The non-TGV network in france is, on the whole, awful. There are many lines which SNCF haven't officially closed, they've just substituted buses for trains for many years. So the TGV services don't really subsidise the non-TGV stuff, because they just don't bother to run them. There are some *electrified* lines where you have 2 trains a day. We should not be taking the french experience as the way to go! (Have a read of Alan Williams in the November 06 Modern Railways)
Nationalised or private, it doesn't really matter if you have the level of government meddling as we have in this country. That is the real issue, to my mind. There are pros and cons to both ways, but the DfT has no place specifying timetables down to the level of stopping patterns.
Anyway, we are where we are. The question should be how to get the best out of what we have, rather than arguing over whether BR was any good.
If British Rail still existed..
Moderator: Moderators
-
arabiandisco
- Very Active Forum Member
- Posts: 3496
- Joined: Mon May 10, 2004 9:49 am
- Location: The Church of Noise
- Contact:
1964-74-84 - As interesting as the comparison would be, unfortunately I don't have these tables - but then again it proves my earlier point that it was BR who brought about the cuts - a failure of a nationalised industry to retain or expand service levels to fight its way out of the cycle of decline.
Profit before Safety - never happened in BR? What about the botch-job resignalling at Clapham Jn, where due to the cheapness of programme, no-one bothered to check the work had been done properly, resulting in a 'wrong-side failure' of a signal? Ladbroke Grove was resignalled at the end of BR days - to a layout agreed by the HMRI. It was HMRI who then allowed HMG to not require ATP fitment on the Turbos, and who allowed the ATP scheme to be curtailed. Ultimately it was the driver of the Turbo - SN109 was not considered a high-risk signal as it had only been SPAD'd once prior to 5/10/1999.
TGV is cost-heavy, although it makes an operating profit, I don't believe it will cover its capital costs. SNCF runs an atrocious service away from the TGV lines and outside the capital. They may have flashy new trains on some routes, but what's the use of a fancy train if it only runs once a day? I'd rather have a fragmented network which runs an 'ageing' train (although not as old as some French DMUs/EMUs) every half-hour or every hour at the same minutes past the hour, than a flashy new train every 3.628 hours but never at the same minutes past the hour, and never at Lunchtime. Having a 'state-owned' service may be politically agreeable, but if there's no serviceto speak of, then people will not use it. If you want an international comparison, then SBB-CFF-FSS is a shining example of a national obsession with trains - one which is probably unaffordable, even for the Swiss.
Profit before Safety - never happened in BR? What about the botch-job resignalling at Clapham Jn, where due to the cheapness of programme, no-one bothered to check the work had been done properly, resulting in a 'wrong-side failure' of a signal? Ladbroke Grove was resignalled at the end of BR days - to a layout agreed by the HMRI. It was HMRI who then allowed HMG to not require ATP fitment on the Turbos, and who allowed the ATP scheme to be curtailed. Ultimately it was the driver of the Turbo - SN109 was not considered a high-risk signal as it had only been SPAD'd once prior to 5/10/1999.
TGV is cost-heavy, although it makes an operating profit, I don't believe it will cover its capital costs. SNCF runs an atrocious service away from the TGV lines and outside the capital. They may have flashy new trains on some routes, but what's the use of a fancy train if it only runs once a day? I'd rather have a fragmented network which runs an 'ageing' train (although not as old as some French DMUs/EMUs) every half-hour or every hour at the same minutes past the hour, than a flashy new train every 3.628 hours but never at the same minutes past the hour, and never at Lunchtime. Having a 'state-owned' service may be politically agreeable, but if there's no serviceto speak of, then people will not use it. If you want an international comparison, then SBB-CFF-FSS is a shining example of a national obsession with trains - one which is probably unaffordable, even for the Swiss.
-
thenudehamster
- Very Active Forum Member
- Posts: 5029
- Joined: Wed Sep 10, 2003 7:56 pm
- Location: Somewhere in cyberspace
- Contact:
The biggest trouble with Nationalised industries is the owners. Actually, that's not strictly true, WE, the general public, the taxpayers, are the true owners but it's the political masters who do all the controlling and ignore completely the needs and wishes of their customers who are also the owners. Private companies could never survive that sort of management. Civil Servants and politicians, of all colours and persuasions simply have no idea of how to manage a large corporation; in fact, as the country is no more than a conglomerate of giant corporations, heaven only knows why we give them the right to run that as well, but that's another story.
Civil Servants and politicians cannot resist 'playing trains' for political reasons. The railway network has been a political football ever since the heady days of the bubble of the late nineteenth century, when any and everyone wanted to build - or have built - a railway to anywhere. What ought to happen, with railways, as with almost every other legislated operation, is that government should set guidelines and targets at best, then let the professional managers get on with running the railway. with road haulage they set the limits on what a truck can carry, how fast, and how long the driver can work. Then they let company management decide how to best work within that framework. Similarly with buses, though there is a social element in bus transport as well, the government does not tell bus operators to run a half-hourly or hourly service, or to use only specific models of bus, or dictate the other day-to-day management decisions; with British Airways, they sold off their shares, let the Airport owners dictate the numer of landing/takeoff slots, then let BA get on with it. Why on earth do they think that they have some magical knowledge that lets them do better with railways?
Swiss railways are a shining example of how how to do it, as matt has said. Affordability isn't the criterion, though, service is, and the Swiss have decided that they need an efficient rail service to reduce the overload on their roads, and they're wiling to pay for that efficency. What this country's political setup does, of course, is demand an efficient rail service, but want it on the cheap; employ managers who have little experience of rail and transport (because they're the only ones willing to work for so llittle with so little) then complain because they haven't got efficient rail services - so then they interfere, on the basis that the management decisions are wrong, when in fact the wrong decision was made at the political level - and we all know that politicians can never be wrong, don't we?
The comlpetely wrong way to do it of course, is the American model, where only market forces dictate which trains run where, so to all intents and purposes you might as well not have a passenger rail system at all.
And Jon, while I agree with you that Unions are an essential check on the runaway excesses of management, there were, for many decades, no checks on the runaway excesses of the Unions. The lightning wildcat strikes, the national tactic of holding the country to ransom on the whim of a couple of union leaders - remember the miner's strike, engineered by Scargill just to prove he was right? We knew he was right - but in proving his point he killed the British coal industry. Fortunately we can import coal to replace what he lost, but it's a little difficult to import a railway service. Trade Unions killed Rover, they killed the Chrysler operation in Coventry, and they never learned; they're doing the same to the replacement Peugeot operation. What Thatcher did was limit the power of Union leaders and put the power back into the hands of the membership. Unions exist to protect the workforce - but too many elected official lost trrack of that, and killed the goose that laid their particular golden egg. Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% in favour of trade unions, I'm just not in favour of their leaders controlling the ones who put them in place.
Transport, of any kind is an expensive process. We pay for the privilege of using cars because to us it is a reasonable expense for the convenience. Until people start realising that railways need to be looked at in the same fashion, we'll carry on making the same mistakes.
Civil Servants and politicians cannot resist 'playing trains' for political reasons. The railway network has been a political football ever since the heady days of the bubble of the late nineteenth century, when any and everyone wanted to build - or have built - a railway to anywhere. What ought to happen, with railways, as with almost every other legislated operation, is that government should set guidelines and targets at best, then let the professional managers get on with running the railway. with road haulage they set the limits on what a truck can carry, how fast, and how long the driver can work. Then they let company management decide how to best work within that framework. Similarly with buses, though there is a social element in bus transport as well, the government does not tell bus operators to run a half-hourly or hourly service, or to use only specific models of bus, or dictate the other day-to-day management decisions; with British Airways, they sold off their shares, let the Airport owners dictate the numer of landing/takeoff slots, then let BA get on with it. Why on earth do they think that they have some magical knowledge that lets them do better with railways?
Swiss railways are a shining example of how how to do it, as matt has said. Affordability isn't the criterion, though, service is, and the Swiss have decided that they need an efficient rail service to reduce the overload on their roads, and they're wiling to pay for that efficency. What this country's political setup does, of course, is demand an efficient rail service, but want it on the cheap; employ managers who have little experience of rail and transport (because they're the only ones willing to work for so llittle with so little) then complain because they haven't got efficient rail services - so then they interfere, on the basis that the management decisions are wrong, when in fact the wrong decision was made at the political level - and we all know that politicians can never be wrong, don't we?
The comlpetely wrong way to do it of course, is the American model, where only market forces dictate which trains run where, so to all intents and purposes you might as well not have a passenger rail system at all.
And Jon, while I agree with you that Unions are an essential check on the runaway excesses of management, there were, for many decades, no checks on the runaway excesses of the Unions. The lightning wildcat strikes, the national tactic of holding the country to ransom on the whim of a couple of union leaders - remember the miner's strike, engineered by Scargill just to prove he was right? We knew he was right - but in proving his point he killed the British coal industry. Fortunately we can import coal to replace what he lost, but it's a little difficult to import a railway service. Trade Unions killed Rover, they killed the Chrysler operation in Coventry, and they never learned; they're doing the same to the replacement Peugeot operation. What Thatcher did was limit the power of Union leaders and put the power back into the hands of the membership. Unions exist to protect the workforce - but too many elected official lost trrack of that, and killed the goose that laid their particular golden egg. Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% in favour of trade unions, I'm just not in favour of their leaders controlling the ones who put them in place.
Transport, of any kind is an expensive process. We pay for the privilege of using cars because to us it is a reasonable expense for the convenience. Until people start realising that railways need to be looked at in the same fashion, we'll carry on making the same mistakes.
BarryH - thenudehamster
(nothing to do with unclothed pet rodents -- it's just where I used to live)
-----------------
Any opinion expressed above is herein warranted to be worth exactly what you paid for it.
(nothing to do with unclothed pet rodents -- it's just where I used to live)
-----------------
Any opinion expressed above is herein warranted to be worth exactly what you paid for it.
Yeah that's one way of seeing it, but as I understand it the scope of non-TGV services in France is very limited. If you'e not served by TGV in France then you're not left with very much in the way of a railway service apparantley. A TGV can take you from Paris to Lyon in mere hours but to get from Lyon to Bordeaux apparantley takes about 7 or 8 hours.jbilton wrote:Hi Sam
Surely that case of SNCF actually supports the idea of Nationalised railways...the profitable services pay to subsidise the less profitable?
Although personally, I thought the TGV had cost the French tax payers a lot of money...so I'm not sure on the so called profit.
Cheers
Jon
Basically what I am saying is that although a high speed railway network is good it shouldn't be at the expense of improving the rest of the network.