Publicly owned rail services?

Our main train company in the NE has been 'renationalised' twice now. It seems to work just fine.

Whatever they do it can’t be worse than the appalling rail services at the moment

I’d settle for a publicly owned water supply, and clean up the filth everywhere. What a state we are in!

I'm old enough to remember the Dr. Beeching rail cuts of the 60's, when some 5,000 miles of track and around 2,300 stations were closed. I was living in the popular seaside resort of Silloth at the time, on the Solway coast on the branch line from Carlisle. When the line was axed, the town's economy virtually died overnight.. a fate common to many other places in a similar position. The car was king, and road transport was the future. With the benefit of hindsight, the policy was perhaps both extreme and unduly focused exclusively on cost-savings. As for Nationalisation, a simple return to the old model would be disastrous in terms of the drain on the public purse, but selectively, there may well be busy routes and networks which could lend themselves to introduction of a modified methodology, and which could still be profitable . Alternatively, if the fine focus on profitability was widened in order to view the railways as a Government-funded public service, it might be possible to extend the Nationalised network and to accept that there will be costs. There would certainly be ecological benefits as road transportation was reduced, plus the movement of people and freight would certainly help to underpin local industries. A complex equation, but certainly worth a close look.

Many other countries have successful government-run railways so we could learn from them. Despite prohibitive fares in the UK, people want to use rail travel. We currently have the crazy situation where many journeys are cheaper by air!

It’s been renationalised in Wales, and we are seeing improvements to services and more investment.

I would love to see a renationalised rail service. I don’t drive and it is becoming increasingly difficult to get around. When you see films of the past, it is noticeable that every village has a station and it is possible to get from anywhere to anywhere else on public transport. I wish we could go back to those days and get rid of a lot of cars. They pollute the air, and are responsible for both accidents and isolation for those unable to access out of town facilities.

A good bus and rail service would require investment at first, but when established it could be at least partially financed by heavier taxes for those who insist on using cars for every journey. It’s difficult to avoid car use now, but that would be different if we had cheap, clean and reliable public transport.

Yes, many European countries seem to have a government led rail service which seems better than ours. Hopefully, such a move would encourage more joined up thinking on road v rail journeys, bearing in mind the environmental impact of endless road building.

Worryingly, the government plan to enshrine a ‘privatised profits, thanks to public subsidies’ model in law later this year. They have a Bill which will create an entity called ‘Great British Railways’ which will oversee rail operating contracts (franchises were ended some time ago) and ensure that in England, the private sector, which includes other countries’ state owned services, benefits from what is a state subsidised natural monopoly, and which will make future state ownership virtually impossible.

The much maligned Mr Beeching was employed by the Government to investigate and report on the numbers of people using the railways, it was the Government that closed the stations not him!
The reason the various Utility companies were privatised was because they were badly run, now they are Privatised they are even worse.
Do we think that this Government will do a better job?

Ah - the wheel is starting to come full circle.

A good bus and rail service would require investment at first, but when established it could be at least partially financed by heavier taxes for those who insist on using cars for every journey.

So where would the fares that people paid be going? Into thin air?

And the tax paid by the transport workers and the companies supplying goods and services to the nationalised transport systems?

Why do people always regard nationalised services as one way money pits?

Government has to spend money before it can tax it back. If the government didn't continually spend into the economy the suppy of money available to everyone would get smaller and smaller as companies and individuals took their profits out of the economy and the government took it out via taxation.

Why do people always regard nationalised services as one way money pits?

Why don’t more people realise the present contract model is just that?

Siope

^Why do people always regard nationalised services as one way money pits?^

Why don’t more people realise the present contract model is just that?

Brainwashing by Maggie Thatcher I think, Siope 😆

I have thought that the re-nationalising the railways has been on the cards for a while now.

MaizieD

^A good bus and rail service would require investment at first, but when established it could be at least partially financed by heavier taxes for those who insist on using cars for every journey.^

So where would the fares that people paid be going? Into thin air?

And the tax paid by the transport workers and the companies supplying goods and services to the nationalised transport systems?

Why do people always regard nationalised services as one way money pits?

I don't. I am talking about reopening the lines, building stations, other setup costs that I don't pretend to know about (do you?). all of that would cost money in the first place, but would be repaid in time.

Of course they would take in money from fares, but I would prefer to see a properly nationalised model where busy lines subsidised quieter ones.

I do wish you wouldn't be so patronising. There's really no need - it's just a discussion.

My DH, who spent 38 years working in the railway industry, had this to say:

"Unfortunately, the railway in 2023 is very, very different from that which existed on 31.3.1994, the day before Railtrack became a legal entity. By comparison, the railway that was Nationalised on 1.1.1948 underwent relatively few fundamental changes in the next 46 years, apart from adding an overall structure at the highest level, wresting decision-making from the Big Four (LMS, GWR, LNER and Southern) that had owned it until then. Those companies had been pretty much bankrupted by WW2.

The mid-90s Privatisation split the industry into a myriad separate private companies, each with a legitimate profit-motive. They ranged from Rolling Stock Companies and Train Operating Companies to a man in a shed fixing wagons under contract. Nearly 30 years later, inevitably mergers and splits have seen further changes. Outside parties, in addition, provide manpower and machinery for contracted work. At one time, all this was under the BR umbrella.

Getting all that lot under one control again would be somewhere between those two popular expressions - herding cats and nailing jelly to the ceiling."

I'm perfectly happy for any amount of public money to be invested in public services. It would have so many benefits for all participants in the domestic economy.

I get very frustrated when people start saying that we'd need higher taxation to 'pay' for it. It's so defeatist sounding and plays into the hands of the right wing and its client media who, with unwearied regularity, portray state spending as irresponsibly spendthrift and persuade the electorate that it'll bankrupt the country.

I'm sorry if I sound patronising but all this groundhog stuff is so pointless. If people won't see beyond the national finances are like household finances myth how on earth are we going to get any change happening?

I’m happy for any amount of public money to be invested in public services
I said the other day that I think you would be happy to see the government creating money ad infinitum Maizie. Do you consider that approach to be sustainable?

It’s interesting to read what your husband, who has far more knowledge and expertise about this than any of us, has to say Ash. It’s so easy to say we should do X, whether X is actually achievable and if so at what cost is another matter entirely. I have said this before in connection with calls to bring the water and other industries into public ownership - can anyone imagine what it would cost to buy out the private companies? The government cannot simply acquire them without paying full compensation to the stakeholders.

The way I see it is that there is a nettle to be grasped, and whereas it might be a massive job to put things right, it can be done if there is a will. Where defeatism comes in is when people think that because something is difficult it can’t be done. Governments make the laws, so if something is stymied by legislation today, the law can be changed so it is not illegal tomorrow. Just as the government of the day took things out of public ownership with no compensation to the public, they could reclaim them if they wanted to. To maintain public trust and consent they could offer compensation to shareholders, but in the end it would have to be a compulsory purchase, much as has happened to people in the line of HS2. .

Germanshepherdsmum

^I’m happy for any amount of public money to be invested in public services^
I said the other day that I think you would be happy to see the government creating money ad infinitum Maizie. Do you consider that approach to be sustainable?

So long as there are resources to be bought and people to be employed and taxation is set at a level to counter inflation without impoverishing the less well of members of our society then yes, I think it is sustainable.

Of course I wouldn't be happy to see government creating money ad infinitum. That would just be silly.

but in the end it would have to be a compulsory purchase, much as has happened to people in the line of HS2.

I agree that that would probably be an outcome, but the value of the companies to be 'purchased' could be manipulated. If, for example, the water companies were far more tightly regulated, with punitive fines for breaching regulations, their value would probably plummet. Policing conformity to the regulations would require more government monetary input than at present, but it would be contributing to economic growth while reducing the value of the companies to a point where they would be happy to sell...

Of course, with Rail, the way it works at the moment, all the government would have to do is wait until the term of each franchise is ended and then take it back into public ownership.