yxee
Well-known member
As far as I can tell, this structure exists in every other industry?
The highways agency don't sell cars, the aviation authority don't sell plane tickets...
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It seems Network Rail are in a bit of a mess
- Thread starter Ernest
- Start date
As far as I can tell, this structure exists in every other industry?
The highways agency don't sell cars, the aviation authority don't sell plane tickets...
Wouldn't happen in Germany
Frampler
New member
It has no shareholders, it returns profits (it it makes any) to the Government, its debts form part of the national debt, and its board are appointed by the Department for Transport. Thus, Network Rail is already nationalised - it's the train operating companies which are in private hands. But the Government likes to pretend that Network Rail is an independent company, so it has somebody else to blame.
Tom Hark Preston Park
Will Post For Cash
- Jul 6, 2003
- 70,204
You should get down on your knees and genuflect thrice-daily to an image of Gordon Brown for signing off the Crossrail investment.
Oh, hang on, Labour spent/squandered money on intrastructure that will serve the country forevermore, as opposed to the Tories giving tax breaks to people that already have more money than they know what to do with to be syphoned offshore. Nice!
Oh, hang on, Labour spent/squandered money on intrastructure that the country will be paying for many times over forevermore thanks to their unbelievable PFI contracts...
Mr Putdown
Well-known member
You do realise that Network Rail is the one bit of the railway system that actually is "nationalised"?
Tom Hark Preston Park
Will Post For Cash
- Jul 6, 2003
- 70,204
Mark Carne, CEO of Network Rail, tells BBC "It's time to level with the public" as five year plan delayed http://t.co/Hk7lLUXwRo
As opposed to WHAT Mark? Not levelling with the public, like you've done up til now.
As opposed to WHAT Mark? Not levelling with the public, like you've done up til now.
Seasidesage
New member
Do you know what? Your both right!
PFI contracts are a disgrace the Govt financing infrastructure using money it didn't have and financing it with our kids future. The Tories, so controlled by their supporters in the city and non doms that they are incapable of investing in this country other than within areas that directly benefit their agenda. A plague on both their houses...
Course, anyone who is elected from any political party would pretty much do the same things...
Papa Lazarou
Living in a De Zerbi wonderland
I saw it on NRE. It's magically re-appeared!
Ernest
Stupid IDIOT
- Thread starter
- #32
There is not much they can do , Railtrack was an abject unsafe failure which went bust now Network Rail the government alternative is a failure. The Tories privatised the railways on a whim with Major doubting he would be re-elected when he made the pledge, a bit like the Tories this time. If you had given the British Rail as was at 1995 the money that has been spunked away on privatising and into shareholders pockets since you would have a railway you would have been proud of, every penny would have been spent on improvements and now 20 years later all passengers would have been enjoying the fruits of it.
Showing ok to me.
Papa Lazarou
Living in a De Zerbi wonderland
Cosmic Joker
The Motorik
A lot of the problems currently being faced by Network Rail and therefore their customers in delivering the current programme of electrification and signalling upgrades is due to the stop start nature of public investment in infrastructure in this country. This is because of the nature of politicians in the UK who through the whole post WWII era have been more interested in short term political objectives than long term planning.
This means that at change of Government, cancelling the previous regimes plans and switching the funding into a different area or big cyclical changes in the total amount of investment, instead of carrying on with modernisation programmes and tweaking for the five to ten year periods ahead. This means that when a big project gets the go-ahead - or in the current case about five big projects running in parallel or following on - the first thing they find is that in the previous ten years of no investment all the relevant specialist skills have dropped out of the industry due to people retiring, retraining or going to work abroad. Then they find that recruiting and training to bring the industry capacity back up turns out to be very expensive and slow with each firm poaching specialist engineers from each other as the people who have the necessary skills are working on renewals which still need to carry on, or on projects in Germany/France etc.
Whilst the Tory regime of the 80's & 90's famously did not have the most positive outlook to public transport, which had been declining for several decades to the mid eighties and rail only began to pick up numbers in the late 80's (preceding privatisation), the Thatcher/Major governments did approve and see through a number of rail electrification schemes of different sizes, where they could be convinced that the investment would lead to lower running costs in the future, although there is certainly an argument for saying many of the schemes were done as cheaply as possible which has led to less reliability and greater renewals than would have been the case with a higher specification:
Hitchin (trains from London Kings Cross) to Leeds and Edinburgh
Royston and Bishops Stortford (trains from Kings Cross and London Liverpool St) to Cambridge and Kings Lynn
Colchester (trains from London Liverpool St) to Ipswich and Norwich
London St Pancras to Bedford
Leeds and Bradford Forster Square to Skipton and Ilkley
London Paddington to Heathrow Airport
plus some 3rd rail schemes:
South Croydon to East Grinstead, Tonbridge to Hastings, Redhill to Tonbridge, Portsmouth / Havant to Southampton / Eastleigh, Bournemouth to Weymouth
The tap really got turned off after 1997 with only a few miles being electrified in the following decade until the last Labour Transport Minister Lord Adondis brought electrification back on the agenda, after it was found that new diesels were becoming more and more expensive due to: fuel costs, increased emissions regulations, other design changes to trains for crashworthiness which made them heavier and so consume more fuel, the European rail manufacturing industry being geared to largely electric railways on the continent meaning that express passenger trains were available as electric off the shelf (with mods for UK loading gauge) but need bespoke designs for diesels (not such an issue for freight or local trains) as UK is the only customer.
In the intervening years rail investment had got entirely distracted by the need to catch up with the track renewals that the Hatfield train crash showed had become necessary. the government had an attitude that passenger don't care whether their train was diesel or electric powered as long as it was on time, but this ignored the issues why a better service can be provide with electric for the same money as a lesser diesel service.
This switching on and off of the investment tap is the same reason why there is no UK rail manufacturing industry any more. The orders dried up after privatisation due to no incentive for commercial investment, so the UK firms were either sold, closed or moved into other areas of engineering. So when trains are ordered now they are made in Germany or France or assembled in this country by firms owned in Canada or Japan.
This means that at change of Government, cancelling the previous regimes plans and switching the funding into a different area or big cyclical changes in the total amount of investment, instead of carrying on with modernisation programmes and tweaking for the five to ten year periods ahead. This means that when a big project gets the go-ahead - or in the current case about five big projects running in parallel or following on - the first thing they find is that in the previous ten years of no investment all the relevant specialist skills have dropped out of the industry due to people retiring, retraining or going to work abroad. Then they find that recruiting and training to bring the industry capacity back up turns out to be very expensive and slow with each firm poaching specialist engineers from each other as the people who have the necessary skills are working on renewals which still need to carry on, or on projects in Germany/France etc.
Whilst the Tory regime of the 80's & 90's famously did not have the most positive outlook to public transport, which had been declining for several decades to the mid eighties and rail only began to pick up numbers in the late 80's (preceding privatisation), the Thatcher/Major governments did approve and see through a number of rail electrification schemes of different sizes, where they could be convinced that the investment would lead to lower running costs in the future, although there is certainly an argument for saying many of the schemes were done as cheaply as possible which has led to less reliability and greater renewals than would have been the case with a higher specification:
Hitchin (trains from London Kings Cross) to Leeds and Edinburgh
Royston and Bishops Stortford (trains from Kings Cross and London Liverpool St) to Cambridge and Kings Lynn
Colchester (trains from London Liverpool St) to Ipswich and Norwich
London St Pancras to Bedford
Leeds and Bradford Forster Square to Skipton and Ilkley
London Paddington to Heathrow Airport
plus some 3rd rail schemes:
South Croydon to East Grinstead, Tonbridge to Hastings, Redhill to Tonbridge, Portsmouth / Havant to Southampton / Eastleigh, Bournemouth to Weymouth
The tap really got turned off after 1997 with only a few miles being electrified in the following decade until the last Labour Transport Minister Lord Adondis brought electrification back on the agenda, after it was found that new diesels were becoming more and more expensive due to: fuel costs, increased emissions regulations, other design changes to trains for crashworthiness which made them heavier and so consume more fuel, the European rail manufacturing industry being geared to largely electric railways on the continent meaning that express passenger trains were available as electric off the shelf (with mods for UK loading gauge) but need bespoke designs for diesels (not such an issue for freight or local trains) as UK is the only customer.
In the intervening years rail investment had got entirely distracted by the need to catch up with the track renewals that the Hatfield train crash showed had become necessary. the government had an attitude that passenger don't care whether their train was diesel or electric powered as long as it was on time, but this ignored the issues why a better service can be provide with electric for the same money as a lesser diesel service.
This switching on and off of the investment tap is the same reason why there is no UK rail manufacturing industry any more. The orders dried up after privatisation due to no incentive for commercial investment, so the UK firms were either sold, closed or moved into other areas of engineering. So when trains are ordered now they are made in Germany or France or assembled in this country by firms owned in Canada or Japan.
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This. It's the same in most professions these days except estate agents where the
only requirement is to be a w******r
Yep - it's risen from the dead since being declared cancelled earlier. You lucky guy.
We've not left - we're waiting for a conductor...
It's been cancelled.
Papa Lazarou
Living in a De Zerbi wonderland
so, it was right - but they kept it from you?
Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
Dr Beeching started it all.