Comments on: Labour’s railway – more delays and higher fares!

By: david f

david f — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 17:16:04 +0000

one thing you have missed out, though i agree with most of what you are saying, is that many places have no services at all or to few places. I tihnk moe than one operator should be allowed to use each line so that if one does not provide the service, the other can to encourage competition though this is pretty much wha you have said. One possiblitly would be to have stations, rather than lines contracted out so that a city can have a train to another city (direct) despite the fact that it does not follow the conventional "route" in the same way that a coach can travel any route. This would reduce the need for changing on long journeys and encourage more use as changing trains is a typical "put off" to using a train. Obviously no one wants a train that is slow, expensive and overcrowded but even that is better than no train at all lol……

By: Stuart Mark Turner

Stuart Mark Turner — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 16:45:25 +0000

To have choice would undoubtably be the best option, the market is the best way to guard against huge price hike's and below par service.

However to achieve direct competition between train lines is rather difficult, I will outline a very basic situation that I am faced with when travelling from London to visit family in Lincolnshire, in order to demonstrate this.

Option one;
I could take the midland mainline train from St.Pancras to Nottingham (which takes on average 1hr30mins) and then change to a slow local train, where I also need to change trains (with waiting time factored into this equation add another 2hrs30mins). This results in a total journey time of approximately 4 hours.

Option two;
I could take GNER/Hull Trains from Kings Cross to Grantham (which takes on average 1hr15mins) and either have a family member pick me up in a car, or take a local train where I will need to change trains (this will take again with waiting time taken into account about 1hr45mins). Resulting in a total journey time of approximately 3 hours.

Of course because of this I always take option two, of course midland mainline could improve the service and reduce journey times, however as you will note that part of the journey is not a problem. The local trains are where the problem lies and the local train operator from both Nottingham and Grantham is central trains, now of course they have a monopoly in that area and no reason to improve service.

So from this situation it can be clearly seen that no matter how good the service offered by midland mainline (which I prefer anyway because they offer a free cup of tea). I could not possibly use them because of the monopoly held by central trains over the local service. Therefore there is no real competition between the two rival mainlines.

So how could we introduce pure competition between these mainlines? Will we have to modify the system so that local train operators do not cover so large an area of the country? And if so how small an area would be acceptable?

By: Stuart Mark Turner

Stuart Mark Turner — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 20:31:26 +0000

The third proposal regarding the reuniting of train companies with the tracks on which the trains run is exactly how a great many problems can be solved.

If the private companies which operate trains also owned the track they could maintain tracks and allow for further expansion without the need for government intervention, therefore the tax payer would not have to foot the bill for train journey's of others.

I don't know how greater direct competition between train operators could be achieved, but that would be highly desirable. However I would like to make the point that while private and public monopoly are evils to be avoided, a private monopoly would not have the coercive power of the state behind it and therefore would be the lesser of those two evils.

Reply: I agree, but why settle for monopoly when you can have choice?

By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 13:44:10 +0000

On 26th December I got to the station to be told that the advertised service wouldn't be running. The station manager told me that the company should never have advertised it because at this time of year the engineering work always over-runs. If he knew this then why didn't Network Rail and the train company?

The station manager did tell me, helpfully, that he thought the work was done better now than under Railtrack. That nugget did not help me get to work on time.

By: Peter Turner

Peter Turner — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 12:36:59 +0000

I have visited Switzerland many times and their trains run on time. However, the Swiss are not obsessed by speed. To them, it seems, how long a journey takes is not as important as the train leaving one station and arriving at another station at the time stated in the timetable. Thus it is possible to plan connections, meetings, appointments etc with a high expectation that they will not have to be cancelled.

I am sure that leaving an opportunity for the train to adjust its speed as required contributes to this. If it is running late it can speed up and if it is running early it can slow down. With our timetables one gets the impression that they have no flexibility built in to allow for this. It is full speed or nothing.