As it happens last week I was able to read about the new UK timetable meltdown, while on a long distance train journey within the Czech Republic. It brought home to me the crux of the problem in the UK. Not so much that the railways are privatised but the way in which UK privatisation has been carried out.
No EU country has opted to copy the UK system of breaking the network up into pieces and offering franchises of those pieces. Instead they are expected to offer Open Access as part of Single Market compliance. Each country approaches this in a different way, and in the Czech case it has been typically complicated, but basically you have two private operators competing with the national 'legacy' operator (Ceske drahy - CD) on the two main routes out of Prague to Ostrava and Vienna.
At 2 days notice I booked a journey to Brno, the second city of Cesko (about the same distance as Nottingham or Taunton from London) to leave on the Friday afternoon (ultra peak) and return Saturday. I chose CD for the journey down on one of the swanky state of the art Railjets - in this case operated by Austrian railways, though CD have seven of their own. It cost me less than £16. On the way back I booked the savvy private operator Regiojet, which offered a discount for over 60s, and so that leg cost me just £7.50. Now here's the killer. Both of those journeys were in first class! So £23.50 return first class, one leg at the busiest time of the week, booked 48 hours ahead. WTF?
It's hard not to conclude that competition on the route has both driven down prices and encouraged innovation. Regiojet offer at seat service of highly competitive but decent snack food, and at seat entertainment portal. They are smart guys who bought the 1st class coaches Austrian railways no longer needed, and are able to claim "1st class comfort for 2nd class prices" . CD have responded by investing heavily in new trains, quality food, and draught Pilsner Urquell or Budvar in the bar.
The key thing is, it's competition on the route. So when I heard the argument this morning about what to do about Northern or GTR - take away their franchise - that brought it home to me. The franchise will be won by some new guys who will be operating a private monopoly. Why can we not grasp the fundamental flaw in that model?
Choo-choo
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Specifically...apologists for the UK system claim that the train operators have a "low margin" business. It's interesting then that the Czech private operator I mentioned is able to make a profit on those very low prices. I was trying to work out the "multivariates" of the cost bases. Wages, obviously. But when it comes to the hardware, there is a European market they can tap into for their locos and coaches.
In the UK, the train operators have a monopoly, a captive audience, sky high prices, and still end up (allegedly) making a loss.
The other long distance private operator, Leo Express, is more wobbly financially, but it too operates buses as well as trains so it can be hard to decode operating profits for the train service.
The bigger issue with this model of privatisation is the same as in the UK. Who pays to modernise the infrastructure? i.e. pay for high speed lines? That journey to Brno is not high speed even if it is comfortable, and way better than driving on the always hellish D1 motorway. But Vienna remains a 4 hour journey. To get the business market and take out Austrian Airlines, they need to get it down to about 3hrs 15. That requires a massive build. Only the State can do it.
Did RegioJet venture in to Slovakia (being lazy)? I understand that there were a lot of concerned Slovak voices as RegioJet looked to undercut the national provider by about 40%, with the hope of enticing enough passengers on to their services that the fare cuts wouldn't show too much of a loss.
Also, I still maintain that RegioJet (rail) operates at a loss. Well, that's what their latest financials show (unless I'm being a doughnut....entirely possible).
When I worked in London, I got these trains - actually the trains were a big reason why I packed it in to go self employed! The thought of doing another 10-15 years of that crap made me want to cry. If everything went ok it was 3 hours of my life, standing, squeezing onto trains/tubes, people coughing in your face! Of course more often than not things didn't go well to varying degrees. Having used the trains for over 30 years to get to work, things have got a lot worse.
He may well be posting an operating loss right now, (what source did you use?) but as I've mentioned, this is the biz he is focusing on, not the travel agency or the taxis. We can presume that he will expect to raise prices once he has a secure position but no one denies that he has made the previous State monopoly owner seriously get their shit together. This is because he offers passengers a direct choice every day, on an increasing number of routes. The UK franchise system does not do that.
Anyway, what has The Lion Rants multivariate analysis of rail privatisation concluded ? :-)
I'm against privatization of the railways but in saying that it was very poor under British Rail.
Would need to sit down and map out the variables that contribute to the differentials in running a private train company in vastly different nations.
Labour wants to re-nationalise the railways but provide no detail on how. Seems to me that Open Access is a decent model but I have not heard any Corbynistas talking it up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usage