Should we nationalise the railways?

[MrMetro]

With rail fares set to rise in January, it brings up the question again, should we nationalise our railways?

Most of Europe's rail operations are run by a state company(although some services are contracted out) and fares are generally cheaper, and the network more efficent from the messy British one.

[BDunnell]

I have always believed we should. The UK's railways are a classic example of how the private sector cannot always claim inherent superiority and greater competence than the public. Many with short memories or a lack of proper knowledge would cite British Rail as having been awful, a failure or whatever; the truth is that, at the time of privatisation, it was anything but.

However, one note of caution. It is simply bloody difficult to run a national rail network, no matter which system, public or private, you adopt. I travel all over Europe by train and experience many of the same problems and frustrations on state-owned networks as I do in Britain.

[Robinho]

Hell no, it would be an unregulated mess and would undoubtedly end up with greater proce increases. The semi-nationalised Network Rail (railtrack) is probably the best way to run the infrastructure and I doubt very much that nationalised companies would provide a better service than the current providers. I know some aren't up to much, but on the whole I have found the rail services to be quite good when I have needed to use them over the past few years.

If you genuinely want to reduce the prices, nationalise/centralise the Agency Labour providers to the renewal contractors, by the time you have added on the agencies mark ups, and then the overhead and profit of the renewals contractor, Network rail have probably paid double the cost of providing that person. consider then that every night you have gangs of 10-12 mean working on hundreds of sites around the country, and 10 times that amount at the weekends (the agency labout bill for one £20m project i worked on was more than £10m, and I was the contractor) and you have a huge amount of cash that could be spent elsewhere or saved.

[BDunnell]

Hell no, it would be an unregulated mess and would undoubtedly end up with greater proce increases.

Why unregulated? And do you feel that rail services run by state-owned firms in other countries are inferior to the UK's?

[Robinho]

I have always believed we should. The UK's railways are a classic example of how the private sector cannot always claim inherent superiority and greater competence than the public. Many with short memories or a lack of proper knowledge would cite British Rail as having been awful, a failure or whatever; the truth is that, at the time of privatisation, it was anything but.

However, one note of caution. It is simply bloody difficult to run a national rail network, no matter which system, public or private, you adopt. I travel all over Europe by train and experience many of the same problems and frustrations on state-owned networks as I do in Britain.

at the time of privatisation we had a network stretched to breaking point after years of under or poorly manaed investment. We are still struggling to overcome that network, but I strongly believed (having been involved from the inside) that the situation would be far worse if British Rail had continued as a single nationalised entity.

comparisons with some of our european neighbours are also difficult. Consder how much of France and Germany's rail network was destroyed in WW2, which enabled a completley clean slate for the network, whilst we are saddlesd with many of the compromises from a Victorian network which massivley limits the efficiency of services in and around major city stations and the ability to maintain and renew them.

[Robinho]

Why unregulated? And do you feel that rail services run by state-owned firms in other countries are inferior to the UK's?

no, but i think the regulation the British system is under currently would be superior to what would be in place for a ntionalised entity. I also point you to my comment about the state of European railway systems which are in many ways vastly superior to the British Network, due to them being far newer and better laid out due to a combination of new building after the war and the British rail network dating back further than anywhere else, which arguably makes it prohibitively complicated

[MrMetro]

The problem Britian has, is that its a weird mix-mash of government and private spending. The government spends more on 'privatised' rail than it did with BR. BR I believe was the most efficient state run railway company in Europe in the early 90's.

[BDunnell]

at the time of privatisation we had a network stretched to breaking point after years of under or poorly manaed investment.

But one which was operating more efficiently than for many years, if ever; that was demanding ever-decreasing levels of government subsidy; and that, if I recall the figures correctly, was becoming more reliable. Then the increasing goodwill on the part of the public towards BR was swept away in favour of a load of bus operators with no clue about customer service.

Let's not forget the main reason why the railways were privatised: John Major's misplaced personal nostalgia for the inter-war years, when trains from competing companies operated in a spirit of free-market enterprise, and travelling by rail was a romantic experience. The trouble was, his impression was nonsense. That situation between the wars was totally unsustainable, as the market could not sustain those levels of competition, and for most passengers rail travel was a misery. Since privatisation, the notion of competition on the British railways driving customer service up and fares down has again been proven utterly false.

comparisons with some of our european neighbours are also difficult. Consder how much of France and Germany's rail network was destroyed in WW2, which enabled a completley clean slate for the network, whilst we are saddlesd with many of the compromises from a Victorian network which massivley limits the efficiency of services in and around major city stations and the ability to maintain and renew them.

This is very true, and not a point I had truly considered before. However, I would add that in countries such as France and Germany the railways were truly valued. This was never the case in Britain, hence years of under-investment punctuated by occasional clueless bouts of indiscriminate resourcing, typified by the infamous Modernisation Plan.

[Robinho]

The problem Britian has, is that its a weird mix-mash of government and private spending. The government spends more on 'privatised' rail than it did with BR. BR I believe was the most efficient state run railway company in Europe in the early 90's.

I point you to the horribly under invested network "inherited" by the privatised system. The investment required in recent time ad currently would have been required eventually under BR, but was being left on a skeleton budget prior to privatisation. Couple that to large scale "new" infrastructure projects (Rugby, Reading, New stations in London, Crossrail) plus the West Coast modernisation and Chiltern Railways upgrades to name but a few. I may be wrong, but I cannot see that these would have gone ahead under a wholly nationalised system, unless that system was vastly different from the BR of the 80's and 90's and much more closely modelled on the system we have today.

One thing I do agree with is that the current fares, especially for the longer journeys, are overpriced

[BDunnell]

I point you to the horribly under invested network "inherited" by the privatised system. The investment required in recent time ad currently would have been required eventually under BR, but was being left on a skeleton budget prior to privatisation. Couple that to large scale "new" infrastructure projects (Rugby, Reading, New stations in London, Crossrail) plus the West Coast modernisation and Chiltern Railways upgrades to name but a few. I may be wrong, but I cannot see that these would have gone ahead under a wholly nationalised system, unless that system was vastly different from the BR of the 80's and 90's and much more closely modelled on the system we have today.

I do see your point, but the fact of the privatised network requiring ever-greater government subsidy may well nullify this to some extent. Had BR continued demanding less and less subsidy, things may have 'evened out' and made funds available for such projects.

One thing I do agree with is that the current fares, especially for the longer journeys, are overpriced

Beyond that, privatisation has left us with a bewildering array of fare options.