Renationalisation of Britain's Railways

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Is proceeding slowly. For some reason the government has not boasted of their progress. Perhaps they do not want to admit that Corbyn was right.

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The country needs a properly integrated transport system. Somebody is going to have to pull together all the frayed and tangled threads and weave them together.



"Almost 40 per cent of passenger mainline rail travel in Britain is now by trains directly controlled by the state, after ministers were forced to bail out privatised operators as they ran into trouble in recent years, according to an FT analysis of official data.

Emergency measures introduced in 2020 at the start of the pandemic have also ripped up the franchising model that lay at the heart of rail privatisation and was designed to encourage operators to maximise revenues in return for a slice of any profits.

It has left ministers and civil servants responsible for the financial and operational decisions of all rail operators, whether or not they have been renationalised. Train companies are reduced to contractors running services to a timetable determined in Whitehall.

“This can’t possibly be a sustainable way of managing the rail system going forward,” said Andrew Haines, boss of Network Rail, the state-owned infrastructure body, who also heads up the Great British Railways Transition Team (GBRTT), a new interim public organisation set up in 2021 to bring management of train and track back under one roof."

FT.com
 
O! Jeremy Corrrrbyn was right?
Privatisation is failed??

To the barricades, comrades. Light the braziers, brew up a cuppa and wait for the Tory boys mob to the defence of their realm...:LOL:
 
"Although transport secretary Mark Harper last year acknowledged the existing set-up was “nonsense” and “mad”, the government’s reform agenda has stalled. The glacial pace is epitomised by a three-year gap between the publication of a policy document on rail reform in 2021 and the draft legislation in February this year."

"the rail system cost the public purse more than £52bn between April 2020 and March 2023"

FT.com
 
I do hope you'll keep up the good work of complaining about the government if the other lot actually get to have a go at being in charge. Meanwhile, please feel free to tell everyone how you will be voting in the next GE.
 
Perhaps more schemes like this needed? Was being discussed on a news prog a few days back and is apparently a success story.

EDIT: just realised thread is about rail, however will leave my post up :)

 
The buses are also a problem. Councils having to subsidise as not making a profit. I live near a shopping area which is also a bus hub. Number of routes cross there. I wonder about the wisdom of running a service say every 15min with very few people on them most of the time.

Train services to B'ham central also run at short intervals. Some previously unused lines are going to be opened up which will expand the network. There are also ghost stations around where trains never stop or very very infrequently so are hardly used. :) Such as once a day.
 
I use a motorbike. Faster, more fun, cheaper, more reliable, more convenient.

The railways will be a unionised, strike prone, expensive and unreliable pile of **** whether they are nationalised or not. They were ****e before privatisation and they are ****e now. Apart from rare exceptions like the self contained systems of Merseyside and Tyneside.

We should stop subsisidising the system and leave it to pay its own way. It'll go bust very quickly because it is crap.
 
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