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Originally Posted by hairyhandedfool
I think, given the current top three political parties, Re-nationalisation would be a mistake, that said the current state of affairs is far from ideal.
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Yup I totally agree. I think the important issue is not WHO owns the railway, but that it becomes vertically integrated. You can bet that if the companies running the trains also owned the infrastructure, the blockades would be far less paralysing.
Similarly I think that a prospective franchisee should be required to present a plan to grow the railway service. Just like in the NHS there are plenty of really good experienced people on the railway who could run it far better than the control freaks of the Civil Service and Government. We need far less government intervention, not more. The franchise periods should be much longer, with the requirement to provide increasing route capacity, longer trains, better stations, larger FREE car parks, etc.
This will never happen with the current government because it just sees franchising as a cash cow, to generate lots of lovely money which it can squander elsewhere, instead of making the franchisees plough their profit back into improving the railway. Under the current system the bidder who wins the franchise is simply the one which undertakes to pay the biggest wedge to the treasury; there is no requirement to provide a decent service - just look at First Great Western (whose stock-shortage fiasco incidentally was actually caused by DfT).
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Virgin are constantly slated for fares increases, yet they have started out with 40 year stock and now have the most advanced stock on the railway. Granted the fares probably don't match the service but when has that ever happened? Thameslink, on the otherhand, started out with 15 year old stock which is still in use yet make more profit than anyone else.
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Well as usual this is of course down to ORR/DfT. Thameslink wanted new stock, but it's a question of the DfT authorising it and ROSCOs financing it, and it has been established that 2012 is the earliest possible date. (As I've mentioned before FCC will be getting 27 class 377s next year, but this is a longstanding clause of the Thameslink 2000 phase 0 arrangement; the Off peak/Sutton/Sevenoaks services will still be provided by the miserable 319s).
Finally, to me the maddest/saddest thing of all is the current Cost-Attribution system which is supposed to benefit the customer, but actually works against them. When a train is delayed (often by external factors which is not its fault) its calling pattern is slashed to enable it to start its next service on time, thus avoiding a fine. So all the passengers get off and wait ages for the next stopping service, whilst their original train runs fast, but empty, to the end of the line. It's lunacy and it makes me quite ashamed to be a railwayman, as it happens on an almost daily basis.
Foggy