It is no great surprise to see National Express handing back the East Coast Main Line franchise.British railway companies stopped making profits around 1914, yet they were supposed to raise enough from the line to satisfy their shareholders and pay £1.4bn to the government over the next seven-and-a-half years.
I doubt that National Express will be the last company to find there is no future in the privatised railway business.
It is not as if the private railway feels more free. Quite the reverse.
Ever since privatisation railway stations have been festooned with notices warning the companies' customers about their behaviour and threatening them with all sorts of penalties and reprisals if they think they can pay for the company's services on the train.
This is partly the result of giving a private company an effective monopoly and partly because those companies are desperate to raise money to pay the government and their shareholders.
Then this position is overlaid with New Labour's target culture. Never mind if you give your customers a good service, just make sure you meet the centrally decided target.
Which is why this evening it was announced at Leicester that the train I was waiting for would not call at Market Harborough, as advertised, but run not-stop to St Pancras instead. Sod the customers. Just make sure you meet the government target.
All of which explains why the privatised railway has taken far more public money than British Rail ever did, yet has in many ways less concern for its passengers than the nationalised railway did.
6 comments:
All of a sudden the political elite (not just the MPs but also the quangocrats) have started to think about the quality of service to the population. And have discovered that not only do they not know how to do it but also that they do not know how to work out how to do it. The cry coming up from the activists is for more regulation, but the frightened ones equate that with micromanagement by central dictat. Once upon a time frontline public servants worked creatively with the public, and the more senior public servants were able to work with that. The new idea for regally granting us entitlements was unfortunately not understood by Cleggy when he responded to Brune's manifesto statement. What the LDs need to ask is how we can ensure that our entitlement is delivered without having to deal with a quagmire of ombudspersons and ultimately the courts in order to enforce it - we need to be convinced that the frontline workers with whom we engage have behind them a hierarchy that is dedicated to delivery and that the quality of that delivery is visible and continually assured. The cry for 'regulation' is being used in the absence of any other term that the b******s understand.
As far as I am concerned, under privatisation the three rofessions who shouldn't be allowed near running a railway (or anything else for that matter) namely civil servants, lawyers and accountants have been given control of the railwys. Add to that the botched structure of the privatised railway and what do you get? Well we're seeing it in stratosperic fares, crowdwd trains and meddling. The Tories should be pilloried for what they did and Labour for what they failed to do in unravelling the whole mess. The brave thing to do is to re-nationalise the lot and subject it to commercial operation under state ownership and proper management and the control structure we have now.
EU law clearly allows a different model for running railways - see Holland for example - private companies operating in a real partnership with the public sector. Indeed Lord Adonis has been visiting that country (notably recently featuring their much better provision for cyclists), but the Transport Times conference at which Lord Adonis spoke also featured a NedRail presentation that emphasised the more general planning of rail infrastructure (e.g. stations) and services for the benefit of the passenger. It is probably very enlightening about our rail franchise model to see how many of the operators are parts of home grown companies, largely born of our privatisation culture. Tweak the model a little and we will find much more passenger-friendly multinationals seriously bidding.
Actually Jonathan, railways have never been profitable. The overheads are far too high and the difficulties of organizing through transit of goods at the necessary speed to ensure profitable without damaging anything fragile has always been a problem. Moreover, many 19th century lines were built as a result of local pressure and unrealistic ambitions of local people to have their own little railway, and ran at a stonking loss from the off due to lack of traffic.
You are correct to say that the problem became more acute after WWI, when road transport improved markedly, but as early as the 1870s the GWR, usually if wrongly thought of as the largest, best managed and best capitalized of all the old railway companies, had three brushes with bankruptcy - that's three times in that decade. In the 1900s, there were serious doubts as to whether railways could survive due to the need for increased expenditure on rolling stock and permanent way (sound familiar)? Then along come WWI and made everything 50 times worse by sweating the system.
I would also suggest that it is less a case of "the privatised railway has taken far more public money than British Rail ever did, yet has in many ways less concern for its passengers than the nationalised railway did" than that SOME private companies don't care for their passengers. For instance, Chiltern runs a brilliant service, a hundred times as good as under BR. Against that we have Arriva Trains Wales, who seem to have an even worse attitude than your TOC at Leicester - or even worse the BR, which, having grown up in Gloucester, is something I never thought I'd say.
Sorry to write such a long post - particularly when I agree with the main thrust of the post. Railways are an interest of mine from an academic point of view as well! Any guesses as to who'll be next to quit?
Oi "Half-Blood Welshman", Chiltern line services were the responsibility of this "3/4-blood Welshman" under BR, and given the clapped-out equipment we had to use we did a pretty good job!
Seriously, yes Chiltern are doing very well, but I'd love to see a proper analysis of true cost to the public 1984 v 2009 ....
Ummm yes Crewegwyn - and why do you think you were given such duff stock? Nothing to do with the fervent desire of BR to run down the service and close the line I suppose?
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