Nationalising South Western Railway...

[Guided Missile]

...is on the cards and as a lifelong Tory, I can safely say that when it happens, it will be one of the best decisions since Boris was elected leader of the party. What a sh!tstorm of a company. Hate them.

 

Might as well nationalise Flybe at the same time. The EU aren't exactly in a position to complain about state aid and it works for Airbus and the Chinese. Horses for courses...

[badgerx16]

Northern Rail as well. Only just over half their trains run to schedule. I have not experienced SWT, but if they are worse than Northern they must truly be sh_it.

[ecuk268]

In the election campaign, the Tories were calling nationalisation "marxist nonsense".

[rallyboy]

Boris makes up whatever suits his agenda on the day shock.

Voters lap it up and point at other stuff to distract from the fact they've been conned.

Again.

[badgerx16]

[spyinthesky]

I sympathise with those who travel regularly and are p*ssed off with SW Railways especially those who use the service at peak times.

 

However I recently watched an independent railway analyst and he mentioned the problems that most/all of the TOC's are facing with issues caused by our antiquated permanent way system and the failure of the nationalised Network Rail company to deal with the issues.

 

Throw in the Union/Management spats on the Train Guard issue and the problems escalate.

 

The analyst guy reckons things will not improve if the Govt runs the operation based on feedback from the NEast Line

[kwsaint]

As a commuter on SWR for the past 11 years I can verify that the service deteriorated when the franchise went from SWT to SWR. The capacity at Waterloo has increased but this seems to have made no difference.

 

The government does need to take back SWR into public ownership, as I wouldn't trust SWR with a model train set, but the whole model for running the railways is broken. No-one sensible is advocating a return to the previous public ownership model

 

Privatisation in the nineties was meant to remove introduce free market back into the rail industry, but the model chosen was dreamt up by clueless Management Consultants. They split the ownership of the stock, the running of the trains and the infrastructure into separate companies. Which broke all the previous lines of communication. The result was a number of nasty accidents (Ladbroke grove, Hatfield etc) due to cost cutting of maintenance and broken comms, and Network rail was re-nationalised. And don't get me started on the current ticketing model.

 

Many of the current franchisees are publicly owned foreign state railways, so up until recently the profits were subsidising foreign state railways. Passenger numbers not meeting projections now mean that franchisees are losing lots of money (SWR lost £137 Million last year). So they try to cut costs and the result is strikes. Added to this the Department of Transport is not skilled up to manage the franchising process.

 

Railway funding for the next few years will be directed to HS2 (needed but will be over-engineered and too expensive). So sorting out the infrastructure and Network rail issues will not get much attention.

 

Really not sure what the answer is. Passenger railways will always lose money (originally it was freight that made all the money) so state subsidy is necessary. But they also need to to be free to innovate to increase passenger numbers. Making the franchisees state-owned, but using the John Lewis model for sharing profits has been suggested. But the current set up is unsustainable and returning to the past would not help

[badgerx16]

Railway funding for the next few years will be directed to HS2 (needed but will be over-engineered and too expensive).

I'd think that the Trans Pennine upgrade should be scheduled ahead of HS2. Mainline trains from Manchester and Liverpool to London can take as little as 2 hours, and are regularly scheduled. However the connecting local services, and through trains to Leeds and beyond, are an utter shambles.

[buctootim]

I'd think that the Trans Pennine upgrade should be scheduled ahead of HS2. Mainline trains from Manchester and Liverpool to London can take as little as 2 hours, and are regularly scheduled. However the connecting local services, and through trains to Leeds and beyond, are an utter shambles.

 

Agree. There is a real danger that all HS2 will do is extend the London commuter belt up to Birmingham and beyond. No other major European country is skewed towards one city and neglects the rest. Better links between Northern cities could create a hub to rival London.

[The Kraken]

I'd think that the Trans Pennine upgrade should be scheduled ahead of HS2. Mainline trains from Manchester and Liverpool to London can take as little as 2 hours, and are regularly scheduled. However the connecting local services, and through trains to Leeds and beyond, are an utter shambles.

I only have very limited experience of trains up there but from what I’ve seen I agree, I’ve got the train from Manchester to Liverpool a couple of times and it was really poor. Slow, very old carriages, overcrowded and uncomfortable. The SWR trains down here aren’t great but they’re light years ahead of what I was on up there.

[spyinthesky]

Agree. There is a real danger that all HS2 will do is extend the London commuter belt up to Birmingham and beyond. No other major European country is skewed towards one city and neglects the rest. Better links between Northern cities could create a hub to rival London.

 

If you look at the High Speed services in France and Spain, both have benefited Paris and Madrid rather than the satellite cities they are connected to although it is fair to say the distances are greater than the London to Brum link.