UK west coast main line fiasco

[Jimbuna]

This ridiculous situation has already cost the Brit tax payer £40 million but could eventually grow to £100 million

Sir Richard Branson says the bidding for the West Coast Main Line franchise had been a "fiasco" but welcomed the decision to restart the process.
He told the BBC he was hopeful his Virgin Trains company could now keep running the route "for many years".
The government has scrapped a decision to let FirstGroup take over the route from Virgin after "technical flaws" were found in the competition process.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19817798

[soopaman2]

I like Sir Richard. He offers services at competitive rates, with little sacrifice to comfort.

I use his phone company, and flew on his airlines.

I paid less, and got comparible service.

I appreciate his investment into space travel. I just find him to be a class act, and a true visionary.

It would be good for the customer, should he get his bid through. He remembers service and customer satisfaction is paramount over shareholders profits. He realizes a happy customer, will eventually make a shareholder happy.

Virgin, which has run the franchise since 1997, will continue to operate the line while the situation is resolved, but when asked if the government could step in, Sir Richard said: "If they can't run a process, then it'll be even more difficult to run a railway."

Touche!

Re nationalisation is the only real solution, it was a dumb move driven by flawed ideology to break up the network in the first place, the various rail companies now recieve more in taxpayers subsidies than the rail system did when it was a fully integrated service.

[Oberon]

I'm of two minds on this, the original tender was over the top by first...and it is debatable if they could have kept it up. However, Branson calling foul just smacked of him throwing his toys out of his pram because Virgin didn't get the route.
First had a rocky start on the GWML, but they seem to have levelled off, likewise Virgin have done well on the WCML, despite the problems with insufficient coaches on the 390 units.
The problem, I think, lies somewhere in the middle, I wouldn't be surprised if gentlemen from first had a 'Murdoch' moment with gentlemen in the government, and notes were exchanged.

Privatisation, isn't it a grand old thing?

@Tribesman - It's possible, but I doubt that renationalisation will happen any time soon. A lot of people have fond memories of BR, but truth be told the service was no better or worse than it is today, in fact it was probably slightly worse. BR was also a massive money pit which was one of the reasons it was sold off. However, some level of control does need to be taken by the government in regards to the price of rail tickets if it wants to encourage people to use public transport, and I wouldn't completely count out some form of limited 'Grouping' in the near future.
History is repeating itself, when railways first came about there was a railway company for just about every town, and several railway companies that didn't exist and were just used to con people out of money, it was like the Dot.com bubble but in the 1840s-1850s. Then eventually the companies that did well brought out those who didn't, and a thousand odd railway companies and schemes narrowed down to about 120, then they in turn were narrowed down to four companies in the Railways Act of 1921 which hoped to reduce some of the losses made by the 120 odd companies, which in turn were nationalised in 1947 in order to aid the rebuilding of the country following the Second World War which had seen the railways run into the ground.
Now, in this recycling of history I'd say we're nearing a repeat of the Railways Act of 1921, we already have some dominant groups, Virgin, First, Southern (again) and it would make sense to split the country regionally and turn it over to them, on the provision that they meet certain requirements, including cheaper fares, or face nationalisation.

[BossMark]

This bloody rotten government cant get a bloody thing right, when Major privatised the railways it was rushed with no thought at all well apart from the Tories lining their packets.
When Labour got back into power in 1997 I was hoping they would Re nationalise the railways. Hopefully come the next election Ed will sort this horrendous mess out

Oberon if it was broken up because it was a money pit doesn't the fact that seperated it is a bigger money pit show that the break up wasn't the solution.
Remaking a four system system negates the benefits of an integrated system.
Given the huge increase in money thrown into it plus the huge buybacks due to complete failure shouldn't you be able to say something other than......but truth be told the service was no better or worse than it is today, in fact it was probably slightly worse....... as a huge increasing expenditure over that time period shouldn't deliver a possibly slight sort of maybe improvement

[Catfish]

Seems it is the same everywhere -

Initially railroads, telegraphy, post system, streets, waterworks, power plants are built with collected taxes (regardless being built by private companies or the state), and often run by the governments by which they were built, or ordered to be built.

Prices are going up slowly, all works and is well maintained.

At some point the governments decide they need money, so they begin to sell (read: privatize) those installations to private companies, to get instant cahs and plug the holes.

(Always mentioning to the unwashed masses how prices will go down, due to the competition of private companies. Little do the people know that all companies try to monopolize, so prices will of course NOT go down, but rise, and heftily.)

So all is being privatized, meaning it is expropriated from the people, now belonging to private companies, who
1. raise fees and prices to get more money, and
2. begin to neglect te maintenance and upkeep of existing installations while firing workers and reducing expenses for. e.g. maintaining the rails, and signals, to get more cash.

Then there willl be late arrivals, and minor accidents will become bigger over the years, while the infrastructure decays, until voilà: The state buys it all back, and begins to repair the mess.

With - you knew it - taxes.

Whoever saw the british film "Navigators" will know what i mean

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

Oberon if it was broken up because it was a money pit doesn't the fact that seperated it is a bigger money pit show that the break up wasn't the solution.
Remaking a four system system negates the benefits of an integrated system.
Given the huge increase in money thrown into it plus the huge buybacks due to complete failure shouldn't you be able to say something other than......but truth be told the service was no better or worse than it is today, in fact it was probably slightly worse....... as a huge increasing expenditure over that time period shouldn't deliver a possibly slight sort of maybe improvement

Indeed, and I can't disagree with you at all, and in an ideal world I'd love to see BR come back, although for me it'd be more for nostalgia reasons than anything else, but I don't see it happening any time soon. Even when BR was around the government was loathe to give it the money it needed to perform at its full potential, certainly the British government spent a lot less on the rail network than the French or German governments of the time.
A case in point is the APT project and the failure there-of. The APT was one of the most advanced trains to run on British metals at the time, it was the most powerful passenger train as well, enabling it to set a UK rail speed record that held for 23 years. However it suffered from technical faults which plagued the project throughout its testing period...however instead of sticking with it and ironing those bugs out, the whole project was cancelled and the bogie designs sold to Fiat, who stuck with it, incorporated it into their tilting train design...and then sold it back to us twenty years later in the Pendolinos that are running on the WCML now.
If APT had been allowed to run its full course, we could have had 140mph services on the WCML twenty years early, furthermore it would have been a better service than the Pendolinos today because the APT sets had more carriages to them (14 to the Pendolinos 11) and the APT was originally designed to go faster than the Pendolino (155mph to the Pendolinos 140mph). However, again, the government was reluctant to put in the money needed for both the APT project to continue, and to upgrade the WCML to the standard needed for 140-150mph running. Like TSR-2 in the military, we created an advanced machine that could have put us on a level with the continent but it was canned due to lack of government funding.
Now, with this age of austerity and government spending cutbacks, do you really think the government would be willing to take on such a massive spending project as the rail network? And even if it did, do you think it would spend more on it than the current operators do?
I didn't like privatisation when it was announced, and I still don't like it, but I can't honestly see the government spending any more money than the private companies have on the rail network, if anything it would probably try to spend less, because at the end of the day, what the government and the private companies have in common is that they tried to run the railways for profit and not just for service and availability, and when the government couldn't do that, it tried different schemes (like sectorisation) and when that didn't work it flogged them.
I hear where you're coming from Tribesman, I honestly do, and as someone who grew up in the era of BR Blue/Grey and Network South-East, I would dearly love a return to the days of BR...curly sandwiches and all, but realistically I don't see any government, Tory or Labour, willing to shoulder that cost and responsibility.