Looking at the frequent services operated today by Chiltern Railways, it seems hard to believe that the rail lines into Marylebone were once seriously considered for closure. Yet back in the mid-1980s under-utilization of the route led to proposals to convert the line into a dedicated bus route, with the site of Marylebone station being converted into a bus station, or sold off to raise an estimated £10 million. Today this proposal and others like it – such as a plan to convert much of what now forms London Overground north of the river into roads – are mostly forgotten. Yet for a time the possibility was very real, and London may have been left with a rail landscape very different from that which exists today.
Setting the scene
Proposals for converting railways into roads dated back several decades. Probably the most detailed argument in favour of the idea was put forward by Brigadier Thomas Ifan Lloyd, CBE, DSO, MC, in his 1957 booklet superbly titled Twilight of the Railways – What Roads They’ll Make! This set out, over some 80 pages, his argument that the line-by-line closure not just in London, but of the entire British railway system and its conversion into roads would lead to a far more efficient transport system for the country. Two years earlier Lloyd had addressed the Institute of Civil Engineers on the same topic, and the booklet is a development of this address. It is worth looking briefly at some of his points.
In 1957 Britain had no motorways. The M1 was still two years away from completion. There were, according to Lloyd, some 186,000 miles of road in the country, and around 20,000 miles of railway. Conversion of this into roads would thereby give an almost 11% increase in the length of road. The new roads would not be part of the existing road network (which he termed ‘service roads’ as they serviced the majority of the population); instead, they would form a segregated network of high-speed roads, with the following features:
- Stopping and ‘dawdling’ would be forbidden.
- There would be no junctions, other than left-hand entries and exits where the new roads passed near the existing roads, usually at the sites of former stations.
- The road surfaces would conform to standards laid down by the Road Research Laboratory.
- Pedestrians and animals would be prohibited.
- Only thoroughly roadworthy vehicles with competent drivers would be allowed.
These factors, combined with the gentle curves and easy gradients of most railways would allow the average speed to be around 60 mph, as opposed to the 28 mph achieved on existing roads.
Thus far the Brigadier’s proposals sound remarkably like some of the requirements for the design and operation of motorways. However, he also considered the vehicles that were to be used. Many would be standard road vehicles, switching between the two networks at the places that stations had previously been, probably with staff checking that the vehicle and its driver were ‘roadworthy’ and ‘competent’. Some vehicles would be dedicated to the new network, and would have rather specialized features. With the gentle curves on the new roads, length would matter less, and high-capacity lorries over 60 feet long were foreseen (about the same size as today’s articulated lorries). The wheels would be placed in front of and behind the vehicle, allowing the main body to be carried low to the ground (providing greater stability), and the wheels to be much larger, with lower tyre pressures; steering would allow them to turn in their own length (presumably the wheels would act almost like castors). Long-distance coaches would be of a similar size. Bus stations and freight terminals would be constructed on the site of goods yards and sidings.
The Railway Conversion League
In the late 1950s the Railway Conversion League (RCL) was formed by Major Angus Dalgleish as a pressure group urging the creation of roads along the line of railways, again in London and beyond, through conversion of the permanent way as described by Lloyd. With the motto “Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come”, the RCL published brochures into the 1970s and beyond, and cited examples from around the UK where railways, often closed by Dr Beeching, had been successfully converted. Dubious economic assumptions were made: the cost of the conversion work would fall as contractors gained much experience (despite considering the task to be a fairly straightforward job of laying tarmac), but no inflation was taken into account. A number of their publications (focusing on both London and beyond) can be found on the website of Transport Watch UK.
One of the Railway Conversion League’s many publications
What seems to have entirely passed by all of those who supported conversion was that roads require a wider formation than railways. A piece of land wide enough for a double-track railway can only accommodate a single-carriageway road, and a four-track railway formation is not wide enough to take a dual carriageway. The RCL described motorways as “a very costly method of providing road-space”, and considered two-lane single-carriageway roads to be perfectly adequate. They published figures showing that the number of passengers who could be transported on coaches along such a road was the same, if not more, than could have travelled by train on the railway; however, without hard shoulders or verges, a single breakdown or slower vehicle would have drastically reduced the capacity of the road. By 1970 the concept of having controlled access to the new roads, only permitted for approved vehicles and drivers, had been dropped. It is therefore strange to see that the League thought that their new roads of motorway speed but not standard would provide comparable safety.
In fairness to the RCL, the research and experience that allows us to know today that traffic tends to increase to use up available road capacity was not available in the 1960s and 1970s; the roads of Britain had not approached their limits, and motorway building was still adding substantial lengths of fresh tarmac each year. In hindsight, we can raise a smile at the thought that the converted railways would be high-speed, safe roads with moderate traffic, knowing instead that a single accident or even a motorist intent on driving 15 mph below the speed limit will rapidly spread a wave of congestion.
Into the 1980s
A number of disused railway alignments had been converted into roads before 1980, but although the RCL enjoyed highlighting these for the most part they were short and fairly local. The average length of the schemes listed in The Conversion of Railways into Roads in the United Kingdom was 2½ km. Highlights for them included the Coastal Road leading out of Southport (on the trackbed of the North Liverpool Extension line of the Cheshire Lines Committee railways), and Yeadon Way in Blackpool (along the approach to the fomer Blackpool Central station). Whilst certainly being beneficial to these two towns, they hardly formed the type of long-distance high-speed road suggested by Lloyd in 1957 nor provided compelling evidence for doing the same in London. The momentum for which the RCL campaigned was just not building.
Tarmacking the Great Central
What does not appear to have been recorded before is the detail of the proposal to convert the ex-Great Central railway line in the London area into a road. This appeared in The Economist in 1972, and was suggested as being an opportunity to perform an experiment into the process. However, serious consideration started when the National Bus Company (NBC) commissioned Professor Peter Hall, a transport expert at Reading University, to investigate whether Marylebone could be converted into a coach station with a dedicated coachway through the tunnels to the north. Hall could not really be considered to be an unbiased author, having co-authored a 1976 report advocating rail-road conversion, called Making Better Use of Railways. His report for the NBC, entitled Great Central Busway : a study of possible rail-to-busway conversion of the British Rail Marylebone lines was published in late 1983 and recommended that the coachway should connect to the A40 via a new link road about 1 km long at Northolt.
Hall estimated that around 250,000 coaches could use the new terminus each year, serving coach stops at the sites of the closed stations en route. If the station building at Marylebone was to be reused as the coach station then it could be opened in 1987 and costs could be kept to around £10.3 million. A greater return could be had, for a larger-up-front cost, if the station was demolished and redeveloped with coach facilities at ground level.
Elsewhere in London
Another report was being prepared in parallel with that of the NBC. Peter Parker, the Chairman of BR had commissioned Coopers & Lybrand Associates to investigate rail-roadway conversion in the London area. A Report on the potential for the conversion of some railway routes in London into roads was published in March 1984. It evaluated seven routes:
- The West London Line from Latchmere Junction to Holland Park, and perhaps on to Willesden Junction
- The Dudding Hill line from Cricklewood to Acton, and then the North London Line to Kew Bridge
- The Hounslow Loop from Kew Bridge to Barnes
- The North London Line from Willesden Junction to Hackney Wick
- The South London Line from Clapham to Peckham
- The LTS line from Fenchurch Street to Shoeburyness
- The ‘Chiltern Line’ route
The first six routes were quickly discounted by the report’s authors. The West London Line and Dudding Hill lines were seen as alternatives, both of which carried sufficient volumes of railway traffic to be profitable and therefore make the cost of conversion less attractive. Nevertheless, the West London Line was felt to be more attractive for conversion.
The routes proposed in the Coopers & Lybrand report
The cost of replacing level crossings by bridges on the Hounslow Loop reduced the value of converting it into a road. The heavy commuter traffic would also mean that this road would be heavily trafficked from the start.
The North London Line route was dropped for two different reasons. West of Camden Road it would be too difficult to convert: Hampstead Heath Tunnel would have required significant and expensive work, the viaduct between Kentish Town West and Camden Road was too narrow and curved, and six overbridges between Willesden and Kilburn would have required reconstruction. East of Camden Road the loss of revenue from both passenger and freight trains rendered the proposal uneconomic.
The South London Line, threaded between houses on a viaduct, carried heavy commuter traffic on certain sections, and as such only the route between Clapham and Peckham was seen as convertible. The formation was too narrow to form a safe roadway, and was therefore rejected.
The proposed route from Fenchurch Street to Shoeburyness, which would be formed by converting the LTS railway, was rejected for similar reasons to the North London Line. West of Bow the route was not physically conducive to conversion, being on viaduct with some sharp curves. To the east, conversion would displace intensive passenger and freight services. The report suggested that the physical constraints were such that if converted it would only be suitable for buses. Transfer of the commuter traffic from trains to buses would not be profitable, and so this proposal was also thrown out.
The Chiltern Proposals
The Chiltern Line section considered four different parts of the line for conversion, in differing levels of detail.
The outermost section, from Aylesbury to Claydon Junction, was considered only briefly. The only benefits would be to provide improved access to a number of villages north of Aylesbury, and an alternative route into central Aylesbury in parallel with the A41. Conversion was not justified.
The single-track line from Princes Risborough to Aylesbury would provide a bypass to the towns along its route, but the cost of altering seven underbridges and the low traffic potential caused this section to be discounted.
The main line route from Northolt Junction to Princes Risborough had the width to make a good road in most places, but would have resulted in the closure of stations with good commuter traffic such as Gerrards Cross, Beaconsfield, and High Wycombe, and the provision of a replacement bus service. Freight services would need rerouting. The expectation would be that this closure would be in parallel with closure of the line to Marylebone and that the line north of Princes Risborough would be abandoned. If the route was to be a dedicated busway then a transit station would have been built at Denham, near the M25, presumably for passengers to transfer onto the bus services. However, the nail in the coffin for this conversion was that it was paralleled by both the M40 and A40 roads, and there was little demand for a third route in this corridor.
The only section that was given detailed analysis was that from Marylebone station to Northolt Junction. The road would have to be of restricted capacity because of the tunnels south of Canfield Place, and so would be either limited to cars, or become a busway for single-deck buses and coaches. Both would have a 6.7 m carriageway and would start with a road junction with the A312 at Northolt. Intermediate junctions would be provided with the A404 Harrow Road at Sudbury and the A406 North Circular Road at Neasden, and the southern end would connect with the A41 Park Road just south of the Regent’s Canal, at Alpha Close. The only restriction would be at West Hampstead, where the West End Lane bridge could not be widened and the road would have to be narrowed to a width of 5.9 m. The general speed limit for both types of road would be 40 mph (rather less than Brigadier Lloyd had hoped).
The changes required to railway services with the closure of Marylebone were threefold. Firstly, the consultants assumed that services north of Amersham would remain operated by BR diesel trains. Secondly, services from the High Wycombe branch would be diverted into Paddington via the route south of Northolt Junction. And finally, the stations at Wembley Stadium, Sudbury & Harrow Road, Sudbury Hill Harrow, and Northolt Park would be closed. The cost of a bus service linking these stations was factored into the proposal; the views of users of these stations was not.
The consultants estimated the costs for the two roads to be similar, with the busway being £15.7 million, and the road for cars just £200,000 more. The key point for BR was getting a return on the investment, and this was to be either through direct tolling of users, or the payment of ‘shadow tolls’ by the Department of Transport, whereby the DoT would pay BR based on measured road traffic. Shadow tolls had the advantage of not requiring toll booths or electronic equipment for tracking cars, and would be unlikely to deter motorists who would not see the payments, even though ultimately they would come from general taxation. Traffic estimates for the road with shadow tolls were 10,500 cars per day between Northolt and Sudbury, 19,800 onward to Neasden, and 15,900 on the final section to Marylebone. By charging the DoT between 3.5p and 6p per car-kilometre, BR would be paid £1.9 million to £3.92 million per annum, a rate of return of between 10% and 19.6%. By contrast, the income from direct tolls would be just £0.89 million, a return of 3.5%. If the road was constructed as a busway, it was estimated that it would need to carry 1,000 vehicles per day, and passengers would have to be charged a 25p-45p supplement to get the same level of return as the shadow tolls would provide on the car-only road.
Other factors at work
By the early 1980s the largely self-contained Chiltern network was run down. The Class 115 slam-door diesel trains and signalling systems were old and approaching the point at which replacement was becoming more necessary. Lack of funding within BR meant that the prospect of saving these costs, as well as getting a financial return for the Marylebone station site, was looking increasingly popular. The Great Central Hotel, opposite Marylebone was occupied by BR’s administrative offices. It would therefore be straightforward to transfer these to another BR property (Euston was most likely) and then sell the hotel with the station site, which would bring in an estimated £10 million.
Marylebone September 1985, the 1825 to Aylesbury and the 1758 to High Wycombe visible. The platforms on the right, and the roof bay, were removed when the line was resignalled and modernised. Photo and caption courtesy Richard Allen.
As rumours and early hints of the plans began to appear, a fierce media and passenger campaign was soon being fought to keep Marylebone open. This was started by a report in the Bucks Free Press about the rumoured closure. A meeting of concerned commuters was held in Aylesbury Civic Centre in October 1983 (months before the report was published), and declared opposition to any plans to close the lines out of Marylebone. The objections continued via a selection of transport users’ groups and local newspapers throughout 1984. BR had formally announced its plans to close the station on 15 March, and in July the statutory closure consultation process started, with objections to be sent to the London Regional Passengers Committee (LRPC – the forerunner of London TravelWatch) who would determine whether closure would result in hardship. The timing was described as ‘underhand tactics’ in the press, being during the holiday period when many commuters might be away and thus less likely to write in with letters of objection. The complaints were such that BR was forced to extend the deadline for comments by six weeks.
On 24 October 1984 the MP for Chesham and Amersham, Sir Ian Gilmour, spoke at a well-attended meeting of protestors held at Beaconsfield Town Hall, arguing that BR had been secretive with its closure plans. Gordon Pettitt, BR’s Deputy Director of London and South East Services attended and heard the local feelings against closure. There was then a lull in hostilities until the public inquiry was scheduled to start in late February 1985. The Marylebone Travellers Association raised funds to pay for a barrister to present their case at the inquiry.
A turning tide
It was at this point that the case for closure began to unravel. BR postponed the public inquiry until May, admitting that it had some of its figures wrong. In May the inquiry was again postponed, this time on legal grounds, for a month. Further publicity for the lines out of Marylebone was being obtained through operation of steam specials and other railtours. Also in May 1985 the Chiltern Line name was adopted: perhaps BR was starting to think that the railway was not beyond saving. The June dates for the public inquiries also passed without anything starting, apparently because of pressure being placed on the LRPC by various public authorities and campaign groups. The LRPC had decided not to allow the objectors to cross-examine BR officials directly, which led to concerns that there was a cover-up taking place, and then to a legal challenge in the High Court by Brent Borough Council. The case was rejected, but was then taken to the Court of Appeal. In November 1985 the Court of Appeal dismissed the case, but Brent then sought permission to have the case heard in the House of Lords.
London Underground was also concerned by the plans now. Originally, the suggestion had been that London Transport had would put on extra services to Baker Street to replace the British Rail trains, something that London Underground had agreed to in principle back in 1983 when they had felt that the Metropolitan line could absorb the additional passengers. It was now 1985 though, and their new Travelcards and Capitalcards, allowing unlimited travel on the Underground and buses, were proving to be very successful. This was contributing to rising passenger numbers following many years of decline, and it was realized that Baker Street would no longer have the capacity to handle the displaced passengers from Marylebone. Put simply, passenger numbers at Baker Street had now increased by 15% since 1983 and if the passengers catching the BR trains into Marylebone from the Amersham route were transferred to the Metropolitan line as well, then London Underground faced the prospect of having to deal with overcrowded A Stock trains.
The wrangling over the future of the line rumbled on with the date for the public inquiry still remaining a mystery. It was subsequently revealed that this was because BR was also reconsidering its plans not just in the light of the passenger increases on the Metropolitan line but also because of the impact at Paddington main-line station. Under the original proposal, trains from the High Wycombe branch would be diverted here but it increasingly seemed like Paddington might now struggle to handle the passengers diverted from that line.
The reprieve
In April 1986 Brent Borough Council was refused leave to appeal its case to the House of Lords; however, on 30 April BR announced that Marylebone and the lines northwards were to be reprieved. Part of the station site was to be sold for property development, but money was to be invested in the Chiltern Line. Station refurbishment was now planned, and a new fleet of trains was being mooted.
The Network SouthEast brand was created by BR in June 1986, led by Chris Green. He was an innovative railway manager, and had lobbied hard within BR against the closure of the Chiltern Line (although his job had been to manage the closure when he moved to the BR London and South East management). He then persuaded the BR Board to use the Chiltern Line as a test-bed for new signalling and train protection systems – one of the advantages of the line being largely self-contained. Suddenly, a line that was being considered for closure was allocated £85 million in investment. Total Route Modernization was now the name of the game. Control of signalling across the line was managed from a new control centre at Marylebone as part of the £12 million spent on signalling, with full Automatic Train Protection provided. The 1960s trains were replaced in 1991 by a fleet of Class 165 Networker Turbos, comprising 89 carriages in 2- and 3-car sets, and these were maintained at a new £4 million depot at Aylesbury. The track was renewed. Marylebone had £1 million spent on its refurbishment, which included removal of the central cab road and its replacement by two new platforms; this allowed two existing platforms on the west of the station to be removed and the land sold for office development.
A satisfactory conclusion
Ultimately, the Marylebone to Northolt Junction section of line was the only piece from all those considered in the Coopers & Lybrand report to have a case for conversion, and it is fortunate that these proposals were not carried out. The difficulties in converting the line, the negotiations that would have been necessary to get shadow tolls paid (something that has come about today, but is probably only feasible with modern monitoring and computing equipment), but mostly the rise in passenger numbers in the mid-1980s all killed off the scheme, and today the Chiltern Line is one of the UK’s best-performing train operators. Following the completion of the Evergreen 2 programme, Marylebone has been upgraded to have six platforms – more than it ever had before – and has recently introduced its new ‘Mainline’ services, which are rivalling the West Coast main line trains to Birmingham. The fastest services take just 90 minutes, only six minutes longer than West Coast main-line Pendolinos, and fares are for the most part rather less expensive.
Had rail services been withdrawn more widely, as described above, it is probable that the section of line north of Amersham would have reverted to London Transport ownership. It is unlikely that LT would have retained a small fleet of diesel trains to shuttle between Aylesbury and Amersham, and indeed the management of BR’s London Midland Region suggested that the line be electrified. One option was for this to have been done ‘on the cheap’, by singling the line except at stations. No detailed plans ever appear to have been made though, as the closure proposal never progressed far enough.
Dear All, in regard to the mention of the Elmers End branch in the Comment of 20 February 2014 at 21:38, I think this is referring to the line between Elmers End and Sanderstead, via Woodside and Coombe Road or otherwise known as the Woodside and South Croydon Joint Railway (W&SC). The line to Sanderstead branched off from the Elmers End to Addiscombe Line at Woodside.
Although electrified, the Sanderstead line was closed on 13 May 1983. Noting the apparent poor condition of the track, and together with the line’s low patronage British Rail could not financially justify wholesale renewal. Now when the closure was announced, David Howell specifically stated that the railway should be turned into a road. What he seemed to ignore was that British Rail needed the line between Elmers End and Addsicombe as there was a Train shed Depot there, and between Bingham Road and Coombe road there are 3 short tunnels! The line to Addiscombe continued to operate until 1997 when it was closed as it was incorporated, together with the Sanderstead line into Tramlink.
Best,
Altstadt White
@Altstadt White – sorry to disagree, but Howell did not state specifically that the railway had to be be turned into a road. He merely selected it as a possible study – I should know,as I led that study as DTp’s client for research projects at the time. I have commented before on the outcome of that and some of the other road-rail conversion projects of the time. The technical reason why that particular line failed was that the change from a railway with water-absorbent civil engineering to a road with water-fast surfaces so increased the speed of runoff during heavy rain, that the local drainage system would not have coped without massive investment. That alone added to the cost so much that it was possible to sink (pun intended) the idea without having to pray in aid operational issues or some of the more obvious problems such as finding room for intermediate highway access to the converted road.
Dear Richard, I would accept your summary; I would say at the time that the Impression was that the Minister wished to turn it into a road. Anyhow it is now a successful part of tramlink.
I would though like to hear your view on the Settle – Carlisle Line. Reading Jamer Towler book “The Battle for the Settle-Carlisle” you get the belief that it was the legal arguments that saved it. When Michael Portillo visited Düsseldorf a couple of years ago, I did put this to him, but he denied it.
@Alstadtwhite -“Dear Richard”? Did you mean me? My summary? Iwas there,I should know!
As to Settle-Carlisle, Towler had very little practical effect on the decision, although he made a lot of noise and was always keen to see his name in lights. The main dramatis personae included the late Sir David Mitchell, who was as determined as I was that the line should not close and he managed to stall consideration of the case very successfully on the basis of a steady stream of economic and policy analysis from my team and the Department’s legal advisers – who were very much on side on thisby stressing the rsk of judicialreview based on the expose of the Board’s case that we had undertaken – until such time as the then Deputy Secretary Transport Industries retired> (It was the DS/TI who was personally committed to have the line closed and he and I spent three and a half years of bureaucratic manoeuvring round the case. Retire he eventually did,by which time,Portillo, who also had no intention of closing the line,had a free hand to determine the case without interference. ) Towler really doesn’t come in to it,I fear.
GH
So – who was DS/TI at that time?
“Wiki” gives only the head honcho’s names:
Ridley ’83 – 86; Moore 86/87; Channon 87 – 89; Parkinson 89/90; Rifkind 90 – 92
Oh, & you might want to correct both the “Wiki” entry & the “Friends of the S&C” who are still claiming that BR were mounting a “dirty tricks” campaign to CLOSE the line, err ….
@Greg T -John Palmer. Key S&C quote “If we don’t close this line, Graham, we’ll never close another.” I believe that Palmer probably encouraged the Board to bring forward this closure in the first place, but certainly by the late ’80s, the Board’s heart was not at all in favour of closure – there was nothing in it for them, and the days when Palmer could bully them had long passed. It’s hardly worth the effort of registering as a Wiki contributor; there is a book to be written about the S&C closure case, but Towler’s magnum opus is not it. The eventual rejection of the case depended on considerable economic and cost analysis, none of which came from Towler (or indeed, the Board’s own figures – the Board had not really had to assemble significant closure cases since the days of Beeching, when the data that were presented were formulaic costs and revenue; economic analysis was something alien to them – a lesson learned from LT, be it said).
Had Marylebone been considered seriously as a closure case, rather than hijacked by the conversion lobby, it would have run in to the same difficulty. Broad Street was a different situation, however – its closure was driven by the property redevelopment potential, which was so enormous that my predecessors asked no questions, although I doubt that CBA would have saved it. I can’t offhand think of any other closures which were driven by property in this way.
Graham, or anyone else who accepts his report of what really happened to the proposed S&C closure, could, if they wished, take steps to try to bring the Wikipedia entry into line with that view. That could be by actually amending it (though it might then get amended back), or by raising the issue on a “talk” page (I think that is the correct terminology).
But oddly enough the philosophy of Wikipedia is less concerned with “truth” (which Pilate also had some doubts about) than “consensus”. If many people believe that S&C was saved by its “friends”, then that view would be bound to be at least mentioned in the Wiki article, even if the article also described an alternative view.
Moral: for disputed questions, first persuade “the world”, then Wikipedia will meekly follow. But Wikipedia is not (meant to be) a means to persuade the world.
@Malcolm – your remarks neatly encapsulate all that is wrong with Wikipaedia. It is but a short step to explain that Princess Diana was killed by aliens led by the Duke of Edinburgh because that’s what many people think. Personally, I was brought up in the academic rigour of a positivistic approach to knowledge. In the light of what you say,I really, really can’t be bothered to amend Wikipaedia. Facts are facts…
@Greg
A complete list is given under “List of Thatcher Ministers” and “Major Ministry”
Minister of Transport
Norman Fowler 11 May 1979 – 5 January 1981
Secretary of State for Transport (date of appointment)
Norman Fowler 5 January 1981
David Howell 14 September 1981
Tom King 11 June 1983
Nicholas Ridley 16 October 1983
John Moore 21 May 1986
Paul Channon 13 June 1987
Cecil Parkinson 24 July 1989
Malcolm Rifkind 28 November 1990
John MacGregor 10 April 1992
Brian Mawhinney 20 July 1994
Sir George Young 5 July 1995
Ministers of State, Transport
Lynda Chalker 18 October 1983 – 10 January 1986
David Mitchell 23 January 1986 – 25 July 1988
Michael Portillo 25 July 1988 – 4 May 1990
Roger Freeman 4 May 1990 – 28 November 1990
Lord Brabazon 23 July 1990 – 14 April 1992
Minister for Public Transport
Roger Freeman 28 November 1990 – 20 July 1994
Minister for Railways and Roads
Earl of Caithness 14 April 1992 – 11 January 1994
John Watts 20 July 1994 – 2 May 1997
Parliamentary Secretary for Transport
Kenneth Clarke 7 May 1979 – 5 January 1981
Under-Secretaries of State for Transport (usually two)
Kenneth Clarke 5 January 1981 – 5 March 1982
Reginald Eyre 5 March 1982 – 11 June 1983
Lynda Chalker 5 March 1982 – 18 October 1983
David Mitchell 11 June 1983 – 23 January 1986
Michael Spicer 11 September 1984 – 13 June 1987
Earl of Caithness 2 September 1985 – 10 September 1986
Peter Bottomley 23 January 1986 – 24 July 1989
Lord Brabazon 10 September 1986 – 23 July 1989
Robert Atkins 25 July 1989 – 22 July 1990
Patrick McLoughlin 25 July 1989 – 14 April 1992
Christopher Chope 23 July 1990 – 14 April 1992
Kenneth Carlisle 14 April 1992 – 27 May 1993
Steven Norris 14 April 1992 – 23 July 1996
Robert Key 27 May 1993 – 20 July 1994
Lord MacKay 11 January 1994 – 20 July 1994
Viscount Goschen 20 July 1994 – 2 May 1997
John Bowis 23 July 1996 – 2 May 1997
@timbeau – what the list doesn’t reveal is that responsibility for railways moved about both in terms of Ministerial level and of indviduals; in general, the Secetary of State delegated railways and public transport to the Minister of State and one of the two Parly Under Secs would support the Minister (the other focussing on roads) but the advent of the tradesmen (when shipping and aviation arrived from DTI)meant that the boundaries were fluid and moved about according to the work load.
For the sake of completeness, you ought also to add in the senior staff at the time: from memory:
Perm Secs – Sir Peter Baldwin from the late ’70s to c1984
Peter Lazarus c1984 – 1988
Sir Alan Bailey 1988 – ?
Sir David Rowlands
Deputy Secretary Transport Industries – John Palmer 1984-1989
David Rowlands 1989- (post reorganised)
Graham says “…neatly encapsulate all that is wrong with Wikipaedia”.
I wouldn’t express it as “wrong”. Wikipedia is a wonderful resource, from which we can all benefit; provided that we recognise its limitations. It is not intended to be a tool of persuasion, any more than a hat is intended to keep one’s feet warm. And it is not, and cannot be, a fount of absolute truth, any more than any single book can.
It must be irritating when there is something of which one is certain, but which is misrecorded in Wikipedia. And my opinion (that Wikipedia’s overall ratio of truth to error, while not perfect, is actually far better than most “non-fiction” printed books) is probably not much consolation.
@Malcolm -perhaps it would have been better if I had said “neatly encapsulates all that is wrong with the way in which people use Wikipedia”?
Graham H
And, there was the extra benefit – for everybody – that the closure of Broad St most emphatically did not mean closure of the service.
Re-routing to Stratford & initially N Woolwich was what really started that route’s revival, by going somewhere useful, with lots of connections – Stratford.
timbeau & GH
But the aforementiond J Palmer does not appear on that list, does he?
Though GH kindly supplies that data later, I see.
Where was he from & what was his background?
[usual snip PoP]
@Greg T – John Palmer was a career civil servant who spent the entirety of his later career dealing with railway policy. When I first encountered him c1975,he was the Under Secretary Railways, moving up to Deputy Secretary Transport Industries when Peter Lazarus moved up to become Perm Sec. Palmer had seen his career advance under Serpell, when Serpell was Transport Perm Sec, and this coloured or reinforced his intellectual outlook – that and his childhood in Halifax, which not only equipped him with a sack of King Edwards on his shoulder, but also gave him a lifelong hatred of London (and London commuters in particular) which he took every opportunity to thrust down astonished Ministerial throats.
If you add to that working methods which I now discover from reading Robert Service’s book on Stalin, were calculated to work by promoting division and fear, and a disloyalty to both staff and Ministers, you may imagine the atmosphere in Railway Directorate of the time. Sir Alan Bailey,when he retired as Perm Sec, apologised (insofar as Perm Secs ever apologise) for letting Palmer remain in post.
To follow up on Graham H’s description, the Serpell Report was produced in 1982 by Sir David Serpell, a senior civil servant for the government of Margaret Thatcher to examine the state and long-term prospects of Great Britain’s railway system. Given the declining ridership & prospects, as well as No. 10’s intense dislike of railways, this report favoured cutting the railways, and it was soon coined ‘Beeching Part 2’. Outrage at this was huge and it was quickly scrapped, with none of its recommendations implemented.
‘Beeching Part 2’ would better have been coined for the 1965 report “The Development of the Major Trunk Routes”, where plenty of to-be-detrunked lines had a grey status on a well known map. I have the Board’s Q&A brief for the DotMTR press event, for the officers who would present it to the media. Choice phrases abound, along the lines (sic) of “routes not selected for development will be maintained/supported/invested in as much as their circumstances justify”.
‘Beeching Part 3’ was really the report printed in March 1965 (but not published because of political sensitivity, with a Government majority in single figures) – the “Railway Plan for London”. This is referenced extensively in the recent publication ‘A Very Political Railway – the rescue of the North London Line’, written by Wayne Asher.
Beeching Part 4? – though Beeching had long gone by then. Arguably the occasion when Norman Fowler lost his temper in a debate on railway closure threats and the (in)famous list – where he said there wasn’t a list. There was – or more accurately there were lists, which kept popping up, sometimes through media front pages – but his outburst temporarily stopped that process. Graham H has covered this one already, possibly much earlier on in this topic.
Only after that was there Serpell, then busway ideas, etc.
Re John Palmer, he was closely involved with the BR Kings Cross via South London early version of the CTRL scheme, when Malcolm Rifkind (then SoS Transport) was outmanoeuvred by Heseltine (SoS Environment) and by effective lobbying from those favouring Docklands and East London development to be stimulated by a rerouted CTRL, including Arups’ technical challenge to the BR scheme, led by Mark Bostock.
The Kings Cross Bill was killed by Heseltine’s announcement, at the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool that October 1991. Sir Bob Reid MkII was there, which led to his not-unreasonable “Pantomime” comment, as the Kings Cross Bill had already undergone nearly two years of parliamentary scrutiny including Select Committee. John Palmer did not believe that the DoT support for the Kings Cross Bill would be eroded by the East London lobbying. One suspects that some others at DfT might have thought it was too good an opportunity to miss…
@Anonymous – Palmer retired in 1989+ (apart from a Eurostar directorship*) and for anything that happened after that, he was out of it. The Heseltine plan (as built) was a curiosity – it came from a political whim, and now we have all been saddled with £1bn + of nugatory public spend.
+He should have retired in 1988, when he reached 60, but managed to persuade the powers that be (Alan Bailey, who had not yet got the measure of the man) that he should stay on.
* He had a French wife at the time and valued his free trips to the holiday cottage..
@Anon 1832
“favouring Docklands and East London development to be stimulated by a rerouted CTRL”
quite how much they have been stimulated by having Eurostars whizzing through Startford non-stop every few minutes is debatable.
I read somewhere that Serpell was nipped in the bud by someone leaking just one of the many scenarios to the railway press – the “worst case” one.
http://www.railnews.co.uk/img/medium/news00333.jpg
The leaks are mentioned here.
http://www.lordfaulkner.com/blogdocs/HOLDINGTHELINE.pdf
That article also mentioned a similar leaked report about ten years previously
https://englishrail.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/reg-dawson-unsung-hero/
@timbeau – A propos Stratford – yes, that was always the issue but Heseltine would have it ;not a shred of reliable evidence was produced to support his contention that an international station would stimulate development and all the precedents suggested otherwise.
Yes.we all suffered the fall out from the Serpell leak and had “Mr Frame” wandering through our offices. In the end no one was fingered conclusively as usual.
One of our constant concerns about this and similar studies was that maps were to be avoided at all costs.
timbeau says “quite how much they have been stimulated by having Eurostars whizzing through Stratford non-stop every few minutes is debatable.”
Debatable, yes. But one argument would read:
CTRL via Stratford => domestic HS via Stratford to central London
=> Olympic Games in Stratford
=> loadsa development money splashing about.
Though AFAIK this was not a deliberate plan at the time!
@Malcolm – hindsight is a wonderful thing, especially when the taxpayer has already brassed up a big one…
@Graham – Yes, but even an unintended consequence is still a consequence!
@Malcolm – so was the first world war; getting it right/wrong by accident is no result at all. You might as well take decisions by tossing a coin – hey! Don’t they do that?
I’m not sure what you’re saying WW1 was an unintended consequence of, but no matter.
When we drift as far as this off topic, it may be time to stop (except of course when it concerns one of your fascinating anecdotes, which, to my mind, constitute an escape clause for any moderation attempt; but we’ve gone way beyond the anecdote now, I think).
Declaring myself as someone who has been very closely involved with Wikipedia for almost eleven years, might I respond to Malcolm’s assertion that “the philosophy of Wikipedia is less concerned with ‘truth’ than ‘consensus’.” We definitely _do_ want ‘truth’ (in all its forms!) but that truth must be something we can point to a verifiable source for. Writing that something “is true because I was there” isn’t valid, but “is true and here is a link or photo of the article in The Telegraph about it” is wonderful. Where there are issues about the veracity of claim and counter-claim then yes, ‘consensus’ does come into it, but only in terms of the quality of sources about the information concerned. If you find something which you believe to be wrong, either change it yourself or add a note on the talkpage, but more importantly *with a reference to where the accurate information is*!
ps. Graham – no, anyone trying to change her entry to say “that Princess Diana was killed by aliens led by the Duke of Edinburgh” would be unable to source such a statement to a reputable source and it would be deleted / repaired within moments. Saying “Facts are facts…” is not strictly true as it depends on which ‘facts’ you have available to you at the time to make your judgment from. Now if you would write the book that you so clearly have the content for I’d be happy to cite it for lots of improvements to WP content!
@AlisonW,
Way off topic but the example given was precisely the reason I gave up on editing Wikipedia. I spotted something that was factually wrong. It was that the DLR tracks were stated to be above the level of the A20 at Lewisham if you are really interested.
No source was given to back up the statement which I was sure was wrong because they were below the level of the road. I revisited the location to make sure I was correct. I then changed the article in question. The change got reverted and when I challenged the point I was told my change was not valid on the grounds it was original research and not backed up by fact.
I decided at that point that if an unsubstantiated assertion cannot be corrected when one only had to visit the location to see it was palpably wrong it was time to give up. It seemed crazy that something could be glaringly incorrect for all to see and yet one could not change it on the basis of the evidence of one’s eyes because one did not have a “fact” to back it up. I suppose nowadays one would simply take a photo as further evidence or one could probably find a picture on flickr but I had got to the point of being past caring.
@AlisonW – being able to reference a published source and privilege it over personalobservation is a logical mistake. Ultimately,ALL published material depends on someone’s personal observation;it’smerely one atge further up the data chain. You might like to consider the approach to evidence adopted by the courts and the forensic services. I don’t believe that Wikipaedia adopts such careful scrutiny of witnesses.
Indeed, I know that Wiki IS based on personalobservation in part and when it is, it can often be shown to be wrong. For example, the entry for my own village, which has to be based on personal observation as there are no published sources at all for the place, is wrong and demonstrably so,simply by making the observer walk round and count, in this case, the shops and services.
@POP/Graham H
Re Wiki, I have found many errors, and my frustration is that the `facts` are easily checkable in some instance. For example, in December 2012 I corrected South Bermondsey Station , where it was stated it is on a viaduct!! I even found a Google image which clearly showed it to be on an embankment.
I have sometimes quoted a National Archives file reference. As I mentioned in a recent post, I wrote a recently published article on Wandsworth Common station, and my research showed not only errors in Wiki, but in the 3 volume standard LBSCR history by Howard Turner.
I can understand when `old` history is wrong, because original research takes a lot of time, and some information is lost over time, and one has to make judgement in some cases, but the article should clearly state this has been done.
I fully agree with the frustration that Wiki has erroneous information which can be checked just by visiting the site in question.
The problem with Wikipedia is that it prioitises unverified written sources over facts which are in the public domain (such as the Lewisham and South Bermondsey examples mentioned – since they have been left out in full public view they are as much in the public domain as Google Earth, or the Evening Standard).
The solution seems to me to be to publish your original research somewhere else, and cite that in Wikipedia!
Indeed, now that the arrangments at South Bermondsey and Lewisham have been mentioned on this thread, you could cite the thread on Wikipedia as basis for making the correction.
One way in which I find LR substantially superior to Wikipedia is that LR understands that there are primary sources (eg NR reports) and secondary sources (books and newspapers) and treats primary sources as more authentic. When for historical facts only books are available, on LR the relative accuracy of them will be critiqued in comments. When I find things wrong on Wikipedia it is often because a secondary authority has been referenced rather than a primary authority (which might not be published in English).
There’s also a problem of American usage for some topics being presented as fact globally rather than just being presented as true in USA.
Any article is only as good as its author. On LR there are named authors for content – even comments – and Inthink that is infinitely preferable.
@Graham H
I’ve been away for a while, and so missed all the activity on 27th.
Regarding Graham’s general observations re closures;-
In the 1980s the British Railways Board were required to submit
applications to close railways (or terminate passenger services)
in accordance with financial principles and procedures as determined by the Dtp.
The BRB most certainly did have the capability to progress very
substantial and intricate economic analysis, but , closure applications
were based upon a few very simple principles. The simplicity of
the methodology might leave an observer to wonder whether this
meant to produce a “cast iron” case for closure every time.
(I) The “Bottom Line” (net savings on PSO grant) were calculated
over only FIVE years.
(ii) Renewal of Infrastructure was treated as a “revenue account”
item. (this is of course, utter nonsense in accounting terms, especially so for very long life structures assets).
(iii) There was no indication or guidance as to “which services should
be regarded as closure candidates”.
This last (iii) in retrospect is astonishing. BR received a PSO grant
on a block basis for the whole supported system (excluding PTEs).
One would logically think that candidature for closure would be
determined by a “ranking”. e.g. an abnormally high level of support
costs per passenger journey/mile, or some other relevant derived
statistic. That this feature was absent was responsible for the
public concern that inevitably surrounded a closure application.
Graham asserts that “no significant closure case had been progressed
since the Beeching period” , which I would question. Although he
correctly states that Marylebone was not a “normal” closure (being
driven, probably illegally) by ulterior motives emanating from the Dtp, there were others. I personally conducted the financial case
for closure for ;- Goole – Gilberdyke, Henley – Bearley Jcn (and a few
other minor cases). However, the closure financial methodology had
been considerably revamped since the 1960s.
I am gratified to learn that neither Graham nor the Minister (David
Mitchell, then Michael Portillo) wanted the Settle Carlisle to close.
Neither did BR Provincial, and it was our surmation that the
government was “unenthusiastic” too.
BUT without a clear policy re a long term stategy for the supported
railway (i.e. a value for money criteria) then, in theory, any closure
showing a net saving on PSO (however small) could theoretically
be approved. The Marylebone closure was a classic example of a
miniscule benefit from closure, but in danger of being approved due
to ulterior motives. The correction of errors in the case as submitted. although a small figure, was sufficient to nullify the case for closure,
BR being legally prevented from progressing a closure (in normal
circumstances) that failed to produce a betterment on PSO account.
Regarding the Settle and Carlisle;-
Indeed, the definitive book has not been written. There is an
extraordinary feature of this closure unknown to all.
I am waiting to apply my own version of the “thirty year rule”.
@Timbeau
“The solution seems to me to be to publish your original research somewhere else, and cite that in Wikipedia!”
I am going to amend the Wiki Wandsworth Common article soon (I must get around to it!), and I will refer to my London Railway Record article, but where appropriate, I may just put the National Archive/LMA reference.
Alan Robinson 28 January 2015 at 12:10
‘Regarding the Settle and Carlisle;-
Indeed, the definitive book has not been written. There is an
extraordinary feature of this closure unknown to all.
I am waiting to apply my own version of the “thirty year rule”.’
Please. Please secrete this information somewhere from where it can be released at the end of that thirty years even in the event of your untimely demise. If it is as valuable/interesting as you suggest it is worth taking steps to ensure its revelation. Would it be safe to reveal it at the time of said untimely demise? Be devilishly difficult to prosecute you then. Or would that just be passing the problem on to somebody else?
@RayK
Thanks for appreciation.
I am in a dilemma. I am withholding my account of the Settle and Carlisle story because I know that it would cause distress to at least
one individual. Rest assured, I am in no danger of prosecution,
and; I have no desire to profit financially from disclosure.
Neither do I seek publicity.
But, I am concerned re historical objectivity, for sake of posterity.
Hence my dilemma.
@Alan Robinson – the Board may have decided that its job was done by producing estimates of the savings from closures, but I fear the heavy lifting started there. To safeguard the Secretary of State from legal challenge, a great deal more economic and social research was required and that devolved,whether I liked it or not, on my team. We also had to go through the Board’s own figures with a fine toothcomb for a similar reason. In the S&C case, I regret to say that we found numerous arithmetic and estimating errors, particularly in relation to the costs of renewing or repairing the viaducts, which, had we let them stand, would have formed the basis for a successful judicial review.
Indeed,so far as the Board was concerned,they simply pulled the pin and handed the grenade straight to me, their job done. Three and a half years later, we managed to defuse it. The Board’s lack of serious engagement with the process was one of a number of reasons that made even those of us who wanted to retain the line, think it was a deliberate set-up. Ministers also thought this and it was meat and drink to those who wanted to launch a major attack on OPS, such as John Palmer. Conspiracy theorists maight well have added that Palmer may himself have been the unseen driving force behind it…
@Graham H
The British Railways Board (Provincial) had absolutely no responsibility
to compute social/economic cost benefit criteria at all. That was very
much the task of the Dtp (and generally without divulging the outcome
of their deliberations).
All BR could do was PROPOSE, the Dtp to consent or refuse.
That this caused anguish was entirely due to lack of any transparent
strategic policy. Other (more enlightened?) countries have declared
policies on this, i.e. ceiling on support requirement per pass mile
or journey, whereby a closure case is trigerred by demonstrable poor
value for money on a long term basis with proper capitalisation
of assets employed. This we did not have (and still don’t).
Instead we had (still have?) a GREAT BRITISH SHAMBLES.
One shouldn’t be surprised if shambolic results ensue.
There have always been minor errors disclosed re closure cases
(although many are degrees of hair splitting judgment re eccentricities of costing methodology).
The key question for Settle Carlisle was that of a “viable” railway
service proposed for closure because of a “lumpy” bridge fixing job.
(by viable, I mean one with a financial performance way above the
average for PSO supported services).
This exposed the whole inadequacy of government policy.
No fiddles, no “conspiracy” just an honest attempt to get some
common sense, and, hopefully a secure a future for PSO services.
Graham: Saying “being able to reference a published source and privilege it over personal observation is a logical mistake” will get no disagreement from me! Thankfully many such issues can be solved by pointing to Google’s Streetview facility as, despite it being a non-current image still shows the facts of the matter for many issues. The whole “reference over truth” is a frequent source of disquiet to many of those involved* but as it is a definable solution to the problem of two people saying different things it currently has to do. Theban is right that WP has ended up relying far more on secondary sources than primary ones. It is, ahem, ‘a problem’.
(* Mike Godwin – he of “Godwin’s law” and former counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation – recently pointed out that he can’t get certain errors of fact about himself corrected.)
ps. LR has been cited as a source on a number of WP articles. Long may the practice continue!
@Alan Robinson – Actually, the policy on closures was perfectly clear. As I may have remarked before, when I took over the railways desk, the then Permanent Secretary, Peter Lazarus said to me in terms: “We give the Board £1bn pa to maintain the network, and in return, they take the flak for its performance” . What closures occurred were triggered either by major infrastructure renewals (in the absence of a properly capitalised infrastructure) or by special circumstances. Ministers would and did give similar answers about maintaining the network and not asking the Board to bring forward closures. Whether that was communicated to the board’s more junior staff I couldn’t say.
It was this policy context that made S&C all the more odd – if this one, then why not Liskeard-Looe, where the fares failed to cover the cost of the driver, or many similar? Coupled with remarks from Palmer about the ineluctable need to set an example and his tendency to conspire with No 10 behind the Secretary of State’s back, there is much circumstantial evidence to show that the case was being used to set Ministers up.
@Graham H
As a said “junior member” of BR HQ’s accounting staff, I can
assure you that I was made well aware of the supposed incumbency
on the BR Board (and later Sector Management) to promote closures.
Your comment re Peter Lazarus says it all;-
“We pay them £1b pa and they take the flak;—–
In the absence of any proper stated public policy re the future of
the railway network, how would you expect BR management to
respond to this? In fact, we were thouroughly fed up, sick to death of taking the flak (not just from the public, but having to endure an
ongoing climate of insult from government too, for highly dubious
political point scoring purposes). The Marylebone closure was just
another symptom of this malaise. If the Dtp had been really serious
about converting Marylebone to a bus station and converting the
approaching route to a busway, then they could have used the
“proper” mechanism, i.e. a full parliamentary bill, subject of course
to a full scrutiny by the commons transport committee (ha ha).
Of course, they didn’t have the guts to do that, so a “back door”
method of bringing about Marylebone closure was attempted.
It gave me the most enormous pleasure to well and truly blow the
Dtp’s duplicity to smithereens.
As I have stated, the whole relationship between Br and HM government was a state of war, and;- All’s fair in love and War (so
it is said).
You are correct, the Settle and Carlisle was a set up. It was put for
closure precisely because it was a good performer (a big fish to fry rather than a little tiddler like Liskeard – Looe).
But, I maintain, no conspiracy, just a perfectly normal act of
hostilities allowable within the rules of the “rail policy Geneva convention”.
waste time trying to closure little
@Alan Robinson: the whole relationship between Br and HM government was a state of war
I like Roger Ford’s apocryphal quote from John Welsby:
Asked about the importance of keeping the Department of Transport at arm’s length, the reply came back ‘that way you can get a better swing at them’.
As Ford points out, Network Rail is now officially an ‘a public sector arm’s-length body of the Department for Transport’
Fun times ahead…
@Ian J
Thanks for advising me of the Welsby quote. I have followed the
link and read the passage referred to with astonishment.
Although , as I stated, the relationship between BR and Govt was
a “state of war”, it was nevertheless accepted by BR that Govt did
have a perfect right to control expenditure in protection of the
public interest. (He who pays the Piper etc).
Despite the advances in technology in recent years, control was much tighter in those days, and BR’s performance re investment
expenditure was far superior. I recall very few instances of significant
project cost overruns. I still maintain contact with onetime BR project managers, and in our nostalgic ramblings it is always
mentioned how (in those days) to exceed a project budget by more
than a few percentage points was almost a “whisky and revolver job”.
There are two important differences (compared with present day);-
(1) New Works Authorisations
No New Works expenditure could proceed unless individually
approved by the Dtp, that is scheme by scheme , in glorious technicolour detail. As I recall, this applied to schemes as small as
£25k, and BR’s accounting system properly reported scheme cost
(i.e. by New Works Authority number).
All this discipline was totally lost by the creation of Railtrack, and
then Network Rail as a “Not for Profit” corporation not under direct
Ministerial control (Gordon Brown’s great fiddle to attempt to keep Railway infrastructure capital debt off national books).
If Railtrack had been created as a simple transfer of BR’s infrastructure divisions wholesale (i.e. with no significant changes
to lines of responsibility) then all the internal controls that BR used
would also have been retained.
No such luck! By 1984ish, HM Treasury had become determined
to extract every possible penny in asset sales, and bust up the whole
infrastructure set up to do this (IMCs and TRCs), For very poor
proceeds, the whole integrity of Railway Infrastructure was comprised (sold down the river and up a creek without a paddle).
The rest is history, especially for those who lost their lives.
(ii) A More contentious point.
BR was (by comparison with today) a poverty stricken industry,
where managers were paid very modest salaries, no bonuses and
generally precious little in way of performance related pay rises.
For example a typical Project Manager in late 1980s would be
MS2/MS3 grade @ approx. £15k pa. In today’s money that is roughly
£35k, rather less than what is paid now, I suspect. Much was
“in house” project wise.
My contention is this;- Managers paid modestly SPEND MODESTLY.
Those who live under personal financial strain (and I encountered
many BR managers in such circumstances) don’t BLOW MONEY!
Might it be that Highly paid Managers have a more cavalier attitude?
(I am posing the question).
However, whatever the reason, the disturbing evident trend for higher and higher real cost of projects (and disastrous overspend)
is causing grief , not least to hapless defenceless commuters and
other regular rail users, whose fares rise ever higher to “pay for
the cost of improving the railway”.
I am really quite astonished that outraged rail commuter terrorist
cells have not emerged with the objective of seeking out these
profligate Railway Infrastructure managers and burning down their
mansions!
I really do think things were better in “my day”.
(the cry of the hopeless pathetic worn out has-been since the
beginning of time, but IT’S TRUE).
immemor
Perhaps they aren’t paying enough for managers and so are not getting decent ones ?
Unfortunately, you either have to pay the going rate, or you have to train them yourself and then try to keep them from leaving to work in better paid industries.
Having worked with JKW when we were both in the Department and again when we had both moved to BR, I suspect that he was running his usual sense of irony when he made the famous remark. One learned to look for the Welsby twinkle.
@Alan Robinson – you and I clearly worked in a different industry. For sure, our relation with the Board was gamekeeper and and pocher, but I do not recall the poisonous atmosphere and defeatism that you describe – nor did I encounter it when I moved to BR. It’s possible that reflects the fact that I dealt mainly with the nascent businesses rather than the regions which were then on the glide path to abolition; it probably also reflects the fact that we had such a churn rate in Secretaries of State that most of the railway policy work remained in the hands of the (very) pro-rail Ministers of State, who all served for considerable lengths of time in the mid/late ’80s. (I understood that bitterness was the order of the day on both sides in the Peter Parker era, but BR1 was a great healer and trusted by Minsters and senior managers alike.)
I cannot imagine that there many senior BR managers who believed (a) that they should be given a blank cheque, or (b) didn’t understand that the State had every right to find out what happened to its money. (if they did think that, meeting the bankers after privatisation would have come as an even nastier shock…)
More strategically, and in relation to closures, one of the fundamental problems faced by policy makers was that there was no rational justification for the BR network as it stood in 1985. The system then was simply defined as the point at which the Beeching programme became politically intolerable. There was no rhyme or reason to what remained: why did Keswick and Hailsham have no service, but Bishops Auckland did, for example? It was hardly possible to have some sort of accessibility criterion, even in the palmiest days of network coverage, and cost benefit showed how little vfm was generated by many of the least used lines. So, we had little choice but to freeze things as they were subject to good housekeeping and sudden capex. The Board understood that. [Incidentally, the conundrum is still with us despite the requirement in EU PSO legislation to provide a justification for subsidy…]
@Alan Robinson
What are the IMCs and TRCs of which you speak?
@LongBranchMike
IMC Infrastructure maintenance Company
TRC Track renewal Company
These were (up to 1995) the Infrastructure divisions of BR’s sector management organisation. They had been structured more or less on the geographical realm of the “parent” Sector organisation. They were accountable to the Sector Director (via the appropriate sub sector manager). The Track Renewal Companies were an artificial construct (the two functions of renewal and maintenance had always been combined, right from earliest days of railways). The idea was that they would be sold to a civil engineering company who would perform maintenance/renewal work contracted to
Railtrack.
The Track Renewal outfits didn’t last long. I was sent (in 1995) as finance trouble shooter to the Western Infrastruture maintenance unit (to rescue a total accounting breakdown). This IMU was sold (spring 1996) to AMEY for a pittance (about £30m) for this they got a £110m turnover business with guaranteed built in profit margin of 10% of turnover. Think about it: £30m investment, £10m profit. The shares rocketed. It was this sort of thing that caused to ne to vow to leave the industry.
@Anoymous
The miserably paid BR managers/engineers were the best. They were dedicated to doing a good job against the odds and delivering a good financial outcome, which they mostly did. The notion that “you have to pay the going rate” is one that nationalisation was designed to destroy. A Nationalised Industry is a monopoly. The whole point (but never admitted to) was to obtain a monopoly purchase of labour, which can then be throttled down. Such employment was intended to be a vocation. The public got a cheaply delivered industry in consequence. Under these circs there is no “going rate”. You take it or lump it, and, where are you going to go? There was only one railway.
The seldom mentioned truth about railway privatisation is that, having opened up a market for railway staff, the pay rates have soared, and with it, costs. The staff benefited from a secure stable career (if you could hack it) but with good pension at end, and likelihood of generous severance payment for early retirement too. I have enjoyed both, and now regard my very modest remuneration as a valuable tax free investment. I am now reaping my return for my labour.
@GrahamH
No BR manager ever expected (or wanted) a blank cheque. All we wanted was a clear statement of objectives, however demanding. Without this, there was no measurement of success, and we wanted to succeed. I am proud to have been part of the team that succeeded in reducing Provincial/Regional Railways support requirement by nearly 50% in the years 1986-1991 (whilst improving and expanding
services). We finally did get a statement of objective from the Dtp, which was to deliver the current Regional Railway network at a support ratio of 50% e.g. £1 support for every £1 of fare revenue.
We came very very close to this (the1991 recession derailed us a bit) but, what thanks did we get;- Statements from people such as Mawhinney;- “BR is deeply deeply inefficient.” Was it hell, you (the taxpayer) got it cheap. The profits from Inter City, Freight, parcels and property etc came very close to compensating for the support of Regional and NSE. What is it now, £4BILLION in support (pah). (reached £7b 10 years ago) And all done by low paid managers. (like me).
IMC – Infrastructure Maintenance Company
TRC – Track Renewal Company
ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail
These are the companies that did the actual track and maintenance work under contract from Railtrack, who were mainly a management company. Part of the cause of the Hatfield crash was due to this split between maintenance and management, and when NR was formed, all the companies were amalgamated.
@AR, Anonymous
Thanks for the explanations, these are gold!
@LongBranchMike
Thanks for your appreciation. The original (1993 act) version of British Rail privatisation implied that Railtrack would be a new nationalised industry, totally integrated, mostly in-house and
accountable to government. In effect, effect Railtrack would have been British Rail HQ without all the train operating and marketing etc, but preserving the internal controls and the HQ managed activities (such as project management).
This could have worked, at least there should have been no compromise of safety. Because the cost of setting up privatisation rocketed to obscene levels (legal expenses and consultancy) HM treasury decided that they had better have a bit more in the way of asset sale proceeds to show for it. The big idea (and totally scurrilous) was that if you set up twenty odd infrastructure cost with a guaranteed profit built in (Government imposed long term contracts) then someone would pay something for them as they were almost a licence to print money. The government didn’t get very much for them, way below the real asset value, and THEY WERE NOT OFFERED TO COMPETITIVE BIDDING!!!
To speed things up, the government “approached” likely contenders and whispered in their ear;- Psssssst! want to buy a rail infrastructure company, going cheap. Together with the 10% built in profit guaranteed to Railtrack, the cost of infrastructure delivery was inflated about 20% compared to BR. And all to create a totally dysfunctional and dangerous set up, a total disgrace.
Vast numbers of BR engineers took early retirement rather than risk having “blood on their hands” (Many of them told me so, in precisely those terms, very graphic language). Their worst predictions came true. I too decided to get out, take the money and run.
The real tragedy of the Hatfield disaster is that;- with a known serious track defect (nothing new in that) this brave new world of rail infrastructure was so incompetent that it couldn’t
perform the most basic safeguard: IMPOSE A SPEED RESTRICTION.
@Alan Robinson – “The profits from Inter City, Freight, parcels and property etc came very close to compensating for the support of Regional and NSE.” Indeed, under the first (and only) business plan for NSE, the idea was to get out of grant by 1996-97; IC was due to make a “profit” by about 1993-94, and with Freight’s £100m+ annual cash surplus, the Board would have been out of grant at that point, with RR’s losses more than covered by the rest.
I fear that Mawhinney (after my time, thank goodness) was a pig in a suit; even the most urbane and tactful of my former DfT colleagues were reduced to expletives. This is what happens when you put a man whose only previous career experience was as a minor radiographer in a minor provincial hospital, responsible for tricky and complex commercial decisions – he just repeated yesterday’s cant – besides treating everyone else as dirt. Glad I never fell ill in Peterborough.
@Anonymous – worse still, the Treasury assumed that the IMCOs were exactly the same as the shovellers who worked on highway schemes and so would form a nice fit with the existing businesses of the likes of Balfours. The likes of Balfours actually bought the argument and even in some cases amalgamated the IMCOs with their existing highway maintenance operations. Disillusionment set in on day 1 but the industry/taxpayer/passenger had to pay the consequences for many years, as you imply. Of course, all this fitted so well with Railtrack’s aspirations to reduce their headcount to about 1500 signallers and 40 HQ staff…
@Graham H
May I (very respectfully) offer to modify your assertion that IC would have achieved profit by 1993/94. I was talking about this to John Collins, (IC Senior Finance Manger) of the period 1984-1994 only the other day. He confirmed my recollection that IC was already fully into profit by 1990 (about £170m pa) including full recovery of interest and depreciation etc.
NR was supposed to have broken even about 1993 (they didn’t make it, recession thwarted them). As I said the TOTAL cost of British Rail (Support offset by profit retained to public sector account)
to the taxpayer, i.e. BR’s total P & L bottom line, was negligible by 1990/91, and should have improved further with resumption of economic growth after abut 1995. In addition BR had achieved the remarkable feat of cash sufficiency on revenue account, funding , in effect only required for capital investment in form of HM Treasury loan repaid with interest.
By far the best financial result of any European state railway, totally unappreciated by the likes of Brian Mawhinney et al and all thrown away recklessly in the cause of dogma.
@AR -thank you for that; sit corrected! (Tho’ didn’t IC have a slight dip c1991?) I agree entirely,the message was clear:BR out of grant was a realistic prospect. More, some work we did in the Department suggested we could get close to getting some of RR out of grant, too. The point was that in Board/DfT speak, the assumption was that the fares elasticity for RR was the same(1.0) regardless of the type of service- a ridiculous thought: RR’s Alphaline services, such as Brum/Manchester to Cardiff had many of the commercial characteristics of IC (fares elasticity of 0.25) and could be priced up accordingly – as we have seen since privatisation. Add in the possibility of transferring full responsibility for local services to the PTEs and the Scots and the Welsh, and the remaining RR services’ subsidy requirements became quite small…
@Graham H
Thanks for that. Yes IC did dip a bit after 1990. The interesting is that the 1990/91 recession was th exact opposite of the recent one with sky high interest rates (reached 15%) to cool down an overheating economy. The effect was to immediately gobble up a huge chunk of individual’s disposable income (higher mortgage repayments) and also a major cutback in activity by private sector. Therefore, an immediate sharp drop in all forms of travel. commuting business and leisure. Not much BR could do to counter this disaster. Costs are determined by timetable (put to bed yonks before). The traditional way for a railway to ride out a recession of this type is by cutting minor renewals and repair work, but, this had all been “ring fenced” whereby any declared saving on these headings would have resulted in corresponding cut in PSO support. A tough one. Cutting wages would have been an option only for the bravest (count me out). Substantial fare increases wouldn’t have worked either.
The latest recession is the exact opposite, with minimal interest rates and QE. Despite substantial reduction in GDP 2008-2011, rail business continued to climb. This indicates that the principal victims this time are the poor. Those continuing in employment benefited from lower mortgage repayments, and businesses were assisted by low interest rates, hence buoyancy of passenger business.
Scotland and Wales.
A matter dear to my heart! I have hammering this one with my local MP trying to get him to understand that the current Rail support (i.e. Network Grant), the driver of perpetual fare increases is very disproportionately incurred in the Celtic zones. About half of the £4b pa goes into subsidising North of Scotland, Ayr-Stranraer and the Cambrian plus Central Wales etc. These lines have always been unviable and have long demonstrated terrible value for money.
It has often been said it would be cheaper to give each passenger a taxi and this is superficially true, if you could actually get enough taxis to run at the same time. Should the support for these services become the direct responsibility of Scottish and Welsh assemblies and paid for out of the taxes raised from the said inhabitants then the imperative to keep on raising fares in England would be very significantly eased. By my calculation it would cost Scottish and Welsh taxpayers about £800 per head pa, which might prompt a rethink. In Scotland, at least, the old bogey that “you can’t close these railways because you will encourage the nationalist vote” is a thing of the past. The SNP is forecast to make almost a clean sweep, and shutting the whole of Scotrail down wouldn’t affect the outcome.
If Scotland ad Wales was devolved, the reduction in Network Grant together with “target” cost reductions on NR should be enough to eliminate English rail support, albeit with some very embarrassing and contentious cross-subsidy issues emerging. There is also the question of £1b pa NR operating profit. This should logically be “netted off” the Network Grant. You try telling South West Trains commuters (already viable) that their fares will need to yield a 20% surplus in order to provide trains for their worthy fellow citizens in the frozen north! (That’s a fine job for somebody, somebody else, not me) (a very old song).
@Alan Robinson
This is the sort of information that makes this forum so interesting and valuable. Thanks for sharing 🙂
@Alan R – In fact, we took the analysis a step further because of the”Local Option” (ie handing over the funding of rural lines to county councils), which was then in vogue. The snag with that was twofold: the non-PTE/Scots/Welsh/NSE/IC lines were concentrated in a handful of counties – Devon, Cornwall, Lincs, Lancs. Some – Surrey, Kent, Hants, Leics, Northants, Glos – had very few, if any. So the funding would have needed to be similarly skewed. However, the way local government funding works, grants are distributed by formula, and there was no formula which we could devise which replicated the skew. The implication of that – politically – was that the counties that needed the most would get too little, shut their lines, and blame central government funding. Those that got too much would trouser it and laugh all the way to the next vanity project.
@Graham H
All very interesting stuff! Thanks for that.
My understanding of the “strategy” for British Railways in the late
1980s is this (This is what Regional Railways Mangers were working towards, anyway, even though there was “some scepticism” as to
whether it would actually be accomplished):-
Inter City : to be privatised (sold to highest bidder, doubtless with
some public regulation) This forming the viable”core” UK national
railway.
Freight and Parcels : Privatised (again to highest bidder) running
over national (Inter City) core network (mostly) at commercial
track access charges.
THE REST : Network SE and RR
To be put under local government control (inc infrastructure),
under a variety of options , to be determined (never got that far).
This might have included, outright privatisation, public/private
partnerships, “not for profit ” companies (as now suggested for Wales) etc.
The key determinant of this was REGIONAL GOVERNMENT.
All in accordance with European Regulation 1169. The PTE
legislation (from 1974) being in accordance with this, and it was
expected that PTE principles and procedures would be extended
to whole of supported network (hence my interest and enthusiasm
for PTE accounting, I thought it would guarantee me a fabulous
career offering untold riches! (ha ha).
Of course, the counties are far too small for effective management
of transport utilities (but too big for urban transport, for which there
was separate provision).
No wonder you ran into so many logistical and financial brick walls
in trying to devise COUNTY COUNCIL support mechanisms, it
just can’t be done.
The whole point of European legislation establishing REGIONAL
government is to overcome these problems, not only in transport
but much else.
BR enthusiastically adopted this European legislation in concept
at an early date, i.e. by devising “Grant Groups” as a sub-division of
train service data and revenue appropriation, as a first baby step
towards this brave new world.
This why BR Provincial was renamed Regional Railway(s) note
the plural, this meant what it implied. It was expected that a
co-ordinating function would be retained by a Regional Railways HQ
into the future, and I would be the “Lord High Chief Grants Manager” (one can dream).
This is why Regional Railways HQ was moved “en bloc” to Birmingham in 1991, very expensively and with a considerably
“beefed up” management team. It was also partly (but not disclosed)
anticipation of a Labour victory at the 1992 election, with a new
transport policy focussed on regions. (Kinnock blew it).
No sooner had we got our feet under the table then the horrible
truth emerged that we were all going to get our cards;——–
Of course, In Britain we seem to have totally disregarded European
legislation mandating Regional Government, and have suffered
the consequences. The only lingering trace of it is in the MEP
constituencies. However, Should full devolution be granted to the
Scottish and Welsh assemblies, including rail support, then this
would be a step in that direction (sort of).
Network South East.
Was expected to be placed under a “Greater London PTE” as per
agglomerations such as Paris (Transilien) or, nowadays,
Greater Boris Rail. (Possibly privatised, either in whole or by subsector)
There are several other contenders for PTEs, East Midlands,
Tees-side, Edinburgh and Fife, South Wales, Avon, East Lancs etc
Oh, how I looked forward to a dazzling climactic last ten years of
my career !!! (Instead reduced to a down and out has been, only
fit for the human scrap heap)
(Whilst Railtrack and TOCs and Train Leasing Cos waxed fat).
You might think that you are able to trace a hint of bitterness.
@Alan R -Having been in charge of railway policy until 1989, I can assure you that no one had any intention of privatising BR,starting with the then Prime Minister. The issue had come to Cabinet now and then but had been firmly squashed by Mrs T – “There are two privatisations that I do not want brought to cabinet again – the railways and the Post Office. ” (I believed her – which is why I bailed out to the Board). Nor were there any plans to set up a SE UK PTE; indeed, I had the greatest difficulty in persuading the then Secretary of State not to abolish the existing ones -and those of us who had led the abolition of LT knew that No 10 thought that PTEs were communism on wheels. (Indeed when the then Under Secretary London Transport, June Bridgeman sent the first draft of the White Paper announcing LT’s abolition to No 10, there was a violent explosion at the inclusion of the word “Authority” in the LRT’s prospective title and the luckless,but tiresome, June was made to go to No 10 within the hour whilst Ferdinand Mount stood over her and rewrote the text).
Nor was there any sign of a statutory PTE when I was at NSE (1990-1994) – as one of Chris Green’s and John Welsby’s close advisers on the politics of London commuting, it would have been apparent.
The plain fact is that John Major personally decided to promote the the privatisation of the railways, not least as something to differentiate him from his predecessor. It came as a surprise to the Board and also to my former colleagues.
@Graham H
absolutely correct ! NO firm plans to privatise any part of BR (pre
1992) No inclination to create more commie PTEs, no Regional
Government either !!!
We (In Regional, especially, but in common with certain individuals
in other business sectors were thinking long term.
The “promised land” of Regional Government, more PTEs etc
was thought of as just an expression of applied logic, whose time must come, after “regime change” in Westminster.
It was even thought that a left wing government would be keen
to accept the Privatisation of IC, Freight & Parcels (eventually).
I think Mrs Thatcher’s recorded verbal reaction to the notion
of BR privatisation was ; NO! NO! NO! It will be the downfall of a
conservative government!
That none of the above happened was due to RR management
being supplied with very duff sub standard crystal balls.
came from obscure part of Derby BREL I think.
Pre-1992 government expenditure was very high – hence the inflationary boom Alan refers to. Post-election, big need for government receipts. Hence rail privatisation and the specific form privatisation took, with the emphasis on maximising receipts from sale of Railtrack.
Once the idea of splitting the assets between wheel and rail was accepted, Railtrack was structured, as Alan details, with split between management and operations. This was described at the time in the Financial Times and elsewhere as akin to a property management company.
We call all draw our own conclusion as to what was the envisaged outcome.
Should have written ‘Pre-1992 election, government spending…
@Answer=42
The outcome of the 1992 election was a surprise, especially to
the Conservatives! I am sure that Major was a “stool pigeon”
(so it was thought) appointed by the men in grey suits to fail,
but leaving an incoming Labour administration with a mess,
hence the runaway spending, sky high interest rates etc.
On being re-appointed, there was a general euphoria in the
conservative party, i.e. having succeeded against all the odds in
winning an election after they had cocked everything up, they
actually thought they were invincible, and could proceed to do
the previously unthinkable, like rail privatisation.
Christian Wolmar has done a fine job outlining this period in
“Broken Rails”. I reckon he’s got it spot on.
BR Privatisation was driven by HM Treasury, who had a privatisation
unit that had run out of things to flog, so;—–
As is well known, Major wanted to re-create the “Big Four” but was
overruled. It was a more sensible suggestion than what transpired.
Yes, I’ve heard this story before but I am somewhat sceptical. Precisely how does one go about over-ruling a Prime Minister?
Even bearing in mind Major’s very lucrative post-PM employ European Chairman of Carlyle Group? Which,as far as I know, had no significant direct relationship with any former BR assets.
@answer=42
P M’s have always been in danger of being overruled by HM treasury.
It is the Treasury which is the real power in the UK (has been since
the Middle Ages when Kings were in thrall to Chancellor of the Exchequer). Nothing much has changed, We need a REVOLUTION!
(Yes I do know some history, Henry VIII had Cromwell topped
for failure to get Rome to consent to annulment).
BUT when it came to Money, even Henry V111 had to bow and scrape.
Having he regional network funded and presumably with operations overseen by county councils would produce some very srange outcomes, because railway builders were no respecters of county boundaries (and many boundaries have moved anyway). I recall thye silliness about Blake Street, where WMPTE funded the ervice thus far and no further, resulting in empty trains having to run to Lichfield and back to reverse.
For example, North Yorkshire would have had two separate networks, isolated from each other, with one of them reliant on what was then Cleveland for connection to the outside world.
What would Cornwall do about Gunnislake if Devon withdrew finding for the Plymouth – Bere Alston line?
Should Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire have to share funding of the Lincoln-Newark line, when it is of far greater importance to Lincoln than it is to Newark (who could get to the rest of the country quite happily without it)
Even now, we have the bizarre situation that the hub of the Welsh rail network is Shrewsbury – which last time I looked was in England.
@timbeau – yes, a simple map overlay showed that you could never align the residual regional network to county boundaries. The PTEs were not unguilty in that respect either, with SYPTE and WYPTE terminating services in the middle of nowhere…
@Alan R – Major was indeed in favour of recreating the Big Four but the Board scored a littleknown own goal on the subject. Hoping to derail (ho ho) the process, they pointed out that freight cut across all the regional boundaries as did many passenger services. Words such as foot and shoot occur. Enter PwC stage left, having read various third form textbooks on splitting infrastructure from operations, closely followed by Lazards and Rothschilds who pointed out that you could carve off some “profitable” bits anyway – such as the ROSCOs and – they believed – the infrastructure, and the stage was set for Major to be overturned. Remember, Major thought this up all on his own and he lacked the intellectual firepower to argue with the likes of the Treasury catspaws such as Rothschilds
@Timbeau
Problems with county council boundaries.
YES! that’s the whole problem, and the point of Regional Government.
To manage large scale utilities (like local rail networks) then the
local government organisation has to be large enough to “smooth
ou” anomalies (although there’s boundto be one or two residual
ones). Basically there is an optimum size. The French and German
regions are the size of three- five English counties. However,
because there are many other local government functions that DO
benefit from a smaller administrative area, a sub-region strata is
maintained. In France, these are Departments, equivalent (roughly)
to British counties. There is an even lower tier of COMMUNAL
administration (all with impeccable Napoleonic Gallic logic)
SO: If Britain was run like France (Sacre Bleu!)
Long distance trains (Connecting REGIONAL capitals) would be specified and administered by LONDON (Westminster).
Local Rail (and BUS) services would be specified, and supported
on a REGIONAL basis (apart from PTE type transport authority in
Urban agglomerations). However (In France) Inter DEPARTMENTAL bus services are specified and managed by the
REGION, but purely internal bus services by the DEPARTMENT.
With Roads, Likewise, Route Nationals (Paris) etc.
Of course, everything is regulated and integrated.
Regional Railways Managers (such as myself) were deluded into
thinking that this was the wonderful logical future for UK transport
too!
AND : A very important reason for the introduction of Regional
Government (In France especially), is that these bodies would be
big and ugly enough to resist the onslaught of National Government.
UK policy since the 1980s has been to systematically strip local
government of its powers and put it on the rack.
(essentially by confiscating business rates).
@timbeau
Sorry, forgot to address a very important point you raised.
PTE boundaries. These were not driven by TRANSPORT requirements
but by accountability conferred upon rate payers.
The thinking was, only the public actually residing in a PTE area are
entitled to benefit from a PTE sponsored service.
This was because the benefit had to accompany the responsibility.
Should the PTE have failed to administer their sponsored operations
economically, then resulting deficit would be a charge on the rates,
therefore only ratepayers subject to this risk should benefit from
enjoying the service provided.
In practice, to confound the naysayers and doommongers , the
PTEs actually worked quite well, with no scaffolds set up in town squares by outraged rate payers with intent of executing spendthrift
lefty councillors (to the great disappointment of conservative politicians who expected this to happen).
Graham H
I don’t know if I am putting the cart before the horse (or perhaps putting the propter before the hoc instead of the post) but I seem to remember that,while John Major was evoking his vision of the Chocolate and Cream d’antan,the more thrusting policy wonks (who,of course,ultimately won) pointing to the aviation sector as an example of a successful separation of infrastructure and “rolling” stock ownership.and that this model was the one to pursue.
Even at the time as a mere bystander I was not won over by this use of aviation practice as a guide to how things should be done on the railways….
AR
Mr Wolmar has put a very finely honed poignard into privatisation, more recently.
His address to te RSA (Railway Study Association) has been published in Feb’s Modern Railways & can be read: Right HERE
He certainly skewers the then tory assumptions:
BR was inefficient
There was too much subsidy
The unions were too strong and there were too many strikes
There was no commercial flair
There was no completion
… and dissects them, under a very good illumination.
And …
No, not so.
Thomas Cromwell survived until after the death of Jane Seymour – he was pulled down by his aristocratic enemies after Anne of Cleves arrived.
[ See also “Wolf Hall”, “Bring up the Bodies” etc …. ]
timbeau
We still have those boundary problems – how many local, not high-speed trains run through err, Penkridge & Styal without stopping, because those places are just on the wrong side of their respective boundaries? I’m sure there are others.
Starting with, coming back to London & the SE … Dartford / Sevenoaks / Kent services & TfL.
Wasn’t the policy wonk at No 10 in charge of railway privatisation policy a certain Mr D Cameron? That was , when he wasn’t heading off to South Africa on a jolly paid for by the apartheid government? Who knows, perhaps he learned something about segmenting the rail passenger market?
The boundary problem is real: devolved transport in France, Germany and Poland have all respected political boundaries to the detriment of inter-regional services. This problem remains a current issue for the UK if rail devolution goes ahead. Even if the regions are defined as the economic regions, as Alan tried.
@Greg Tingey
Thomas Cromwell
You are correct, I must hang my head in shame.
If I was to dare to present this to my History teacher (still alive)
I would be absolutely roasted and denounced “You are even more
useless a historian than you were back in 1968”.
I was getting him mixed up with WOLSEY. Twas he that failed to
get the vital annulment, was facing trial for treason, but died before
the axe fell.
Public service was quite hazardous in those days!
Nowadays we just joke when we say;– Ha Ha so and so’s for THE CHOP.
@slugabed – Yes, and we are still cursed with the aviation paradigm even now in relation to fares and customer service; I might mention VT… People simply don’t use the rail.way as they use airlines. For most ordinary mortals, an aviation trip is planned weeks if not months in advance and is assumed to occupy a whole day with a great deal of advance warning as to travel schedules; a rail trip is an out and back with a great deal of uncertainty as to timing…
@Greg T – and you are now paying an extra £4bn pa for the privilege of riding in a private train… nearly a penny on income tax.
It baffles me that railway operators keep trying to emulate airline practice, apparently in the belief that air travel still has the glamourous cachet it had in the 1960s. the advantages of rail travel – a seat by a window (with a view), with a table to sit round – turn up and go ability – seem to count for nothing.
SWT’s revised seating layout on their newly-acquired 456s is particularly inept, putting a four-seat bay next to a windowless blank wall, next to a set of longitudinal seats with their backs to the adjacent window. Seemingly designed by someone who does not understand the point of a window.
@Graham H
I entirely agree with you re the direction longer distance rail travel
has taken in emulating airline practice.
Indeed, with the exception of VERY long distance travel (London
to North of Scotland?) I would have thought that to compete
effectively (to maximum extent possible) with car travel, rail
needs to present same features. Car travel is “instant”, no advance
reservations (with huge penalties for change of plan), and also
(except for car parking charges) uniformity of cost (to user) in
proportion to distance with regard to variable costs.
The success of Rail services (buses too) in London is because the
Oyster card manages to provide reasonably competitively priced
travel on an “instant” on demand basis.
The UK national rail really needs to do the same, in fact I would
say that any rail network where the vast majority of journeys are
three hours or less is no more than an “extended metro”.
The Netherlands rail system works on this sort of sensible basis.
So, Just why has it come about that we have totally uncompetitive and unaffordable (to most) open tickets, with the alternative (affordable option) being hedged with so many off-putting restrictions. (which must be restraining demand even if hidden).
If “open” train fares were “reasonably”. i.e. affordably, priced
then the machinations described in trying to get from Taunton to
London would not feature.
I attended a funeral a few years ago in Kent. One of the mourners
had driven from Manchester (home within easy reach of Piccadilly)
to Crematorium (easy reach of station on Javelin High speed).
Just one person in car. He had set off at 04.00hrs to be sure of not
being late for funeral at 13.30!!! In the event he arrived with only
about 30 mins to spare (usual catalogue of gridlock on M1 M25
Dartford crossing etc) . He was then dreading the return drive
(in the afternoon/evening peak) with more gridlock to encounter.
I pointed out that Picc- Euston is only 2hrs 8mins (3 trains per hour)
10 mins walk to St Panc, then 32 mins on SE High Speed.
He snorted, I DON’T CARE IF IT WOULD GET ME THERE IN
FIVE MINUTES, I’M NOT PAYING THE OUTRAGEOUS FARE.
I pointed out that as the funeral had been announced
two weeks previously he should have been able to get an advance
fare, cheaper than driving. This was rebuffed on basis that “I will
be done for the outrageous full fare if anything changes/goes wrong”.
This , I submit is a graphic account of travel choices which must
be applied in great number every day. In a country with “reasonable”
normal fares rail would be an obvious choice, even if dearer than
the advance fares which other European countries also provide.
I will be so bold as to say that the “long distance” rail travel business
(mostly Inter city) at approx. 10b pass km pa (my best guestimate)
could be doubled if on demand affordable travel was provided.
Handling this volume of travel is another question!
This I suggest is a “hidden cost” of the government’s rail strategy
of the last twenty years, to great public disbenefit.
@AR 1156
At least one of the rail operators sees things rather differently, believing that a national tariff is hindering progress.
http://www.passengertransport.co.uk/2015/01/%E2%80%98national-rail-ticketing-holds-back-innovation%E2%80%99/
Rather like the Universal Postal System there are costs involved in making a service available to all, but if you follow Arriva’s ideas how long do you have a network for? What happens when, for example, a franchise changes hands?
@ James Bunting
Very interesting, I have followed the link and what Arriva are essentially beefing about is the complexity of required technology
to sell tickets on a national basis. BR (and pre nationalisation railways)used to have a solution to this ;- the “Blank” ticket, fares
charged on standard tariff per mile travelled (by nominated route).
(I can here the guffaws rising from our technology worshipping
contributors).
Actually, I was only referring to the need to provide an affordably
priced (competitive with driving) instant open ticket for any journey. Just how this might be accommodated is another matter.
A zonal approach might be suitable, i.e. “ordinary” open ticket ,
e.g. London to/from any station in Cornwall/Devon/Cumbria/
Norfolk (etc). (Should reduce cost of issue).
I fear we are getting dangerously off topic!
Note,; “Ordinary” long distance fares were whammed up to
outrageous levels in the last years of BR on instruction of the
government. That we have now reached such fantastic price levels
for on demand open travel is mainly due to starting from this
exaggerated base.
I am cynically inclined to believe that the conservatives hoped to
make political capital by having the TOC’s conclude that fares
were overpriced (with potential positive yield from a reduction)
and then announcing that fares are to be cut as a dividend from
private enterprise efficiency!
I am so utterly cynical as to believe that the “New” labour government
maintained fares at this high level so as to deny the conservatives
the opportunity of claiming that a moderation was due to the
benefits of privatisation.
However brought about, my research indicates that UK anytime
long distance fares are the dearest in the world.
And they go UPWARDS Ever upwards. Why?
Graham H
This is a tired subject I’m afraid.
Not helped by Eurostar & DfT & UKBA all trying to pretend that trains are just aircraft with permanent wheels.
Sigh.
AR
This I suggest is a “hidden cost” of the government’s rail strategy of the last twenty years, to great public disbenefit.
[Entirely speculative (and well worn) political conspiracy theory deleted. PoP]
Indeed I have several pre-1948 & at least one pre-1923 “blank to blank” or “$PLACE to blank” tickets in my small collection.
Ah, the Edmonson punched card….
[Vacuous comment deleted. PoP]
@Greg Tingey & PoP
Ok OK it is getting a bit tired and revisiting much chewed over
speculations etc.
How about bringing this thread right back to topic and also;-
bang up to date?
Closures : This is a topic of enormous interest and significance
(hence large volume of posts on this thread).
SO : How might a railway be closed today?
One might like to think that the age or rail closures is past, but
I wouldn’t put too much money on it. An extreme national economic
crisis might well result in certain less remunerative railways being
subject to the cruel spotlight of truth (?).
From this account of Marylebone, I think it is now fairly well
demonstrated that the way closures USED to be progressed was;-
Only the Railway itself could propose a closure, but not Government.
(with the possible exception of some really major initiative requiring
a special embracing act of parliament).
The important thing to note was that of Ownership. BR owned the
railway (title to it) also owned the service, i.e. had ability to control
and forecast the financial performance.
Since 1996;-
Closure methodology has been very well hidden. I have taken the
subject up with a former colleague, latterly of the SRA Dtp NR etc .
This is it;-
The responsibility to advance closures rests with the ORR (and there
is methodology contained somewhere in the vast acts of parliament).
I retorted; In which case, in reality, A RAIL CLOSURE IS NOW
AN IMPOSSIBILITY. For the following reasons;-
(1) Governments just can’t initiate a closure (not politically acceptable)
The ORR is a government body.
(2) A Railway Closure could not possibly be advanced without
submission of a “business case” which would require at least
medium term presentation of costs and revenues.
Under the present conditions, these figures can not be obtained.
For TOCs they are commercially sensitive. I doubt the capability of NR to provide accurate specific infrastructure costs for an individual
line. There is the question of time period to be reviewed, rail
infrastructure is a long life asset. How could anybody forecast
that determined by government policy?
(3) The Key determinant is the that of Franchising. A rail closure
can only be brought about by a stated intent to delete the said
service from the franchise specification. This would be very messy
mid franchise. Who would initiate this process?
For all the above reasons, I submit that, in reality, closing a railway
is just much too difficult.
I was fascinated by the way that Graham H revealed the Dtp’s fear
of Judicial Reviews challenging closure case submissions in the
1980s and 90s. I was unaware just how strong the fears were.
I am sure that today, there are more and stronger organisations
capable of mounting a JR challenging a rail closure, and,
It is now even harder to get meaningful robust figures, so;-
Is the age of Rail Closures really past?
Might Marylebone be threatened again?
The North London line from Stratford to North Greenwich was closed in 2006. Obviously this was because it was replaced by the DLR (on a different route), and so there wasn’t much to complain about, but it was a closure nonetheless. How was this handled ?
@Alan Robinson,
Going off at a tangent a bit, I am sure closures are not entirely a thing of the past. I can think of two situations where I cannot believe a station/line would be kept open.
The first situation is where an alternative has been provided. That alternative is an overall improvement even if certain individuals lose out. So a classic example would be Watford (Metropolitan). You also have stations resited (e.g. Rochester).
The second situation would be where the entire reason for a station’s or line’s existence has disappeared. No specific potential future example comes to mind but Tilbury Riverside would be a good example from the recent past.
There is a possible third situation where changes meant that operationally the station or line created a situation where the minor benefit was dwarfed by the disadvantages and the there is also a fairly convenient alternative. Example in the past include Moorgate (Thameslink), Westbourne Park (Western Region) and Coulsdon North. You could also put Tilbury Riverside in this category too.
I tend to agree with you that politically it would be very hard to close a station. Unless there was a good reason as described above (and not just low passenger numbers or the fact it made a loss) I cannot see it happening.
Procedurally it is very easy to close a station notwithstanding ORR etc. which can be bypassed. Simply use an Act of Parliament. I think in practice you can get away with a Transport & Works Act order nowadays. This of course is much easier if you do it as part of a bigger scheme (e.g. Croxley Rail Link).
@Jim Cobb,
A somewhat better example than mine. Of course, long term the plan was to reuse much of the trackbed for Crossrail but as Crossrail had not yet been authorised this did not form any part of the argument for closing it – it was very convenient to close it nevertheless.
@PoP
As you say, a closure can be effected by means of an Act of Parliament,
but this is only going to apply in event of a major scheme whereby
a section of railway (or individual station) is closed as an incidental
feature, and where there is, presumably a demonstrated improvement
or enhancement in rail transport facilities serving the area affected.
What interests me is, how might a closure (whether whole route
or individual terminals) be progressed when it is a question of
achieving a desired economy to the public purse i.e. on going
reduction in support requirement within a franchise, or even an
enhanced PREMIUM anticipated when removing an unviable
route/service within a premium franchise ?
BR used to promote such closures on the basis of a demonstrable
saving (net improvement) to the PSO grant claim over a designated
period. I think I have demonstrated that the TOC in incapable of
submitting such a proposal, and current legislation does not require
them to. It is not possible to make a convincing case for an “economic
closure” without submitting a statement of costs, revenues and effect
on franchise support, and I don’t think the present structure of the
Rail industry is actually capable of such a thing. I am not aware of
any requirement in current legislation whereby TOCs can be compelled to divulge fine detail of their costs and revenues within an
overall franchise specification, let alone future plans. I am not even
sure that they can do this to such fine detail for purely internal
management requirements.
SO, should there be a major “crunch” with declining financial
performance and TOCs demanding either increased support or
reduced premium (compared with original bid) such as to
significantly increase the cost of the Rail system to the taxpayer,
what would happen? At some point, it would to be accepted that
continuing large real fare increases are not going to paper over the cracks, especially not at a time of national economic crisis.
Who would wield the Axe?
PoP
[Entirely speculative (and well worn) political conspiracy theory deleted. PoP]
Except it was not a political in the sense of party-political hypothesis, was it?
[Snip. PoP]
However, as you say, back to the current plot ….
Jim Cobb
IIRC, bccause it was a “closure-with-replacement” & that replacement was itself a n other rail service …..
@Alan Robinson – If the TOC’s run into financial trouble, don’t they just hand back the keys and walk away, with DOR talking over the franchise ? I know the financial penalties are much higher now, but they will still walk away rather than bankrupt themselves. Therefore, it falls to the government to make savings, either through DOR or NR.
As you say, the railway industry finances are not structured in a way which means individual lines costs can be worked out. So the only option then is to slash and hope it reduces costs. Of course, as Greece is demonstrating at the moment, austerity reduces economic activity which makes the countries finances even worse, requiring even more austerity. Therefore, pumping money into infrastructure development may help your economy. Of course, you have to ensure you get value for money, which is the problem with this industry.
There is a not insignificant cost to actually closing and ripping up lines, but little cost in reducing services. So perhaps the answer will be to reduce or remove services and mothball the infrastructure. If you mothball the infrastructure, you don’t need any expensive renewals or upgrades, and if you reduce the services, you don’t need to buy expensive new trains, or employ costly staff. Thinning out is a lot cheaper than closing. How much money it would save is anyone’s guess though !!
Gentlemen – the revised closure legislation provides for a variety of stakeholders to put forward closures – ORR, TOCs. and the PTAs. The process hasn’t changed significantly, however , and has been remarked, the political and judicial contexts remain the same. At the time, I understood this rather odd extension of the field to be a deliberate attempt to avoid responsibility for closures coming too closely back to Ministers now that the Board was no longer there to take the rap. (BTW, whilst you can do virtually anything by Act of Parliament, I very much doubt whether a TWAO would do the trick). In practice, I suspect that DfT have been deliberately obfuscating the performance of individual service groups in the most sensitive area by the constant reorganisation of franchise boundaries; the “proper” capitalisation of |NR will also have prevented the usual, S&C style, infrastructure triggers. The reversion to nationalised industry status will be interesting in that context….
@Graham H
I think you are getting the picture;—-
It’s like this;-
Supposing (Just supposing) that the Department of Transport is
determined to reduce the “cost of the railway to the taxpayer”
by eliminating certain poor performing rail services.
It could only be done by revising the franchise specification (at
time of renewal) to exclude said poor performing route/service/
terminals from the franchise specification.
This would need a closure proposal (which couldn’t possibly be
covered up, the public would demand a transparent declaration of
the case for reducing the franchise specification).
This would then have to declare that;- in consequence of reducing
a franchise spec (i.e. not including the service under review) the
outcome would be a bid £xxx pounds less than would have
been submitted.
Then (just suppose) that the actual bids came in at the same price as previously;- huge scream up, the public paying just as much but
getting less railway for it. Total nemesis.
Any politician who had promoted the said closure would be
“deader than the deadest dodo in the dodo museum”.
Which is why it can’t happen, or, have I missed something ?
@Alan R – I suspect that the revised list of those who could propose closures was devised in the utterly vain hope that some bidders would offer a lower but non-compliant bid on the basis that some services would close. Not only is there no mechanism,normally, for considering non-compliant bids, but my “personal bid adviser”tells me that bidders don’thave any informtion that would enable them to make such a judgement call – even if they wanted to. For all the obvious reasons, none of the possible proponents of a closure has the slightest interest in making a fool of themselves or of attracting the political odium. Given the renationalisation of the infrastructure,I suspect that what will happen is a steady rundown of service quality in terms of line speeds and TSRs.
@Graham H
You’re right. Government can only influence costs of NR (The
TOC element is untouchable).
Following the McNulty report NR are supposed to be subject
to an ORDER to reduce their revenue expenditure (by about
£1.0b pa which will eliminate most of ENGLISH rail support).
This is a tall order, I am very sceptical as to whether achievable.
As you say, in event of great National economic crisis, the most
likely result is general cheeseparing of infrastructure costs,
the loss making railways required to stagger on. The trouble is, such a policy would greatly compromise the “viable” network (which
would take a pro rata hit). I do wonder whether things were better
thirty years ago.
The closure of the Folkestone Harbour branch – which was beyond the franchised network – was formally approved by the ORR last year (see http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/14345/closure-ratification-notice-folkestone-harbour-branchline-and-station.pdf
I’ve lost track as to whether the proposal originated with Network Rail or DfT.
@Man of Kent
Thank you for that, very interesting.
Of course, this is another technical closure of a route without
advertised (or franchised) passenger service.
In which case there can not have been any genuine objectors.
This used to apply in the “old days” too for minor closures, such
as odd curves , usually where there was a seasonal occasional
direct service making use of them. In these cases , closure approval
was a “rubber stamp job” as nobody could claim to be suffering
hardship and therefore could not officially object.
We have several examples of “ghost trains” today whereby closure
has not been advanced. Three that come to mind are;-
Stockport-Stalybridge (Fri only one way)
Gainsborough Central – Barnetby (Sat only)
High Wycombe- Paddington (one per day)
I would expect all of these to have been included in the franchise
specification. There should be some significant savings from closure
of each, but the fact that no closure case has been proposed rather
suggests that it would be a can of worms and not worth the effort.
Sometimes these “suspended closures” come good. A notable example
being the Cardiff Bute Road branch ( as was) . This in reality was once
no more than a headshunt to allow a few peak trains to turn back without taking up valuable track capacity between Cardiff Queen St
and General. It just wasn’t worth closing. The Cardiff bay development has brought it back to life, I was most pleased to experience the quite satisfactory ridership on it last summer.
(having been the only “passenger” when I last sampled it in 1980).
Do you know what is likely to happen to Dover Marine?
@Man of Kent
Sorry, I had a total brain failure re Dover Marine(Western Docks).
Of course it was officially closed in 1994 (under old regime).
An interesting case, with unadvertised service continuing to run
for some months.
@Alan robinson
“We have several examples of “ghost trains” today whereby closure
has not been advanced.”
Two new ones from the new timetable in December. The recast of the Argyle Line services after electrification of the Whifflet line means that all services to Lanark now take the direct route between Glasgow, Motherwell and Wishaw, instead of alternate trains running via Hamilton and Holytown. This has left the curve between Motherwell and Holytown, and the line through the old Ravenscraig steelworks site between Holytown and Wishaw, each with one train a day instead of one an hour, and Holytown itself only has the hourly Edinburgh-Glasgow service and has lost the regular services to Motherwell and Hamilton in one direction and Wishaw and Lanark in the other.
@Timbeau
Thanks for drawing to my attention. The services mentioned
are (I am fairly sure) PTE sponsored. It would seem that Strathclyde
PTE has done a “tidying up exercise getting out of some infrastructure
costs. The residual “Ghost” services are likely to be non-PTE and,
incredibly (don’t know just speculating) Dft sponsored, that is
NOT part of Scotrail franchise spec.
Effectively, ghost trains under these circumstances are the derided
nationalised railway!
I am referring to this because I have been doing considerable
nocturnal research into an actual example of a recent rail closure in LONDON. I have accessed the relevant papers (with full technicolour
details) on the ORR website and will report my findings/observations
in near future. The line(s) referred to are the odd bits of curves
left bereft of train service due to the deletion of the Brighton-Manchester service from the Cross Country spec. It’s all much
more intricate and thorough than I suspected and first impressions
are that, as I suspected, attempting to close a “real” passenger railway
would be an absolute bureaucratic nightmare for the Dft.
PTEs The rule used to be that if a PTE withdrew support for a
particular service then it was the “kiss of death”, the Dtp (as was)
regarding the PTE as being the effective consultation body and
subsequent closure procedures would be almost academic.
One PTE closure that I was involved with was Balloch Pier, only
a few hundred yards of track, originally for purpose of connecting
with Loch Lomond paddle steamer which gave up the ghost in the
early 1970s I think. After withdrawal of PTE support , a PSO ghost
service ran to keep it open. This was about 1985. There were a few
objections I recall, anglers mainly.
Another interesting one that has escaped a closure submission is
Newhaven Marine. Hasn’t been a train for a decade or so, station
unsafe. I think that if you succeeded in obtaining a valid ticket to
Marine then Southern will provide a taxi from the town station.
It’s a bit academic as Newhaven HABOUR (not to be confused with
MARINE) is only a few hundred yards away, as I discovered when
catching an overnight boat to Dieppe some years back.
@Alan Robinson
“High Wycombe – Paddington” might conceivably be useful for one or two passengers, perhaps — but the actual ghost train originates from South Ruislip, having arrived empty from Wembley LMD. The return run continues to West Ruislip (and thence empty to Marylebone), because the NNML connects only to the down line in South Ruislip.
@AR and HM
My understanding of High Wycombe-Paddington is that it is a device to maintain driver knowledge as a diversionary route.
@Alan Robinson – “This used to apply in the “old days” too for minor closures, such
as odd curves , usually where there was a seasonal occasional
direct service making use of them. In these cases , closure approval
was a “rubber stamp job” as nobody could claim to be suffering
hardship and therefore could not officially object.” Oh yes,they could – and did! The basis of such objections, as with S&C, was that the closure would /should never have been brought forward because the Board had failed to develop the service as much as it could/there was unmet need which needed to be considered before closure could take place. And the legal advice was that that could constitute the basis for a jusdicial review.
I’m pleased to say that there were very few such speculative objections to Balloch Pier, but Abertafol and Gogarth*, where the stations had been derelict and unserved for years, had several, and of course, S&C had many.
The interesting case was the removal of the last Willesden J LL to Broad Street starter (dep 0802 as I recall), which began from the LL bay and then ran up the curve on to the NLL. Although there was, obviously, a continuing service between HL and Broad Street at the time,the lawyers believed that the vertical differentiation between the LL and HL stations might constitute enough to define a separate service “on which passengers had come to rely” . Eventually, we decided to take the risk and let it go without a formal closure. (I had used that service when working in the City at one time and I was usually the only passenger…)
A similar dilemma arose with regular excursions, especially those which had a rusty rail element, where the punters could use the train for paert of the journey – were they sufficiently regular that the “passengers had come to rely” on them? We asked the Board to be careful when repeating these.
*For amusement,one friend who was a keen ornithologist, said that it would be a pity to close these two stations, as their ruins constituted an excellent birdwatching hide. But he didn’t take that view sufficiently seriously to make an objecti on.
I seem to recall that relatively recently Paddington saw weekend services to High Wycombe during engineering works. Can anyone advise whether it is more difficult to timetable diversions over a route with no timetabled passenger services apart from the route knowledge issue?
@JimS -that sort of diversion wouldn’t trigger a closure case when it ceased unless it happened so frequently and regularly that people had come to rely on it.
Graham H
was that the closure would /should never have been brought forward because the Board had failed to develop the service as much as it could/
To which I would add the aforementioned Stockport – Stalybridge & via Brigg lines, both of which IMHO could carry a “reasonable” (hourly? 2- hourly in the latter case? ) service.
@Graham H
I’ve been trawling through the 2005 Railways Act re closures.
It’s absolutely horrendous, will report when I’ve had time to digest.
Closure Objectors;-
My understanding was that anybody could object, but only those
who could demonstrate “Hardship” as a consequence of closure
could be taken seriously, i.e. requiring a response by Dtp.
In practice this was held to mean regular work/education/health
journeys (possibly visits to elderly relative etc) whereby there
would be no acceptable substitute transport.
With regard to the S & C, I do recall that one of the objectors was
a DOG , named “Ruswarp” I think. I have dim memories of hearing
that this caused kerfuffle as to whether dog tickets are “passenger”
or Freight. I don’t know whether this caused a PAWS to proceedings
or need for new CLAWS in legislation. I expect that, if Ruswarp
was called to give evidence, on being asked about how the closure
would affect him, he would have complained about ROUGH (Ruff)
treatment. However, I think he would have been ruled out as a
valid objector, on the basis that dogs travel on ROVER tickets.
Any comments, Graham?
Jut suppose they tried to close BATTERSEA (through trains to
BARKING?)
@AR – the definition of hardship is much wider, although not tested in courts. For example, the S&C case included local businesses claiming hardship on the grounds that closure would prevent customers or even salesmen reaching them. I recall a rope works (!) somewhere along the line that made a great fuss – the legal advice was that we had to consider this, too.
Thinking ahead to days when NR is expected to make do with less money, if lines cannot be closed, what about tracks? Will we see more singling? Talk about pendulums!
@jimS
“I seem to recall that relatively recently Paddington saw weekend services to High Wycombe during engineering works.”
I assume you mean works preventing the use of Marylebone, but it has also been used during the Reading remodelling work (and, as discussed on another thread, will be again over Easter) by Bristol – Paddington services running via the Didcot West curve and reversal at Banbury. These don’t call at High Wycombe, running nominally non-stop from Oxford to Paddington. It may be possible for these to use the new Bicester curve in future, rather than the Banbury reversal.
Virgin has also run Birmingham-Euston services via the New North Line, Greenford, Ealing Broadway, and the connections to the North London at Acton Wells to rejoin the WCML at Willesden Junction.
I suspect the “route learning special” is a figleaf – they only need to learn the route to run the ghost train. Diversions over normally freight-only lines do happen – Lichfield to Tamworth for example – or lines normally only served by other operators, e.g the GN/GE joint line and the Hertford Loop, neither of which see East Coast services except when the ECML is closed.
Malcolm
Well, sooner or later DfT or the relevant minister(s) will have to take note, really, publicly/officially, as to why NR maintenance / construction is so expensive here.
We all know, of course, it’s been all over the technical press, but, officially, it has been carefully, studiously ignored.
Because, again, as we know, the answer is .. the fragmented, privatised railway.
What will they do then?
How inventive will the wriggling get?
While I understand that the political hurdles may be too high for a railway closure proposal to succeed I am not convinced that a TOC could not put forward its costs of operation. Surely the whole point of a franchise is that the costs of everything are clear to the TOC? I can see why the NR infrastructure cost might not be boiled down to fine detail but costs of staffing, premises maintenance, rolling stock, power, depots etc must all be known to the TOC and the DfT. Isn’t the financial and operational performance of each TOC franchise also picked over on a regular basis between the TOC and DfT? That should be a standard part of the franchise management process.
Several TOCs (LOROL, SWT, London Midland) have managed to close ticket offices or reduce their hours of operation and I assume there was appropriate evidence about sales volumes, revenues and costs put forward to convince those that needed convincing. I also struggle to believe that the private sector TOCs don’t pay minute attention to their cost base and revenues against their franchise plan, business plans and forecasts. After all we regularly see the converse argument of ” oh, we can’t run more trains on Sundays as it would be so costly and we would need to have all the costs and extra subsidy signed off by the DfT.” 😉
Frankly, I think that all this discussion of the elevated costs of closing unneeded lines is beside the point. The issue is as defined by Malcolm: NR costs are too high and reducing too slowly when compared with government expectations.
Even if all ‘unneeded’ lines were to close costlessly, the amount saved would be marginal.
The key issue is NR’s management of its costs. It should be quite clear that the means of oversight (the ‘Members’) has not worked and needs replacement. Since NR is now nationalised, a return to a government-appointed Board much like BR must be an option. Say what you like about BR, the consensus is that it managed costs welll from Beeching onwards. The alternative is splitting up and privatising – the John Major option, if you like. This appears to be under discussion within Conservative Party circles, though whether it will make the manifesto is another question.
Personally, I think that there are also opportunities for savings on TOC expenditure. But that’s another story.
I don’t think nationalisation is the issue with NR costs either way. The problem is the sheer size of the organisation. In my experience the very best people can usually control cost to 10-20% lower than the merely decent can manage. There are, however, always very few of the very best people and in a large, monolithic organisation they tend to be spread too thinly and promoted too slowly to have a major impact in the bottom line. Rather than nationalise NR personally I would prefer to go back to pre-merger and have multiple vertically integrated railway companies competing against each other. It won’t happen of course.
@answer+42 -Quite so. NR will not get used to being managed like the BR of old, of course; indeed, the senior management has been going round telling its staff that the change in status will not change management style or practices. As Imay have remarked before, already,NR have been introduced to FIS and there will be monthly meetings with DfT officials to exercise oversight… However ( and this emphasises the futility of tinkering with the marginal costs , as you rightly say), 1/3 ofall NR’s costs cannot be identified to train operations at all – mostly the cost of servicing their evrgrowing debt – and cannot be cut by operating efficiency; another 1/3 cannot be identified below regional/zonal/area level (eg area signalling schemes) and have only a very weak relationship with the cost of operating trains; that leaves a third which might be allocated to individual lines. Game not worth candle? And how stupid therefore was McNulty -the cuts he suggested are automatically geared up 2-3 fold by the correct analysis of NR costs and hardly realistic therefore. Why was he paid?
Interestingly,the EU view of fixed, semi-variable and variable costs is much the same as the UK experience at a European level, despite the diffeence in capitalisation between UK and the rest of Europe.
@Answer=42
Well said! I utterly agree with and applaud !!
In retrospect, there are only a few things of significance that I learned
from my Railway Career, the principal one being that a Railway
is a first and foremost an Infrastructure asset. When properly
accounted for i.e capitalisation of assets, infrastructure will comprise
between 50% and 80% of the costs of any Railway. In fact , the
smaller the volume of traffic handled on any railway, the higher the proportion represented by infrastructure. Infrastructure requires
very careful planning and control, on a long tern basis and ideally on
as large a volume as possible to obtain vital economies of scale.
I’ll even go as far as to say that the entire viability of any railway
is dependent on this high quality of infrastructure being achieved.
If railway management just “runs some trains” charges a fare that
people will pay ,then this will produce a result that will underachieve compared with applying maximum effort re marketing
rolling stock utilisation etc) but only by about 10-15% of potential.
Lose it on Infrastructure and the railway dies! costs soar (maybe
double) management is overwhelmed by accumulating renewal
and repair workload. result = bankruptcy!
Sound familiar? This is what happened to Railtrack. and accurately
forecast by informed observers.
To continue to deliver railway infrastructure at a consistent (affordable) price, there has to be a continuity and also (more
controversially perhaps) a very high “in house” element.
The formation of Railtrack broke all these long established principles.
The great failure of Railways on Britain is the unacceptable cost of
infrastructure, the McNulty report pinpointed the problem well.
In the UK it costs about 30% more than for other comparable European networks (which have undergone various changes, but
with better smoother transition).
Network Rail, to their credit, inherited a desperate situation, and
restored confidence and quality to a broken railway, but , at a very
great price. Getting this price managed down is the number 1 task.
Unfortunately, as Nationalised Industries have mostly been abolished, Government has also lost the skills needed to manage them and get results. They will have to learn;– but fast.
My calculations indicate that, If UK rail infrastructure was delivered
at a “European standard cost”, then need for franchise support
(and Network Grant) in ENGLAND would vanish!
To the great benefit of all, and especially rail users subject to perpetual fare increases which could no longer be justified.
That “European standard cost” is in reality, the cost of BRITISH
RAILWAYS infrastructure, pre-privatisation.
@Theban
“go back to pre-merger and have multiple vertically integrated railway companies competing against each other. It won’t happen of course.”
No, it won’t. Since the merger, the Beeching programme removed most of the duplication implicit in different companies competing on equal terms using different infrastructure: there are very few exceptions: London – Birmingham, London – Scotland, London – Southend. In other cases a serious upgrade would be needed to get the secondary route to compete: London – Exeter, for example: and even then GW would have the advantage for any destinations further west as the LSWR route has been torn up.
FIS is the Financial Information System, a seemingly innocuous name for a complex funds flow statement submitted to the Treasury once a month by every nationalised industry.
@timbeau – you are of course right. However, when the point was put to the Treasury in relation to the Major plan, their come back was “There will be competition by emulation”. This appeared to mean that EC would be so stung by the quality of WC sausages,they would be forced to provide a better service. Not sure how this translated into emulation on London commuter services.
@ Alan R – you clearly have much greater knowledge of railway finance than I will ever have but I’m afraid I really struggle with your diagnoses as to how to “fix” UK Rail. Your solution is to take old style BR, mix it with a dose of super dooper Euro rail practice and then all our problems are solved. I’m afraid I don’t see it that way. I have yet to read anything anywhere that is remotely definitive and objective about *why* Network Rail struggles with its costs and with its efficiency levels. Until we understand that then there is little prospect of getting a sensible alignment between what we want the railway to do, how best to deliver that and to determine an acceptable level of cost and efficiency that we expect from NR, its contractors and the TOCs. To my mind there is little point in forever faffing around with costs when the government wanders along and vastly increases NR’s work scope beyond what it had previously specified in the HLOS / SOFA process for Control Period 5.
I take your point about getting good use of the infrastructure and pulling in the pounds from the punters and in broad terms the UK network seems to do that. In some respects it is doing it too well given the chronic overcrowding and congestion that we have. The inevitable result of that is to spend even more on more / better infrastructure which is unlikely to do much for NR’s finances. It’s very good to see commitment to more electrification but what’s the point of setting an expectation that NR cannot meet? All you do is create an opportunity for people to come along and bash NR round the head and say they’re useless even though the requirement was badly specified and given an unrealistic delivery date. For as long as we have so many dysfunctional elements to the process then we’re doomed to fail in terms of having a cost effective railway that offers decent fares, sufficient capacity and which passengers find acceptable and affordable.
I’d argue that we are beginning to see TfL being pulled in far too many different directions at once. I’d also say that the cracks are beginning to show in terms of the system being unable to cope and also becoming more and more difficult to improve while keeping passengers “on side”. TfL is a transport organisation. It’s not here to be the Mayor’s pseudo property and economic development agency.
Does this mean the “competition” minded Treasury wonks will be pushing for more “Open Access” – without “moderation of competition” then?
This is a very divisive issue – see the current issue of “Modern Railways …
Yet I feel that without “OA” Sunderland would not have a decent service – as Lincoln still does not & Shrewsbury had it’s one snatched away by too restrictive a stopping pattern being imposed ….
@Graham H
Competition! As an “economist” or, at least an economics graduate,
I feel qualified to make some observations.
The theory of “perfect competition” (and the resulting “unseen hand
of market forces that delivers paradise on earth) is only credible
when certain essential essential features apply in the market,
These are (simplification) a consistent homogenous product,
freedom of entrance and exit into/out of the “market place”.
Perfect knowledge (held by all participants, i.e. producers, providing
a uniformity of cost of output, and buyers, too), but, most importantly;-
A multitude of both buyers and sellers, such as to be “infinite”.
There is of course no such thing as “perfect competition” anywhere,
it’s a mirage, BUT some markets are less imperfect than most.
An any objective analysis, rail transport fails the test, it can only
be provided with a very high degree of imperfect competition.
That’s just how it is. The attempts to “inject” competition into
the rail industry might be likened to releasing two private
enterprise swallows in January, so you can pretend we are enjoying
a free enterprise summer!
Having said that, there are limited opportunities for competition
in supply of services and materials etc.
In any case, the real competition is with road.
There are only a few instances I can find of competition between
TOCs and even then it is far from any definition of perfect competition.
Anglo-Scottish (Or at least from London) and this is being
consolidated into one ownership)
London-Birmingham (Three operators Virgin, LM and Chilt)
(Imperfect, differing character of service and routes).
Southend (central area) – London
The open access competition is also “imperfect”.
That’s about it, routes with more than operator with same or
similar calling pattern don’t really count. (especially not when same
fares are charged).
All the hoo-hah about competition, and that’s all it boils down to,
less than 5% of passenger rail sales volume.
In the 19th cent, there were “free market economists” who actually
argued that we should ban railways and just make do with
stagecoaches and horses and carts as it conformed more exactly
to this competitive model. (pointing out that a railway would be
an institutionalised monopoly).
Their descendants are still active today.
Besides competition by emulation, the other form of competition beloved by the franchising advocates is “competition for the market” as opposed to “competition in the market”, which, as you say, hardly exists. However, as anyone who has dealt with prospective bidders will know, not only are there very few of them, but their agendas and objectives differ widely.The costs of market entry are high – a typical bid will rack up non-recoverable fees of £10-15m.These things mean that the numbers of usual suspects willing to compete for the market is small. Cynics will have noticed that when the latest “head of franchising” was appointed in DfT a couple of years ago, one of her first comments was about her plans to increase the number of bidders. Cynics have gone on to note the radio silence on the matter and the evidence (lack of) in relation to any franchises let subsequently.
Just for amusement, when I was advising the Tanzanian government on their possible rail franchising programme, I was part of a team led by Iarnrodd Eireann’s consulting wing. I arrived to find that they had already drawn up a long list of potential bidders commencing with Eurostar and ending with the Brighton, Hove and District Omnibus Co. Apparently, some IE clerk has simply sat down with Jane’s and listed every rail operator (the BHD got on the list because the shell was used as management vehicle for Stagecoach rail at one stage, but the clerk forgot to put sown the newname). When I duly reported this to the World Bank (whose nark onthe project I was),IE were sacked andthe project terminated. I felt very sorry for the Tanzanians who were earnest and hard working and keen to follow advice.
@ Graham H – re emulation in London commuting. I think the only thing that is being emulated is an over full tin can with wheels.
@Graham H
Very good stuff. During the heady days of early 90s there were
conservative politicians who seemed to think that anybody could just
jump up, get themselves a train and start running; roll roll up
anymore for the skylark express to London? etc.
Who was the sensible conservative who managed to see through the
nonsense?
The original classical economists (Adam Smith especially, the greatest of all) really did envisage the market as stalls in the market
place , anybody could set one up. All selling uniform products,
same type of potatoes etc.
Whilst setting out the theoretical stuff, Adam Smith DID appreciate
that there are certain types of goods and services whereby imperfect
competition (even monopoly) was inescapable , but desirable
nevertheless. Canals especially. He wrote his stuff in late 18th cent
pity he didn’t live into the railway age.
“Who was the sensible conservative who managed to see through the
nonsense?”
Robert Adley, MP for Christchurch, who described it as A “poll tax on wheels”. His sudden death in 1993 at the age of 58 left the privatisation movement without one of its leading opponents at a crucial stage in the process.
@WW/AR – Did I say that competition by emulation was in any way a helpful concept? -Just another example of the Treasury using a third form economics textbook. Adam Smith included not only canals but also roads as activities which were unsuitable for competition;he would surely have included railways had they been anything more than wooden coal transporters at the time, as AR says.
@timbeau – a great loss – had he survived longer, there would havebeen many interesting leaks during the privatisation process…
@Graham & @Timbeau
Robert Adley. A tragic case. He was committed to getting some common
sense into the whole privatisation programme, but had to endure
being denounced as a “Puffer Nutter” by ignorant colleagues.
As to whether the stress contributed to his sad early demise, we
can only speculate.
That wasn’t who I was thinking of. There was a later minister
1984/85 ish who put the lid on the wilder competition fantasies.
(i.e. told the government like how it is, i.e. you can’t have train
companies all “jostling” on a railway same as competitive coach
operation on a motorway (or words to that effect).
Competition by emulation. We had it. Always did. Individual parts
of BR could engage in this, in all kinds of ways. So did the private
railways. Sometimes competition took the form of not emulation
as such, but individual quality. Hamilton-Ellis commented that
pre-grouping, although the Midland Railway had the slowest railway
London – Scotland, they concentrated on comfort, with the deepest
most luxurious upholstery in First (Very Good in third) and most
notably, the finest restaurant car service in the UK.
My impression is that this sort of competition hardly exists today.
East Coast do still provide vastly superior catering to Virgin, but
for how much longer now they are both going to be Branson Rail?
I have tested out these theories when conversing with landlords
of public houses.
One said, look I am only the pub in this village, so in theory this
should be a rubbish pub because of lack of competition.
I retorted, but it isn’t, it’s a very good pub (I would say that wouldn’t I). He replied, I want to run a good pub as a matter of personal pride,
and I want satisfied happy customers who come again and spend
even more. Sounds logical.
I sometimes think that those totally sold on competition as a
motivator must be very cynical people. They actually seem to think that
Human Beings won’t do a decent job unless in a state of fear.
(Some do a rotten job whilst working in a state of fear).
@AR- In 1984/5, we were being ground under the heel of Nicholas Ridley+, whose views on competition made your average monetarist look like a commie wimp. Not sure who around that period might fit your bill. Tom King was a sensible fellow but lasted only a few months; Johnny Moore* was so vain and stupid that many reptiles would have made better public servants.
+ Ridley was privately inclined to argue that traffic lights and even rules of the road were an infringement of liberty, at least in my hearing… Fortunately, we managed to keep railways away from him – after all, we had a junior minister who was responsiblefor these matters and we didn’t need to trouble the SoS himself, did we? (Short lesson on Yes Minister tactics)
* Johnny Moore was slated as the next PM but one or two (I am aware of the Belloc poem) – briefly. His arrival was marked by an edict stating that no submission to the SoS should extend to more than a page, must be double spaced. and submitted only on the blue notepaper; we understood what that implied. He was also very shortsighted and insisted that papers were submitted to him one at a time and placed on a special lectern that stood on his desk. He refused to wear spectacles in public and if we were doing a presentation thrown up on a convenient wall,his private secretary used to enjoy winding him up by asking “Shall I fetch your spectacles, SoS?”
@Graham H
Thank you again for more wonderful insights. This is getting really
quite zingy.
The “sensible” conservative minister as I was searching for
was Steve Norris.
Christian Wolmar in “Broken rails” identifies him as “the sharpest
transport minister.
Here is the relevant quote (page 69);-
(late 92 I think) “It was clear that no franchise for train operations could be let unless there were guarantees about where the potential revenue came from. If there the prospects that any other operator
could come along and cherry-pick the best bits, you’ve destroyed
the basis on which you can make the bid”.
Wolmar goes on to say that Norris pointed out that total open access
would have led to much higher levels of subsidy (or reduced premium). In addition there would be disgruntled passengers
thwarted by tickets only valid on nominated trains (we now have that!).
By 1993 McGregor had apparently accepted this logic, and announced
at a Railfreight conference that;- “If some franchises have to be
exclusive, in whole or in part, then they will be made so”.
Interestingly, Wolmar reports that, not for public consumption,
there was growing concern amongst conservatives that the chaos
of unregulated bus competition was making them very nervous
about public reaction to a similar shambles on rail.
They weren’t very bothered about buses, only plebs use them.
Regulator John Swift QC got involved too, with some wry comments
as to how he was supposed to promote competition, but in reality
devising means of restraint! The effect was that Raltrack was instructed that train paths sold to a specific operator were granted
sort of “grandfather rights” and could not be sold to a higher bidder
subsequently.
Wolmar speculates that Robert Adley was highly influential in
persuading the government to drop the concept of open access.
To bring it back to topic, sort of. At the same time, a closure
methodology was brought in which was so tortuous and complicated
that Wolmar speculates is was deliberately so, to reassure critics
that privatisation would not be accompanied by closures, as it was
much, much too difficult to bring an effective proposal. A huge
furore had broken out over proposal to eliminate the Fort William
sleeper from the franchise specification. (which would have implied
a closure case for the connecting sections of route from Motherwell
to Knightswood North Jcn).
Still working on deliberations re recent West London closure
Watch this space!
@AR – Stephen Norris didn’t appear in transport until well after 1984 – probably 1992? He was no friend to public transport in London – the sponsor MP for, amongst other things, the LTDA, the Motor Cycle Association and similar. In the mid -80s,David Mitchell did yeoman service in protecting railways, followed by Michael Portillo. The combination of Mitchell/Portillo and Channon (as SoS) marked an Indian Summer in railway policy before the deluge. I still treasure an aside by Channon who had just been subjected to a tirade by Palmer about the need to close more railways and make commuters pay ; he turned to Mitchell and remarked “Dear me. How right wing officials have become”.
AR @ 17.24 1st Feb
You can’t possibly say all that!
P.S. I have replied that LU/TfL got saddled with PPP, btw & that we (Londoners) are still paying for it ….
AND @ 18.24
Well, the then tories obviously “thought” that running a railway was the same as running a bus company – as was evidence by several bus companies being in the bidding at the first round of privatisation …
Oops, as they say.
AND @ 212.47
Norris?
But wasn’t he involved in the total fiasco of “Jarvis Rail” – & I remember his public ( & IRRC sexist) pronouncements on secretaries & “class” (meaning totally inferior cattle-trucks) travel.
However, I’ve been told by others, including a regular contributor to these fora, that he wasn’t like that in person.
See also Graham H’s comment.
Um.
@Graham H
Your recollection says a great deal;-
“Make commuters pay” Which commuters, travelling on which trains
and paying how much more?
My whole stance (I and argue this to the end of time) is that the
railways of Britain are NOT one homogenous integrated system
but a collection of disparate businesses with varying financial
prospects. In fact, I am gradually coming to the extraordinary
conclusion that the last time Britain’s railways were satisfactorily
organised was pre 1922 (pre 1914 really. Each railway was
an entity in its own right. Fares were regulated (i.e. by adhering to
standard non-discriminatory tariffs, but not uniform level of
tariff, e.g. the SECR (and SER and LCDR before) offered the most expensive fares in the UK.
Consider, should the SECR have encountered economic difficulties
(or need to make major investments) this could never have impacted
on fare levels on the other commuter railways, LSWR, GER LBSCR
LT&S.
The government now imposes a uniform fare policy without reference to the individual performance of each TOC.I contend
that not only is this unrealistic and unjust, but economically
inefficient too.
South West Trains is now convincingly demonstrated to be a fully
viable franchise (Premium exceeding appropriation of Network
Grant, despite a fair bit of unviable rural route mileage, such as
Basingstoke-Exeter). In these circumstances, real fare increases
are a tax on travel, how could any politician defend this?
(try interviewing SWT commuters at Waterloo about this , Ha Ha
best of Luck, you would be probably be lynched).
The only time the “specificity” of a rail service really came under
the searchlight was of course, a closure proposal.
I have been able to detect (In ministerial statements) in recent
years a certain punitive attitude. i.e. Make the passengers (what, all
of them?) pay more towards the cost of “The Railways”.
This is not only distasteful but contributing to even higher levels
of public cynicism and despair.
It’s clearly nothing new, as you have demonstrated.
Dear Graham, yes I meant “Graham” in my earlier E-Mail above.
Dear Graham and Alan. The Information above about the Settle-Carlisle line is very interesting. From this, can it seem right that this whole closure was only driven by one person (Palmer)? Or am I mistaken? To think that all of the letters that I wrote to my MP (Sir John Hunt) , as well as asking questions at Constituency and General Election meetings……..During the height of the closure hearings, I managed to arrange for my sixth form brother to ask John Moore, MP for Croydon about the Settle-Carlisle when he was visiting his School (Whitgift) in his constituency. Needless to say Moore was amazed that this question should come up, but did give the impression that the line would be saved………Only a couple of weeks later in April 88, came the statement that the Minister “…was minded to close the railway…”
Alan Robinson @ 1 February 2015 at 18:47
“A multitude of both buyers and sellers, such as to be “infinite”.
There is of course no such thing as “perfect competition” anywhere”
A Glasgow University economics lecturer of my acquaintance (workplace, the Adam Smith Building) was quite struck by boarding houses on the south shore of Blackpool. He said “the nearest thing to perfect competition I’ve ever seen”.
@Alstadt White
The Settle Carlisle episode in a few short bullet points.
(I) Closure benefit was included in the business case for
electrification Weaver Jcn – Glasgow (assumed ability to concentrate
all traffic over Shap leaving S & C redundant as major artery).
(2) Didn’t happen, BR still had troublesome short wheelbase wagons
and (very importantly) continuing need for S & C for engineering
and emergency diversions BR still had time sensitive mail trains).
(3) Government raised the question, i.e. you haven’t achieved the
full benefits of WCML electrification, so how can we trust you
with any future major investment programme ?
(This “brewed” during late 1970s and early 1980s;- and
There was clearly a pro closure desire within the Dtp (now revealed
by Graham H to be mostly from Palmer).
(4) BR therefore brought forward the S & C closure as a “test case”
(also a wind up) Motivation being that this was a good performer
financially, in fact best operating ratio on Provincial!
The point being to impress the need for a long term strategic
policy major “lumpy” infrastructure works (fixing Ribblehead).
(5) The public would get wind of the issues, and with closure
refused on grounds of pretty unanswerable case against;-
A new era of commitment to investment in the Provincial Railway
(and elsewhere) would be enabled, especially including a proper
rolling stock replacement programme (The 158 build and more).
Note : BR (originally proposed for closure by the LM region , just
before sectorisation) put this one forward precisely because it was
a star performer. It was so good that termination of the service
was out of the question. The evaluation was conducted on basis
of a DIVERSION of Leeds-Carlisle trains via Carnforth and Shap.
As this worsened the operating ratio of the service (more train
mileage and other complications) the case for closure would rest
entirely on avoiding a measly £2million or in viaduct repairs,
I.e. a total travesty, about the price of a new trunk road roundabout.
The Railway Press of course, denounced BR as vandals, and;-
Absolutely no-one “twigged” what it was really about.
(Other than such as Graham H and David Mitchell, and I am still
not sure if they really got the whole picture).
I have described the whole thing as “High level Poker for High Stakes”.
I hope the above gives some enlightenment. Please ask if you would like me to expand, I’ll do my best.
In retrospect the most meaningful and exciting episode in my life.
@Alan Griffiths
Please note, this blog really isn’t meant to be an economics debating
forum (the snip cometh), but I must say, Blackpool boarding
houses really are close to a perfect competition set up.
Still are. Went there the other year to bash the revitalised tramway,
and poked around the vicinity of Rigby Road depot.
There are hundreds and hundreds of the most uninviting digs
you ever saw, all 19th cent terrace houses, but all displaying the
same standard price;= “£20 per night B & B.
Same thing re bars , everywhere all drinks £2.
Nothing much like this in the transport business (rickshaws?).
AR
I have been able to detect (In ministerial statements) in recent
years a certain punitive attitude…….. Perhaps it is because they, or some of them are out-of-date, &/or are uninformed.
We have previously had the discussion regarding “Buchanan” & how it is simply totally impossible for the automobile to solve all problems – & this has been known since the mid 1960’s.
Yet, all through the period 1979-2000, irrespective of the party in charge, it seems that the drive to promote the Autogerichtstdat [‘car oriented city’ seems to be the best translation of this term, please advise if needs to be improved. LBM] continued, in defiance of reality.
This seems to be “more of the same” – yes/no?
@Greg Tingey
The Buchanan report was the greatest inspiration of my youth!
It put definitive form to ideas forming in my adolescent mind that
this great future of a universal car owning and driving paradise
unfolding had fatal flaws. It’s as relevant now as ever.
When it came out (with its devastating conclusion that utter gridlock
would prevail without a continuing high level of public transport
use) the Beeching report implied the cessation of all “stopping”
(inc all provincial cities’ commuter services)trains outside of
London (and no clear positive policy about what to do with them either). Talk about joined up thinking.
Politicians just couldn’t handle this, the question was too big for them. Broadly, politicians tended to pacify the public with this
wonderful car dominated world to come (like the USA), and
continued to avoid the congestion and pollution issues, let alone
face up to the implied de-densification of urban areas and explosion
of sprawl that mass motoring demands.
Only recently, I have been reading reports of proceedings on Worcestershire council (concerns about continually rising rail fares).
A Conservative councillor put down the objections raised, Of course
rail passengers must expect to pay higher and higher fares, “trains
are subsidised” (despite the fact that the train service in question
is a premium franchise) then insisting that motorists “deserve”
cuts in fuel duty, and free parking in town centres.
Sometimes, I despair.
@AltstadtWhite – Palmer indeed . As to Johnny Moore’s lack of a sensible response- as noted earlier in this thread,Moore was not in office long, not interested in transport,and not interested enough to follow the issues that were occupying his supporting Ministers of State (nor was there any interest in keeping him informed – unless he asked – his reputation had gone before him).
Offtopic Alert! @AR. I suspect that there is a more compelling incentive for your pub landlord who operates a monopoly in his local village. Pub leases are so expensive that bad landlords anywhere soon find that they don’t have enough customers to allow them to break even. The real competition is from cheap booze bought in supermarkets.
Back on topic (ish). I note that C Wolmar (in Modern Railways this time) has repeated his ‘what are franchises for?’ question. If there were any politicians around who had sufficient business experience, they might see where costs could be eliminated from the current UK rail set-up. It’s impossible to believe that anyone who had been the chief exec of any big and complex organisation would not want to get rid of the artificial interfaces and arthritic contract-based relationships that 21 years of struggle have failed to overcome in the rail industry (RDG – what are you doing?). However, another Modern Railways contributor (Ian Walmsley) might have the utterly counter-intuitive answer: even though it’s obviously a rubbish set-up, the politicians believe in it sufficiently to carry on providing oodles of cash to support it (for now).
@fandroid, channelling C Wolmar
“‘what are franchises for?’”
easy – to make money for the franchisee,
(and, possibly, to give DfT someone to blame for poor service).
@Fandroid – “the politicians believe in it sufficiently to carry on providing oodles of cash to support it” – I have yet to meet the politician who is sufficiently motivated to dig into the detail of a policy and its rationale – doubly so if the point of the digging is to come up with a policy which might be difficult to sell to colleagues who presently believe the slogans/nostrums on which the policy was based in the first place. And the present structure of the industry is based entirely on slogans and nostrums peddled by PWC and Lazards at the time. Who is going to admit they were wrong in 1993?
Putting anything in place of the present mess would be so difficult in politicians’ view that the game is not worth the candle. Actually, sorting it is extremely easy, especially now that the expensive step of taking on NR’s debt has already been taken.
@Fandroid
I don’t think we ought to go off topic to the extent of an in-depth
dissection of the pub business!
All I was trying to say was;——-
(In any business context) The fact that a particular organisation
might have a relatively strong position in the market place
(a quasi monopoly?) does not mean that a poor product at an
excessive price will NECESSARILY be provided.
The reason being is that most people (admittedly not all) actually
want to do a “reasonable” job, not rip people off.
Competition doesn’t guarantee a good outcome. Those dreadful
Blackpool boarding houses were enough to convert the most
enthusiastic free marketer into a communist.
Personally, I would prefer to holiday somewhere with much more
imperfect competition and consequently higher prices;-
like Switzerland.
Railway costs;
Under nationalisation, absolutely everything that went through BR’s books could be subject to the Minister’s beady eye. They could
micromanage away to their heart’s content, absolute pests.
Now : TOC costs are untouchable, It’s their business (Literally).
Once that franchise bid is accepted then costs are private and
commercially confidential.
The only scope left for Government to influencethe financial
performance of the rail industry (i.e. reduce support) is;-
Real fare increases, government imposed with yield handed back
to Dft.
Or; Network Rail, which can be micro managed just like the old days.
Train Leasing is out of the frame , too.
SO we have about 50-60% of the railway’s cost snow firmly out
of reach of the clammy fingers attached to the dead hand of the state.
No wonder fares go up.
@ Alan R – do you have some evidence to support your claim that TOC costs are “commercially confidential” and no-one, including the DfT, can find out what they are? I simply don’t believe that your statement is correct – how do DfT manage those franchises which are “management contracts” without full disclosure of what is going on and making sure that the TOC is not raking off more than the management fee? I am sure there has been more than enough learning from a vast range of outsourced, PFI and PPP contracts that means that current franchise contracts should have vast reporting requirements in them so that there is transparency for the DfT (and their auditors). I accept that FOI does not apply to the TOCs but that doesn’t mean the client doesn’t have access to the numbers.
I fear I must also disagree with you about fares levels. The DfT allows TOCs to apply differing fares levels, to have greater than “normal” fares increases on some franchises as well as encouraging the offering of discounted advance tickets. South Eastern had higher than normal fares increases for several years as part of the franchise award to Govia. Higher fare increases are envisaged to “price up” the value of the Northern and Transpennine franchises that out to tender at present. Scotrail was recently reawarded on the basis of offering lots more discounted tickets while Virgin East Coast award includes a *reduction* in ordinary return fares. Governments of all complexions in recent years have had a policy of inflation plus fare rises and reduced public subsidy. The voters have kept voting for the parties with that policy so we should hardly be shocked when it gets implemented. Ditto for TfL – Labour lost in 2012 despite 4 years of fare rises in Boris’s first term and offering a policy of fare cuts. Londoners voted for a continued policy of fare rises as Boris has repeatedly reminded his political opponents. If people want an alternative to fare increases they need to vote for it and accept their taxes may need to rise in consequence or something else gets cut. We’re all a bunch of hypocrites because we want low fares, mega reliable railways but won’t fork out the extra money to pay for them. A plague on all our houses!
@Walthamstow Writer
Management contract franchises : You’re right. I wasn’t thinking
of these, just “ordinary” franchises. I don’t actually know how much
cost information is reported to the Dft by TOCs. Obviously, the Dft
will know the track access charges payable. I just can’t imagine
that a TOC (e.g. the owning co) would be willing to disclose cost
data any more than a private company in other context.
As our TOC franchises are held by conglomerates, there aren’t even
any specific annual accounts to pore over. I have had a trawl
through the Dft website to try and find mention of any cost reporting
requirement. They are required to report passenger statistics of course and ticket sales. Can any one else give a more detailed
account? USA reporting is much more fulsome. I can spend days
poring through the minutae of cost data reported monthly by Amtrak.
(Yes, just as you thought, bean counters are mad).
Fares: We, and the western developed world are now facing the
spectre of deflation. Deflation is very very nasty. There hasn’t been any since about 1934 so no-one knows how to respond to it.
In business, it is simple. you cut prices. If you don’t you are dead.
(you cut wages , too). The perpetual fare increase mindset is
obsolete,
I am not at all certain that “we all want low fares and mega reliable railways”
Many just want to be able to travel by train at all at a fare they
consider to be reasonable.
I have pointed out that we are in danger of producing demonstrable
cross-subsidisation. This happens as soon as there is just one viable
franchise. Much of the confusion is due to the government’s
inability to devise a track access charging regime that exhausts
Network Rail P & L, leaving “bits over”.Nevertheless, as the ORR
has now published a breakdown of “bits over” AKA Network Grant,
viable franchises can now be identified. As attention is drawn to
this, the users of viable franchises are getting to get more and more
restive re fare level charges, just are they are with regard to energy
tariffs. Politicians won’t be able to ignore this.
To bring it back to the topic of Railway Closures;-
There is (and always has been) a choice, in basic principles;-
What is better for the UK’s economic and social well being;-
(i) A viable Passenger Rail industry , without subsidies, but trading
profitably on (relatively) modest regulated fares, or;-
(ii) An Unviable (in total) Passenger Rail industry, aggregated together whereby every attempt is made to charge passengers on
viable routes “over the odds” to cross-subsidise the less unviable.
With my “economics hat” on, I would assert that (ii) is economic
disastrous, a sub-optimal result that is also unjust and divisive.
So: Either we close down the unviable railways (leaving the viable free to thrive) or: the unviable are “ring fenced” so their need for
financial support does not contaminate the whole.
Beeching said: close the unviable. Politicians rejected this.
BR continued to run unviable railways (muddle) and, in the 1980s
tried to get the government to accept the notion of financial compartmentalisation (sectorisation)
Now, it’s all jumbled up together again.
Fundamentally, I think it is wrong (by every measure) to charge
fares at such a level that individual passengers are paying for someone else’s journey. Any transport subsidies deemed worthy
should come from general taxation (national or local).
In practice, by applying continual fare increases, Government are
behaving in the style of rampant monopolies that public regulation
is supposed to restrict.
@AR – there’s no evidence at all that we face deflation in this country.
I have found it absolutely fascinating to see the amount of information about the machinations of BR and the Government that has arisen as a result of my original article – and hopefully someone will be able to make use of this in a future book.
I noticed – with mixed feelings of horror and amusement – that the railway conversionistas are back, and this time using the Institute of Economic Affairs to give their loopy plans a veneer of credibility. See City AM this morning. Will they never learn?
@Graham H
“No evidence at all that we face deflation in this country”
Oh yes there is! I continually monitor all kinds of economics
websites etc, and I can report that this now the major pre-occupation
(and great fear) of a lot of very highly regarded economists.
It is feared to be in prospect for the whole of the developed world,
the UK can not escape. It is already well apparent in the Eurozone,
and take particular note of Switzerland. A Banking driven economy
has a natural tendency to drive the exchange rate of its currency
ever higher. to the great distress of those involved in the “real”
economy, in the case of Switzerland, tourism, precision engineering
(and the cuckoo clock industry, which I read is now threatened by cheap Chinese cuckoo clock imports, I kid you not ).
The Swiss tourist industry organisations are in emergency sessions
to try to bring about a uniform agreed 25% cut in charges.
In the meantime I read that internet reservations for Swiss hotels
have totally dried up (except for top of range).
This is deflation in action. The UK is Europe’s next most significant
Banking led nation .This fate awaits. I’ll bet a pint with anyone
that these horrors will come to pass. I’m onto a good thing, because
after a few years, beer will be cheaper.
But my investments will have shrunk, ah well.
Should the pound continue to increase in value versus the Euro in
next few years, millions will start to think the unthinkable, that perhaps;-
we would have been better of joining the euro after all!
@AR – what do you know about deflation that has been concealed from the Bank of England’s MPC? Their latest report on inflation states: Inflation has fallen further below the MPC’s 2% target, reflecting the impact of lower food, energy and import prices and some continued drag from domestic slack. Inflation is expected to remain below the target in the near term, and is more likely than not to fall temporarily below 1% at some point over the next six months. It then rises gradually back to the target as external pressures fade and unit labour cost growth picks up. The MPC’s guidance on the expected path for Bank Rate continues to apply. When Bank Rate does begin to rise, the pace of rate increases is expected to be gradual, with rates probably remaining below average historical levels for some time.” I doubt very much if Switzerland’s position is relevant to the future UK forecasts.
@Abe -you beat me to the trigger on the IEA – well reported in this morning’s Independent also, complete with “stupid” figures that assume that all loss making lines are converted into roads (that would appear to leave SWT as the country’s remaining train service).
In reverse order
Just as you thought it was safe to come out …
Today’s “torygraph” has highlighted a new report by the so-called “Institute for Economic Affairs”. It was co-authored by an, erm, “friend” of ours, Paul Withrington, who, in spite of being told (here) that he was flat wrong, has gone ahead anyway.
Direct link to actual “report” here:
http://www.iea.org.uk/in-the-media/press-release/converting-commuter-railways-to-busways-could-save-passengers-40-in-fares
Health Warning – report is seriously insane.
Unfortunately this sort of thing shows that the battle is still not won, as no amount of facts & information seems to convince doctrinaire “believers” (of any sort) does it?
Ah, thank you Abe @ 08.39, too – & in answer to your question: No, they never will learn, because they don’t want to – they refuse to look in the telescope, to see the moons (of Jupiter)
Graham H – thanks also – I assume that all the major papers are now reporting this, though there seems top be a dearth of “comments” boxes.
QUESTION – should we direct “outside” readers to this specific discussion, pointing out just how futile the IEA’s so-called “arguments” are, or do we not want to be overwhelmed with, err .. “uninformed” people, shall I say?
Now then:
AW
2/2/15: 15.45
Ah yes, trains are subsidised & roads are not – Withrington is going on about this, too ….
timbeau 2/2/15: 18.55
and, possibly, to give DfT someone to blame for poor service?
I would make that definitely, actually, as it is such an easy escape-route, isn’t it?
WW 2/2/15: 23.35
I thought that people like messrs Wolmar & Ford had tried to get details of ( non-concessionary) TOC-costings & expenses etc – & been told “commercially confidential – & get lost” ??
Off topic, but I was under the impression that Boris won in 2012 for entirely non-transport issues, & really not a topic for this discussion, at all.
Alan Robinson @ 3 February 2015 at 08:40
I think you missed the recently rocketing value of the Swiss Franc against the Euro.
I recall Swiss Francs at 10 to the pound. By the time the Euro began, a Swiss Franc was worth more than a Dmark and in the past two years it has gone up even more. Small wonder Swiss businesses find it difficult to export or to attract visitors.
@Abe
Don’t underestimate bodies such the Institute of Economic
affairs. The title they have chosen suggests and an impartial
academic body that produces objective studies.
There are not at all stupid, they learn plenty! but, they are a
political organisation dedicated to the minimisation of the state
and minimal taxes. Their backing is recently revealed to come
from massive wealthy right wing tycoons (including the now
notorious Koch Brothers).
They also put out “propaganda” using figures that are , at best
of questionable honesty.
I have just examined the article you refer to, drawing attention
to how “the UK’s railways” (in total of course) are supposed to be
costing the taxpayer £6b pa in subsidies. This is simply incorrect.
The current figure is £4b (really £3b as Network Rail, now nationalised returns a £1b operating profit back to total public
sector accounts. The RDG group have also pointed out that taxation
of rail industries now yield more than annual support level also.
The Institute of Economics have also put out a video denouncing
HS2 as a total waste of money, because it will cost £80b.
The real figure is £29b (plus some unspecified contingencies that
take it up to about £45b, which current HS2 management is adamant
will not all be required. £80b is way over the top.
In any case, half of the current support is for Scotland and Wales.
It goes back to the old adage;-
Figures don’t lie, but Liars can figure!
Also: Everyone is entitled to their own opinions , but not
their own facts.
But then, as Pontius Pilate said ;- “What is truth?”
It seems that today, we get the best truth that money can buy.
The bus conversion case has been well demolished by recent actual
examples. We have two railway conversion busways Cambridge
and Luton. (a few others in progress) Costs of construction
are £09-15million per km (and this without significant major problems such as tunnels and viaducts).
Conversion of the UK’s non-viable railway network (about 6,000km
would cost about £100billion (and the IOEA would want to do the lot) just the unviable network would incur an annual capital
charge of circa £5b. There is no way you could possibly service that
debt by running buses.
There is a good reason that the railway was invented. It’s better
than a dedicated roadway. (re 18th cent mineral tramways etc).
AR
Are you sure the IEA is getting Koch money?
If so, that is a deeply unpleasant piece of information.
@Alan Griffiths
The rocketing value of the Swiss franc is what I was referring to;-
I just didn’t draw attention to it in my post, thinking that “everybody”
would know about it. Basically, the Swiss government has being
to peg their currency to the Euro, by buying Euros on a massive
scale so as to depress the Swiss franc. This has now got too silly,
they are absolutely awash wit Euro holdings, and , I think the
Germans have got fed up with it as it has been upholding the value
of the euro too. So, they have stopped buying Euros, and the Swiss
franc shot up by 25% overnight, with catastrophic results to the
“real” Swiss economy. (which will have serious political repercussions,
I fear the snip, so, I’ll take it back to a transport context. Basel had
opened a tram route extension into Germany. It is now Europe’ s
most successful new tramway! trams absolutely heaving with Swiss
shoppers nipping over the border to buy stuff about 30% cheaper.
The same thing is happening to the UK (The pound is being ramped
up) My Eurotunnel shares have gone up substantially again. (whoopee).
The market expects booming shuttle business, South East England
shoppers popping over to Calais. Same thing.
The whole point of a common currency for Europe is to stop this sort
of nonsense. and the inter-national tensions and corrective
restraints on trade that inevitably ensue, as it will, the Swiss won’t
tolerate their retail sector being zapped for long.
Beware, a rising currency brings about the dreaded deflation,
It’s happening NOW.
Switzerland might even vote communist like Greece!)
@Abe – One of the authors of that IEA article, Paul Withrington, has an almost religious belief in rail to road conversion and nothing you can say to him will change his mind. He consistently under-estimates the conversion costs and over-estimates the benefits.
Of course, whilst the rail industry cannot effectively control, or even correctly report, its costs, this sort of nonsense will continue to pop up.
I’m sitting on an express bus now. We are 20 mins out from Reading station heading towards Heathrow. Currently somewhere on the M4 roughly level in longitude with Bracknell and doing about 20mph. This bus has 45 seats and standing is banned. By the time we get near Maidenhead, any train starting from Reading at the same time will be in Paddington. It’s a bit unfair because the slow progress is due to backups created by a modest overnight snowfall. …..Oh hold on to your seats ! We must be doing over 40mph now. I’m unsure why the IEA put the Cambridge bus lanes forward as a fine example. They fail to get anywhere near the city centre where the slowest traffic is. Perhaps they think it would have been done better if private enterprise had promoted it.
Oncoming deflation – or not?
We cannot know. Anything said about the economic future is an opinion. The site practice of asking for evidence is, sadly, not applicable here. (You can ask for evidence of opinion, of course, but evidence of opinion is not evidence of fact).
As for people voting for fare rises, of course nobody does, any more than turkeys vote for Christmas. But WW was right in a way; the electorate is presumed to have chosen a package that included fare rises and other things, over a different package that included fewer fare rises and different other things.
Put another way, the public might want lower fares, but they were not offered them in a package that they found acceptable. All contributing to democracy being a daft way to organise things, just slightly less daft than all the others. As many people have said (most memorably Winston, but he was not the first).
@Alan R
“I think it is wrong (by every measure) to charge
fares at such a level that individual passengers are paying for someone else’s journey. ”
But how do you measure that? The fixed costs are such a high proportion of the running costs of a railway, and it is a matter of debate as to how to apportion them: to take an example, a counter-peak journey costs the railway next to nothing – the price of printing the ticket maybe – because the train has to travel anyway, even if no-one is on it, to make way for the next crush-loaded incoming train.
The Swiss example is very relevant – I was on holiday there a few years back, when the franc was already nearly at parity with the both Euro and the US dollar. Go back ten years and you could buy nearly twice as many francs for your dollar/pound/euro. Consequently, the tourists are staying away. At several of the mountain huts we stayed at, with accommodation for maybe 100, the number staying there was in single figures. With most of their running costs fixed (in francs) they were having a rough time of it.
@fandroid/Abe – yes, the arguments against conversion have been well rehearsed here and elsewhere, and you are right: short of killing Withrington in a railway jihad, the Railway Conversion League (or whatever it calls itself today) will continue to peddle opinion as fact. I particularly liked the IEA suggestion that HS2 should be replaced with a busway used by 1000 buses an hour.
The Cambridge example is especially relevant -who needs that boring and ugly city centre full of academics when it could be a shiny new beton brut busway and terminus?
Perhaps a good way to deal with Withrington might be to egg him on. The sillier his proposals become, the easier it is for the public, and the politicians, to see through them.
@timbeau
“Just how do we measure that” passengers cross subsidising some
one else’s travel?
It’s essentially very simple (to an accountant)
The UK passenger rail industry is divided into individual businesses
TOCs. However, support requirement is treated in AGGREGATE
not compartmentalised.
If any one TOC is profitable . then this results in a surplus premium
paid back to public funds, which is then taken into account to
negate the overall level of support nationwide.
When this happens, there is demonstrable cross-subsidy. It’s
happening now, especially for South West Trains, a very big
franchise.
Suppose, just suppose we organised bus transport on a similar national basis, with franchises specified and awarded by the Dft
with a national bus support requirement.
If London bus fares went ever upwards (with increasing surpluses)
used to fund buses in the provinces, would there be a scream?
you bet. Same thing with investment. Fare increases in the provinces
might be imposed by government to pay for zingy new bus stations
in London. (more howls).
In the 1980s I was astonished at the profits generated by Inter City
(reached about 25% of turnover). and they were real profits too,
paying for infrastructure on a prime user basis.
If Inter City had been a private company, the monopolies commission
would have jumper on them hard and enforced fare reductions.
Because it was a nationalised industry, the monopolies commission
didn’t go near and Government was happy to take back the surplus
to net off the overall cost of the railways to the taxpayer.
Inter city passengers were being screwed to pay for some one else’s
railway. I am astonished that no user groups twigged it.
Incredibly, due to years of continuing real fare increases (and growth)
certain London commuter services are already viable, and most of the
rest not far behind. Interestingly, Inter City services are no longer
the demonstrable money spinner, (Only East Coast is in the black)
but this is the inevitable result of compromising their identity by
including provincial services in the franchise spec (Great Western
and Greater Anglia especially). If the BR TOC definition had been
maintained (without rural trains) they would be probably both be
support free today.
The whole thing boils down to the virtue of specificity, but
governments prefer to obfuscate by aggregation (more opportunity
for sleight of hand).
@Jim Cobb
Paul Withrington et al.
Fight fire with fire!
This is the killer put down;- (and am impeccable free market position)
If a busway is such a wonderful viable proposition, then why hasn’t
private enterprise come forward to promote Acts of Parliament
to build one? (surely it would be able to pay back its capital with
a commercial return).
Or: given that there are thousands of miles of disused railways in the
UK , why has private enterprise not offered to buy them from Sustrans? (oh they’ll charge you ha ha).
This is the same argument used by right wing detractors of High
Speed Rail proposals in the USA.
What’s sauce for the goose etc.
If there really were investors willing to risk their capital in building
busways , then I would respect them. So; the retort to the Railway
Coversionists is :Put your money where your mouth is, or shut up.
(It still probably won’t shut them up though).
Fundamentally, they are not BUILDERS, just destroyers.
@Malcolm – Agree entirely (that was behind my ironic remarks about Cambridge city centre access). TLK might be a good place to start – 300buses/hr down the hole and trying to unload at City TLK-dwell times of c5 secs?
@Greg Tingey
Inst of EA Koch Money
Here is my source (pretty authoritative I think)
Guardian Article 19th Feb 2013
Secrets of the Rich George Monbiot
Just google: secrets of the rich monbiot and it comes up.
Chilling stuff
[This is starting to go off topic. Lots can be found on the subject via search engines, but please, let’s keep the conversation on LR transport focused. LBM]
Withrington re-cycles ideas that we, on this very blog, have told him are false.
If you look at the pdf of the report, page 9 ..
It states:
Para # 1: For a given traffic volume, busways would typically require far less land than rail, both at terminals and along routes. The sale of surplus land
would further enhance the commercial case for conversion.
utterly false, as we all know
Para # 3: There are few technical obstacles to conversion. On most of the
commuter-rail network, track beds are wide enough and bridges high
enough to accommodate two-way bus traffic. On the approaches
to Central London there is often sufficient width for several lanes in
each direction.
He has been told this is completely untrue, in a public forum – this one, IIRC
There is a word for people who repeat known falsehoods in public.
Further down on pages 15 & 16, he gives “capacity” arguments, so-called that are at the best wrong
P 15: In fact, it is well established that a single lane of a motor road, free of
junctions, may carry up to 1,000 express coaches per hour.18 If they were
travelling at 100 kph (60 mph) the headways would be 100 metres, leaving
gaps between the vehicles greater than the minimum distances recommended
for motorways and substantially greater than often observed in practice on
the road network.
i.e a full bus every 3.6 seconds You what?
On P 16 he re-iterates the ultra-narrow New York bus tunnel competing, as we noted with Ferry Boats which simply does not, erm, hold water.
If his supposedly technical arguments are that false ( & I would contend, deliberately so) then that should be enough to trash this nonsense.
But – it must be done quickly & publicly.
Again, the question I have asked before comes up … WHY?
What’s in it for Withrington & his associates?
Is it doctrinaire hatred of anything at all state-owned?
Or (&/or?) do they simply hate railways, for some obscure reason?
I really would like an explanation….
AR
your demonstration that many railway services are already profitable, or very close to break-even is, of course wonderful ammunition against Withringtons fantasies.
I like your “If your idea is so wonderful, why does no one try it” gambit – but, of course, they don’t want a free market – they want one rigged in their favour.
Which is why bringing them down on the basis of complete technical fallacies & downright lies is a better way to proceed. ( I think )
@ Alan Robinson – I am genuinely puzzled at your position on fares and cross subsidisation. I appreciate from a purely economic point of view any form of subsidy is a wicked act but our society quite likes it. Indeed we have a universal postage rate within these islands and the inhabitants on Barra do not make any useful contribution to the costs of that service and I have witnessed an economist denounce the provision of that service as it involves the rest of us bearing the costs. His position was they should pay the full cost of the service or have it removed. Similarly Graham H has regaled us with a tale where he observed a Treasury economist arguing that the first passenger on a bus must be made to pay the full costs for the provision of that service (presumably for the year or contract duration) after which subsequent passengers could be charged a marginal fare. In both cases I would submit this is nonsense and demonstrates where economics departs from reality.
Rightly or wrongly the railways were nationalised and they are now seen as a national asset especially as the tax paying citizen pays for them either through their tax or via the fares they incur even tough the train operation is now provided by independent companies operating under contract British Rail was also notorious for its high fares when compared with some continental countries. Where they scored was on the provision of additional services to meet specific demands and by offering a range of cheap discounted fares valid at certain times. Marketing was one of its strengths something they possibly inherited from the Big Four. I agree the current anytime fares are very expensive but what proportion of the travelling public pay these fares? I am very aware of the use of advance fares and discounted tickets (using Railcards) by many travellers. If as you suggest the fare structure is so ineffective why are so many people travelling by rail? The increase in patronage is genuinely astonishing. I am also not aware of any groundswell of anger about cross subsidisation. Most people if they consider it at all think it is a price worth paying. Similarly the NHS is funded by all tax payers but some rely on its services and others enjoying greater health use it less. Are the healthy subsidising the sick and should we move to prevent this? I think I know the likely public reaction to such a proposal notwithstanding its economic merits.
Your argument appears to be that if all or most discounted fares were abolished and replaced by reduced anytime fares this would be more equitable but equitable for whom? Arguably a reduction in anytime fares would still leave them expensive for most travellers which would discourage travellers as the costs of these reduced anytime fares would have to cover the full costs of providing the service unless your argument is akin to that of Barry Doe and Christian Wolmar that too many journeys are being made which are socially undesirable and should be penalised by the removal of cheap advance fares. The likely outcome of such measures is a reduction in income and patronage which would then justify significant closures. You seem to feel that if we identify loss making lines and close them we would achieve a profitable railway. This was the argument both Beeching and Serpell advanced – in Beeching’s case he achieved the closures and reduced costs but not the anticipated profitability. In Serpell’s case the proposal for a skeleton network of 1500 miles was so unattractive it was immediately dropped. As a regular user of South West Trains within the London area and beyond I have no problem with the continuing provision of services on remote lines in Wales, the south west or anywhere else in these islands under subsidy or cross subsidy if it means we continue to have a national network.
I like many was hostile to privatisation but rather reluctantly I think it has not been wholly bad and I do not believe British Rail would have been permitted to undertake anything like the investments made subsequent to privatisation. It will be interesting to see if National Rail will be allowed such largesse now it is back under Treasury control.
@RchardB
Postage, Interesting. Established in 1840s on model of universal
postage rate (1d) on basis that this would provide maximum
encouragement to trade. In reality, there is massive cross-subsidisation
Don’t ask about unit cost of mail handling to remote crofters in the
Outer Hebrides etc.
But justifiable (it has been argued) on grounds of- anyone(or any
business) might want to send a letter anywhere (spreading economic
benefits to rural areas) and;- It is (or was) a very low cost item.
The lower the cost of an item, the less contentious any cross-subsidy
will be to consumers. As the cost of postage has rocketed even faster than anytime train fares, this is now being contentious,
with cherry-picking by private providers.
Rail fares are just much more prominent (a much higher value product). May I ask you (put yourself in the place of a regular commuter, annual season £5k or more). Would you be happy to pay
such a high fare so that 25% goes to pay for a train service somewhere
else?
I think I am right in asserting, that when put like this to a regular
rail passenger, they would not approve.
But this is what is in prospect, and is happening now.
The fare situation is very knotty indeed. Talking to a Virgin West Coast Train Manager the other day he confirmed what I suspected,
that Full fare anytime tickets are as rare as hen’s teeth. Even first
class travellers are mostly using advance tickets.
This begs the question, if you have a product that’s so expensive
that it doesn’t sell, why continue to offer it. It must be terrible for
the image.
My main concern is that this policy means that there must be a whole
swathe of potential rail business (on longer routes) that is being
deterred, with considerable external costs in consequence.
No wonder that Philip Hammond (in his brief tenure on Transport)
made the acerbic comment that trains are a rich man’s toy.
This can’t be good.
Regarding railway organisation. I am a total believer in fragmentation of the railway into specific business units, with the
financial results clearly delineated and support (if required)
determined individually on its merits.
I do accept that to many, this is strong meat.
basically back to 1914 but not the same definitions as the railway
companies of that time, based upon more logical current business requirements. This is fighting talk in some circles.
@Alan Robinson – you assert that an annual season ticket holder costing £5000 per annum is being charged a surcharge of 25% to provide a cross subsidy. Where is your evidence for this apart from an assumption that funds directed to DfT by financially successful franchise holders via premium payments are indirectly used to provide subsidies to rural services. As far as I am aware there is no clear trail to show that the price of one ticket (season or otherwise) includes an element to subsidise a rural line. The cost of the ticket reflects a need to maintain the whole network and your approach suggests a beggar your neighbour approach whereby I as a ticket holder using South West Trains should only be contributing to that small portion of line my train actually travels upon and no element should be defrayed even to support any other element of SWT’s operations. Such atomisation does not work in practice even though an economist might develop a model to claim it will.
Also you are concerned that the excessive cost of anytime fares is deterring travel by train and the railway network is the poorer for this loss of income. Again where is the evidence to support this contention? If the anytime fares are to be reduced what percentage reduction would be required to generate sufficient additional travel to offset the reduction in income? Also where is the evidence to suggest this would be a natural outcome?
You also seem to be saying that the presence of advance fares distorts the market and these should be curtailed if not abolished. If so where is the evidence that the travelling public will respond to continue to travel by rail in the same or greater numbers using anytime tickets albeit at a reduced cost? In the absence of such evidence it is merely an assumption and one that is not supported by current operations.
Whatever else they maybe the franchise holders (and for that matter Directly Operated Railway services) have a very keen interest in growing revenue and generally seem to be succeeding despite their heavy reliance on advance and other discounted fares.
Your view that a return to a pre 1914 arrangement would be a desirable outcome is bizarre. The history of railway companies within the UK demonstrated a continuing need to amalgamate and where possible create regional monopolies such as the NER and the LBSC. Some would argue that the future of some of those companies was poor even without the impact of World War One. Bear in mind there were originally over 1000 railway companies although many of those were short lived or were vechicles for larger companies to grow the market or stymie their competition. An economist would say a monopoly is the most efficient although that does gives rise to the question of how do you ensure a monopoly does not abuse its market position.
The most ferocious competition in 19th century England was in Kent where the SER and the LCDR effectively bankrupted themselves until they were brought together as a single operation under the South Eastern and Chatham Operating Committee. Yet in Edwardian Britain the companies operating in the South East had the worst reputation for quality of service a reputation which was transformed over a 20 year period following their amalgamation into the Southern Railway. Frankly I think any arrangement is problematic but we are where we are. I think most people would prefer to keep the current network whatever it’s idiosyncrasies. Whilst it may not be your intention your approach is to keep paring down in the quest for a perfectly financially viable network. The danger with that approach is by focusing on a narrowly defined specific you lose sight of the purpose of a railway network in 21st century Britain. The assumptions which underpinned the management of the late 20th century network have changed. The growth in passenger traffic is astonishing and I think it is clear it is not just a statistical blip. We have exceeded the passenger count for 1921 when the network was twice as large and the number of stations was over three times greater. To a certain extent we are in uncharted territory and I would be loath to see closures or reductions in service until we have fully understood what is happening. Arguably looking back the Beeching cuts went too far given the current traffic levels although no one expected this turnaround at that time. Indeed Treasury in the nineties assumed that privatisation would curb or contain subsidy as use of the network continued to decline.
@RichardB
The 25% cross subsidy I postulated is just a theoretical model
to illustrate the principle. There is no cross-subsidy effect of that
magnitude in the UK as yet, but with continued real fare increases
and growth in demand, who knows, could come to pass.
At present , my calculations indicate that South West Trains
are rendering a surplus of approx. 3% of turnover back into
total rail account. This means, at very least that SWT passengers
are (broadly) paying 3% more than necessary to achieve a “break
even”. Incidentally, “Break even” used to be the official directive
to British Railways in the 1950s (and other nationalised industries).
It is true that there is no actual transation from one TOC to another
in respect of surpluses (or support either), but the Government
treats rail support in aggregate,and in effetcthis is exactly what
does happen when reporting on this aggregated national basis.
You suggest that “compartmentalisation” of accounts is a beggar
my neighbour approach. Absolutely right, what possible obligation
or duty (moral economic or otherwise) is incumbent on any
consumer to pay for more than the production of the specific good
or service acquired?
The Tyne & Wear metro passenger doesn’t pay anything towards the Bakerloo line, why should a SWT Trains passenger be expected to support (say) the Cumbrian Coast?
The disparate collection of railway routes are no more a national
system (financially speaking) than the UK’s trams and metros.
This notion of a national network, treated as one is the whole problem.
I did used to believe these conventions ,until, when working for
BR Provincial in the 1980s, not only did I see the necessity for
separate “bottom line management” on a sector and sub sector
basis, I saw the improved financial results it delivered.
The provincial sector reduced its call on public funds (PSO) by
nearly half between 1984 and 1990, entirely due to this concentration
on specificity. Note that during this period the PSO was ring fenced
between for each of the two supported sectors. I also had the immense pleasure and satisfaction of managing the PTE (S 20)
accounts. Each of these PTE sponsored systems was effectively a business in its own right, the bottom linebeing managedby the
PTE who specified services and fares. Fare levels were also totally
“ring fenced”, specific to each PTE. There was no nonsense about
putting up fares in (say) West Mids to help out Greater Manchester
through a difficult time.
Railways amalgamated throughout the 19th cent (and into early 20th
cent) for the same reasons that amalgamations take place in other
industries, to attempt to affect economies, therefore better returns
to shareholders. There were some “benign” amalgamations, the
SECR managing committee (never a proper amalgamation) did
produce a better railway, but would the public have benefitted from
a full merger of SECR and LBSCR ?(more doubtful).
A Railway needs to be big enough to be managed effectively (economies of scale re infrastructure etc) but not so big that it becomes unwieldy and too complex to achieve a good market focus.
The LMS (biggest joint stock company in the world) was much too
big and thrashed around, so was the LNER (chronically bankrupt).
The GWR trundled on in stately magnificence, slightly expanded.
The Southern may have seemed to have done well, but the electrification, welcome as it was, masked increasing obsolescence
on the rest of it. SR’s loco and carriage new build was only about
one third replacement level 1923-39, hence ancient T9s etc on
ex Waterloo main line trains.
In any case, the 1923 grouping was an extraordinary government
directed attempt to avoid the pressing need to restore freight
tariffs to their “real” price level of 1914. Tariffs had fallen behind
during the 200% inflation of WW1 and there was a terrible post war
slump. Government was reluctant to restore sanity on tariffs, the
whole UK railway industry was going bust, so they enforced the
BIG four monsters.
I would maintain, that, if they had the guts to allow a normal
profitability to be restored (tariff increase) then Britain’s railways
would have been better more efficiently delivered under the 1914
set up.
The purpose of a railway network;-
The same as it always was, to enable people to travel and goods to
be conveyed. BUT passengers make overwhelmingly specific journeys
confined to one network, and it is imperative that this is managed
as such. Surbiton -Waterloo, Orpington – Cannon St etc.
With freight, ahaaa, this is a little different. The freight business
is much more disparate and wide ranging. As late as the early 1950s
the railways earned 75% of their income from freight, and the
enthusiasm for treating Britain’s railways as one network is more
understandable in terms of facilitating freight movement.
BUT railfreight lost its pre-eminence, and UK railways became a
passenger prime industry by the 1970s, Just a statement of fact.
Therefore, with freight secondary, the railway needs to be organised
as a passenger transport system. This was what BR sectorisation
was about, the confident assertion of the passenger business.
And this passenger business is overwhelmingly specific to defined
local network, in terms of management control.
nothing precludes through working over another railways metals.
It was the fact that GC accessed Marylebone over the MET that
led to the extraordinary end to the Marylebone closure proposal of
1986!!!
(Hooray, back on topic).
As an over £5k annual season ticket holder on SWT, I am unimpressed by AR’s arguments. There are many many places where I and my family hardly ever go, because the railway line there has been shut. The more the (hopefully busy) locations that can be afforded out of generalised railway funding (including any identified cross subsidy), to be added back to the network, the better in my opinion. Many Londoners and South Westerners may not choose to go often to Mansfield, but how stupid to close the railway in 1964 to a town of ca. 100,000 population. (BTW, our company helped to secure the European coalfield community grants towards the line’s eventual reopening.)
There are plenty of other places sized at 15,000 population or well above – the 15k criterion was favoured in the ATOC report of a few years ago. For example, try Wisbech at nearly 30,000 with no quick and easy way to access the high value Cambridge economy.
At the other end of the spectrum, of the last three occasions that I went to Ilfracombe (so not the busiest location), the earliest was on a train. The second, on MV Balmoral the other year. The third, on an Exmoor holiday when the car was used as the holiday vehicle, and no public transport was used at all. Ventnor? only twice – once by ferry and train, and once by ferry and bus. Their economic loss, for example with fewer visitors coming and spending money. (Not that I expect those two to be top of any reopening list.)
The future of railways is as an enabler of access, connectivity, Gross Value Added, and many other aspects of a quality life. Graham H is correct to observe that the Beeching process just ceased, and that there has been little rational definition of the places that should now be connected, once again (or even for the first time – eg a new town in the middle of nowhere – Skelmersdale or Peterlee, anyone?).
There might (just might) be some places now meriting disconnection from the network (try Berney Arms or Tees-side Airport for starters, based on national station usage, or Sudbury & Harrow Road, to offer the least used London commuter location) but pragmatic reality is that the politics now generally say nay if there’s a strong push back. I’d rather the same management and policy time was spent getting more for our railways, including making the existing railway engineering more affordable than Network Rail’s eye-watering costs – now there’s a desirable rationale for reducing season ticket fares!
Richard B
Arguably looking back the Beeching cuts went too far given the current traffic levels …
It is a not-uncommon trope to suggest, quite strongly that of the Marples/Beeching cuts, or indeed any closure after 1958 ( I have chosen that date quite deliberately) that:
Case “A”: Approximately one third of the subsequent closures should have happened long since – i.e. the lines should never have been built in the first place.
Case “B”: Another third should never have been proposed for closure, ever, & could, even at that time, have produced a better return from the service provided, especially with proper timetabling & re-connectivity.
Case “C”: The remaining, difficult triad, where closure might have been a good idea, or a return to a complete “basic railway” would have saved the day – maybe, maybe not.
“D”: This assumes, of course, that as a supposedly single industry, route-rationalisation at the local level could/would have produced one useful service rather than 2 or 3 useless ones – this would have required localised investment for long-term gain.
In fact the current Nottingham – Mansfield – Worksop service is exactly one such case.
Examples: “A”: The Barry Railway main line, the Hull & Barnsley, duplicate lines up the S Welsh valleys.
“B”: The main line of the Withered Arm, Harrogate – Northallerton, Spalding – Louth – Grimsby, the Woodhead
“C”: Simplifying the lines up the Leen vally N of Nottingham – also a case for “D” incidentally, Guildford – Horsham, 3 Bridges – Tun Wells & Uckfield – Lewes etc.
“D”: Padstow – Bodmin – Bodmin Jn, Oxford – Cambridge, Sudbury – Shelford, N of Nottingham as above.
But the assumption, driven by fashion ( & greed & corruption) was to assume that the railways were finished.
On freight, one must also remember, that, even with the loss of much of the huge bulk coal traffic, a lot of freight was “thrown away” ( by diktat IIRC ) & that with really modern container-handling methods, it might be possible to regain a lot of that traffic. [ minimum load – onc container & from / to specific points – it would require, however the re-invention of something like a marshalling yard – except it would be the containers, not the wagons that were moved around. ] ???
Anon
You posted whilst I was writing , & one of your examples prompts an addendum: why did I pick 1958?
The M&GN [The Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway, (M&GN) was a joint railway owned by the Midland Railway (MR) and the Great Northern Railway (GNR) in eastern England. LBM], of course, parts of which should have gone immediately, parts should have been re-connected to the system in different ways & parts should have been kept open & even developed – in other words a mixture of all 4 of my “cases”
Oh & “Mansfield” of course, not Mansfiled – oh for an “edit” button!
Your 15 000 population-size will trigger a groan from others, because, of course, Haverhill fits that bill perfectly(!)
@Anonymous
May I please attempt to put this as tactfully and respectfully as
I can;-
Your willingness to pay an over £3k fare (over the odds maybe) so
as to be able to visit all sorts of places by rail;-
You WOULD say that wouldn’t you;- because
YOU ARE NOT A NORMAL PERSON!!!
You are a Railway/Transport enthusiast. So am I, we’re WEIRD!!!
The normal person travels on a specific journey, to work, college,
Football, visit Gran etc, and they just want to pay a fair (fare) price
for the journey actually undertaken.
On my ramblings throughout Brtain by rail (over 98% of routes
now bashed) , I have discussed this issue with many fellow travellers
encountered, and “normal” people all say the same. They only care
about the journey that they make, almost invariably a regular trip.
(OK you get some railrover types).
If you can summon up the nerve, try it for yourself, see what you get.
Other points (and important valid ones)
Desirability of maintaining rail services to a wide range of destinations (Ilfracombe and Ventnor mentioned). Absolutely,
Transport (any sort) confers external benefits on the economy and
society of the region served, of national benefit too. The ancient
Romans knew this, They knew it in the Middle ages, hence building
of bridges and provision of ferries. Adam Smith knew it too, and
referred to the need for the state to provide great works (infrastructure) that benefit trade but cannot pay for themselves.
BUT it is vital that the specific benefits of such works, or services
can be individually computed. Without which there is no credible
business case. As these external benefits accrue to the benefit of
the region/nation served then it is right and proper that this should
be funded from general taxation, not other users of viable portions
of said networks.
Network Rail. Correct, Still much too dear, Cost blew up after Railtrack collapse, time they came down a bit. Best of luck to anyone
trying to bring this about, could be dodgy, one prang attributable to
“cuts” and any politician who had demanded the cuts be made is dead.
AR
I pay for my season ticket because it efficiently gets me to work as a transport professional. That isn’t weird. For that money I have a pleasantly large house that couldn’t be afforded anywhere near London. It’s cheaper to commute than pay London housing costs. I prefer to work on trains and to spend other travel time looking out of the window rather than driving. Don’t you? Many other people use public transport by preference – if they can. That’s doesn’t make them weird, either. You’re stuck in Herefordshire – but that’s your choice of location, and you’ll have your own reasons I’m sure. That doesn’t make you weird either. But please do NOT go around accusing others of weirdness because of their own, rational, choices.
By the way, my discussions with our line’s guards and train drivers may indeed be weird, because unlike most commuters I actually bother to talk to the people who are making my journey possible and they generally do their very best. Shame perhaps that more ‘normal
computer stopped too soon…
Shame perhaps that more ‘normal’ commuters and occasional travellers don’t talk to railway staff, rather than either ignore or harangue them. You find out a lot about the real transport world for the front line. On our trains, too, us passengers also talk to each other from time to time, unlike closer to London…
One hesitates to add to a growing pile of curious views on the question of networks and cross-subsidy, but a little clarity of thought may help.
One, cross-subsidy is inevitable on every public transport trip the moment you add more than one seat or more than one station. As the fatuous Treasury argument I have mentioned indicates, there are set up costs which are incurred whether you run any sort of service or not and these have to be funded somehow.
Two, the next question is the level of disaggregation at which cross-subsidy may take place – it can be in the course of a single trip (as envisaged, the lawyers tell me) in the EU regulations requiring tendering of services – and as practised by the bus sector, but not rail fortunately) ; it can be some arbitrary cost centre/divisional /regional level; it can be between operators, or even within the consolidated accounts of the Department of Transport on the grounds of fungibility of funds. None of these is “right” and all of them inevitable.
Three, runs anguished hand through thinning hair, how often do we have to say that 1/3 of all NR’s costs have nothing to do with any specific line and would be incurred even if not a single train ran? Another third cannot be located below regional/zonal/area level, leaving only a smaller portion which have any relationship to the operation of a train service. Closures do not save any of the first of these thirds, nor much of the second third and by no means all of the remaining third, which is why Beeching failed. Nevertheless, these unspreadbale costs have to be met and depending on how they are spread, the degree of cross-subsidy moves around with them. So – a “financial network” if you like. It’s the reason why it’s irrelevant to say that a London commuter is crossubsidising (or not) some other arbitrary trip maker.
Four, a network comprises – in theory – anything with more than two stations. People do use the railway system to make a variety of journeys, perhaps less in the case of commuters, but all the Board’s own internal studies showed this to be so. Stripping out the commuter element, the general finding was that about 40% of all journeys crossed the boundaries of cost centres; for freight, probably closer to 100%.
@Anonymous
OK OK fare cop, I’ll come quietly.
Perhaps I wasn’t actually as tactful and respectful as intended.
What I meant was that those of us who have a deep interest in transport
actually enjoy getting around as much as possible, exploring the rail
network, and yes, I spend most of my time looking out the window
etc. So , of course quite naturally we would like to have railways to
everywhere (within reason). I don’t think that the (Non transport
enthusiast) general public sees it like that.
I’m off to Manchester tomorrow to thoroughly monitor the loadings
on the new Airport line, just my own interest. This is what I mean
by weird. (so you could have a quiet day tomorrow on this thread)
Off to London Thursday. more swanning around watching and learning. Next week all over the place, including Belgium (trams)
even weirder. From now on, until end of November, there won’t be
a single period of more than two days without extensive travel
(all over Europe, and UK anywhere from Wick to Penzance).
I would willingly spend the whole of the rest of my life on trains,
not least because, you meet people, the best thing.
You are absolutely right about communication. The more that
managers, staff and customers talk and correspond, the better.
@Graham H
having expended a great deal of time developing and implementing BR’s infrastructure costing systems (i.e. located costs and Sole User adjustment) I do claim to have extensive of these “black arts”.
I recognise all the difficulties that you list.
This Is why, in later life (after years of reflection) I am drawn into
belatedly recognising the virtue of an integrated self contained
railway. There may be some cross-subsidy within any transport network, all depends on how the accountants attribute costs.
but for a “reasonable” sensibly sized railway, the question should
be satisfactorily contained.
As you say, with a National Organisation (NR) to own and manage
rail infrastructure you have a nightmare world of layers of
overheads, direct costs , semi direct costs and goodness knows costs.
With a self contained corporate railway company, the infrastructure
costs are simply identified, they are the expenditures incurred by
the railway company’s civil and signal engineering depts. (plus
transfers and charges).
So, supposing nasty civil servant in Dft wants to close down
Shrewsbury – Aberystwyth/Pwhelli ? Another nightmare closure
case, but , if this railway was one corporate entity, (Cambrian?)
then it’s all simple.
The LMS did such a study in 1938/37. Outside consultants were
brought in to do a Beeching/Serpell type job on the Highland Division (everything north of Perth). As the LMS hadn’t changed anything since the days of the Highland Railway in 1922, they
could just lift the figures out of divisional working results (Ok with
some jiggery pokery re through traffic of course).
It scared the pants off the LM directors, the consultants recommended closing the lot at one fell swoop (I saw the report,
still hanging around in Euston HQ Finance dept in early 70s).
My first day on BR was in July 1969 at Waterloo HQ.
Attached to Economic Survey Officer (– Glassborough).
He showed me the Southern Region’s working results in summary,
and said, take away, come back in an hour and tell me something.
I did, and reported back, Sir, this is a profitable railway, in the black.
He said, correct, could be sold and would make money for shareholders from day one, and with private sector investment,
profits would eventually be stonking!
So, he said, whatever you have read about BR deficits, they are not
incurred on the Southern.
SWT trains is just regaining this natural viability, fine.
South Eastern’s not so good though.
To my naive little mind…
It makes absolute sense to assign costs that can genuinely be assigned to some cost centre and this should be done. E.g. We should know the true cost of keeping the station lighting on. We should be aware of this and not hide it in some generalised electricity cost. There maybe something that could be done if you can isolate costs e.g. switch the lights off during the day (almost back on topic given how often Marylebone’s copious station lights always seem to be on whether needed or not) or install more energy efficient lighting.
We might not always get down to station level but identifiable costs are still helpful e.g. comparing cost of running diesel traction compared to electric traction on similar routes.
As Graham H keeps pointing out, the dangerous game to play is to allocate costs to a cost centre when one cannot truly identify that cost with that centre. If the cost centre disappeared would the cost genuinely go away or (being artificial) would it simply have to be allocated to somewhere else?
It is also a dangerous game to allocate incomes to different portions of the rail network. It is generally fine to allocate a SWT only season to SWT but a ticket from a London suburb to a remote Welsh station is much more problematic.
The two great problems are the fixed costs that Network Rail has (e.g. servicing debt, maintaining redundant structures) and almost fixed costs that can realistically only be recovered by closing the line and external costs and benefits that are much harder to compute and then raise issues about how much these should be taken into account. A critical factor here is when people rely on trains for employment and if the trains went would the jobs disappear or merely go elsewhere?
Where I would support Alan Robinson to some extent is that supposedly fixed costs can be looked at much more critically. Provincial Services got the engineers very involved and really got on with what needed doing and what could beneficially be done at worthwhile cost rather than just accept that engineers need to maintain the line and it would cost a fixed unarguable amount. Progress was really being made but all that was lost under the disruptive influence of privatisation – which is not to say the same thing cannot be achieved on a privatised railway but it is probably more difficult although one would think the bigger incentive was there to do so.
The incremental cost argument is also behind the fallacy of “revenue protection” having to catch every last person regardless of the cost. A lone freeloader does not actually cost the railway anything except the tiny cost of the energy needed to move him. The train will run whether he is there or not, so it is not the same as nicking a packet of Smarties from Tescos. More zealous revenue inspection may make some freeloaders pay up to travel, but there are others who will simply not travel if they have to pay, so the cost of setting up barriers etc will not see any return from such people. And of course there are the horror stories of overzealous inspections resulting in travellers who have been pemalised for innocent mistakes vowing never to use a train ever again – with all the revenue implications that involves. There was a report in metro this morning on that very subject
@PoP
“A Dangerous game to allocate income to different portions
of the Railway Network”
help, if this is so, I SHOULD HAVE BEEN PAID DANGER MONEY!
This was done on a comprehennsive scale by BR since the 1970s, by
fiendish computer systems such as NPAAS and ORCATS, that
group ticket receipts by flows, then allocate to train services that
apply to those flows. It’s still done on same basis today, except
that we have total data capture (well almost except for rovers etc).
In the good old days, railway companies were allocated due portion of receipts (both passenger and freight) by the Railway Clearing House.
You are correct about difficulties of applying costs on a specific basis
and for closure cases, only AVOIDABLE costs were allowed to be included (as with Marylebone, I know cos I did em).
But with a corporate Railway company, under the companies acts
and supplying a proper audited accounts etc, then (within the
boundaries of that companies ownership,) then cost data is accurate,
It’s the costs incurred to that company. Accountants can argue till the
cows come home about subsequent treatment (and do).
Railway Clearinghouse rules used to respect INFRASTRUCTURE
ownership as the geographical determinant of costs and revenues
for transfer to/from companies (e.g. where through running occurred). It was precisely these Railway Clearing house rules
that applied to the GC/MET re Marylebone, hence the continuing
complex arrangement, the proper application of which scuppered
the closure case (to my great glee). Doubtless, a recognisable version
continues to the present day (I’d love to find out).
@Timbeau
The marginal cost of a passenger;-
I thrashed this out at a management conference years ago;-
The cost of the cardboard forming the ticket.
timbeau says “A lone freeloader does not actually cost the railway anything except the tiny cost of the energy needed to move him”
Well yes, but they are not lone, are they? Some at least of the fare-dodgers caught actually bring the railway far more than the amount of the fine, because of the deterrent effect. Many people who might be tempted to cheat do not actually do so, because of fear of getting caught.
Well, that’s the theory, anyway.
@Malcolm
I am reminded of a wonderful tale (in some book or other)
recounting initial proposals to distaff stations and introduce paytrains.
At this meeting, an old time Area Manager (from Aberdeen) thundered
on about how these proposals were totally unacceptable because
they would result in gross immorality!
Was he anticipating orgies in unattended stations?
No, to a railwayman from Aberdeen, “gross immorality” is travelling
without paying for a ticket.
@Alan Robinson:
Comparing SWT with South Eastern is therefore very much apples vs. oranges.
SWT have a proper, hairy-chested mainline railway that’s relatively simple and serves a vast territory. It has four-tracking all the way out to Woking; it is blessed with plenty of grade-separated junctions, and the route serves a number of cities. Inter-city services are the easiest services to make a profit on. Shifting stuff in bulk quantities (including passengers) over long distances, at speed, is by far the most efficient use of trains. Commuter services, with their frequent stops and relatively short distances, are not.
South Eastern have a bunch of dysfunctional railways, most of which were built primarily to shift agricultural goods. Their entire territory comprises south-east London and… Kent. You can count the number of major conurbations in that county on the fingers of one hand, so inter-city services aren’t a major revenue stream. The rest of the network is limited to less efficient local, regional, and commuter services, few of which make any real money.
Speed is only an option on HS1, which is the only line anywhere in Kent that lets trains hit triple-digit speeds. 90 mph. is the top speed on the 3rd rail network, but South Eastern’s lines inside the M25 barely manage 60-70 mph.; even the Medway Towns getting just 30 mph. between Strood and Gillingham.
South Eastern aren’t even playing the same game as South West Trains, let alone playing in the same league. The latter is a proper mainline railway. The former is running a regional metro in all but name.
Ignore the “therefore” in my opening sentence. Serves me right for copy-pasting it from the end of the post to the start.
(@Alan Robinson: you do know you only need to do a carriage return at the end of each paragraph, right? The computer will take care of the rest. That’s what it’s for.)
Groan . . .
http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/Briefing_1501_Paving%20over%20the%20tracks_web.pdf
@Anomnibus
Correct, South Eastern does have an inherited weakness compared
to the other two constituents of the old “Southern”.
I did draw attention to this in previous when I mentioned that the
Southern REGION as was showed a positive bottom line despite the
South Eastern division.
I know Kent well, was brought up there (Medway Towns) and lived
there for just over forty years. My first permanent railway position
was at South Eastern Division HQ 1 Albemarle Road Beckenham.
The basic weakness is, the traffic density fizzles out, the farther
east you go, whereas the South Western and Brighton networks
have solid traffic originators (and destinations) at their extremities.
The populations of Bournemouth, Southampton, Portsmouth,
Worthing, Brighton, Bexhill etc far eclipse the minor towns in East Kent as traffic originators, and there is also the collapse in holiday traffic to Thanet which used to be good (I remember the Thanet Belle
ah those were the days). There’s something else, going back to the
Kent Coast electrification of 1959/61. They built a major train depot
at Ramsgate , for goodness sake. Given the thing out of traffic in
East Kent, this has resulted in 12 car trains trundling about with load factors of about 5% (up till about 01.30 in morning and starting up at
04.00 in morning). This has resulted in very poor stock utilisation.
Logic suggests that train depots should have been at Ashford, Faversham etc. As you say, much of it is really a rural rail network
but with long major commuter railway trains. The Javelin depot
at Ashford has at least got that right. Some sections are almost forgotten “ghost” lines, such as Maidstone-Ashford, zilch business last time I sampled it. But not all gloom, the Ashford-Hastings
(I know, its now Southern) has come up leaps and bounds.
However, the nearer you get to London, the busier the trains, but my
impression is that local business has all but disappeared.
Could this be because fares , priced in accordance with the London
travel market are just overpriced for local travel such as Canterbury
Ramsgate or Paddock Wood – Ashford etc?
In 1968 Eyebrows were raised considerably (at the Dtp) when the
Southern Region submitted grant claims for PORTIONS of the
South Eastern Network. This included Ashford-Ramsgate I think.
@Anomnibus
SWT isn’t just a long-distance railway, although you could be forgiven for overlooking the SW London commuter services – after all SWT management usually do.
On freeloaders – yes stronger enforcement does encourage a few who might otherwise chance it to pay up, but overzealous enforcement can be counterproductive.
http://metro.co.uk/2015/02/02/rail-companies-told-to-stop-treating-passengers-like-criminals-5046930/
On freeloaders; though there have been some well publicised “well to do” fare evaders exposed recently, the public perception is probably of an anti-social being. And with this, the concept that if somebody engages in one form of anti-social behaviour then they are just as likely to engage in others. Littering, vandalism, loud music, threatening behaviour, feet on seats, take your pick. If it becomes known that particular stations or routes are easy pickings for fare dodgers then it may deter legitimate travellers and drive them on to other forms of transport, depriving the railway of potential revenue. Not to mention the cost of clearing up after such people.
On South Eastern. I think it’s faintly unfair to call its turf “inefficient” given the sheer number of people in moves in and out of London every day. Also it may not have cash cows such as Brighton at its disposal but the idea that it has little local traffic seems misguided; there may not be many going from Paddock Wood to Maidstone but it’s a different story in the London suburbs.
I’ll just say that I am very puzzled by Alan R’s seeming obsession with allocating costs and revenues down to the nth degree. A sensible allocation of costs and revenues are fine where they allow effective management and investment decisions to be taken. Doing them off the back of some accounting theory because it generates lots of numbers seems peculiar. Also obsessing about the marginal effects (plusses and minusses) with a complex transport network to try to avoid cross subsidy is getting us back to the alleged Nicholas Ridley nonsense of buses should only run the profitable direction and not return in service on the “unprofitable” contra peak direction. Completely mad. If we are playing with numbers then you can take the revenue and cost numbers for the TfL bus network and show that is dreadfully over subsidised or that it is effectively profitable. It just depends on how you decide to treat certain elements of revenue and tender costs. TfL did this in the latest Annual Report and also in the most recent business plan. This was in response to concerns from London Assembly members that buses were being disadvantaged when compared to rail modes given the very different treatments of investment costs and also the vastly higher element of concessionary fare revenue on the bus network. If you look at the very basic operating level of TfL services then the Tube makes an operating profit and the DLR, Tramlink and Overground are not far behind. What they can’t do is fund their capital investment needs. The bus network, at aggregate level, just “washes its face” financially but tender costs contain a massive hidden subsidy to the contractors for new or refurbished buses that TfL require via the tendering process. Those assets don’t come for free.
I would also make two other remarks – given the massive scale of grant that goes into Transport for London then I am afraid that a passenger on the Tyne and Metro (or the Glasgow Subway or Sheffield Tram or West Yorkshire Bus) is paying to fund not only the Bakerloo Line but also the DLR, Tramlink and the W10 bus to Crews Hill. They may only be funding investment on the tube but they are still paying towards it.
I thought it was a well understood fact that season tickets are horrendously underpriced when you compare the effective daily rate when set against what a day return ticket would cost. There are also the issues of longer period multiplier factors also allowing “free” days or weeks. I know rail commuters would be outraged by such statements so don’t send round the death squads! If you want to rebalance fares within franchises and get rid of “susbidy” then its the season ticket holders you have to go after – they cause the cost base to be so high in terms of handling peak demand. Of course this will never happen because it would be a complete disaster for the politicians who promoted / pursued such a policy.
Could it be that someone at the New Statesman has been reading our prolonged discussion on rail fares? Check out their spin off site CityMetric.com article:
http://www.citymetric.com/transport/everything-you-know-about-british-train-fares-wrong-704
Is Withrington still going? It’s quite incredible how one man still keeps popping up, whose ideas have been debunked more times than I care to remember.
Who on earth does he expect to fund such a scheme and why? It’s not going to be the public, there’s no support and never has been, nor are the political class queuing up to sell it. Cambs county council are still pretty much a laughing stock, and that was a new busway, not replacing a railway.
The IEA supposedly supports competition and free markets. Quite incredible they endorsing a scheme that reduces completion and there is no business case. Marples would have loved it, ironic his disappeared to Monaco owing million in tax – by train.
10,000 miles are railway are going to cost at least £100 billion to convert (based on Cambs busway figures – which is btw, falling apart), in fact with land take, rebuilding of junctions and so on, easily double that. That’s without the disruption, loss in house price values in commuting areas, the costs of laying off and retraining off 190,000 rail works that pay taxes. He never includes those figures, conveniently.
The bus industry gets 3 billion from fares revenue and 2.5 billion in government support per year. Most reasonable people support this as it allows low income groups and people like students and pensioners access to jobs and leisure.
In the world of the EIA they would be doubling their fares (no subsidy allowed, tut tut). After all we’ll have so much more left when were all on zero hours contacts, paying massive rents and leases on cars and homes we’ll never own, as well as paying for private education and healthcare. All things they support. When the economy collapses again, they’ll be safely in a gated tax haven counting money and doing press releases on the next money making scheme.
In order to pay for this scheme they (the fantasy buses companies, that are queuing up to endorse it) have to up the fares some more, At only £200 billion, a sure fire winner running on congestion free rights of way with pensioners desperate to get to bingo. Don’t mention the bus wars though. These pesky companies that will compete running up the much faster (ahem motorways, dual carriageways etc) with lower fares, cross subsidised by car drivers running on a (road) network 24 times bigger are a mere technicality.
So there’s no public case, no business case, and practically it’s a dead duck too. Lines like Crossrail, Thameslink, the Victoria line have double the capacity of the average grade separated busway (45,000 pph v 20,000), which would take several years to put in. I’m sure a city like London (with 80 percent of people coming into the centre by rail every day) or Birmingham (42%) would cope splendidly. Business leaders in Sheffield, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol and Birmingham are going to be delighted being 2-3 times further from London in terms of time and other major cities, that’ll really help the labour supply and business activity. Commuters too will be delighted, far less time at home with the nagging husband and wife.
So yep, great idea Paul (you borrowed). Keep writing to the Times, and doing press releases and fact sheets, I’m sure we’ll “get it” eventually.
@Anonymous
I’ve studied the output of the Railway Conversion League, and
Paul Withrington’s Transport-Watch site in great depth, trying
to make sense of them, and also trying fathom out what their
motivation is. It’s not commercial, there are no investors lining up
anticipating wonderful profits from running buses on converted
railways.
This is it: (you can get the drift of this in odd comments).
What they really want is a network of super exclusive high speed
highways, only available to drivers of high performance cars, on a
toll basis. It’s the perfect realisation of the mythical J Bonnington
Jagworth (of the “Motorists liberation front” a wonderful feature
of the long lamented Peter Simple series in the Daily Telegraph.
J.Bonnington Jagworth was always deriding lesser motorists in
their “Boggs snail Popular” getting in his way. So that’s who
PeterSimple is, James Bonnington Jagworth.
Converting railways into busways is just a device to bring about this
new motoring heaven on earth, without trains (125mph) replaced
by buses (55mph) Britain’s businesses will clamour for this super
exclusive highway network, leaving the plebs to mix it with trucks
on the old inferior motorways.
The Motorists’ liberation Front also included;-
The Rev John Goodwheel (The motorists’ padre, he went cruisn arouns the UK in a mobile cathedral giving sermons on motoring
heaven to come) and;-
Royston Cylinder : Crypto Marxist Chief of staff (who plotted a
different sort of proletarian workers motoring paradise, all driving
trabis I suppose).
They used to meet in an inspection pit bunker, somewhere near Staines. The motoring revolution never got anywhere due to
irreconcilable differences between the Rev John Goodwheel and
the Atheist Royston Cylinder.
These revolutionary councils always ended in a slanging match, J Bonnington Jagworth retiring to console himself with a pint of BGA
drunk from a silver hubcap.
Absolutely wonderful.
As is often the case, many a true word spoken in jest.
@WW – How you allocate costs depends on the reason you ask the question in the first place – and there are as many different answers (ie allocation formulae) as there questions . A lot of the recent discussion on this thread assumes that there is a single or “right” answer. There is no such thing. Do I want to know how much cost is avoidable if I close a line? if so, I also need to know what time frame you have in mind: closure today would save some fuel andmaybe staff costs today; over a month, I’d certainly save some staff costs and probaly some track inspection costs, too. Over a year, I might begin to avoid track and rolling stock maintenance; and so on. Would I save marginal costs? Who knows – depends on what slack resources are around. If I’m looking at the system as a whole, then Imight have different time horizons and take into account other costs but again there’s no “right” answer. In most cases, it’s a matter of what answer would you like?
As with cost allocation, so with cross-subsidy. You can “prove” anything you like, depending on the level of transfer payments to which you zoom in or out. As a Humpty Dumpty argument, it is perfectly possible to argue that the cash flows within the EU are such that the inhabitants of Long Benton are subsidising the Athens metro, but I’m far from clear what that proves. (Unless you’re a Daily Express reader)
Alan Robinson
Yes, it was wonderful stuff.
One small correction: Peter Simple was the name of the column and the journalist was Michael Wharton.
The column continued under Auberon Waugh but, alas, those wonderful characters were lost.
I’ll recount hearing a drunken slur by a former chief executive of a company, whose company had made a successful bid in the first round of bus privatisations…
Something like….
“To be honest, there’s no money in running the buses. We can’t make money in ferrying three incontinent old biddies home from bingo every Wednesday night. We want the garages and the bus stations.
I note that Dorking, Leatherhead, Chelsham, etc bus garages have since been ‘developed’.
A blog that amongst other things mentions that British Railways during the 1970s was Britiain’s largest purveyor of wines is relevant to the theme of previous comments regarding privatisation shortcomings.
This just shows what spending your careers on the railways will do, no thinking outside the box…. converting them into busways is a fantastic idea whose time has come. Clearly you would want to add some sort of automated guidance system, and possibly a way to connect them together so less drivers are needed, but once that is done then I’m all for it
… Apologies to whoever I have remembered that joke from the last time this subject was brought up
@Herned – and you will need some snappy acronym ; perhaps Tracked Rail Assisted Module or similar.
Yes I suspect property ‘development’ is the real motivation. Some prime city centre sites they can buy from the government at knock down prices, and re-rent to us all at extortionate rents, while sipping champagne on their yachts. The buses in the meantime quietly returned to normal roads – after all, the poor people that are left on them won’t complain, and even if they do they won’t be listened to. #Savile #Hillsborough. The better off by this time will all have bought cars, like they did after the Beeching cuts and closure of tramways in the 60s, hence the problems we have now.
Reminds me of Stagecoach when they took over SWT, Brain Souter was shocked when letters about poor service appeared in the Times and MPs were rounded up for questioning by the middle classes. His previous clientèle were more likely to throw a brick at the bus station. (his words not mine). Admittedly the average SWT customer is highly likely to work in the city and come from leafy Surrey, but it’s not to say the average rail customer is as well healed. Rail demographics are distorted as the better jobs (IE the ones that pay a lot of tax into the economy etc) tend to be in city centres, where rail is the prime mode of access.
Though Withrington thinks train passenger are all rich. Clearly he doesn’t travel by train much. Try getting the Newark to Leicester stopper, or Birmingham to Kidderminster train, or the Hartlepool to Newcastle service.
Is it one of the following?
A pathological hate of railways, perhaps caused by a distressing childhood experience, his trousers jammed in a departing train at Weston-super-Mare? (That said I swear I read something years back about him being trapped on a train after a suicide or breakdown or something, and he tried to sue). I find it ironic he lives in Northampton, the town he voted to keep the railway out in case the sheep turned black. He spent most of his time in the council objecting to rail schemes and if a scheme is tabled he normally turns up somewhere with a letter of objection, the real ‘Swampy’ of the rail world, albeit slightly better dressed.
It could be he’s just an extreme right wing loony? Now he’s using Richard Wellings who seems to get on on every TV and radio interview going (must be his enormous number of twitter followers and undoubted appeal to the masses) it seems to be the perfect paring.
Anyway, as there is no sensible business plan (see above) really other than property development, or some psychological issue.
Pleased to see the announcement that Snow Hill station is being rebuilt, Pity it wasn’t left alone, like Nottingham Victoria, in the first place. People were sold a pup in the 60s, and Withrington is selling a pup now. Instead this time we’ve all wised up. As a non-car owner, I really don’t want to spend 3 times as long getting to the next city, though I’m quite happy to use the bus at the other end.
“converting them into busways is a fantastic idea whose time has come.”
Good, now run along to the city and go and raise all the money to do it, there’s a good man.
Radical free marketeers are always anti-rail for public transport full stop whether it’s trams, light rail, metro or high speed. If it has a steel to steel rolling interface it is inevitably old fashioned, a ‘victorian invention’ past its prime, even though the non-flanged wheels on a flat surface of their prefered solutions have been around for millennia. They always claim it is merely cost they’re concerned over, that rail always turns out more expensive than any other possible solution, but I feel this is actually more of a technique to avoid the cost of all but the most basic public transport provision, even where demand favours a more capable technology than city buses on particular well used corridors in the modern widely dispersed city region, which nevertheless still persistently contains certain small nodes of extraordinary density of commerce and employment.
I often think of an elevator analogy. Although they are very expensive to provide, modern high rise buildings cannot function without these ‘vertical railways’ and it makes sense to save valuable building space and install the most efficient high capacity technology even though there is clearly no opportunity to make some sort of market economy out of their provision and use. Hence elevators usually remain free to use for all legitimate building users.
On reading various IEA publications however and in the light of my new found free market enthusiasm I now think this is appallingly wasteful socialistic central planning of the worst sort and fervently believe ‘victorian’ elevators must be abolished forthwith starting with any new developments. They could be replaced instead by perfectly adequate competing private sedan chair services operating on the general stair networks of the buildings concerned, in the manner of jitneys.
@Alan Robinson:
One other advantage SWT and TSGreatMouthful have is that their networks are actual networks that have multiple connections to other networks. You can get from Gatwick to Guildford or Reading direct, without changing trains once. Even Virgin Cross Country run services well into SWT and even Southern territory. You can even catch a train in Birmingham that will take you all the way to Stansted Airport.
I can understand why people get frustrated with South Eastern, but its problems are almost entirely caused by the effectively isolated rail network they’re saddled with. Kent might as well be an island for all the connectivity its network has. This has played a major part in the county’s economy — or lack of it. Almost every major town and conurbation has been reduced to being a dormitory suburb for commuters working in London.
This isn’t economically healthy: Kent is almost entirely dependent on London. When London’s economy stumbles, almost every town in Kent stumbles with it. There’s no backup. No Plan B. No fall-back position. There can’t be one, because London is the only major city you can get at reasonably quickly from anywhere in Kent. Until that changes, Kent will never be able to expand its own regional economies.
This is a bit of a chicken and egg situation: Do you take the risk and spend £billions on new cross-river connections and better links to other networks, or do you take the usual short-term approach of spending that money on projects that won’t take over a generation to pay back their investment? It’s not hard to see why politicians tend to prefer the latter.
Withrington will never directly address any points raised by his factsheets, largely because they are mostly fictitious derived from some dubious calculations and claims.
Claim: Bus systems have higher capacity:
The capacities can be seen here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_rapid_transit
BRT tops out at 35,000 pph, for what is essentially a dual carriageway at Bogota. Even the 20,000 pph claimed for grade separate busway isn’t really applicable to the UK rail network, there’s an awful lot of flat crossings about. To claim buses can run 3 seconds apart, negotiating flat junctions, and taking dwell times into account, is intellectually dishonest. It’s not reality. As soon as one line, joins the next on the flat, you would need at least 1 minute for a bus to cross and pull out in front, then gain enough speed. The same applies to stopping at ‘stations’. So the effective capacity is probably nearer 60 buses per hour, or 2,400 phh using coaches. You could perhaps get to 5,000 pph by running “bendy coaches”. Claims like 75,000pph are ludicrous and bare no relation to the real world or any computer simulation.
Metro systems are typically 40-80,000 pph, with many numerous examples in the UK and abroad. These are often partially or completely automated, Heavy rail typically reaches 30-40,000 phh (and will be the case with Thamelink and Crossrail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_transit
Conclusion: False claim
Claim: Buses are cheaper than trains for the taxpayer.
Apart from Withrington does not know the difference between capital investment which has to pass CBA analysis and operating subsidy, let’s do a basic calculation.
The support to the bus industry was £2.2 billion in 2013 in England alone – aside from the money, spent in Scotland and Wales. (about another £500 million) Bus subsidies typically account for 45% of operating costs, rail subsidies are 25% of costs.
The support to the rail industry was £5 billion in the same period. So buses are half the cost of trains?
Firstly a lot of this is capital investment in things like Crossrail, electrification, etc Secondly the road system that buses use is paid for principally by motorists, amounting to a hidden subsidy, more of which later. Indeed, much of the network grant to Network rail goes just to pay interest on capital investment loans. Bus capital investment tends to be paid for by local councils.
Lastly the devil is in the detail, bus passenger kms are half that of rail (Source Transport statistic DFT 2013). So broadly speaking both bus and rail are getting the same about of direct public money.
BTW I’m not against rail OR bus subsidy as both are good value in reducing negative externalities and producing positive ones, certainly with rail there are massive land value benefits. The SE of England relies on the proximity to London, and access to London, mostly by rai.
Withrington omits telling anyone about bus subsidy, preferring to talk about coaches. Which whist do run commercially for the most part, they are a tiny part of what buses do, tend to be pre-book in nature, and are analogous to intercity rail which largely washes it’s face, and in some times generates money for the government.
Conclusion: False claim
Claim: It’s a brilliant business idea, and it would pay it’s way.
If it was such a thing, someone would be funding it. Nobody, not anyone, is interested commercially. The busways that have been built, by local councils have all by and large run into problems with cost, maintenance, and ridership (especially in the case of Luton). This has left local tax payers with huge debts.
Withrington relies on talking about money paid into the treasury by users of trunk roads. The vast majority of trunk road users are motorists. Ignoring the huge external costs of pollution, congestion, noise and so on, this isn’t ‘profit’ to the Treasury if anyone does the full equation.
Leaving that aside, the fact remains that coach and bus operators pay very little tax on fuel: give or take it is more or less than same as diesel rail per litre. There is no possible way bus and coach companies could afford to fund such a network from fuel taxes. This would imply an access charge.
So he comes down to cross-subsidy, which Withrington is obviously against for rail – even though car drivers do benefit from decrease cars on the road. And frankly rail’s modal shift is much better than bus by far.
This is important because it is the basis of the whole IEA/Transportwatch case.
Withrington normally at this point says cars can use the network off peak. Apart from people want to travel off peak, if you let any cars onto these busways – which unless they are like normal roads you cannot – it destroys all the capacity. It also means the buses are just like any other buses, with access to a network already 24 times bigger than the road network, so what’s the point? A far more cost effective and practical way for bus operators and councils; is to add bus-lanes to the current road network.
As there are no time savings to be had, the scheme wouldn’t pass any CBA analysis.
Withington also conveniently ignore taxes paid by the rail companies, their suppliers and employers.
And anyway, even if you were running such a service, what’s to stop a coach company that doesn’t have additional network costs, going into competition with you with lower fares? Bus companies are renown for bus wars, not just against other bus companies, but trams and rail too. Their real “enemy” is of course the private car, and the lack of joined up thinking is often detrimental to local transport.
So the business case, even on an operating level, let alone capital costs, collapses.
Conclusion: False claim
Final conclusion: While Paul Withrington is entitled to his opinion, this pushing of falsehoods especially if he was or is in recipient of money is dishonest and misleading.
If I was a member of the IEA I’d want be donation back for paying for such a nonsense report.
More than once,and not just in the field of transport,I have come across what might be described as “wonks” advocating one or another scheme which,under the minimum of scrutiny,turn out to be at least as hare-brained as they at first appear.
I have stood up in public meetings and challenged their spokesmen successfully.
The problem is,I am aware that although to bandy words with such people is an intellectual turkey-shoot,they can phone the Prime Minister next morning,whereas I cannot.
That is where the danger lies.
Although there are many excellent points here, I do wonder if we are giving too much “oxygen of publicity” to the IEA’s nonsense!
Personally, I suspect Wellings doesn’t believe for five minutes that any of this will ever happen- he is playing a longer game, hoping for privatisation of the motorway network.
Withrington on the other hand——-
@RobT
Oh dear, I’ve had an awayday (remember them), and come back to
find that this Paul Withrington chap has got you all going, every
which way re costs subsidies, demand , capacity etc.
I am reminded of that wonderful film “Oh Mister Porter” with its
catch phrase (uttered by the old guy at Buggleskelly station)
“Ye’re wasting your time” !
One of the most contentious propositions in the ivory towers of
economics is the question of which of these two is the driver;-
Politics or Economics.
With Iof EA and Railway Conversion league types, (they think)
it’s politics.
Best way to deal with these sort of assaults is to accentuate the positive, draw attention to the superior qualities and benefits of rail
and demonstrable public cpreference for a a good quality rail service
compared with a bus/coach. (which is so, UK bus usage down 30%
in last 30 years, rail usage UP about 90%) Rail Pass km now exceed
bus km , and just taking National Rail. Add in Tfl and metros/trams
etc rail superiority is even more apparent.
I have one relevant actual experience to relate. About 30 years ago
when I was a student member of the CIT,I used to attend meetings
along with the local manager of Maidstone & District Omnibus Co.
At one point we discussed busways in depth. The M & D manager
pointed out that there was a short section of busway leading into
the Pentagon bus station in Chatham. It had intensive use as all
buses entered the bus station by this means (about 20-30 per hour).
This is far short of the fantasmagorigal capacity claimed by Paul
Withrington! His great concern was that M & D had to bear the cost
of repairs and maintenance, (for which the council invoiced them).
He reported that the repair bill was so onerous (after only 10 years
in service) that, if he ran intensive bus services on a dedicated
busway, the fares wouldn’t even cover the basic infrastructure
costs, never mind capital investment repayment.
The problem was that of a narrow carriageway, about the same width
that would apply if railways were converted into busways, the
surface being unable to withstand such a concentrated impact.
The truth is, buses are indeed an economical means of transport,
in terms of total cost per seat km, PROVIDED, their infrastructure
costs are (in effect) limited to the duty element of the fuel consumed
(about £0.3-0.5p per km depending on type of bus.
My analysis of recent busway costs indicate infrastructure costs
(i.e. the commercial access charge that is NOT raised) in region of
£4-6 per bus km, even with fairly intensive usage.
At an average bus loading of 18 passengers (somewhere near for
urban services) this equates to circa £0.30 per pass km,
to which vehicle costs need to be added, indicating a unit cost of
£0.60-75 per pass km.
Doesn’t sound like a money spinner to me.
Don’t think I’ll be instructing my stockbroker to buy shares.
Note : the above assume a generous asset life of 30 years. Recalling
the anguish of the said M & D manager, this may not be realistic!
@Alan Robinson
“This is far short of the fantasmagorigal capacity claimed by Paul
Withrington! ”
Hmn, indeed, as the road 24 times bigger than the rail, it seems ironic bus passenger KMs are half that of rail (29v59 billion pass km), especially as 40% of the journeys are given away for free, then get similar cash per pass km, and the councils are paying for bus stops and other infrastructure.
Britain’s busiest corridor (possibly Europe’s busiest) the Wimslow road in Manchester does have 1 timetable bus per minute, although parts of the road have 1 bus every 30 seconds – apparently it’s chaos. This makes a maximum seat capacity of 9,600 pph using 80 seat double deckers, about 1/4 of some of the tube lines in London and Crossrail and Thameslink when they are finished.
Just a shame there is on average 3.5 people per bus. So to be Withringtoneque for a second, this means everyone could be put on an Express train, or one Crossrail train with 2/3rds space still going spare.
Though, in a radio 5 live interview he claimed the British public lacked imagination. No they have experience of rail replacement coach services Paul. (He wouldn’t travel by train, especially on Sundays). He went on to say, rail lines were a great waste as the New York busway could carry 30,000 people an hour (I think it’s nearer 15,000) and rail companies would be better running buses which would be hugely profitable! (Can someone tell him most of them do run buses too?)
I was hoping someone (with hopefully reasonably knowledge) would then ring in and say about 6 lines in London carry more than that or similar, and by the way coach services are already available. But some idiot set fire to a pilot in the Middle East, and it all got cut short. Shame.
@Alan Robinson: My analysis of recent busway costs indicate infrastructure costs (i.e. the commercial access charge that is NOT raised) in region of £4-6 per bus km
My understanding was that operators on the Cambridgeshire busway, at least, do pay an access charge for the busway which is intended to cover the cost of running it. But yes, this is exceptionally unusual for bus operations which usually rely on a hidden subsidy through road maintenance budgets.
@IanJ
Thanks for info that Cambridge busway does impose an access charge on bus operators..
not the case with Luton-Dunstable, whereby there is a row as to how
ongoing costs of maintenance/admin is funded. A “proper” i.e.
commercial access charge enabling a modest profit to be earned
by owner of asset would appear to be unaffordable to bus operators.
the £4-6 is my calculation of an indicative range, based upon
actual construction costs at a 30 year book life, interest charges
plus the known declared long term maintenance costs.
(in other words, on the same basis as rail track access charges).
The much touted “flexibility” of buses is actually a deterrent to
any commercial development of a busway. As the buses can be
driven on any road (for only the price of fuel duty) and there is
no legislation to compel them to use a busway, then the busway
owner is very limited as to how much can be charged for access.
take Luton. Slap on an access charge, and the result could well be
that the new busway becomes disused!
Anon @ 13.48: 4/2/15 – & – RobT
Spot on – as you say we have challenged Withrington here, we have told him his numbers & calculations are wrong … & he just ignores all of this & spouts the same old same old ….
Next up – why are the media giving him even limited space, because they must know (if only because “we” have told them) that the IEA’s products are rubbish.
Um
ELEPHANT IN ROOM – unaddressed, btw
All those buses on roads, as opposed to railways ..
And the kill rate will be?
How many extra deaths per week, never mind per year?
no-one (including me, I’m ashamed to say) has raised this one ….
RobT @ 19.51 4/2/15
It’s a brilliant business idea, and it would pay it’s way.
Can, sometimes, under special circumstances be true (unfortunately, perhaps) ..
Examples: “the Oxfoed Tube” – though it is nuch slower than the train, even with the M40/M4 & similar buses to the Medway towns & Sheerness, where the rail service, let’s face it is crap.
Final thought for the moment …
Luton & Cambridge….
IIRC, didn’t the inhabitants of both areas prefer & ask for a rail service?
And were told by DafT that: “No, we civil servants know best & you are going to get a bus-way”
Due to long lead-times, this was, of course set up before the current fashion-switch to rail.
[ Incoidentally, we’d better watch out, as I suspect that DfT will try to revert to being “The Ministry of Roads” given half-a-chance … but that is definitely off-topic for now.
@RobT
“Britain’s busiest corridor (possibly Europe’s busiest) the Wimslow road in Manchester does have 1 timetable bus per minute, although parts of the road have 1 bus every 30 seconds – apparently it’s chaos.”
I’d be surprised if two buses a minute is the busiest in Britain, let alone Europe. Waterloo Bridge in London carries sixteen routes (not counting the X68), and most of them have a peak hour timetabled frequency greater than every eight minutes.
Oxford Street’s “red wall” may also come close. If they are truly nose to tail it still only requires a bus to travel its own length in 30 seconds, a speed of about 1mph.
@Walthamstow Writer (3rd Feb)
This one’s got a bit delayed, been whizzing about;-
Walthamstow Writer is puzzled by my “obsession with allocation
of costs and revenues to the nth degree”.
I AM obsessed by this, and make no apology.
It was this obsession that drove me to identify the faults in the
Marylebone Closure case, and compile the correct figures that
demanded its rapid withdrawal in 1986.
I was a “business analyst”. This is what business analysts are paid
to do, analyse, to the nth degree squared and more.
If it was not for the obsessive tendencies of business analysts (could
have been performed by another, but I was there at the time)
then this thread might have been entitled;-
ABSOLUTELY TERMINAL
The sad loss of Marylebone Station, much lamented, and the
spectacular failure of the half hearted busway and coach terminal
replacement!
How that for bringing the thread back to topic ?
Alan refers to business analysts, the allocation of costs to the nth degree, and his role in the rejection of the Marylebone closure proposal.
All well and good, that analysis was clearly appropriate then, and I don’t think anyone is arguing that costs should never be analysed.
But neither is it the case that they must always be analysed. Numbers alone are of no value. Sometimes a number is meaningless, and sometimes, even if meaningful, knowledge of it results in no action. Do I care what my car costs per mile? For me a vague guess (somewhere between 10 pence and 75 pence) is perfectly adequate, because I have no plans to change it, and I can afford it. For someone else in a different situation, or for a company with a fleet of cars, a precise figure could be very important.
@Malcolm
I disagree (respectfully) of course. Numbers are always of value.
and always. meaningful.
For instance, car costs .I have a speadsheet going back to 1971 for
providing a full analysis of my car cost data (until 2001, when I gave
up owning one).Absolutely everything, fuel. maintenance (every repair
bill, insurance, with full applied depreciation and interest charges.
With uplifts to current price levels (RPI or CPI) I could report
the precise cost of car ownership and running. It was the result
of this analysis that led me to conclude a financial advantage
to my ceasing to own a car (a full evaluation over estimated ten
years of alternatives, car hire, taxis , and “external” value of inconvenience experienced (I priced my time).
I now maintain the same degree of detailed analysis in respect of my
wife’s car (which I seem to be responsible for managing!).
Same thing for all personal accounts, investment strategies, even holidays, every holiday I undertake is costed to the nearest £0.50
per item and meticulously planned.
Same for Housing (depreciation rates for household fixtures and fittings, medium run maintenance budgets etc.
I have renovated a house in France, all meticulously researched
and planned, and delivered to within 2% of my original project
budget (except for change of scope insisted on by wife, for which
an emergency supplementary project variation budget was devised,
I got her to pay for it!).
I have even got a budget for my next visit to London for the LR
booze up in March !! (minimal provision for expenditure on drinks).
It is by these means that companies/organisations achieve viability
and even prosperity.
You may be beginning to think that business analysts such as
myself (AKA bean counters) are TOTALLY UTTERLY MAD!!!
You are right! But: There’s method in our madness.
P.S My Wife’s car is costing (per mile) £0.21 in direct costs, £0.06
in semi-directs, and £0.07 in fixed costs (based on annual mileage
of 2,250). I have a car mileage budget.
(before recent reduction in fuel costs, approx. -£.02 per mile).
Fuel costs still too uncertain for me to compile a “robust”
2015 outturn forecast.
Alan – whatever turns you on!
You are not the only one to do this sort of thing. But neither is it very widespread. Probably we should rejoice that we are not all the same!
@Malcolm
Thanks for being understanding.
You’re right of course. Human society would be utterly dysfunctional
if we all had the mind of a business analyst.
Diversity, in its glorious multifariousness is essential.
The same dysfunctionality would occur if everybody had the mindset
of a doctor, lawyer. engineer, banker etc.
Or, an UNDERTAKER, and I would say, that Business Analysis is
just like undertaking, somebody has to do it.
Consider, that the Beeching plan came about was at least in part due
to the fact that BR’s business analysis was inadequate. (at the time).
It took computerisation in the 1970s and 1980s to enable the higher
quality that could permit Sectorisation. (which was successful,
everybody seems to admit).
@Alan
I’m sure that I speak for all of us when I say that I am amazed at your attention and dedication to detail. But I assure you that my holidays are planned somewhat differently.
More to the point, I think that you and Malcolm are both right. We need the numbers in grand detail but we need to make the calculations for a purpose. The devil we fight these days is no longer railway closures, Mr Withrington being but a blister on the long march of history, but the insidious three-headed dragon of Network Rail’s costs.
Graham H came up (1 Feb – took me ages to find) with a tripartite division of these costs:
* 1/3 of all NR’s costs cannot be identified to train operations at all – mostly the cost of servicing their evergrowing debt – and cannot be cut by operating efficiency;
*another 1/3 cannot be identified below regional/zonal/area level (eg area signalling schemes) and have only a very weak relationship with the cost of operating trains;
*a third which might be allocated to individual lines.
The point of getting deep into the costs of elements 2 and 3 would be to identify not really the costs but the variability of operational, maintenance and capital costs, measured on appropriate metrics. What gets measured, gets managed and all that.
No doubt NR do all this but somehow ensure that ORR can’t follow the story.
@Answer = 42
You’re getting the idea, you might have a bright future ahead of you
as a business analyst!
“we need to make the calculations for a purpose”
It is this purpose that drives business analysis, and the willingness
of organisations to employ them, despite the fact that they are all
utter pests, liable to enrage every manager in the company!
British Railways had a purpose in conducting this. It was an integrated railway, fully responsible for every aspect of a railways
business, and all coming together in series of definable “bottom
lines”. Sectorisation introduced a multiplicity of bottom lines.
If BR could shave a bit off its costs by discovering that there were
too many paper clips used at so and such office, then there was an
immediate improvement in the bottom line of the whole railway.
(OK I am being a bit facile with paperclips, but in the context of
NR it could be signalling staff enhanced pay etc).
The motivation to continually examine and review is lost when
revenue is contractually agreed (track access) . For a long time NR
was neither fish nor fowl, Not under private sector market discipline
nor “public sector rigour” (and there is such a thing).
When Railtrack was set up, they dispensed with all the mechanisms
and procedures set up over decades by BR, on basis that there was no
longer a need. They had no knowledge of costs by route (or in any
disaggregated form) and no interest. Source costs of infrastructure
maintenance and renewal was in any case contracted out.
Complex systems devised to provide valuable management information were just switched off with the end of BR.
Railtrack didn’t even have an asset register.
(Railtrack was unable to get at any disaggregation of costs within the contracts with Infrastructure maintenance Cos , and didn’t care to).. The rest is history.
In theory, as I have an impressive career record in infrastructure
costing I should be able to get a position with NR at enormous
salary (or as consultant) but , I’m too old, doddery even.
I was too old by 1990, Business Analysts are reckoned to be “over the
hill” by age 40 due to Brain slowdown and increasing reluctance to work more than 150 hours a week. I’m not joking, I was told this
in 1994 as reason for not being able to secure a new position at my
existing grade. So I took the severance money and ran..
I was burnt out, anyway.
Don’t regret it.
Of course, it could be that I had acquired a reputation as the “enfant terrible” of BR management accounting.
@Alan R
“Same thing for all personal accounts, investment strategies, even holidays, every holiday I undertake is costed to the nearest £0.50 per item and meticulously planned.”
As the advert has it, some things are priceless. As someone with enough money but not enough time, I don’t need to know exactly how much my holidays cost to enjoy them! The analysis goes something like:
Q1 Do we want to go there
Q2 Can we afford it (yes/no)
Q3 Can we spare the time
Q4 What is the least unpleasant way of getting there
Usually Mrs T deals with Q1 and I do the rest!
I run a company car. Everyone tells me it would be cheaper to run my own secondhand one instead. But I avoid all the hassle of sorting out insurance, tax, haggling with used car dealers, maintenance (when your vehicle is owned by one of the biggest fleet operators in the country a franchised workshop isn’t going to quibble over warranty claims: not if they want to keep the business).
I saw in yesterdays mainstream press the report on the IEA project and thought we had been here before thanks to Alfred Sherman and recalled the Chiltern proposals. I did a quick web search to check my facts and this thread was top of the list.
Just to say that I found the contribs here especially informative (with particular thanks to Graham H and Alan R for sharing their personal experiences).
With regard to the IEA report, I recall thinking at the time (early 80s) that their starting point was nothing about the efficient use of resources to transport people, but more about opposition to a then state owned industry and one that then (as now) they will perceive as offering too much power to unions. This being because railways have to be run in a ‘collective’ method – like the military I suspect – it is mostly an ‘interdepndent’ system – orgs like the IEA favour the smaller transport unit – bus or car – because they perceived this as facilitating ‘individualism’ – even if it involves larger levels of subsidy to deliver in practice (but much is hidden in various costs areas).
Having said that I suspect the IEA would favour fully toll road / road priced system with no planning restriction on who could build roads where, and access is to those who can pay, and only a private medical system for those injured on the roads or by any other means.
I can only hope that with rail use figures high, and the govt prepared to pretend the rail system is now not nationalised, less time would be wasted in Whitehall examining pointless rail conversion schemes (but then Luton and cambridge were proceeded with….).
As pointed out above perhaps the only sensible response to the IEA is indeed to say “yes, you may be right. Of course the taxpayer should not be burdened with providing such systems, I do hope your chums in the market place can bring forward some viable schemes that they wish to fund, since there are many closed railway lines on which to build a line to demonstrate how profitable such a concept would be”.
@timbeau
Holidays
Don’t disagree with your analysis;-
My only variation/embellishment would be;-
Q2 In order to determine whether you can afford “it” , you
have to determine what “it” will cost you.
Q4 what is the least unpleasant way of getting there?
Wrong way round.
What is the MOST pleasant way of getting there?
Answer : Rail (of course) there is no alternative.
Please don’t reproach me for enjoying privilege travel.
I have just put to bed an extensive tour of Germany, (April).
all on PUBLIC advance fares from London;-
London Spezial (to anywhere in Germany E59) (£44).
Swanning around on LanderKarts (E23 for 2, one day rover for
a large region).
A couple of one way Sparpreis Intercity tickets E29 each.
Oh, and some tram/metro fares , too. meticulously researched.
Armed with this information, yes I CAN afford it.
Company Cars;-
I do appreciate that this outrageous giveaway has been tamed.
I have witnessed BR Passenger Marketing Managers go blue/purple with rage when referring to this in the past.
How are we supposed to run a viable rail service when the government gives out such a huge tax break which makes the
rail choice totally unviable? I could demonstrate that the monetary
value of this tax break (as was) dwarfed BR’s PSO support grant).
It’s been sorted, as you say, probably cheaper to run your own car,
and BINGO Business travel by rail has soared!
In the last few Years of BR, company cars were granted for the first time to very senior people. I can remember how they went to every
conceivable fiddle to justify going to a meeting by car (with free rail
travel available!) in the centre of major cities like Manchester, and
even London, just to bump up their business mileage in order to
reduce their tax payable! Says it all.
The purpose of all this analysis, of course, is to get richer, more money to invest, with appreciating values to be analysed further!
Scrooge didn’t have a good business analyst to assist him
(Bob Cratchit wasn’t very sharp). If he had employed one, he could
have enjoyed some fun in life, and got even richer.
@timbeau/AR – yes, of course you can take costings to nth degree (once, saddo that I am, I recall calculating the cost of walking to the station daily – about 15 p for the record) but there is a serious point to it. That point is that, depending on the answer, you may wish to change your behaviour – close something, do less or more of it, or whatever. But – as I remarked to WW in this thread yesterday – you choose an allocation method to suit the question. Detail is not an end in itself.
@Graham H
“You choose an allocation method to suit the question”;— !!!!!!
How can you be so cynical?
The Business Analyst is the standard bearer of TRUTH!
Armed with the sword of objectivity;
Shielded by the cloak of righteousness.
( do this and you are not supposed to get the sack).
The method chosen is the correct method, one that discerns this
glorious immutable unimpeachable truth before which all must yield, even the most manic pig ignorant railway manager ,
or “pig in a suit” transport minister.
It was my resolution to earn my spurs as a chivalrous knight of
financial truth that inspired me to slay the dragon of the faulty
Marylebone Closure case (and a few others).
Didn’t get knighted though, didn’t win a fair lady either, just
wife moaning about me working late again.
Truth is the supreme expression of knowledge, and;-
Knowledge is power.
@AR – not so: do you wish to know what will be saved by closing a line over a week, a month, a lifetime? You will, as I explained here yesterday, use a different allocation algorithm. Are you intereste in the marginal cost of adding a new activity? Different again. But I’m sure you knew this.
BTW, there is nothing wrong with cynicism at all.
@Alan R
“Q2 In order to determine whether you can afford “it” , you
have to determine what “it” will cost you.
Q4 what is the least unpleasant way of getting there?
Wrong way round.
What is the MOST pleasant way of getting there? RAIL of course”
Q2 – up to a point, but you don’t need to budget to the nearest 50p.
Q4 – sorry, but the people I choose to travel with would prefer two hours in a pressurised aluminium tube to twelve in a German sleeping car (which have stopped running anyway). BRITISH sleeping cars (at least until April) are another matter.
“I can remember how they went to every conceivable fiddle to justify going to a meeting by car just to bump up their business mileage in order to reduce their tax payable! ”
That system went out in 2002 – the benefit in kind figure on which you pay tax is now based on the list price multiplied by a % (between zero and 35%) which depends on the CO2 emissions figure. Previously, the multiplier did indeed depend on the number of miles you racked up, leading to lots of meetings in odd places in March!
@timbeau
Sleeping cars are being put out of business by high speed rail mostly.
It’s now cheaper to break journey and stay in budget hotel, and there
is not actually so much time saved by overnight hauls anymore
My next trip to Germany is all daytime travel. We are leaving Heidelberg at 13.48 St Pancras at 19.57.
The speed is not relevant, up to a point. Being a geographer
by inclination, I find land travel absolutely fascinating and absorbing.
I don’t mean as a railway enthusiast either, just what is outside the
window, scenery, agriculture, housing, industry, etc. The travel is
the best part of the whole holiday, and in fact all my days in Germany
will involve at least five hours travelling.
How could I possibly want to travel by a means that denies you all
this? I have made rail journeys to European destinations that have
cost about four times as much as Sleazeejet or Try-on Air, and it has
been money well spent. My business analysis of the trip indicates
a huge payback.
As far as I am concerned;- Flying is strictly for the birds.
Be careful, you might wish to accuse me of being extraordinary
in some way, but: you musn’t call me “weird”.
I do hire a car in France, for local pottering about. (no public
transport). I can get to mid France in 5 hours from London, how
could flying beat that? (driving certainly doesn’t).
@Graham H
Perhaps we are a bit at cross purposes unnecessarily.
Of course, different types of evaluations are done re differing time
scales. My complaint re the closure methodology (as used for Marylebone) was that it was over a Five year period, and based
upon avoidable costs only. A Railway is a long life asset, any renewals
of infrastructure will maintain this long asset life. It therefore follows
that a “true and fare” presentation must be on this long life basis, which implies capitalisation of assets.
I was cynically inclined to believe that the 5 year evaluation period
was mandated to ensure a positive result every time a closure case was presented ( always showing a benefit on PSO claim).
the (substantial) savings from not renewing infrastructure always
outweighing (in net terms) the modest “avoidable” operating cost
etc savings.
I am relieved to know that my cynicism was at least not scurrilous,
and despicable, even if not exactly laudable.
I am now purged of any lingering cynicism of course.
AR @ 14.16
Yes, but why were Railtrack so dysfunctional – why did they deliberately throw away all their management tools before they had even started – or was it political direction?
Later … “Company Cars” … I note that within the past week some tory MP, somewhere was trying to get rid of “Spouse’s priv” on the railways, [Snip. PoP]
@Greg,
I think you see political direction in everything – even when there is a simpler more obvious reason with evidence for it.
The real problem was Railtrack didn’t understand its assets because it did not have suitable people such as engineers at a senior enough level and it didn’t listen to them anyway. Moreover it didn’t understand that it needed to understand its assets. How hard can maintaining a couple of steel rails attached to the ground be?
It was also very much distracted in behaving as a property development company for which keeping a railway in good repair was one of the burdens it was lumbered with.
All this is well documented and well known. There is no need to look for political involvement in that sense.
@PoP
Your last post is a superb condensed synopsis of the fundamental
flaws in Railtrack from the very beginning. But , you don’t suggest WHY!
It’s a sorry saga of the inherent dangers in a revolutionary approach
(to anything) rather than the evolutionary process which railways
(and other very large complex organisations), generally favour.
As Christian Wolmar has pointed out in “Broken Rails” BR privatisation was not a “normal” privatisation.
Instead of selling an existing organisation to private interests,
or even a sub-division of an existing one, a completely new and
unprecedented organisation was established in parallel with the
existing, which was then simply abolished in 1995-96.
The bets analogy I can think of is that of a Ship at sea.
The ship owner decides to have a new crew, with a new organisation.
The existing Senior Officers (Captain, Mate , Chief Engineer etc)
are simply told that , from a certain date, they are to be put in a
boat and left to fend for themselves, services no longer required.
(If it was a pirate ship, they would walk the plank).
In the meantime, the ship owner devises a new organisation, a new
management structure that doesn’t have any knowledge of the sea,
but buys in contracted expertise from qualified individuals, whose
expertise is questionable.
The lower grade seamen remain on board, awaiting the direction
of the new management, who eventually arrive by helicopter.
The handover takes place at sea, during a hurricane.
As has been questioned (not just by Christian Wolmar) how could
anything so extraordinary take place.
I would assert, that, as the Railway Industry had been nationalised
for nearly 50 years, the City was totally devoid of any expertise in
railway management. As there had been no shareholders. there
were no analysts specialising in railways. If there had been an
attempt to re-organise an existing other major corporation in such a
way there would have been knowledgeable people expressing caution
and even disapproval.
Railtrack shares were sold by flotation after the company had been established (with direct public sector finance, i.e. a nationalised
concern at first instance). It was the government that organised
the flotation, not the usual city expertise involved in launches.
The only people with the specialised knowledge and understanding
of Railways capable of identifying the pitfalls were: Existing BR
managers. One would have thought that these individuals would be regarded as having highly valuable knowledge, to be consulted.
But they were totally ignored, treated with contempt, actually.
Instead, not only were existing BR HQ organisations abolished,
BR staff at lower levels were unable to even transfer into to the
new Railtrack organisation, and , in truth were not wanted.
I remember a lecture given by BR Chief Exec John Welsby (he might
have been chairman by then) where he spelt out the bleak news.
He told us straight, We’ve been torpedoed, the ship’s sinking, and,
no lifeboats, every man for himself. But with one difference,
nobody is to say one word to the media at pain of sacking. (no
severance pay for those who blabbed).
I remember a terrible atmosphere of disbelief, as if we were living
through a nightmare. Engineers were utterly distraught, fearing
accidents would proliferate.
Whatever might have been done to the Railway Industry by way of privatisation could only, by definition be a political act. at the
will and behest of the government in power.
I think Greg is right on this one.
As you rightly say, “Railtrack did not have suitable people such as
engineers;——”
This was the problem, certainly, but not the explanation.
It was the officials of HM Treasury driving the whole process
to a large degree, but in conformity with current political dogmas
which led to the disastrous notion that a Railway could shed its
responsibility to directly manage its assets by sub-contracting
these tasks to others (and without any checks and balances to
ensure competence of those sub-contractors).
There is one other body that should have borne responsibility
for this failure, but has never been mentioned;-
The Railway Inspectorate.
The “Old” Railway Inspectorate (only a few ex Royal Engineers
Majors actually, plus minimal staff support) would have blown
more whistles than all the guards at Waterloo. BUT
They were deliberately nobbled in 1993/94. The old buffers were
stood down and replaced by “health and safety professionals”
These newly appointed “professionals” had no railway knowledge
and were not required to have acquired any. INCREDIBLE.
I am cynically inclined to believe that this was deliberately, and
cunningly planned. Certainly, without this vital move Railtrack
might have been so exposed as incompetent that the share flotation would have had to be cancelled.
So, yes, ultimately politics did drive the creation and downfall of Railtrack.
@PoP- the problem RT faced with its engineering support may have been a bit more nuanced than reported in recent posts, although the decision to impose outsourcing on RT was certainly a political one and something that went to the heart of the problem. In BR days, the railway relied on the invested local knowledge about asset condition of the divisional engineers and their foremen. On privatisation, many – maybe most, in my experience -of the relevant engineers took the very generous redundancy terms and left.
The new IMCO and TRCO owners were faced with a serious “knowledge deficit” and really struggled to recreate what had taken many decades for the old industry to build up; for example, Balfours was reduced to issung all its team leaders with hand held notebooks to try and record what they actually found as they went about maintaining the kit. The Board’s asset registers, as deposited in the data rooms, turned out to be -shall we say – “informal”, even where the assets were well-defined, such as rolling stock. I had cause to devote a fair amount of time between 1994 and 1997 trying to tidy the problem up, as many assets (not RT’s) were transferred item by item by means of statutory instruments,which had to be got right, for obvious reasons.
“IEA favour the smaller transport unit – bus or car – because they perceived this as facilitating ‘individualism”
The London bus strike must be awfully irritating to them. Almost as much as the increasing urbanisation in the world requires more “collective” transport not less.
Wellings talks fondly of automation, no wonder. While it does make sense from a capacity point of view, ultimately it’s a stick to beat the workforce in general. How long before the first fully automated supermarket?
Low wages and less jobs means less tax, which means more cost cutting for public services. Less spending means more debt, more debt means more business for the banks, and ultimately collapse, that will be bailed out by the tax payer, who then have to have more cuts while the banks call in the loans. By accident or design I wonder?
Rather like Railtrack and Network Rail perhaps? At one time BR managers used to write tickets to any destination an employee wanted to go, It made sense, the train ran anyway. Now, NR buys the tickets, an extra cost, rather like the compensation payable to TOCs, for upgrading lines, or 150 year old cuttings falling in for weeks on end.
The motorist, coach or haulage company wouldn’t get a bean from the HA if the M1 fell in, or if it’s improved. Convenient that for anti-rail proponents arguing about costs. Ironic is was these the likes of the IEA and Adam Smith institute that advised the government on privatisation, and said costs would be driven down (through a religious belief in the power of competition) yet put an a myriad of systems to have entirely the opposite effect.
By accident or design I wonder?
Greg mentions Withrington: “Para # 1: For a given traffic volume, busways would typically require far less land than rail, both at terminals and along routes.”
That’ll be why the Luton-Dunstable busway is around 20-30% wider than the metals which preceded it then.
@RobT
Political convictions (whether right or left) can have some of the
characteristics of religious faith. Both communists and libertarians
often have a faith in their respective philosophies. They will both
extol the virtues (to the public) as the key that unlocks the door
to the room of human happiness and contentment.
When applied, in accordance with the fervency that these disciplines
provide to their followers, no happiness results, only misery.
BR privatisation is a fine example.
Normally, extreme views that abandon common sense and long established best practice do not get much of an airing in Britain
but something strange and even “Un-British” happened to government and society during the 1980s and early 1990s.
I see the essential difference between extreme left and right as this;-
Left: The dubious means are justified by the Glorious Results.
Right : The dubious Ends are justified by the glorious Means.
Neither succeed : The socialist paradise on earth is never arrived at
Revolution continues indefinitely, challenged and restrained by
counter revolutionary elements.
The libertarian paradise on earth is never arrived at either. True
libertarian principles are never fully adopted, challenged and
restrained by counter revolutionary elements.
Supporters of extreme political philosophies must have a miserable
unfulfilled and humourless life.
PoP/AR
Thank you, both of you – but, as AR says I asked “WHY” & PoP answered “HOW” …
When Railtrack was set up, how come it was constituted thus? Which (I think) was a political decision, was it not?
AR: It was even worse, actually, because the Track-separate-from-trains” model was tried, right at the start ( The S&D 1825 …) and was found to fail miserably – IIRC the S&D had to buy out the independent operators, so that it could run all of its’ own services …
Lessons of history etc …
But with one difference,
nobody is to say one word to the media at pain of sacking. (no
severance pay for those who blabbed). Even so, I’m surprised no-one did – now of course, such a procedure is known to be illegal, but that was 20 years ago. Um.
HMRI (as was)
Is a very nasty story – IIRC the H&SE people who temporarily took over, before the more recent re-re-organisation where safety is currently split between ORR & RAIB really hadn’t a clue – it appeared (note that word) to be looking for someone to “blame” every time something went wrong, rather than trying to prevent bad things happening again.
Yes, & as others have commented, here & elsewhere, lives were needlessly lost as a result.
Even now, RAIB cannot inspect a new set-up, before it is opened to the public, as HMRI used to do. I am desperately trying, right now, to prevent something horrible happening as a result of new construction – my MP is on-side, I’m glad to say, but the rest is proceeding at a glacial pace.
Alison W
Spot on – the other bit, of course, as always is tunnels.
And, oh dear – intersections: where, on just the Chingford branch can junctions be made at-grade with the existing road system?
Err ….
I don’t think anyone has mentioned the rail – bus conversion on the San Francisco bay bridge, a very similar project to the Marylebone proposal.
However, that did go ahead, and then they had to build a new rail tunnel underneath the bridge for the BART to replace the lost capacity.
@Greg,
I get all that but the way I read your original mark on the subject suggested some Machiavellian attempt to destroy the railway by making it unworkable. To do so would credit maverick politicians with far more ability that they have. I just think they didn’t really understand the true consequences of what they were doing. (Almost back on topic) it is the dangers of obsessive political doctrine defying common sense such as converting railways to roads.
I go back to my guiding principle: if there is a choice between believing something was a cock-up or a conspiracy I always believe the cock-up explanation unless there is any evidence to the contrary. Sadly almost, I believe that the politicians who split up British Rail really believed they had devised a more workable way of running railways. And this goes back to one of my other issues, we do not have enough scientists or engineers in politics who can explain why something is just plain daft (and you do not need to repeat comments about Margaret Thatcher having been a scientist and [mentally insert personal thoughts here]).
@GH 22:25 – A friend of mine was a QS with Railtrack in that period. I, likewise, was horrified when he told me of the state of their asset register. Disaster, recipe, hello Potters’ Bar et al.
How much the environment he worked in contributed to his health problems, I do not know for sure.
@PoP – “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”. I now know, thanks to losing another 5 minutes that I will never get back, that this favourite phrase of mine is known as “Hanlon’s Razor”, in a nod to Occam.
The cock-up vs conspiracy dichotomy always leaves out the middle way: culpable negligence. I do not know enough about the creation of Railtrack to comment really, but might it be the case that, without any of the responsible people actually wanting the railway system to collapse, or people to be killed, they may have been a bit reckless in not making enough effort to prevent such outcomes?
@MikeP
And the most important thing I learnt from years in the (then) Territorial Army was a corporal who told me “never underestimate the ability of people to be stupid”.
@ Malcolm and others. I believe it was the Chief Excutuve of Railtrack who prior to the Hatfield tragedy went on a record with a statement on lines of “there is nothing wrong with railway if we did not have to have trains run on them” – apart from rather obviously trying to deflect on future blame on to the TOCs it revealed to my mind that Railtrack viewed the use of the railway as a secondary activity to property development.
I said this before on other discussions that we too easily forget the mindset which was forged in the late fifties and early sixties that passenger railway traffic was in inexorable decline. I think that view persisted outside the industry right into the nineties. Treasury saw privatisation as a means of getting rid of an unwanted liability and they quietly hoped that with privatisation measures could more easily be taken to shut lines or reduce services thereby reducing the national subsidy.
As I recall upon privatisation it was not expected that there would be any form of a renaissance in railway travel. Certain sectors, or services might indeed flourish but this would be against the well established background of decline. Certain political advisers in DfT hoped that Amerucan railroad companies would come to the rescue and the operation of commuter services in Chicago by Burlington Northern was regularly cited. I don’t think this was conspiracy I think it was a genuinely held belief that passenger railways could not attract sufficient traffic to generate the income for a successful business. I think the growth in custom took our opinion formers by surprise and indeed some were slightly apalled at the implications as at first it was seen as a flash in the pan. Very reluctantly I think they have had to admit we are in uncharted territory with passenger levels reaching or exceeding 1921 levels which is why investment has risen and why previously absurd ideas such as reopening or extending the withered arm in the south west are now being considered as viable ideas
I know that Alan Robinson has said certain portions of the railway were intrinsic,y profitable but that certainly was not how it was presented by successive chairmen of BRB and nor did anyone of note externally take that position. The passenger railway service were viewed not as a basket case but as an inherently difficult business which in a modern world should be dispensed with and replaced by a dependence on cars and roads. After all the main political parties looked to the USA as a harbinger of what a modern country woukd need to do. Before 1968 BR was viewed as a business which had lost its way and the Beeching cuts et al were meant to restore it to a financially successful business but losses still mounted. Do remember that most of the closures happened on Labour’s watch. From 1968 politicians had to accept there was a social requirement for a railway which more or less protected the current network otherwise death by a thousand cuts or closures would have continued. Serpell subsequently proposed a 1500 mile network and although it was ridiculed at the time and afterwards there was a school of accountants and analysts who believed this approach was the only way forward. He did not formulate those ideas in a vacuum.
@RichardB: As usual they were looking the wrong way. As we are now over “peak oil” (as I’ve heard it described), car ownership and usage is declining with the high costs. The oil shock of 1973 should have been a warning, especially coming as it did a mere 6 years after the phasing out of steam (on the mainline at least: The last of BR Steam).
@RichardB – at the risk of repeating myself; the problem with the railways is that for the last 70 years (and probably the last hundred), no one has actually been able to say what the railways are for. It’s not to provide a comprehensive rail service -how could they? Just compare the statutory duties of BR with those of LT; BR simply provided and operated rail services; no mention of “need”. And again, as I have already pointed out in this thread, the network as it emerged from the Beeching as being what was left when the politicians couldn’t stand the pain of further cuts. No mention of need or social purpose.
Nor did the PSO I imposed in the ’80s take account of need. It was simply a directive to provide so many train miles. Again, a PSO which took account of need would probably close swathes of the rural network.
The politicians and policy makers hoped that the problem of “why buy BR /rail sector” would go away with the identification of a profitable network, however small. It’s only in recent years that it has dawned on people, especially at the Treasury, that no such camelopard or unicorn exists.
Anyway,let’s not repeat the whole of this thread once more…
@Graham H: Maybe it’s time for the moderators to close the thread? It’s starting to take a very long time to load now!
@Southern Heights – you beat me to the draw! Yes,it’s becoming repetitive and even emotional…
PoP
Agreed … but it was (we seem to agree?) a doctrinaire political cock-up, that very fortunately did not happen in the case of Marylebone, but did in the case of Railtrack. (?)
Thread end?
Perhaps we need to split it into two daughter threads ..
One dealing with the specifics of the Marylebone case history & the other dealing with the broader socio-political implications & the interaction with national policy both at the time & since. The latter would have to have a new name & could stand in any time someone like the IEA reappear from under their wood-pile?
Some entries, of course, especially near the “top” of the discussion would need to be posted in both “daughters”.
Be an interesting job to do ….
Just thought I’d post this from the Bogata Post, concerning the so-called “gold standard” best in the world BRT system.
[Shortened (“simplified”) for readability. LBM]
According to the video, the answer appears to be simple. Ramirez and his team of students state that the solution to the problem of the TransMilenio does not lie in improving the infrastructure of the city – as this could take 60 years or longer – and nor does it lie in getting more buses running on the routes. The solution, the video says, is to create fewer routes, and make them more efficient.
Ramirez argues that the extensive number of routes complicates the system with no monitoring of the flow of people. This is why we see empty but frequent buses on less popular routes, but full and infrequent buses passing on the main routes. Furthermore, he proposes a dual tariff fare system for a quicker or slower service, thus offering the opportunity to choose between saving time or saving money.
However, according to TransMilenio management, the idea of reducing the number of routes is simply not feasible, and does not take into account the secondary Alimentador (feeder) bus system. “The professor (Ramirez) sees the bus system as a metro and his proposal is not viable because it doesn’t take into account the infrastructure of the SITP. You would have to make the stations as big as the portals to support this kind of capacity,” one TransMilenio director said of the video’s ideas.
http://thebogotapost.com/2014/10/09/bogotas-transmilenio-system-a-painful-route-to-the-future/
They’ve just given the green light to new tram routes…
Turning to the operating problems of buses, one issue that is conventionally assumed to be difficult (except by Withrington) is the problems ofloading and despatching several vehicles at the same stop. Unless “flighted”, it is difficult to load more than one vehicle at a time as anyone who has stood in a taxi queue will know (a problem greatly exacerbated if the vehicles serve more than one fixed route). And yet- in the past, we have seen 90 bph on the Clerkenwell trolleybus routes (a piece of research prompted by the TCR thread…) with close stop spacing, no overtaking, and no hint of snowdrifts of vehicles queuing to serve the stops. What was the key to this? Onboard fares collection by conductors? Superior acceleration of electric over diesel traction? Frequent stops and therefore small numbers boarding?
@everybodycontributingtothisthread
I agree, the debate has thrashed around enough now, and ranged
fare and wide, with many fascinating diversions;-
May I submit that, out of this vast collection of opinions and facts
there is one them that is present;-
Marylebone (and services running into it) was a LOCAL railway.
In fact it was a LONDON railway.
It was utterly wrong that strategic decision making re the future of this railway should be undertaken at a NATIONAL level.
London railways should be administered by LONDON.
Local railways should also be managed locally.
That myself (working at the BRHQ) and Graham H (at the Dtp)
should have been responsible for this was totally inappropriate.
That the closure case was able to be presented at all was due to defects in BR’s management, whereby HQ items (the LT settlement)
were not divulged to a local level, and the original figures submitted
rendered faulty.
BR eventually put this right with sector management, but the
issue remains: local railways need to be under local management
and the public interface(specification and control) has to be under
local control too.
If this logic had applied in the 1980s (it could have been) then
Marylebone would never have been under threat of closure,
and meddlesome ministers (and civil servants) would have not
been able to attempt to close a railway in order to further an
ideologically motivated aspiration to inflict a conversion of a
railway into a busway.
The PTE model is correct. No PTE sponsored service could have been
subject to this assault.
In summary: Westminster is not qualified to administer local
transport facilities.
I don’t think there is any more to say.
@Alan Robinson – 6 February 2015 at 20:42
May I submit that, out of this vast collection of opinions and facts
there is one them that is present;-
Marylebone (and services running into it) was a LOCAL railway.
In fact it was a LONDON railway.
Don’t let Sir Edward Watkin know about this!!
Alan
Not at all sure of that London railway claim.
I was returning from Bicester Village tonight (yes I know how sad that appears!) and the three-car train was standing-room only from High Wycombe.
It made one unscheduled stop at Wembley Stadium and one person got on.
@Anonymous
Yes, things have changed since 1986 with the extraordinary growth
of the Chiltern TOC.
The infrequent service to Banbury hardly figured then.
Of course, when I say LONDON, I do mean Greater (Greater) London.
In any analysis, the services operating from Marylebone could
hardy have been regarded as a vital part of the UK’s national
Railway network, and thus subject to the strategic directives of
National Government.
If it was proposed to convert the West Coast Main Line into
a busway, that would indeed have been a policy decision of
national significance. I do sincerely trust that that this is unlikely
to come to pass.
@John UK
You are correct re Edward Watkin, it was a different era, no public
direction of railways at all, not in a strategic sense anyway.
Not so in other European countries, even then.
Even in the 1980s, of all the main line termini in London, Marylebone had the least to do with services to the London suburbs – even Greater London. On the original GCR route the local services were, then as now, run by London Transport well beyond the Greater London boundary (although LT’s services had been cut back from Aylesbury to Amersham in the early sixties, that’s still many miles beyond the GLC boundary). On the other route most trains don’t call within Greater London at all, and the rest only call at Wembley Hill/Complex/Stadium/whatever they call it next to try to drum up business.
AR
& everybodyelseonthisthread ….
Whether we “terminate” discussion here or not, there are two book references (one of which has certainly been mentioned) which should always be borne in mind on both the specific & the general subjects:
“Holding the Line” by Faulkner & Austin
&
The Great Railway Conspiracy” by Henshaw – the latter was very recently updated.
Although neither has the intimate & revealing data vouchsafed to us by AR & GH they are very good information to have to hand.
Re Watkin et al .. of course, as we know, the GCR itself was merely part of the much grander Manchester – Paris scheme, was it not?
Greg providing two useful references for people who want to learn more about this really does make this seem a fitting time to say that really is the end of the discussion. It was informative but had really run its course.
We shall move on.
For those interested in some very readable information about what was going on behind the scenes, I thoroughly recommend Andrew MARR’s “A History of Modern Britain”, published by Macmillan
Yes, the past has been discussed exhaustively. There is little more to be said.
Graham H’s post 6 February 2015 at 15:09 summarises the situation accurately: there is no description of need or use to the network, simply ‘it is as it is, plus we are building a bit more’.
I think that there is scope to move slowly towards a rational network:
1. define three or four objectives for rail
2. identify the network that meets or could potentially meet these criteria
3. state that this is the minimum network size
4. when there is new construction, the political coverage exists to close lines that cannot meet any discernable need
As I said, progress to a rational network would be slow….
@answer=42 -you are undoubtedly right in theory, but the usual bugbear of creating losers as well as winners applies (as with all changes to any sort of “entitlement”, to the tax system or indeed to any other public service ).
Creating a policy for a “simple” product, such as the universalpostal obligation, is relatively straightforward; creating a policy for a homogenous area such as a conurbation like London is relatively straightforward,too. It’s when you are faced with trying to find something that fits Lincolnshire and Surrey and covers commuting,intercity and deep rural it becomes actually quite difficult. Throw into the mix fares, line capacity and so on and it becomes even trickier.
Having studied alternatives forms of PSO now, for many years, on behalf of a variety of states wishing to reform their PSOs, I have to say that no one has yet discovered the sort of holy grail that is implied here. Perhaps the Swiss and Dutch policy comes closest to the sort of thing that you have in mind – close routes (any mode) that fail to carry a minimum number of punters, maintain residual links to isolated settlements ,build additional capacity where needed. Have an integrated timetable. Have a simple fares structure (but differentiated by mode). I can’t see anyone rushing to do that here, alas – the screams from the vested interests would drown out any sensible discussion…
BTW, the Swiss even have a freight PSO – something otherwise contemplated only in S Africa so far as I know.
This starting to look dangerously like the revival of an exhausted topic.
If the thread is still open for book recommendations then may I suggest Dyos and Aldcroft’s British Transport: An Economic Survey from the Seventeenth Century to the Twentieth. It was first published in the late 60s and covers the period up to 1939 but gives a very good overview of the development of transport in Britain from an economic viewpoint, including the reasons why we ended up with the railway system we did in the mid 20th century.
Graham
On the basis of your previous warnings, I am specifically trying to avoid creating a universal right. In my proposed policy, specific criteria for hard cases are permitted. Is it in fact true that the Cambrian Coast line provides regional access more cheaply than other modes? And is it also true that regional access is a valid policy goal that is worth the shovelfuls of dosh per person (resident / tourist) that any solution costs? In a rational world, both statements would need to be true to keep the line open.
We also agreed previously that getting the overall rail network right would probably not save enormous amounts of cash. If this is in fact the case, then my proposal is politically not worth persuing.
Not sure whether PoP will permit this thread to continue. He has already described his enthusiasm for applying the shears on this topic. But if I’m permitted a brief answer, it would be yes to your various points, with the caveat that an SCBA-based network will also shut lines where benefits are trivial…
@Graham H
I too don’t wish to prolong the life span of this thread, but not
comfortable about putting it out of its misery whilst there is
still a flicker of life in it.
I made the point earlier, National Governments are not qualified
or positioned to devise any sort of concept as a PSO for the whole
nation. The attempt to assume this role has led to disastrous perverse
outcomes such as the near-miss closure of Marylebone (and a few
other actual closures in earlier years now regretted).
The basic principle is; He who pays the piper calls the tune.
The “piper” , defined as a geographically logical and identifiable railway sector, needs to be paid by the same geographical political entity (or as close as possible). It is only a local body that knows
what sort of repertoire the piper is able to play (or might be).
In truth, National government is tone deaf, and doesn’t really like
music anyway. As the National Railway may be supposed to be self financing, then it can do “its own thing”. (choose its own tunes).
Graham mentions Switzerland. A classic example of the validity
of Regional specification and support provision. (also integration
with other modes).
Getting very edgy. Comments like “I made the point earlier” seem to confirm at least an element of repetition.
@Pop
No. no repetition, I must have made this point hundreds of times.
I was lucky enough to pick up a copy of
“I tried to run a railway” by Gerry Fiennes at Woking flea market
this Sunday for just £1
It is an excellent book about how railways were “run” in the post war period, and I cannot recommend it enough for those who are interested in “behind the scenes activities” and thinking in B.R. after the last war
Another thing about Marylebone is the fact it may get even busier, once the terminus for the GCR mainline trunk route that took pressure off the WCML and ECML. Sadly the trunk route between Marylebone and Manchester has gone, finished off by Thatcher and her cronies. It may re-open as it is the more logical alternative to HS2 and would be a lot cheaper to build and do less environmental destruction.
Paul Johnson
“It may re-open”.
I’ve never heard of that, have you a link?
@Anonymous
“http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10406859/HS2-Labour-to-examine-cheaper-rival-plan.html”
Kite flying, I suspect
Timbeau
Thanks for that, 2013 and Gilligan.
@Paul Johnson
The GCR main line was downgraded long before Thatcher and her cronies. The last through trains to Sheffield and Manchester (not many)
were withdrawn in 1964. A residual (about 4 a day) service continued
Marylebone – Nottingham until autumn 1966 (steam hauled to end).
Thereafter, a Rugby-Nottingham DMU service continued for a few more years.
The truth is, the GCR London extension was a failure of epic
proportion, Sir Edward Watkin’s folly. It offered no worthwhile
advantage compared with the pre-existing services offered by the
Midland Railway and London & North Western (Rugby) and failed
to achieve anywhere near a viable level of business. It totally
wrecked the business results of the GCR, hitherto a perfectly viable
really useful railway, and soured business relations between the
GCR and Midland (leading to all kinds of tensions in management
of their joint railways, such as the Cheshire Lines).
It should never have been built, and under a proper national
government directed rail strategy, would not have been.
No wonder Sir Edward Watkin (or his successor) was careful
to arrange for an advantageous financial arrangement with the
Metropolitan, this being the factor that ultimately saved Marylebone
from closure. The “Continental connection” was always just a dream.
There was absolutely no chance of this ever coming about in the
strained relationships between Britain and Europe in the pre WW1
years, and it was madness to undertake a questionable investment
of billions (today’s prices)in furtherance of this ambition.
That Marylebone has “come good” in the present age is extraordinary,
who’d a thought it back in the 1960s?
Recreating the GCR main line as a substitute for HS2 would be an
equally disastrous folly, poor access to central London, inadequate
trackbed width, tunnels galore, Nottingham section turned into
a tramway etc, (and irrelevant to pressing need to improve speed
and capacity to West Midlands and North West. (and between West
Mids and South/West Yorks.
I wouldn’t buy shares.
@ Alan Robinson, who said “There was absolutely no chance of this ever coming about in the strained relationships between Britain and Europe in the pre WW1 years,………..”
I have to disagree with that, and hence the “Anglo-French Exhibition of 1908”. Relations with Germany were strained, yes, but the tunnel was never intended to surface in Germany.
In fact, Wiki is unusually accurate. It says “The Franco-British Exhibition (1908) was a large public fair held in London in the early years of the 20th century. The exhibition attracted 8 million visitors and celebrated the Entente Cordiale signed in 1904 by the United Kingdom and France.
The Exhibition was held in an area of West London near Shepherd’s Bush which is now called White City: the area acquired its name from the exhibition buildings which were all painted white. ”
Well, if it celebrated “the Entente Cordiale”, I suspect our relationship with France was rather good.
@Castlebar – even with Germany, relations were hardly strained to near breaking until the last year or two before the war. May I recommend John Roehl’s recent three volume biography of Wilhelm II (only the last volume* is relevant)? Nasty piece of work the Kaiser might have been, but that didn’t spill over into Anglo-German relations until quite late. Around the time Watkin was planning his grand thoughts, France was seen as more of a threat to the peace of Europe than Germany indeed.
To pick up AR’s point about not investing in such things, all the evidence is that the global capital market around the turn of the century was excessively liquid and that there was a shortage of good quality investments to mop it up – for example, not one, but two groups competing to build a tube network despite Yerkes warning to investors about his MO. At a time when Consols were thought to be good if they returned 2% pa+, even modest returns on stocks seemed attractive.
* All 700 pages of it – a monument to Teutonic thoroughness…
+said with some asperity as it has take until now when Osborne has finally refinanced the WWI loans, to get rid of a £100 investment my grandfather made in war bonds at 2% – a real nestegg, he believed – but then he didn’t have to deal with the debt management folk in Bristol.
@Graham H and Castlebar
“Strained relationships” The very notion of a fixed link with Europe was
enough to raise the generals and admirals to a state of apoplexy.
Reputedly, Sir Edward Watkin committed the greatest ever humourous
speech in the house of commons, in reply to misgivings about the
security of the realm should a tunnel be extant;-
After a huge prolonged build up, ever more grave and emphasising
his determination that Britain should remain inviolate from
continental aggression bent on invasions etc;-
He finished with (words to this effect) ;- And this, honourable
members of the house is what I assure you will be done;-
“Should any invader dare to violate the sanctity of our noble land etc
by means of the tunnel;——
I WILL INSTRCT THE PORTERS AT CHARING CROSS NOT TO
LET THEM THROUGH THE BARRIER!!!!
A Glorious vision of the Kaiser and his generals at platform 6;-
“Where did you say you got on mate? Berlin hauptthingy ?
Dunno what the excess is from there. You’d better go back, more
than my job’s worth to let you through.
The house (reputedly) collapsed into a state of utter paroxysm,
for a substantial length of time.
However, similar xenophobic protests were expressed back in the 1980s.
In any case, nearly all of our trade was with the empire and commonwealth, there just wasn’t enough business with Europe.
It got worse in the 1920s.
@GH
I would also suggest watching the Beeb’s excellent 37 Days, the mini-series behind-closed-doors story of the final weeks before the outbreak of World War I.
@AR – nevertheless, the documentation and diplomacy of the day says you are wrong. For something lighter than Roehl, there’s always AJP Taylor, if somewhat outdated now and LBM’s excellent recommendation of 37 Days. The plain fact of the matter is that Britain wished to remain aloof from continental entanglements right up to the last 48 hours before war broke out, but that didn’t prevent very close relationships between the ruling classes on both sides of the Channel. Far from permanently strained relationships, the severance caused by the war came as a distressing shock. The Yellow Press was regarded as being as much of a rabble rousing nuisance then as the Daily Mail is now.
PS I don’t think Watkin continued his ambitions beyond WWI and the liquidity of the capital markets was much tighter and less stable than before. Capitalists of all stripes found it difficult to raise the sorts of money needed to fund new infrastructure of any kind; no doubt, the extraordinary demands of state borrowing up to 1918 had much to do with that.
@Graham H
I cannot dispute that there was an aspiration for better cultural
ties with the European continent, especially amongst the “cultured
elite” but, military objections to a channel tunnel would most
likely have been paramount (hence the questions in the house that
Sir Edward felt obliged to respond to).
Yes, there was an entente cordial with France, and some impressive
manifestations such as the White City exhibition, but not sufficient
to overcome long term antagonism to and suspicion of Europe.
Is this still the case?
The long discarded verse of our national anthem read;-
Confound THEIR politics, frustrate THEIR knavish tricks !!!!
And, who are THEY? “They” start at Calais.
Goes back to the 16th cent mostly.
@Graham H
Forgot to say; Sir Edward Watkin couldn’t possibly have continued
his ambitions beyond WW1, he was dead by 1899.
After which event, the only ambition of the GCR Board was to
avoid bankruptcy!
And: Excess Liquidity : Very dangerous. It’s what we have now.
Victorian plutocrats poured money into (sometimes highly dubious)
railways. Today’s equivalents pile it into property and derivatives
of derivatives bound by hedges or something. Not railways , pity.
This thread is officially back from a near death experience!
AR @ 14.58
Just the same, I was able 1st/2nd April 1966 to go to Manchester London Rd from Marylebone on the overnight parcels + passenger & come back the following night, starting from Central.
Loco changes at all sorts of interesting places
( The rail-tour I was going on from Manchester went to interesting places too … )
@AR -the British and Germans and French exchanged military observers at the annual manoeuvres and fleet reviews right up to the outbreak of the war. You must produce evidence for your assertions rather than rely on backprojecting this week’s Daily Mail.
“£100 investment my grandfather made in war bonds at 2% – a real nestegg, he believed ”
2% isn’t bad at present, but over 100 years it would only return you £724, including the capital.
In order to keep up with inflation, which averaged about 4.7% over the past century, it would have to be worth about £10,000 now, so in real terms it’s lost 93% of its value.
@Graham H
“British and Germans and French exchanged military observers at the annual manoeuvres and fleet reviews right up to the outbreak of the war.”
Of course they did – that’s the point of a military review. If you want to face down a potential enemy you need to show off your military might. Bet they didn’t reveal any secret weapons though.
@timbeau – “so in real terms it’s lost 93% of its value.” Tell me about it. And to rub salt into the wound, the (privatised) managers of the stock had devised a system of unanswerable questions to prevent the stock being repaid when my father’s estate was wound up. Sample: “We need to ask you a security question about your family” “Fine, what is the question?” “We can’t tell you for security reasons”.
I shall spend the £100 I have just received on a half decent lunch for two. Aforesaid grandparent would have been shocked…
@timbeau 18:27,
When I was in the Territorial Army I was taught that (foreign, i.e. Russian) military observers were invited to manoeuvres of over 25,000 troops as part of an international protocol. I believe this was reciprocated. The reason was so that it was quite clear to the foreign power that this genuinely was an exercise and not a means of surreptitiously building up troops in preparation for an attack. Otherwise, the other side panics and builds up troops and the original side then scales up their fighting ability and so on until you get a tense situation. The idea is to defuse this at the outset.
From memory, the foreign military observers were free to go where they pleased in a defined area but there were areas that were forbidden. They were to travel in clearly marked vehicles. They were to be afforded every courtesy normally offered but if they were discovered in an area they shouldn’t have been there were clear procedures for dealing with that. At no time was it ever suggested that the purpose was to show off military might.
We are getting way off topic yet again.
@timbeau – your point about inflation reminded me – to come back to something railway-related – of an approach I received in 1988 from the NFU who wanted the compensation set out in the Railway Fires Act 1906 updated. This was payable to farmers whose crops had been set on fire by passing steam locomotives; the spread of preserved railways prompted them to revive their interest. My economists had a happy time indexing wheat prices for the previous eighty years, but we concluded that because so much agricultural production was now subsidised the farmers – and certainly the state – would be better off if the crops were burned anyway…
@Graham H
Railway Fires Act 1906. This is all coming back now.
Had a wrangle to deal with on the Kent & East Sussex Railway
about 1989. There were extensive wheat fields all along one section of
the route (owned by one farmer). They kept going up in flames , and
compensation demanded (wheat prices were forecast to slump that summer). this was getting silly, so, spies staked out, and we got ’em
caught in the act.
Om the other hand, if an engine ran over a sheep, then the carcass
was popped into the firebox PDQ, leaving aroma of roast lamb.
As to proof of anti-channel feeling (i.e. as expression of anti-
European sentiment) all I can say is that about half of the peasants
of my parish have told me that “actually using that abominable
channel tunnel (instead of bobbing about on the high seas, Yo-ho-ho)
is not only unpatriotic, but an act of high treason.
@Graham H
Forgot to mention;-
Not only have I been told that I am guilty of high treason
(for using the dreaded channel tunnel)
but also that the sentence should be :-
TRANSPORTATION!
@poP three days ago
“this seem a fitting time to say that really is the end of the discussion. It was informative but had really run its course. We shall move on.”
Three days and another thirty comments later, it’s still going strong. Rather like the station that the article is about, it seems this subject refuses to lie down and die.
I would still like to hear more Information on the “Battle for the Settle-Carlisle”. I spent a great deal of time writing letters, visiting and travelling on the line, attending the closure hearings. Maybe a separate Report / Forum could be instigated.
[As the Settle & Carlisle is far from London, and notwithstanding the comment discussion on LR on the subject, we will not be setting up an article or forum for it here. However we will look into other options and let you know off line. LBM]
In Edinburgh we have a section of rail to road conversion (West Approach Road). It’s quite narrow and only good for 30 to 40 mph in a single carriageway format.
PW’s assertions are fascinating, as I write this on the same day as the official opening of the Borders Railway. I was hoping that more enlightened attitudes might prevail, but it seems not!
I’m sure that PW won’t mind if I apply the labels NeoCon and UKOK to his outlook!
@Janet – not sure after the lapse of time who PW might be -can you help us?
Graham H
I’d hazard a guess at Paul Witherington…the conversion chappie…
@slugabed/Janet – not worth the effort of dealing with his comments, then!
@ Graham H – Slugabed is correct, Paul Withrington who commented on the article albeit near the start of the comments. He clearly disagreed with your remarks about rail to road conversion being “impossible”. I note that he now appears to be associated with that great purveyor of transport “reality” (ahem!) – the Institute of Economic Affairs. Given that, I think Janet’s proposed labels seem apposite.
@WW – thank you. I agree totally with Janet’s assessment. [I was once offered a job by the IEA as a transport adviser; I really couldn’t understand what they thought I had to offer them… and still can’t].
@ Graham H – I’d guess that they thought you would bring “credibility” but that’s based on an assumption that they could persuade you of the value of their propositions. At that point I need say no more. 😉
Indeed there are many comments and I started with the ones at the top, before skipping the rest! And PW is who you say he is!
I’m trying to follow the logic, whether railway conversion is a form of Western Fundamentalism that could be attributed to Thatcher/Reagan or belief in the printed word of journals such as The Economist…or if it’s just a cash grab to turn a few of the micro-elite from millionaires into billionaires but I’m sure that quite a few ordinary folk will get trodden under along the way.
@Janet – before Widdrington, there was something called the Railway Conversion League (beware of anything with the word “league” in its title, so redolent of dimly-lit church calls in dowdy S London suburbs). They were active in the early ’50s, if not before, possibly bankrolled by the road building fraternity – all well before Thatcher and Regan were thought of. Not that age lends respectability to the arguments!
So far as Mrs T was concerned, the anti-public transport arguments were based on her vision that car travel conferred freedom – “The Great Car Society” (even she realised the unwisdom of that slogan) – and money spent on improving public transport was wasted. We had the greatest difficulty persuading her that the Channel Fixed Link should be a rail tunnel rather than a drive through one; her opening response had been in favour of a road bridge, until the safety risks were explained to her.
There are perhaps two roots to this attitude. One was a very widespread attitude between the Wars that car travel was not merely modern but also that cities could and should be redesigned around personal mechanised travel – Das Autogerecht Stadt” – depicted by Corbusier (and more amusingly, persisting into the days of Eagle and Meccano Magazine in the fifties). The second thing was that for many of my parent’s generation, (ie those born a hundred years ago), cars did liberate them in some way – the country drives, the roadside picnics, the easy trips to future retirement locations (aka bungalowland-on-sea). As we now see, that could only be a passing phase in the evolution of attitudes, but for a generation or two -and presumably especially applicable in the remote and poorly-served Grantham of the time – those attitudes became embedded. It never crossed my parents’ mind, for example, to use trains for long distance travel because they could, and did use the car, well after they were really a safety risk to all concerned. Such attitudes were typical, I found.
PW maybe – consciously or otherwise – be the catspaw of vested interests, but his views have a lot of retro emotional baggage. I doubt he would acknowledge that!
I suspect that for some of the Thatcher entourage, destroying the ability of trade unions to have any major impact on transport was another reason to prefer cars over public transport.
@quinlet – very much so, although the irony of the heavily-unionised car manufacturing industry seems to have passed them by.
I feel that Jane’s dichotomy (or,in fact,unholy alliance) could be applied to nearly all modern political initiatives….name me a policy and,given the most superficial research,the “fundamantalist” and “pork-barrel” factions amongst its proponents would make themselves quite obvious.
Sorry…Should read “Janet”…No edit function….
@Graham H
“presumably especially applicable in the remote and poorly-served Grantham of the time ”
I know Lincolnshire as a whole has a reputation for insularity, but Grantham is on the East Coast Main line, and as the junction for Lincoln and Nottingham, and with a major depot for engine-changing, had all but the fastest expresses call there.
As for road travel, with the Great North Road running through the town until the bypass was built in 1960, congestion must have been commonplace even in the 1930s
@ GH Yes you are right, but it wasn’t only the safety aspects of a Channel bridge (in thick fog) that converted Mrs T to agree to a tunnel. My info is that somebody {possibly Keith Joseph or somebody saner}, had a word in her ear and suggested to her how she might/would be in the hands of the unions in the steel industry. The Torrey Canyon disaster and Humber Bridge construction were both precedents which could be repeated in vast magnitude. An immediate rethink was required and we got ‘tunnel’.
@timbeau – a question of perception, I suspect. (And the fact that today’s EC timetable offers 2-3 departures per hour to London, but in 1963, for example, an erratic broadly hourly offering.) As to bus and coach services, even in the ’60s and ’70s. LRCC was notorious for the infrequency of its services (twice daily between Grantham and Lincoln as I recall)
A propos congestion, Ministers (and Mrs T in particular) used to argue openly that was a sign of growth and prosperity* and could be easily solved by more road building. How we laughed… perhaps she actually liked the pre-1962 jams on the Great North Road.
*I fear I may have inadvertently written that into speeches myself (but not, of course, the point about road building, which even then, people knew to be a lie).
“An erratic hourly offering” counted as quite a good service fifty years ago, and certainly when Miss Roberts was growing up in the 1930s.
@timbeau – the exam question as set,however, was not whether the service was poor but whether people perceived it to be so and used it, or not, accordingly. In fact, the 1963 offering was slightly worse than the pre-war timetable ( 16 v 18/19 London through trains).
I would agree with you that roughly hourly wasn’t bad for the time; I think the difficulty that the train operators (sorry, railway companies) faced was that try as they might, other modes were seen as more fashionable, and the private car, the most fashionable and liberating of the lot. The brief rise and swift fall of the American interurban network (which generally offered hourly or better) in the face of the model T similarly reflected a changed perception of rural/small town mobility. Universal car ownership was seen by politicians ranging from Balfour in Edwardian times, to Hitler and Eisenhower* at later dates, as the goal, to be reflected in road building programmes accordingly.
* it was difficult to draft a sensible sentence that included all three leaders, but there you are; as Humpty Dumpty remarked, “There’s glory for you”.
@Graham H
The relative glamour in the inter-war years of the Great North Road and the “Late & Never Early” – despite Gresley’s best efforts at the top end of the market – is an interesting point. My grandfather, a steam-lorry driver, certainly spoke to his young son – my dad – of the Great North Road as having a certain excitement to it. (But as he grew up in Southern Electric land, trains were not very interesting)
The question though was whether the premise that the home town of the Prime Minister is question was “especially remote and poorly-served” at the time, and I would contend that, by the standards of the time, it was very well connected by both road and rail.
The infrequency of LRCC’s service to Lincoln along the A607 cliff road in the 1960s is unsurprising – it was a Tilling company (i.e nationalised after 1948), and not supposed to compete with the railway line which ran parallel with it until Beeching.
Timbeau ‘As for road travel, with the Great North Road running through the town until the bypass was built in 1960, congestion must have been commonplace even in the 1930s’. Certainly in the 1930s and even into the 1960s car ownership would have been far beyond a grocer’s daughter – or a postman’s (or butcher’s, baker’s or candlestick maker’s). When I was growing up in South Ruislip in the 50s car ownership was very much the exception rather than the rule. Is it so surprising that Mrs T saw universal personal transport as a holy grail? Except that it is arguably socialist in concept.
Thank you for your remarkably restrained comments on my posts, everyone!
In the case of my local rail to road conversion, the West Approach Road in Edinburgh, it perhaps doesn’t serve Paul W’s case terribly well and I must make some observations, thus:
1. The rail services were centralised, obviating the need to change terminals for connecting services. (A benefit for rail.)
2. The replacement road is torturously narrow, having been squeezed into awkward geometry, complete with a Y junction eastbound where traffic must merge. At least railways have points and signals! (A disbenefit for cars.)
Out of interest, can high-sided road vehicles be made to negotiate converted railway tunnels?
________
Some more points!
When I was at yoonie, the economics dept seemed immersed in some whacky/biased theories, e.g. CalMac ferries are inefficient owing to the (then) traditional state ownership. No actual evidence required in support of such an assertion, which frankly could have been true or false. Then there’s The Economist, which is no stranger to pushing such ideas!
However, people should be careful of what they wish for! Having turned a lame and tame BR over to private business, the new starts will have a voice! One rail franchise is worth several bus operations, I’m told. Bus substitution and railway conversion anyone? Nope.
Janet asks ” can high-sided road vehicles be made to negotiate converted railway tunnels?”
It depends on which vehicles, and which tunnels, how many lanes of traffic, how thick is the tarmac etc. Unlike many continental countries, which have a “standard” height for most road vehicles, (4 m. or 13 ft 1 in), and most bridges can accommodate them, the UK has many vehicles slightly higher than that, and a full range of bridge/tunnel heights. But yes, some converted rail tunnels can accommodate some fairly high vehicles.
Janet
Not sure that the Caley/Princes Street closure counts as a ‘conversion’ like the proposed Marylebone scheme.
From memory the site and lines were derelict for years before any proposals came forward.
@timbeau – I don’t recall that the Lincoln area was subject to one of the BTC Coordinated Area Transport Plans; in many other ex-Tilling areas, buses and trains seemed to have carried on with a lordly indifference to each other. I suspect it’s just coincidence that poor bus services there avoided competing with a (really very modest) parallel train service – remember that the big four bought into the bus industry not to coordinate with them but to take a financial stake in them and cream off some of the profits of competion.
One of the things that’s easily overlooked about the east coast (and west coast) prestige services is how few of them there were – at best a couple of up-to-date rakes was about the limit;for most semifasts and stopping services,the stock would have been mostly pre-grouping and often late C19. Not until BR started to build the Mk1 stock in quantity was there any significant amount of new stock available – with the consequent pervading dowdy appearance of most trains -a real turn off for would be passengers.
@Janet – the “case” – which didn’t exist – for rail/road conversion was really just a pet hobby horse worked up by one or two individuals which happened to be seized on by certain politicians and their advisers (Alf Sherman in particular) as a highly useful stick with which to beat up the rail industry. The practical aspects were of no interest to them.
Speaking about termini and destruction, can we expect an article on the recent HS2 announcements regarding Euston station?
It is pertinent to remember that decisions were skewed by vested interests. Railwaymen and Unions made political donations to one party, but more importantly, road builders, house builders and major construction companies made rather large donations to the other, the one that happened to be in office.
Large donors not only like rewards and recognition, but also expect to be listened to, however wacky their proposals. When somebody or their company has just given your party a fat donation cheque, pouring tons of concrete over the route out of Marylebone didn’t seem such a bad idea at all.
I doubt Margaret Roberts would even have had much awareness of the nature of the service provided at Grantham station in the 1930s whether good or bad. Isn’t it more likely that she would have become aware early on that it was a railway town whose workforce would be largely dominated by bolshy trade unionists, anathema to her father (likely a Poujadiste avant la lettre) who incidentally owned not one but two local shops; pace Anonymous 15:42, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a motorcar quite early on.
Miss Roberts was born about 100 yards from the East Coast Main Line, so would have been only too aware of the trains. As a grocer, Alf Roberts would probably have had a van, so could drive – he may have run a car as well.
In the thirties, most people travelling any distance would have done so by train, although it is unlikely a fifteen year schoolgirl would have known the details of the services (her male contemporaries would be a different matter!) I would expect she would have been aware of its existence.
WW2 started when she was 14, and petrol was still rationed when she went up to Oxford in 1943. She would certainly have used the train to go there and back
……………and the relevance to Marylebone is……………………………….?
Anonymous/Janet – The services into Princes Street station were removed in the early 1960’s and the lines finally closed in 1965, with the trackbed rebuilt as a road in the arly 1970s, so this was an oppurtunistic rebuild rather than a planned conversion.
I created a website, http://www.rail2road.org.uk, to record those locations where disused railways were rebuilt as roads. This got me into a lot of arguments with people who wanted to convert the railways to roads (including PW) as they thought it was an advocacy site, whereas it was intended just to record to loss of old railways.
The site hasn’t been touched in years, but I recorded 207 conversions for a mileage of roughly 257 miles, which shows that most were relatively short. In all cases, the convesions were opportunistic as the railways had already closed. In the couple of cases where I managed to find costs, reusing an old railway formation did not make a noticeable saving on the cost of building the road – similar schemes without railways cost similar amounts, something which really annoyed the conversaion fanatics as they always overestimated the value of reusing the old formation.
@Jim Cobb -your conclusion doesn’t surprise. I was the internal sponsor for two DTp studies on rail/road conversion – the Woodside branch, and Sleaford-Spalding. I think I have reported on them on this site before so please forgive me if I repeat myself. As you say, the cost of conversion compared with new was much the same. Two conversion costs stood out in particular: the need to install proper drainage (cf the S Ives busway), as railway embankments were largely self draining, and the need to replace all the rail overbridges as the troughing and bridge upstands were too close together for safe use as a roadway. Embankments also posed a problem because of the narrow crown, which led to expensive side barrier requirements and where the lack of any space for a pull-off caused further safety concerns. In the case of the Woodside branch, it was estimated that adding the runoff from so much extra hard surfaces would blow the local drainage capacity after every storm. So much was predictable, but we had to prove Ministers wrong… [In the case of Sleaford- Spalding, the cost of conversion was such that the same effect could be achieved by minor and cheaper tweaks to the existing road system.]
Janet
Out of interest, can high-sided road vehicles be made to negotiate converted railway tunnels?
NO
See waaaaay up this discussion (!)
They are too wide to pass, usually, without knocking bits (wing-mirrors etc) off each other, being manually steered.
Also, they will often graunch their top-outer corners on the tunnel lining, but as said elsewhere it also “all depends” on individual size constraints.
Graham H
That reminds me of one of the truly great losses to connectivity, if nothing else of the system:
Spalding – Boston & Firsby – Louth – Grimsby. The “Lincolnshire coast line”.
If something could have been done about “LC” costs, I suspect it might have been saved – and yes, I have travelled all of it.
Greg is right re high vehicles. L T had to have special buses (with special tyres) just for use on route 108 through the Blackwall Tunnel. The relevance here to this Marylebone thread is that the concrete proposers conveniently forget such extras with their proposals. The true cost of converting the Marylebone line to a bus/coachway was, I think, well underestimated. But some few people would have become fabulously rich.
@Graham H – There are locations where a bypass was built very close to disused railways but the old railway formation was not used (eg. part Evesham Bypass) so that gives a good indicator of the value of the old railway. Of course it can help in some locations, but most railway formations are too small for equivalent roads.
@ Jim Cobb Bramber – Steyning is another example. These things seem to work better where no existing tunnel is involved, but in Marylebone’s case, a long, narrow tunnel under a very expensive part of London is already in place
The general alignment of the railway may be useful for road conversion as it is a fairly continuous brownfield site. It also follows an existing division in the local area, rather than creating a new one. However, in almost all cases a wider alignment would be necessary than the railway needed, and overhead structures would need to be modified or replaced by at-grade junctions..
Castlebar,
in Marylebone’s case, a long, narrow tunnel under a very expensive part of London is already in place
It might be long but it isn’t narrow. I am pretty sure there is space for four railway tracks there.
@castlebar
the relevance is becoming somewhat tangential, but seems to be an attempt to understand the source of the apparent antipathy to railways by senior politicians in the 1980s.
Beatrice Roberts (nee Stephenson!) was born in Grantham, even closer to the railway, and was 18 at the time of the Grantham rail disaster. Perhaps this created a dislike of the things, which she passed on to her daughter?
Castlebar,
On further investigation it appears to be a lot more complicated than that. The northern entrance is two track but there is another unused tunnel entrance next to it.
http://s5.photobucket.com/user/s-type-driver/media/2014%20album/image.jpg1_3.jpg.html
(Don’t try clicking the play icon – I think it is a still taken from a video).
It was definitely wide enough for four tracks out of Marylebone though
http://signalbox.org/diagrams.php?id=414
Either way, I am pretty sure that the tunnel would not have been an issue if converting to road for the purposes of running coaches into Marylebone.
@ PoP. Maybe
But I doubt wide enough for modern day buses coaches with massive wing mirrors.
Post-war buses were mostly built to a 7’6″ width. With RTWs and Routemasters, 8 feet wide buses became standard. With a different sized (and widthed) population today, and different expectations of comfort etc, even if there is room for four railway tracks in the Marylebone tunnels, I wouldn’t like a late running coach heading towards me in the opposite direction. With wing mirrors, does anyone know the overall width of modern coaches on our roads?
@PoP
“It might be long but it isn’t narrow. I am pretty sure there is space for four railway tracks there.”
Sources on ‘tinternet suggest three double-track tunnels were built under Lords cricket ground as future proofing, but only one was ever built beyond the WCML crossing, and the other two were never used, except as sidings. One has since been obstructed by subsequent building work.
If the tunnel roof is arched, there would of course be less headroom in two double track tunnels than a quadruple track one.
The normal maximum width of any road vehicle in Europe is 2.55 m, or 8 ft 4.4 inches. This does not include the mirrors, nor any provision for a gap between vehicles: my father’s rule of thumb for this is 1 inch per mph at slow speeds, rather less above 30 mph. The standard width of a motorway lane appears to be about 3.65 m (other figures are available all over the internet, let’s not get hung up on millimetres).
While the original article was fascinating, and it has produced interesting comments, I personally find the minutiae of the extent to which the plan might have worked to be a bit like wondering what a ham and egg breakfast would taste like if you had no ham and no eggs. Maybe that’s just me.
Malcolm, I’m afraid that not for the first time, I am having difficulty with your sense of humour. “Minutiae” is actually very relevant when you are proposing to fit things into tunnels. Especially as road transport is wider now (as, noticeably, are the wing mirrors). And this thread is about precisely that, the proposal to convert the tunnels out of Marylebone into a bus/coachway, so “minutiae” matters
Certainly far more on topic than ham and eggs.
But as you say, “Maybe that’s just me.”
The carriageway was planned to be generally 6.7m wide, with one pinch point at 5.9 m. Given a standard coach width excluding mirrors of 2.55m, that means 160cm clearance – 80cm clearance at the pinch point – in which you have to fit four mirrors, and some dynamic clearance.
But it’s worse than that, because that is the width at ground level – arches taper inwards as you go up – but wing mirrors stock out quite high up.
timbeau, you are right. The topic is about what was going on in the early 1980s, so over 30 years ago. Vehicles today are noticeably wider and most noticeable of all seem to be coach wing mirrors. So, it begs a question of hidden costs that perhaps was not factored in at that time. Clearances which were once acceptable have been diminished by wider vehicles. That might mean some tunnels would have to be widened. The cost and disruption would be massive, and probably unacceptable going by the length of the Marylebone tunnels. How many other bustitution type schemes have been hit by costs that “nobody saw it coming”? Fortunately, Marylebone was saved, but are there others out there?
Here is a typical coach of the 1980s.
http://www.showbus.co.uk/photos/d207lwx.JPG
The maximum width of a coach was set at 8′ 2.5″ (2.502 metres) in 1961. When it was expanded by an extra 48mm to the present limit of 2.55m I don’t know!
@Castlebar “……………and the relevance to Marylebone is ……………………………….?”
–The genesis of Thatcher’s negative attitude towards railways.
I am drawing the line now on discussion on the Roberts family use of rail transport vs road, as it is a tangent on a tangent, supposition & hearsay. All further discussion will be snipped. LBM
@ peezedtee
That’s an assumption. Do you have any evidence?
timbeau,
I thought (but cannot prove) that the maximum width was set at 2.5m sometime in the post-Routemaster era. That is what was permitted. This approximately equated to 8′ 2.5″ which is what was displayed in the cab but this wasn’t the legal maximum – just a convenient imperial approximation as in the 1960s not many were familiar with metric measurements.
I don’t know why people think it was 2.55 metres. The Road vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986 section 8 clearly states 2.5m though allows “a locomotive” or “A refrigerated vehicle” to be wider.
@ timbeau
Thank you for posting the 1980s coach photo
I know that London Transport built some 8 foot wide buses after the war, (the RTW class) but initially they had to be used in the suburbs as the police took the decision to ban them from the City and central London. Again, the noticeable thing about your photo is the wing mirrors compared to today’s new coaches. Yes, the theorists and conversion flag wavers were probably right in that those coaches would have probably passed with ease in Marylebone’s tunnels. But that’s probably not the case with today’s productions.
Janet asked about re-use of rail tunnels for road. Here’s what had to be done to part of the Gravesend West branch – the height of the vertical section of the tunnel was just about doubled (The line ran at the level of the top of the concrete).
Solution surely would have been foldaway mirrors. Given its width, surely no overtaking would be allowed on the coachway?
Operation was envisaged as 250,000 buses a year – 1000 buses on the busiest days – assuming a 16 hour operating day that’s one a minute. That’s not actually very much traffic even for a single carriageway (one lane each way) road, but it is high enough to make the terminal facilities at Marylebone interesting. Dwell time to unload and reload a 50-seater coach is considerably more than 60 seconds, so they can’t just use a single stop one after the other. And using a terminal loop arrangement with parallel stands means passengers having to walk across in front of them. Any other arrangement requires incoming and departing coaches to manouevre around each other to their respective stands.
For comparison, Victoria Coach station handles 240,000 departures a year, (mayor’s annual report 2014, page 9) , but it uses a much larger site (actually two sites, on opposite sides of the road, which helps to keep vehicles out of each others’ way).
@ Castlebar – we are clearly in the land of speculation about what could or could not run in the Marylebone tunnels. It is surely entirely plausible that a modern coach could be fitted with mirrors that would fit within the tunnel widths and the long / wide mirrors could retract or adjust “out of the way” as necessary. It’s even arguable, to a point, that the use of mirrors would not be needed as much in a controlled tunnel environment where the only other vehicles would be coaches anyway. To extrapolate an argument that the tunnels would need subsequent reconstruction is a bit much when the far more plausible solution would be to “adjust” the vehicles in some way. Anyway it’s all rather pointless given we are a long way past any thoughts of a coach station being built at Marylebone. The railway is also not immune to “changes in requirements” meaning substantial later rebuilds – e.g. the current works at Farnworth Tunnel to allow for electrification or rebuilding platforms to reduce stepping distances.
We have a few Busways in service in the UK of varying designs and one, Leigh, under construction. As with all bits of instructure used to provide a transport service there have been positives and negatives. Depending on their preferences people will choose the issues that suit their arguments. For some every busway built within 100 miles of a former railway line is the embodiment of evil and the perpetrators should be banished to outer darkness but I don’t think that stance helps sensible debate. I’ve no great preference either way to be honest before someone tries to portray as stupid or a follower of “evil”. 😉
For what it’s worth, you can see an example of a twin-track railway tunnel recycled for road vehicles here, near Gravesend. This section of “Thames Way” reuses part of the old Gravesend West branch to pass under the A226 “London Road”.
(There were a huge number of sidings, loops, etc. in this area that came and went with their related factories in neighbouring Northfleet, with some additional tunnels converted for road use, though these were effectively rebuilt. The Thames Way tunnel is the only one that retained the original tunnel structure. There’s even still a short patch of narrow-gauge embedded track in a car park just off nearby Clifton Marine Parade!)
Note how far the roadway had to be dropped – the concrete lining running below the tunnel’s original brickwork shows it to be roughly 1.5 – 2 metres. Also note the lack of any footpath whatsoever.
For context, the first photo here is a view taken almost directly above the tunnel mouth. The last photo shows the work was needed to turn this bit of railway into a road.
(The other end of the branch became the connection between HS1 and Fawkham Junction, allowing Eurostar trains to get to Waterloo International while the rest of the route was built to St. Pancras.)
@Pedantic of Purley, 11 September 2015 at 11:27
“. . . there is another unused tunnel entrance next to it . . .
. . . It was definitely wide enough for four tracks out of Marylebone though
I think the Great Central was opportunistic in the building of its tunnels near Marylebone. Whilst they aspired to a wider railway they certainly didn’t complete a four-track route throughout between Marylebone and Finchley Road. Where they were building under a substantial open plot as at Lords, they took the trouble to cut and cover the additional tunnel sections as can be seen clearly on this 1935 map:
http://maps.nls.uk/view/103313264#zoom=4&lat=6706&lon=11781&layers=BT
However, by the crossing of the LNWR near South Hampstead station they were well into bored construction and only a single pair was accommodated as can be seen here:
http://maps.nls.uk/view/103313246#zoom=5&lat=4189&lon=8718&layers=BT
. . . although bridge abutments were constructed with four tracks in mind as can be seen here:
http://www.railwayarchive.org.uk/map/getobjectmap.php?rnum=L2214&mapid=524181.jpg&mlsref=1077&cmn=Marylebone&pn=2&mp=3&all=no
At Finchley Road the first 100m or so of the extra tunnel heading south was also constructed opportunistically, again easily because that section was cut and cover beneath an open site. No permanent tracks were provided in these tunnels although during construction the contractor had sidings on the site.
Returning to the Lords tunnels the six tracks there formed mains and reliefs and a pair of headshunt sidings for the large goods depot. The foundations of the modern Danubius Hotel Regents Park (formerly a Hilton I think) are said to penetrate the unused tunnels between Marylebone and the cricket ground, but the tunnels under Lords still exist, were disposed of by Railtrack, and their future remains uncertain, see:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/ba593db6-cad9-11e3-ba95-00144feabdc0.html
(Article contains picture of developers standing in tunnel!)
erratum:
On reexamining the maps, the Hilton hotel was actually built above former open railway rather than over a tunnel section, and the structure spans the remaining open pair of tracks but probably also blocks the other track alignments with basements levels and foundations.
Mark Townend,
Thanks very much for all that. It is exactly the sort of comment I treasure. Full of substantiated facts and generally enlightening. I was particularly fascinated by the FT article – the contents of which I knew absolutely nothing. It must have taken some time to do the investigation.
It is particular interest to me because I sometime travel to/from Marylebone yet have new known the full history. All I really knew at the start was from what I could see when using it was that the tunnels were wide and appeared to have plenty of space for two coaches to pass.
PoP, 12 September 2015
“It must have taken some time to do the investigation.”
With Google as my friend, research took surprisingly little time. The FT article was link #2 for search term “Lords tunnel”! I’d remembered a series of contractors photos I’d found before of the tunnel construction sites, but couldn’t recall where. Remembering there were a large number of photos of contractors locomotives as well, I searched for “Great Central contractors locomotives” in image search and found the railways archive site very quickly again and once there I found their interactive map page particularly useful – http://www.railwayarchive.org.uk/map/osIndex.php
The NLS maps site is a goldmine for research. They have the historical 25 inch OS maps now for all of London and a large swathe of south England and you can easily generate a link for any view and zoom level.
Mark: Interesting. I suspect that internet research is a skill which cannot be taught. A knack, perhaps. Person A can flail around for hours with no result, and person B apparently “just happens” to think of the right search terms. Perhaps it’s luck, but some people make their own luck!
@Mark Townend, PoP
Construction of a three arch tunnel in St. Johns Wood
http://www.railwayarchive.org.uk/Lpages/html/L2228.html
I was chief clerk at Marylebone at this time. I had in my possession the official closure notices that were to be displayed for some weeks before closure. Thankfully the reprieve came and they were never used.
[I’m moving this link to an upcoming Friday Reads, where it is more relevant. LBM]
The view from the Lords link
https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/http%3A%2F%2Fcom.ft.imagepublish.prod.s3.amazonaws.com%2F6e3e07fa-cc13-11e3-a934-00144feabdc0?source=next&fit=scale-down&width=600
has a profile resemblance to the Met St Johns Wood Railway line here
http://www.guerrillaexploring.com/gesite/public_html/images/guerrilla/GES130/GES130-02.jpg
Was this possible rebuilding for joint working with GCR.
Had a second GCR tunnel through Hampsted been available it would surely have been used by the Bakerloo (Jubilee) branch during the new works programme of the LPTB. By then GCR was already scaling down
selling land at Marylebone for housing.
@MARK TOWNEND At Finchley Road the first 100m or so of the extra tunnel heading south was also constructed opportunistically, again easily because that section was cut and cover beneath an open site. No permanent tracks were provided in these tunnels although during construction the contractor had sidings on the site.
This site – Finchley Rd tube to the left.
http://www.railwayarchive.org.uk/map/getobjectmap.php?rnum=L1580&mapid=524181.jpg&mlsref=1077&cmn=Marylebone&pn=2&mp=3&all=yes
Unchanged in 2013 cab ride @25:56
https://youtu.be/2aJXt_AuRl8?t=1556
@Mark Townend Returning to the Lords tunnels the six tracks there formed mains and reliefs and a pair of headshunt sidings for the large goods depot.
It was actually 7 tracks on your map (& confirmed on the 1947 signalling diagram) the up/down fast/passenger lines and a loop. It was a cut & cover section so irrelevant for the tunnels but someone looking at the under used portal from the Station would see a three track opening. On the overlay below you can see the retrenchment from rail activity in the area (parcels/coal),
In that context it is not too surprising that the repurposing was evaluated.
http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=17&lat=51.5289&lon=-0.1696&layers=173&b=1
The blue circle slider on the left alters opacity 1947/today