The one who should be held accountable for this railway mess is that useless, spineless cretin Grayling. Our Minister for Transport - what a waste of space this Berkley Hunt really is. A typical Tory who passes the buck and squirms like a worm - yet he has overall authority and responsibility to sort out this mess - it is his bloody job. Just remember who privatised it all. Time the whole of the rail network was brought back into state ownership.
I’ll give you fair warning here: rant time!
I’m neither for nor against nationalisation - someone needs to come out with a modicum of a plan and financial burden, if any. Then a rough outline on what structure it wants. But the calls for nationalisation are often used as a convenient answer based on ideals without actually looking at whether it will truly answer the main issues we suffer with the railway:
- Ticket fares: it’s actually the Government themselves who tell the Train Operating Companies (TOCs) to raise prices each year by retail inflation plus maybe another 0.1-2%. The base price is too high, absolutely, and RPI is forever greater than the pay rises most of us earn, absolutely. So surely a party has the ability to say “if you vote us in then there’ll be no price increases for the entire term”?
- Capacity: that’s largely dependent on the number of train tracks and terminal platforms, the length of platforms, the inability to provide double-decker trains, and the ability of the signals to shorten the time between trains. All this infrastructure is down to the nationalised Network Rail.
A lack of trains where there is room for them is down to the amount of trains a TOC has, definitely. But for delay in acquiring more trains then comes down to the DfT having to give the authority and then the trains to be built. Currently the train-making factories in the UK are running at 100% which is why many TOCs are now forced to go abroad even when there are decent options to choose from in the UK.
- Reliability: issues like points failure, broken tracks, signal/track circuit failure, trees on the line etc all come under the nationalised Network Rail’s remit. Shortage of traincrew could either be a result of the TOC, but also remember if this is during disruption then it’s fairly likely that the train and crew meant to be taking your train is caught up in the disruption. Particularly if the were working the train’s previous journey.
- Rail Replacement Services: I literally saw a councillor recently tweet “On the Rail Replacement Bus due to planned engineering works. We need to nationalise our railways NOW!”. See the point above.
- Industrial action: often a melting pot of blame between the TOC attempting to save money/cut staff incidents; the Unions protecting jobs no matter how small the changes are, and both digging their heels in.
Don’t forget as well that there’s a set of commitments the Government demand when the franchise tender is being bid for. In Southern’s case IIRC there was even the mention of changing the conductors roles as well as the ticket office closures. That’s only what I vaguely recall, and having Googled the commitments just now I ended up with a 670-odd page PDF while I’ll be fucked if I’m going to read shortly before popping off to the micropub.
- Communication during disruption: at least this one’s largely down to the TOC, bar communication/last-minute decision-making by the signaller etc.
- Comfort: for standing, see capacity above. For the comfort of the seats nowadays (for anyone lucky enough to have had a ride on one of the mythical Thameslink services from Medway) my God it’s like sitting on an ironing board. Apparently the lack of padding is down to Government demands on fire safety. Surely the Government can just say “you know what, let’s ditch this OTT regulation”.
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So by my reckoning if we want to improve the railways we’ve got to forget who owns it and just fucking invest in Network Rail. Unfortunately this comes at a time when the NHS and other departments also need ‘saving’.
Longer franchises would in my eyes encourage more investment by the TOC owners. Why invest in a franchise if you’ve got to bid for it again just 4 years later? How much return on that investment will you see in those 4 years?? If companies want to make profits, then there are a hell of a lot of other industries they would rather look at. Sure, parent companies get a slice of profits. But given the profit margin for TOCs is so paltry compared to the overall turnover the money the parent company makes simply won’t make a drop in the ocean.
The ‘good old BR gravy train’ days were days of awful conditions and horrific needless wastage the higher up the hierarchy you go - a bit like the NHS now.
