Update: Passenger rail renationalisation begins
 

Transpennine Express, the inter-urban shirt show presently operated by First Group, will be transferred to the government’s Operator of Last Resort at the end of the month. It will join Northern Rail, Southeastern, and LNER in ‘arms length’ government control. The devolved governments have already taken control of all services in their purview as a matter of policy.

Almost a quarter of all passenger rail journeys will be on nationalised services once the transfer of TPE is complete and Labour has made a commitment to fully renationalise the whole lot anyway.

So is this the end of private rail operations in Great Britain?

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/l...-b1080350.html

Re: Are the railways being quietly renationalised?
 

The large corporations were the only ones to benefit from privatisation. Consumers and employees equally shafted and the government turned a blind eye whilst their friends rubbed their hands together.

Re: Are the railways being quietly renationalised?
 

I think it's about time it was. I don't understand the benefit of privatisation for things where there is no real prospect of competition. The process is also nuts. Remember that First Group vs Virgin Rail dispute where First Group promised the earth, almost won the contract until the eve of a court case when the government went 'whoopsie, we missed a few details in our checks'.

Re: Are the railways being quietly renationalised?
 

The days of an integrated railway owning everything from train manufacturers to KC Jones Burgers, Sealink ferries and hotels are long gone.

I can't see freight or the rolling stock companies being renationalised either.

I think the government's taking a pragmatic approach to ownership. I can envisage most passenger train companies being state run when their franchises finish based upon the fact that a Labour-majority government is the likely outcome in the next election. The exceptions might be those franchises awarded by bodies like TfL and Merseytravel.

One question is what happens to the open operators like Hull Trains which have been quite successful under the current set up. Hopefully, pragmatism will rule the day.

Re: Are the railways being quietly renationalised?
 

Nah, it’ll remain the classic case of privatise the profits, nationalise the losses. The absolute worst outcome for the taxpayer but the best for party donors.

Re: Are the railways being quietly renationalised?
 

In the dying days of the Major government in the mid 1990s, British Rail was the last major piece of nationalised infrastructure left standing. Every other significant nationalisation post-1945 had been undone. For most of the Tory party it was almost an article of faith that Mrs Thatcher’s great project be completed, and they could see the writing on the wall - they were likely to lose th next election and quite possibly the one after it as well.

The privatisation of British Rail was therefore a political imperative, that had to be conceived, implemented and completed on a tight timetable. What we got was a mess. The single worst part of it was Railtrack, a heavy engineering company operating in a safety-critical environment, whose directors thought they were running what amounted to a retail proposition to a series of captive audiences. A significant number of people paid for its incompetence with their lives.

Stephen Byers, transport secretary under Tony Blair, has a deservedly sketchy reputation as an MP and in government, but effectively renationalising the infrastructure under Network Rail was definitely the right thing for the network, even though his methods were dubious and the government was ultimately on the hook for millions in lost investments at Railtrack.

The process of competition to run actual train services was flawed from the outset. On busy, profitable lines, there was rarely the capacity for more trains. The ability of ‘open access’ operators to run competing services outside of the franchise system was hampered by rules designed to protect operators running franchised services. And the franchise process itself was a bureaucratic muddle designed and managed by civil servants with inadequate experience. Franchise bidders regularly ran rings around them.

The Virgin/First Group case you mentioned became a scandal because in trying to improve their performance, civil servants charged with awarding the franchise had developed an inflexible model for comparing franchises that was easily abused by bidders. The standard scam was to ‘front end’ the costs of running the franchise and ‘back end’ the profits, so over - say - 10 years of a 15 year deal you wouldn’t pay anything back to the government because you were recovering your costs and therefore not making a profit. Of course you had to prove you could run the franchise profitably in order to win it, so you promised massive profits in the last 5 years or so in order to balance the whole thing out. Thing is, there was a break clause in the franchise, around the mid-point, so the franchise operator, when they inevitably reached the point where they knew they would never be able to actually pay the government what they had promised, could walk away, having coined in bucketloads of network subsidies during the ‘investment’ years and never having had to pay anything back to the government because you never got to the ‘profit’ years. In the Virgin/First case, First was awarded the contract and Virgin threatened to go to court over it because their bid was such a brazen example of this back-ending technique. El gov called it back in, then scrapped the whole franchise process and gave Virgin a temporary management contract until it could be re-run.

Overall, I think privatised services *could* have worked in principle and perhaps a model based on management contracts rather than franchises would have worked better. But the system is now badly broken, and while it seems certain its days are numbered anyway, as Labour is committed to ending it, I am intrigued by just how much of it has come back under State control under a Tory government. I wonder whether, if they had another 5 years in government, they would continue quietly nationalising it themselves.

Re: Are the railways being quietly renationalised?
 

According to the Transport Secretary in a statement to MPs, Mark Harper said the government intends to put all contracts out for competitive tendering once the market allows.

Re: Are the railways being quietly renationalised?
 

That’ll be that then. The profitable bits cherry picked off and us saps picking up the tab for the bits that aren’t.

Re: Are the railways being quietly renationalised?
 

That probably means "when the strikes end" and there's no sign of them ending at the moment, unfortunately.

Re: Are the railways being quietly renationalised?
 

Anyone got any idea how much money the country makes from the in-house managed companies compared to franchising the business out to the private sector?

Re: Are the railways being quietly renationalised?
 

It would definately be a good thing if the railways were nationalised again.
There would need to be someone in charge who does it for the people, not for the money which is basically what every private firm has ever done.

Re: Are the railways being quietly renationalised?
 

The water supply industry next please.

Re: Are the railways being quietly renationalised?
 

That would cost too much, far better regulation is needed there. It was never great in the public sector either.

Rail franchises can just be handed back in when they expire or earlier if they don't perform.

Re: Are the railways being quietly renationalised?
 

I don't think anyone gives a flying, who owns/runs them as long they are run right and cost effectively.

As a long term user of the East Coast Main Line, I've never noticed any discernible difference to the service (good and/or bad) as it has hopped between public and private operations.

Re: Are the railways being quietly renationalised?
 

LNER no longer sell return tickets and have changed the pricing structure so you should have done unless someone else is paying.