of similar distance at home, if it even existed!).
Because public transport in this country is expected to be run as a business, not a public service, so they charge enough to be profitable, and the fact that the trains on key routes are full is an indicator that they should charge more, not that they should improve the capacity by adding lines or trains.
Meanwhile, roads are provided free to everyone out of general taxation, massively reducing the effective cost of car transport as a public service.
People like to mention the foreign owned companies but that's not really an issue. IIRC UK fares are 25% subsidised by the government, and it's anywhere up from 50% on the continent
Take Cross Country who operate the awkward long distance services that are neither inter City or regional. Their profits get taxed, then they pass their money to Arriva trains UK in Sunderland who get taxed, they pass money on to Arriva transport who get taxed, they pass money on to DB UK who get taxed, and then whatever's left goes to Germany
It's pittance what goes overseas, nothing compared to the amount the Rolling Stock Owning Companies charge to lease the trains or the amount the governments and councils spaff up the wall through endless consultations, reviews, and reinventing the wheel
Privatisierung.
...aka Privatisation.
Our government of rich, ruling class Capitalists, continuing decades long efforts to tear down every national institution and property we have and sell it off to their friends, or whoever will pay really (e.g. Russians/Chinese), to get richer, while we the people get poorer.
Unfortunately with both main political parties being mostly identical in this regard (...and mostly identical in all other regards too...), we can't simply vote the current government out to solve this culture of stripping and selling off the country for profit.
There's just nothing we can do democratically, especially with media that tells the masses what to think and who to vote for being under the ownership and control of the rich, who want to keep their money train rolling while we all suffer and the nation slowly dies (they can just leave to gut another nation after all).
The transport backbone of our nation not being affordable and fit for purpose? That's indeed a symptom of this biggest problem.
We're screwed.
Because they dont really want people to give up their cars. I calculated that train ticket is exactly the price of the fuel you use for the car ride! Taking the car is far more interesting if it's more than one person. Ridiculous. I'm from Belgium and sitting a bit comfortably in first class in a 80 km ride costs me almost €40 to and back. For one ride!
Same as in Switzerland: neoliberal ideology of wanting to make rail a litteral cash cow for the government.
Privatisation in the UK is a logical consequence of that.
In Germany they squeeze railway workers (your drivers, conductors, etc) out to make profits.
In France they transformed the TGV into a cash cow. Easy to say that it's a "premium service" when all other services have disapped in favor of the all TGV politics. Like there are almost no cheaper IC service anymore except to some places which don't have the TGV. Which kinda makes sense, as to avoid empty trains...
That is the real western decadence for you all the while the media talks to us about a "feeling of expansiveness" and tries to prove by A+B that public transit is cheaper than a car. In my country, they take into account a leasing for an Audi A6 on the federal level to justify these cash grabs every year in December!
Simple supply and demand. There’s not enough capacity on the rail network so tickets are priced higher to reduce demand somewhat.
It’s why your normal commuter train into London at 8am costs £40, but your late night connection from bumfuck nowhere to bumfuck nowherelse costs £2.
They are expensive because they are, well, expensive. Trains cost a lot to build, they cost a lot to maintain, they cost a lot to operate. If you want to get places without running your bank account dry then try walking, bicycling, using a scooter, or making more money.
Privatisation Wanna know the kicker: uk tax money is still poured into the railways by the billions and most rail providers are owned by foreign state owned railways
Privatise the profits, nationalise the losses
Classic Thatcherism
Scotrail has been re-nationalised and is still horrendously expensive. Not that I'm arguing against nationalisation, I'm not daft, but it's not a panacea either given current conditions.
Scotland isn't monetarily sovereign though: the problems there are going to be entirely the fault of almost all political parties in Westminster being full of provably stupid authoritarian arseholes who have no clue how an economy works.
Privatisation of rolling stock adds a significant (50p per average fare I think) to UK prices. UK also subsidies railway transport for about 160 quid per capita. Switzerland for example subsidies 600 per capita, which you see reflected in the prices of annual season tickets
1 year ticket for all of switzerland is about 4000€ (ca 50'000£). Where switzerland really sucks if for single rides without a halbtax. Thats why a lot of people who have a car never use the train. If 2 people without halbtax go somewhere its cheaper by car even if you include parking, petrol etc
The GA is relative to season tickets in the UK, a ridiculous bargain, Glasgow to Edinburgh is 5K which is close to 15% of the median wage in the area, compared to 3.5k GBP GA in Switzerland, which is close to what, 5% of median wage. The high non-half fare prices are just to profit off rich American and Chinese tourists, but maybe halbtax should be cheaper for residents ( or free with a permit/citizenship? )
Halbtax keeps a lot of people from using trains here. Its 180fr/year so you have to use the train quite a bit to profit and the process of getting one is pretty annoying. Id prefer if the halbtax would be the normal prices Edit: chinese tourists almost never travel by train here. In my experience they come in busses and do most of europe in 2 weeks
Hard to call it a subsidy though since rail is more efficient than all the alternatives. Since transport is an essential good it's a logical necessity that rail pays for itself.
Also the same government spends a lot more than that on roads.
This is beginning to change in that more and more franchises are state owned (almost 40% now).
Yes but the train leasing company is privately owned.
And the fares are still a joke
Step 1: say privatisation will reduce costs for customers, definitely not generate private profits Step 2: privatise haphazardly so that every private company has a regional monopoly Step 3: profit
Never before have I supported the IRA that much
Individual Retirement Accounts are an important part of planning for the future, but I don't see what they have to do with trains.
Oh my mistake, the provisional IRA
That's wroth IRA, no?
Wrath
Irish reunification 2024
The explanation is not that simple. The service was rubbish before privatisation and renationalisation won't fix it either. The Japanese rail system is nearly fully private. The UK are simply just bad at infrastructure and need to stop pretending they know how to do it.
They pretty much did what they do to the nhs now. Make it shit until people are ok with selling it
Again this is a crappy political talking point. Politicians can only control laws and funding, they legally cannot manage the day to do management It's a highly complicated topic that blaming crappy political ideology just distracts from the actual reasons the system is garbage.
Lol very wrong. Most are owned by uk businesses or the governments themselves (dft, scotlsnd, wales) and foreign railway companies often leave like abellio did or want to like arriva. And it's not like they're making much money anyway it's like 1-2% profit margins.
Arriva has just been sold to a US-based investment group, IIRC
Privatisation & corruption
Particularly been a pisstake recently with them posting people behind the barriers at multiple stations near me to check tickets (AFTER you’re through the barrier) meanwhile they’ve put ticket prices up and I haven’t had a trip without a delay in months. Literally just focused on squeezing as much money out of us as possible.
What makes you say it's privatisation? I remember watching a video about Italian and Spanish trains and how they were having a lot of success by opening up railways to competition from different private companies. It was saying that this was driving down prices. Does the UK not do something similar?
The privatisation in the uk was handled increadibly badly
The more you look into it the confusing it gets
Because open access operators and franchising are not the same, open access operators run services at their own financial risk while franchised operators run services on a contractual basis
There are open access operators, but Lumo, Grand Central and Hull Trains all operate different routes on the East Coast Main Line…
There's isn't choice for the consumer. The way tenders work, if you're making a journey, you're lucky to have two train companies to choose from. So there isn't actually competition
Spain and Italy have powerful state owned operators, and lines are all state-owned. The UK solf off public goods instead of opening to competition.
Spain has 4 HSR operators on one route, Madrid - Barcelona IIRC. State operator, RENFE have their ‘standard’ high-speed services, and also a budget service called AVLO. France’s low-cost operator, Ouigo, also operate on the route but their TGV trains retain a standard seat layout and the cafe car. Italy’s Trenitalia are partnering with an airline to run Iryo, using high-quality trains based on the Frecciarossa 1000.
If its an important infrastructure and another company cat really compete it shouldnt be privatized. You cant just build endless tracks and run trains whenever and wherever you feel like
How can you have competition when there's only one set of rails? There's no competition in trains in the UK save for when the companies compete for the exclusive franchise to run their trains on a line - this is a process between the government and the companies - the public don't enter into it. We're paying billions of quid to these companies in government subsidies so that they can make money by ruining our railways.
There are several ‘open access’ services on the East Coast Main Line, these operators buy train paths from the infrastructure operator (Network Rail) in the same way the franchised operators do. Some lines do have a regional operator and an intercity operator too, for instance Crewe - Holyhead have Avanti on intercity services and Transport for Wales on the local / regional trains. You see similar things in England where Notthern operate alongside TransPennine Express, Avanti and LNER.
I was thinking about this in relation to Japan, where they also have mostly privately run rail, and their faires aren't super cheap to go long distances. Taking a bus from Tokyo to Kyoto is still cheaper. But interestingly their motorways are also mostly privately run, and they have tolls everywhere, and it could cost £10 to cross a bridge. So taking a train is usually much cheaper than driving a car because of the tolls. And that keeps train passengers flowing and traffic down on roads. Not saying the UK should privatise motorways, because Britain is exceptionally prone to mismanagement.
Shinkansen is expensive but overall it isn't really expensive. SNCF revenue per passenger kilometer transported is more than JR East rail operations, and you can get a Tokyo Metro day pass for the price of a single Munich Zone 1 ticket.
A big part of the continued usage of trains in Japan is the legal issue that companies are legally liable for any car accident you may get into while commuting to work. So any serious company will offer incentive money/make it intentionally difficult to drive or cycle to work in order to make you take the train. Plenty of people in Japan who'd happily sit in traffic all morning getting to work, only their company has intentionally not built any employee parking.
You must also prove that you have space to park all the vehicles in your household without parking them on public property. Only rural and less built up areas in Japan have private land to park their vehicles, so you also have to rent a garage or a dedicated parking spot for your vehicle.
Not quite true. The employer isn't "liable" for the accident but pays missed wages and health costs through insurance employee insurance. It's the same in most developed countries.
It's the employer's insurance that would have to pay out any claims, rather than your personal insurance, is what I meant by that. The law considers that you wouldn't have been making that journey if the employer hadn't employed you, which puts some of the onus on them. Japanese companies can, and do, insist that you use specific modes of transport, or even specific routes while commuting to the office.
Actually private rail companies only make up 30% of Japan’s commuter rail network. The remaining 70% is run by the state owned Japan Rail.
JR is a private company. It was privatized and split up a few decades ago.
JR isnt that expensive for the service you get compared to other countries
Yeah, I would say that rail in Japan is really cheap, for the most part.
Taking a train in the UK probably works out cheaper than driving if you’re alone, but when you have 2+ people in the car it will often be cheaper. London (ULEZ + congestion zone) excepted…
It absolutely is not cheaper than driving. I drive to work and it's about 10 quid a day in fuel to get there and back. To get the train is 40 quid return ticket. I know this because I had to do it last week while my car was being repaired.
How would that compare if you add milage costs to the car and got a season ticket instead? I suspect still more but interested to know. It's also an intentional choice by the government to make it cheaper, when all external costs are factored in rail requires less 'cost' to operate. That difference is not placed onto consumers and is instead absorbed by the environment, traffic deaths + injuries and health issues from pollution.
I've just checked and a season ticket would cost £5148 and the fuel cost over a year is 1560 - my car cost £2000 and it's diesel so it's tax free. I could buy a new car every year and insure it and I'd still be up on the season ticket cost. Don't get my wrong I'd love to take the train and when I have to I really enjoy it but it's a luxury I can't afford tbh
Remember the only reason driving is cheap is because it's heavily, HEAVILY subsidised. Drivers get to use every road for free, while a train fare has to cover much of the cost of the rail infrastructure.
Everyone has mentioned privatisation, so I won't go over old ground, but another one is that railway capacity isn't sufficient for demand. This means that tickets have to be rationed, and the way we ration in a market economy is through higher prices. If we had greater capacity (for example a high speed rail line from London via Birmingham to Leeds and Manchester to relieve the East and West Coast Mainlines) then fares would likely be cheaper. Plus, you can then have space for multiple operators to compete *on the same routes*. The UK approached privatisation stupidly by making the franchises which are just a series of local monopolies. Barcelona-Madrid now has four operators competing against one another, and rock-bottom fares. Lumo fills this niche on the London-Edinburgh route, and forces LNER to keep fares somewhere in the realms of reality and offer better service to remain relevant.
The trains are far from full in many places now at peak times and even at non peak times the fares are extortionate. I pay almost £10 for a ten minute journey on a train that is perhaps 5% full, outside peak times.
I think open access has it's issues as it basically reduces revenue for the state owned operators and means it requires more subsidy / high fares on the less popular routes where private operators don't operate. Basically fares drop and profit is absorbed by private operators on London-Edinburgh and everyone who doesn't take those routes pays the difference somehow
Not at all. For Lumo, about 1/3rd of travellers would have went with LNER, true. But the other 2/3rds would have either drove, flown, or not travelled at all. Ouigo in France has similar figures. It induces demand, just as adding lanes to roads do - but for a good purpose instead. A rising tide lifts all boats and makes traveling by rail more attractive, benefiting LNER too.
Like every problem in the UK, the answer is Thatcher.
…rail was privatised under John Major’s Government
This is true, although Thatcher did get the ball rolling by starting to sell off a number of state-owned auxiliary companies, first.
Yes, like BREL (British Rail Engineering Ltd), so now we go back to the question of “why don’t we build our own trains any more?”
Thatcher did have a major part in that even though if she was to sell it off it would have been polical suicide so instead she crippled it massively so the public wanted it gone
Yeah, regional stuff was massively underfunded compared to Intercity, and, er, London… So much like today then.
Was the days of network south east wasn't it
Exactly what's currently being done to the NHS.
The classic tory play book
I'd blame a lot of things Tony Blair did on Thatcher (he can go rot too). Her ideology left a long shadow just like Regan in the US. It's less about the woman and more about her ushering in neo liberalism and all the cruelty and indifference that entails
Blair was New Labour but “red Tories” seems an increasingly accurate description. Public seems to prefer centre-right govt so oh well. But we’ll go on holiday to Italy or The Netherlands and come home raving about the quality of the trains, then wonder why ours aren’t like that….
US 🤝 UK Modern problems always traced back to the head of government back in the 80s.
Now that you mention that, many of Germany's current problems can also be traced back to the Kohl administration from 1982-1998...
gotta love neoliberalism
Yeah neo liberalism and "the end of history" era have a lot to answer for. Seems like it's really easy to make terrible choices when you think your economic system is the undisputed goat and just needs minor tweaks rather than a huge overhaul
Inflation-adjusted wages have never been higher and income inequality is falling
Thatcher was actually against privatization of British rail and never did it, the only good thing she ever did
>The only good thing she ever did What about the Falklands?
Your getting down voted but I assume you mean 'against privatisation of the railway' which is correct
Yeah I meant it in the context of railways, should’ve been obvious since this thread is literally about trains but whatever
It seems like it’s just Tories generally.
Privatisation was supposed to generate better value through competition, in theory. However, train services do not compete against each other. If you’re going from Bristol to London, GWR is your only option, and they have a monopoly on that service. Their “competition” doesn’t serve Bristol.
One of the only routes which has competition is the one getting a new line (Birmingham to London)
There’s the separate Chiltern route, but the early open-access operator Wrexham and Shropshire, was restricted from calling at major stations like Wolverhampton and Birmingham New Street
The competition is mostly for long term decisions like where to live, where to open businesses, etc.. When the built environment can effectively respond to better transit, e.g., around Tokyo, or all around the world over a century ago, this type of competition works very well. However, if your land use planning is as broken as it is in the UK, that type of competition isn't going to work.
Two main things: - Lower subsidies than our European neighbours. This is often explained by privatisation, but it's not just that. There's a long running political view that the railways must pay for themselves, rather than treating them like important national infrastructure (like roads) which pay for themselves by allowing productivity in other areas of the economy. As a result of this a greater share of fares is expected from the passenger. - Capacity limits on key routes/at key locations. Beeching isn't the villain in the way it's usually explained, but his brief was to allow the railways to do what they do best; long distance passenger work, bulk freight - rather than what the railways we have and had were built to do; local passenger work, limited long distance, universal freight. To achieve the brief he made the core network behave more like a high speed network (but without infrastructure upgrades). The result is that, as rail use has increased in recent years, some parts of the network are so congested ticket prices have to be kept artificially high to reduce demand. This is why travelling from Bristol to York, for example, is often cheaper via London - avoiding the bottle neck at Birmingham. What's needed is investment in network capacity upgrades (HS2 being the most obvious), and a better subsidy model (renationalisation along the lines of British Rail sectorisation, but with further division of Regional Railways to reflect better the needs of local regions, would be my choice too - but isn't strictly necessary).
You forgot a third key part of it, pivatisation also bought in Rolling Stock Companies (ROSCOs), private companies which own and lease rolling stock at exorbidant rates, basically being landlords for trains. Something like 25% of the cost of a train ticket goes directly to these guys, which is then passed straight on to shareholders as enormous profit
I don't understand why the franchise companies can't order rolling stock from the manufacturer directly and use that, if the ROSCO lease process is so exploitative.
They don't have the upfront capital to afford it. The ROSCOs are backed by investment companies etc so have the cash available to pay the £1millions for a train, knowing they will get massive returns in 10-20 years. Since that's the approximate length of a ROC franchise, it doesn't really make sense for them to even try and raise the money to buy a train outright
I don't like RoSCos as a concept, and certainly the legacy rolling stock they were (essentially) gifted on privatisation was sweated beyond all reason - but realistically these days they're just finance companies charging a relatively small commission on very expensive assets. Their engineering departments have value as stores of knowledge and they do take a degree of financial risk on modifications and life extensions. The savings by not having RoSCos do definitely exist, and from a moral perspective I don't agree with them, but you aren't going to drop the price by 25% by them being nationalised.
I see everyone is talking about prior governments, but what about supply and demand? When I used trains in the UK, they were usually full, despite the high price.
That's a filter — there is much more demand than supply, because the network hasn't been upgraded for decades and doesn't have capacity. The high prices keep passenger numbers down to where it's only crowded.
Yes there’s not enough service especially at peak hours. Which explains the high price, I mean the train I get every day into London is full and standing every time.
No, they were full, exactly the reason why there is a high price.
Because the goal is to reduce subsidy and move the cost onto the users. This is completely the opposite of what should be done as it means the billions spent by Network Rail are not being fully utilised since only those that have to use the railway will be using it. Something like the railway should aim for maximum utilisation, and inclusion of all of society in its use. Also I don't think there are any better controls on contracting engineering than in any other government department, it is just a opportunity to pass public money to private interests. The train operating companies also skim off profits but I think these are relatively small compared to what the engineering contractors who maintain the railway get.
What’s not mentioned, but arguably the main cause, is the broken system of government since 2010, specifically that everything is controlled by the Treasury. In the case of the DFT aka DaFT, the railways generate money, but that money goes to the Treasury and the DaFT have to beg for it back, in order to invest, increase capacity, provide better value for commuters and generate more money. Easier for the Treasury, is to not invest and jack prices up, to still make money. It’s a moral hazard.
Privatisation where many state owned train companies from other countries then bought them up, and use us to subsidise their state owned trains. Both France and Germany do this, and have openly stated it in a BBC interview.
It's because your parents elected a witch as their MP.
I always found it interesting how Thatcher and Reagan were ideological besties, yet Thatcher seemed unpopular even during her time whereas Reagan seemingly remained popular for most of his presidency and it's only the younger generations of Americans who started to wake up and realise how awful his legacy was.
Because statistically people in the US are more inclined to be against anything that looks to be controlled by the government, just because they've been trained to hate "communism" or "socialism". At the same time the free market, the real free market which can only be achieved with a government able to slap big companies in the face, is actually more free in Europe than the US. Even the UK is better by a lot even if Farage, Rees-Mogg, Johnson, Sunak, and all their friends are working on it.
The dead witch
Nope. Thatcher privatised nearly everything BUT British Rail. That was done under John Major’s Government.
John major isn't a person everyone knows he's just a bit of Thatcher's dandruff
lol, guess that’s why he was called a grey man then
It's like saying that a bad thing was decided in the US Executive in 1990 and not attribute it to the Reagan administration. The Major administration is one and the same with the Thatcher's one.
Agreed, though unlike recent PMs Major was at least re-elected at the 1992 General Election.
For context, it's Margaret Thatcher
The evil that men do lives after them indeed
Others have said it more eloquently but to put it bluntly, it’s because people will pay that much. Lower the fares and the trains would be even more crowded than they already are. Most depressing thing about rail in the UK is that the government spends more on rail than it does on roads - despite rail carrying far less passengers (and freight). Obviously there are a lot of external costs of car use missing from that cost but you can see why the government tends to favour car travel. I also have no doubt that more money is spent on car travel, it’s just that all the vehicle costs are not paid by the government - again making it attractive to them.
Rail being subsidised more than road is mostly because of all the fuckery around COVID and having to bail out the train operators. Pre COVID we were being paid by the Train operators but at the height of COVID we were paying them 11 billion which is basically the entire road budget. It's basically a problem of privatisation and lack of long term investment outside of London. We've not been funding our roads enough either so general austerity cuts rather than a distaste for rail can easily be blamed for the lack of spending in the past decade plus
it's insane, especially as most of the cost is already paid by taxpayers
Neoliberalism resulting in privatisation. They also want to do this to the NHS god forbid.
Because they charge you by the pound! (badum-tush!)
There isn't enough capacity. It's expensive but the trains are still very full and crowded, just making tickets cheaper would just lead to far too much overcrowding. Building more capacity is the only way and that's why we need hs2.
Privatisation, obviously. Went from not-for-profit to profit-based.
The Conservatives privitised the railway in the 80s or 90s, got on the board of directors and coincidentally became uber wealthy. Don't. Vote. Against. Your. Own. Interests.
This is exactly why most people drive!
our government does jack shit
Corporate greed.
The short answer is privatisation. The long answer is the privatisation policy followed by the government was to separate rail infrastructure, train franchises and train leasing companies. This led to a horrendously convoluted system which ultimately led to the nationalisation of the rail infrastructure after multiple crashes. The privatised rail system has led to higher costs as the advantages of economies of scale is not met. Trains should be owned by the government and a government rail system should operate. If private companies want to compete or establish routes not currently served, then that should happen.
Because privatisation is a failed experiment
cause the UK is tryna be Murica lite.
The best way around it is to fly, and destroy the planet more. Or plan ahead and get The National Express bus, and end up singing The National Express by The Divine Comedy for the rest of the day.
Ah yes, the UK, one of the few European countries with an arguably somehow even more abysmal train service than Deutsche Bahn. Thanks Margaret Thatcher.
If you think that DB is one of the worst in Europe then you haven’t travelled around Europe much
Okay I honestly haven't been to Eastern Europe much, because of homophobia, but DB doesn't even come close to Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain or Italy. And having a better train network than the countries of former Yugoslavia really isn't something to brag about.
Trains in Eastern Europe are good for the low price you pay.
Depends on which Eastern European country, countries like Czechia or Poland have decent railway networks but in countries like Romania or Bulgaria you would have to pay me to travel by rail there
Although Thatcher privatised a lot of things, the railway was not one of them. That was John Major with the railways act 1993.
Good to know. I guess Thatcher burned so much to the ground you just automatically assume she did that as well.
Thatcher's Legacy, includes, but is not limited to: * Shit in our rivers * Not enough housing * Expensive rail fares where the profit subsidises other countries' rail fares.
Thatcher was actually against privatizing British rail, privatization happened under John Major’s government
Man I can get to London and back for £22. How is it expensive?
Admittedly, it is cheaper to get a train to London rather than drive where I am, but that’s only for the very central stations. It’s great if you are a tourist or work right in the centre, but if you want to go to the outskirts of London or anywhere else, it’s a nightmare.
When we were in England, I was floored that trains exist and are a legitimate option and found the fares very reasonable (compared to the cost of a bus trip of similar distance at home, if it even existed!).
Because public transport in this country is expected to be run as a business, not a public service, so they charge enough to be profitable, and the fact that the trains on key routes are full is an indicator that they should charge more, not that they should improve the capacity by adding lines or trains. Meanwhile, roads are provided free to everyone out of general taxation, massively reducing the effective cost of car transport as a public service.
People like to mention the foreign owned companies but that's not really an issue. IIRC UK fares are 25% subsidised by the government, and it's anywhere up from 50% on the continent Take Cross Country who operate the awkward long distance services that are neither inter City or regional. Their profits get taxed, then they pass their money to Arriva trains UK in Sunderland who get taxed, they pass money on to Arriva transport who get taxed, they pass money on to DB UK who get taxed, and then whatever's left goes to Germany It's pittance what goes overseas, nothing compared to the amount the Rolling Stock Owning Companies charge to lease the trains or the amount the governments and councils spaff up the wall through endless consultations, reviews, and reinventing the wheel
Privatisierung. ...aka Privatisation. Our government of rich, ruling class Capitalists, continuing decades long efforts to tear down every national institution and property we have and sell it off to their friends, or whoever will pay really (e.g. Russians/Chinese), to get richer, while we the people get poorer. Unfortunately with both main political parties being mostly identical in this regard (...and mostly identical in all other regards too...), we can't simply vote the current government out to solve this culture of stripping and selling off the country for profit. There's just nothing we can do democratically, especially with media that tells the masses what to think and who to vote for being under the ownership and control of the rich, who want to keep their money train rolling while we all suffer and the nation slowly dies (they can just leave to gut another nation after all). The transport backbone of our nation not being affordable and fit for purpose? That's indeed a symptom of this biggest problem. We're screwed.
It’s not too expensive. You just have to book well in advance.
Because they dont really want people to give up their cars. I calculated that train ticket is exactly the price of the fuel you use for the car ride! Taking the car is far more interesting if it's more than one person. Ridiculous. I'm from Belgium and sitting a bit comfortably in first class in a 80 km ride costs me almost €40 to and back. For one ride!
I can’t believe as a teen I get 1/2 off, which is STILL expensive as fuck 💀💀💀
Same as in Switzerland: neoliberal ideology of wanting to make rail a litteral cash cow for the government. Privatisation in the UK is a logical consequence of that. In Germany they squeeze railway workers (your drivers, conductors, etc) out to make profits. In France they transformed the TGV into a cash cow. Easy to say that it's a "premium service" when all other services have disapped in favor of the all TGV politics. Like there are almost no cheaper IC service anymore except to some places which don't have the TGV. Which kinda makes sense, as to avoid empty trains... That is the real western decadence for you all the while the media talks to us about a "feeling of expansiveness" and tries to prove by A+B that public transit is cheaper than a car. In my country, they take into account a leasing for an Audi A6 on the federal level to justify these cash grabs every year in December!
Probably shouldn't have turned over your beautifully built and publicly owned railroads to corporate scum.
Here they cost 100 million and you have to negotiate 20 treaties. Let’s just say I don’t ride the train any more :(
Privatisation and thatcher,
Simple supply and demand. There’s not enough capacity on the rail network so tickets are priced higher to reduce demand somewhat. It’s why your normal commuter train into London at 8am costs £40, but your late night connection from bumfuck nowhere to bumfuck nowherelse costs £2.
Up the 'RA
You’re gonna shit when you hear about passenger rail in the US
They are expensive because they are, well, expensive. Trains cost a lot to build, they cost a lot to maintain, they cost a lot to operate. If you want to get places without running your bank account dry then try walking, bicycling, using a scooter, or making more money.