Railtrack was put into Railway Administration by HMG the regulator at the time Tim Winsor drop very broad hints before this happened that he would look very favourable on a review of track access charges. The board of Railtrack did not take the hint and the rest is history. HMG did pay out based on the share price before administration was invoked but not at the level that Railtrack was at before the crisis which is the compensation that shareholders tried to pursue. It took a year or two for the valuation to be agreed. Roger Ford has put his Modern Railway column musings since the turn of the century on his web site
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website. BTW he is the technical journalist at Modern Railways who's presently trying to work out DFt Rails rolling stock cascade plan, Septembers Modern Railways and ePreview at the above website. Back to the subject there's probably some musings in his columns of the period going into the detail.
Mr Scargill done Maggies job for her in not having a vote on strike action and causing a split in the union which it never recovered from.
She distinctly said she did not want to do it because of fallout from it going wrong. Think of people using trains, natural tory voters being generally more affluent than the general population. No qualms about privitising the buses as the users were less liekly to vote Tory anyway.
Yet the railways are the busiest they have been since WWII (or is it now ever?).
Season ticket price increases were pegged /below/ inflation for some time. Only newspaper comparisons and airline marketing departments use standard open returns for every trip.
This is misleading. Does anyone try to "understand" airline or ferry tickets, or do they just want a price? Sure, working out quotas on each train is complicated, just as it is with Easyjet, but not many people actually want to do that. "I want to go from A to B on Tuesday, what is the cost". Only anoraks need to worry about the routeing guide, obscure ticket validities etc etc. Anoraks don't want to book ahead and travel dirt cheap (except when they are flying), but it would appear lots of passengers do.
"Flatter" fares could be simple: but try telling students they can't get home in first class for a tenner any more, or you can't take the kids to London for next to nothing next month. Or there is no incentive for the little old lady who could travel at any time of day to avoid the crush-loaded 08.00 to the city.
Not very difficult when you consider the population figures, what people also forget is that the roads are also then busiest ever, as are air flights, there has never been so many kids in education (it doesn't mean that it's because education is better that ever - just that kids have to attend school, just like people have to travel, no matter what...
Not so, people sometimes want to 'break' their journeys (perhaps to visit a certain shop in one town) before travelling on to their end destination, under BR that was simple, not these-days, one has to understand the TT, TOC and fare structure before knowing if there is going to be a valid onward service.
Anoraks don't want to book ahead and travel
When you go to an airport you KNOW what flight you are boarding, and unlike railways, air travel (in this country at least) has never really been a 'turn up and travel' on the next available service. The fact remains, 30 years ago one could have travelled from London Kings X to Edinburgh using nothing but local inner, outer and country (DMU type) services if you were so inclined (!) - OTOH one could have travelled from Kings Cross to Finsbury Park [1] using any inter-city train that was scheduled to stop at the station. Now, not only does one have to travel on the correct type of train but one has to also travel on the correct TOC.
[1] for those who don't know the line, FP is the next station out of KX, about 4 miles.
Funny that, BR managed, and they didn't have the sort of government aid that the current (and past) privatised TOCs have, in fact BR was bluntly refused such grants by Thatcher/Major - go figure...
Thankfully getting quieter now that some people are getting a harsh lesson in economics.
How many actually want to do that though? How small a minority do you want the railways to pander to?
How many people were so inclined? A few enthusiasts perhaps. I suspect the vast majority just want to get to their destination as quickly as possible, by the most direct route possible.
It's not so difficult to understand, though, is it?
No, I was thinking more of those a bit higher up the ladder who have relied on the hope of ever increasing house prices to fund an unsustainable lifestyle.
Are you outside the UK, perhaps? A lot of people seem to assume it now works like that in Britain (AIUI it does work like that in Germany to a certain extent), but it doesn't. Inter-available ticketing is one of the things which the privatisation model actually got right.
There are a few situations where you can get a lower fare by gettting a TOC-specific ticket, but you can just get a normal ticket if that is a problem.
The then-MD of WAGN moaned that they had introduced a new WAGN-only Peterborough-London annual season ticket which was a lot cheaper than the ticket inherited from BR which inter-available with GNER. The expensive ticket was still available of course, but they now offered a way for people willing to take a bit longer to save a grand or so. Needless to say, the local paper moaned that the cheap ticket was not valid on GNER, rather than celebrating that you could save a grand if you didn't need the standard product.
By the time you are going to the station you probably know what train you are catching in most cases where TOC-specific ticketing might be an option.
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I'm sure I've seen mentions of some once working on that basis, in "how I got a Concorde to Manchester" type tales. Of course some countries such as France treat inter-city trains like flights. Though Albanian railways apparently only offers tickets for the next departure, no advance purchase at all.
The
But you don't. Tickets are valid on any train. We *don't* have a continental style system of paying more for better trains.
When I go home from London to Hull, I can use my Saver on any of National Express, EMT, (with FCC if I really wanted to), Northern, Transpennine, CrossCountry, Hull Trains. I could even do a through journey on Hull Trains, a service which didn't really exist at more than a token level in ye olden days.
I can save money by getting a train-specific ticket, or two if I want to stop off, but in return for low fares that is (obviously) train specific for the main leg, so getting the correct type of train doesn't enter into it.
AIUI the pick up/set down only of some services at Watford and Clapham junctions is long-established.
Hmm, sorry but it's you who doesn't understand what passengers want, you are thinking like the 'profit at all costs' driven TOCs - do you own shares in one or more TOCs by any chance?...
That about sums up the total shambles that the privatised rail system is and makes my point about BR days when passengers turned up, bought a ticket and got on the first train - one that went in the desired direction of travel and direct!
Who, other than rail enthusiasts, want to travel via Cambridge (and Ely?) when travelling from King-X Peterborough when faster (and possibly more comfortable) trains run direct - in BRs day passengers could and *it didn't cost any more*, in fact a ticket would probably have cost more had the passenger specified an indirect route!
As people often say, if the trains were any busier no-one would use them.
Passengers want to travel for free on their own train, but it is not going to happen as long as they also don't want to pay tax!
I pay into a pension scheme, so quite possibly, albeit rather indirectly.
No one would stop you buying the discounted ticket and then burning the GBP1000 you saved, if it made you feel better! Though I'd rather you gave it to me...
I rather suspect you have little knowledge of the modern commuter if you want commuters to buy tickets at an office immediately before travel every time. Life is too short, even if they had a hundred ticket windows. Commuters don't want to have to plan in case the person in front wants to buy a priv sleeper ticket to Thurso with Plusbus, a dog and a cello.
As for irregular traffic, well, you are asking for what we have. It is not like Italy, where it costs more if you want a fast train. Or Spain, with different desks for different train types, or Bulgaria where you buy a ticket then have to reserve at a different part of the station. We don't even have reservation-only trains.
I've no idea. But that is completely irrelevant, as WAGN didn't run any Peterborough - Ely trains, so presumably a discounted WAGN-only season ticket would not be valid that way. The GBP1000-cheaper-than-BR ticket would only be valid on direct Peterbough - King's Cross( and Moorgate?) stopping trains - but as you say, few people would want to go via Ely anyway.
(One reason for going via Ely might be if the mainline is closed between Peterborough and Hitchin. Hull Trains sometimes run south as far as Cambridge where people can change for a FCC train to London, avoiding the need to get a replacement bus from Peterborough)
- in BRs day passengers
How can going via Ely both not cost any more and cost more?
Without bothering to check, AUIU all normal tickets are valid for Peterborough - London direct, or via Ely and Cambridge to King's Cross or Liverpool Street (probably via Stansted too), or even on the through train to Liverpool Street via Ipswich if it still runs (though that is a special case related to it being a through train).
All you need to grasp is that tickets in the UK are inter-available, and valid on any permitted route - the exact meaning of "permitted" being of anorak interest only. The name written on the side of the train really doesn't matter.
I can't afford to travel by train when I'm alone, let alone when there's two or three of us travelling - even at today's grossly inflated petrol prices it's miles cheaper by car.
Yes you do. It's apparently down to the customer to know whether or not his ticket is valid on any particular train. It's perfectly possible to buy a ticket which is not valid on a particular service even if you stipulate at the time of purchase that you intend to use a specific tarin.
Scargill's problem was that he didn't really know how to lead a strike effectively. If the miners had had Mick McGahie (leader of the Scottish miners) as their leader during the strike, then Thatcher would have had a much more formidable opponent who knew how to operate politically. Scargill was his own worst enemy and never took advantage of the many situations in Thatcher's handling of the dispute, even comical occurrences like MacGregor turning up for a meeting with Scargill with a paper bag over his head.
Well obviously. Else we'd be overrun with old baddies insisting on using their Hull bus pass to travel from Wick to Brussels Midi first class.
But the UK is not like continental countries, where an A-B ticket may not be valid on the "wrong sort of train" even if it is going A-B, and through tickets might not be available if you need to change. We have time-based restrictions, not operator or train-type based.
In general you don't need to know the TOC, unless you have a train-specific ticket in which case it is decided for you anyway.
Is it? The simultaneous departures from New Street to Edinburgh(?) which were discussed recently, I suppose, but that is a bit of special case.
There is London - Gatwick, I suppose, but where else? Heathrow Express is BAA's own toy, so they can do what they want just like, say, the NYMR or a rail tour company.
Obviously if you buy a train specific tickets you need to travel on that train, but that isn't really what I would understand by knowing whether a ticket is valid.
No, they use them because they have to, if they were any bussier people would start complaining (more) about over crowding or the lack trains - of course OTOH people who don't have to use trains could just give up and return to using their cars....
But they do pay taxes, it's just that their taxes are su
How about just buying a normal ticket at the discounted rate - like one could with BR?!
I never said anything about not being able to buy a season ticket.
The fact is, even railway employees can't understand the fair structure or permissible routes/TOCs for a certain ticket type. If one was being overly cynical one could almost claim that the whole system has been designed (as so many payment structures are these days) to act as a case-cow in the way of fines and penalties for those who will benefit from them.
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