If he wanted a legitimate evaluation of the Virgin Rail experience, he should not have announced that he was going to be on board. Virgin excels at free PR and they certainly laid it on thick for him so that they were presented in the most positive light.
Travelling First Class in a mostly empty carriage and being served nice food whilst 2 coaches down the economy class peasants are crammed in, being gouged £2 for a packet of crisps, and the toilet door doesn't shut properly... ah the legitimate Virgin Rail experience lol still, could be worse, could be a Northern Rail Pacer. I was getting those to and from work every day at my old job and was very glad not to have to get on one again when I left
In the Republic of Ireland, Irish Rail is nationalised and 100% owned by the Irish Government. Oldest Intercity trains are 16 years old. Oldest Commuter trains are 17 years old in Dublin, 20 years in Limerick, 26 years in Cork. Statistics on the Intercity service between the two largest cities, Dublin and Cork. Punctuality in 2018: 87.6% Reliability in 2018: 99.6% One way standard class ticket: €21.49 (£19.39) One way first class ticket: €53.99 (£48.72) Distance: 252 km (157 miles) approx. Average scheduled journey time: 2 hrs 41 mins And statistics on what I think is their busiest Commuter service, the Heuston Commuter in Dublin. Punctuality in 2018: 96.5% Reliability in 2018: 99.3%
Those are some pretty good prices. I took the bus from Dublin to Cork a couple of years ago because my friends insisted it was cheaper and faster. I regret that decision until this very day
The trouble is that eight years on, things are no better. If anything they're worse than they were in 2015. This documentary has aged incredibly well. Well made too.
I know two posho’s who never use the train (let alone public transport) but will ‘give it a go’ are not the best people to tell a frustrating story experienced by millions of people They are FIRED😂😂😂😂
Driving a Merc is irrelevant - many of my friends who are actually not rich by any means (and can be classified as low or working class) drive Mercs. However, being a friend of Maggie "the witch" Thatcher is definitely something reserved for the elites of society.
What's lacking in this documentary is an interview with Sir Humphrey Appleby who, I am certain, would have a very concise explanation for any and all shortcomings of the British Rail system. Btw for the price of 5000 pounds mentioned at the beginning of the film you can get one year's travel on almost all public transport in expensive Switzerland without any restrictions. And in first class.
Heck, for that price, you could get all-access yearlong passes for all transport forms in Belgium (the rail company SNCB and the regionally-operated public transportation companies) and could still buy yourself a nice ring.
@@NextSound170 nah more like 30-60 kmph, and it does not matter so much you can look outside and enjoy the scenery. You will not be bored trust me. Especially if you have never been on this route.
@@SCRtrainguy Eh, it's a 4 fold capacity improvement to Euston and (in it's full form) a massive time saver from Birmingham to Leeds. It also includes finally building a new station in Birmingham, and a new route into Euston.
Don’t want to alarm you but the royal train is ran by network rail owned by the British goverment but the locomotives are leased from DB which I will admit is German but the royals are also of German descent Checkmate
Jimbob I think I said "being operated" in my comment. What did you not understand? Your comment is completely irrelevant. I know that the Royal Train is owned by Network Rail. It is being operated and maintained by DB Cargo. It’s in the first paragraph of its Wikipedia article.
Thatcher knew privatisation was politically extremely difficult and so she fought shy of it. Major allowed it into the April 1992 Tory election manifesto and then against all the odds won the election so had to do it. It was a fight between Treasury, Dept of Transport and Government with BR almost entirely left out of the debate. The resulting British compromise, implemented quickly and arguably incompetently, was the worst of all worlds.
British rail was struggling they were not upholding high standards not to mention in the 1990s there fleet still had some older locomotives the class 101, 309 ect Lots of old First gen DMUS and EMUs also to mention MK1 and 2 coaches also the locomotive fleet.
the problem with Britain's railways is the 50 year lack of repair to the network that is now being fixed by Network Rail and caught up with at great expense.
To HM Government in London... Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland may as well not exist. They only like having them part of the UK for their tax money.
Whoever decided to split the railway into bits and pieces and privatize them had no idea on the technical and economical necessities of rail traffic. While trains used to be seen as a public service in the "good old days" , they are now a means to extort money from those who have no viable alternative transport available!
It's very interesting to compare this to what happened here in Germany after 1994, when the two former public railways (of East- and West-Germany) joined to form Deutsche Bahn AG (an "AG" is a company whose shares are traded at stock exchanges). Well, to make it short, the results were kind of similar. The "Pacer" is quite interesting too. In Germany, we did something like this too, but in the late 1950s. The resulting train was called "Schienenbus" (roughly: Railbus), or technically, the VT95.
Thank you! I have travelled quite often with DB. Often nice, sometimes very unpleasant. Here in DK we bought new trains, IC4, about 14 years ago. IC4 turned out to be a bit of a failure so now the the old IC3 trains are being renovated and shined up to run a little longer. Decades ago Denmark chose to continue with diesel instead of electrifying the rails and it is biting us in the bottom, as we are doing it now but it would have been cheaper to do back then. So until they are done electrifying and buy new trains we continue with IC3 and IC4.
@@Degofhas In Germany it really depends on where you live. I'm living in the Rhine-Ruhr area, where the DB operates the S-Bahn (= S-tog), which connects the dozens of cities with each other. The whole system suffers from a lack of maintenance, and delays are very common. Really, the DB and especially the S-Bahn are a running gag here. ( th-cam.com/video/uODtMWbG0SU/w-d-xo.html )
@@wuloki A friend of mine lives in Neuss and he jokes about the S-bahn all the time. It doesn't matter if it has anything to do with the bahn. If he is slow to reply to a message - blames the S-bahn. If he is lacking behind in a game - it the S-bahns fault. Got a speeding ticket in the car? - It's because of the S-bahn 😂😂 I lived in Hamburg for a while and took the train to Berlin. It was pleasant every time but when I went to Frankfurt it was a pain in the ass! The trains are nice to be in though! I have the impression that in many areas in Europe not enough money and effort is put in to train service. It really a shame because the population density and relatively short distances in Europe makes for conditions for trains and we should be much better at it!
@@Degofhas That asks for a long answer... In Germany, commuter trains (S-Bahn) and long-distance trains are two completely different things. The company in charge is Deutsche Bahn (German Railways), but they're split up into various subcompanies which handle the various parts of the system. The S-Bahn network is operated by it's own company, same as with the long-distance trains. The big problem - and that's my oppinion - is that we privatized the railway. Until the mid 1990s, all rail services were operated by Deutsche Bundesbahn ("German Federal Railways"), and even though they didn't make any profits (like few public transport services do), they did their job quite well. In the 1990s the German government hopped onto to the "let's privatize everything and let the free market handle it" bandwagon, and that's when things started to go downhill. The newly founded "Deutsche Bahn AG" (AG = joint stock company) postponed maintenance to make their books look good for the shareholders, and split up into a dozen or so companies to dilute responsibility.
“Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?”― Tennessee Williams.
It's like hearing and seeing the same proces we went through in the Netherlands. The government overhere has privitised about every public service you can imagine. Healthcare, Public Transport, Energy....you name it! And as it goes over in the UK, it doesn't work. It is a disaster.
It doesn't matter whether it's public or private the key is to have good management. The trouble is when it's public the politicians keep interfering and when it's private they're out to rob as much money from the public as possible. When the railways were nationally owned the union's insisted diesel trains had to carry a crew of three driver assistant driver and guard. That was because steam trains had a driver, fireman and a guard they forced the government to pay for three when only one was necessary. In practice the assistant driver and guard who had nothing to do usually signed on at the depot and then went home. If you travelled on an intercity train by the time you got to the destination there were discarded sandwich packets, newspapers and drinks cartons everywhere because cleaning was the job of people at the depot. About the only thing good about being private is that half an hour after they serve drinks and sandwiches some one comes along with a plastic bag to collect the litter. Compared to Britain I thought your trains in the Netherlands were pretty good but I remember going through one station which was being modernised and it took three years to finish the job. When we asked why they told us it was an argument between the national government and the city who should pay for it
Part of the issue is society’s obsession with working to rigid hours. If more companies allowed for flexible starting times within, let’s say, a 3 hour window between 8am & 11am then the peak rush would be more spread out.
Where we are now with our railways is the culmination of nearly fifty years of poor management and under investment. In my opinion it goes back to the modernisation plan, we should have gone directly from steam to electric traction which would have meant keeping steam for longer but instead we opted to use diesels as a stop gap and in doing so we scrapped an almost new steam fleet that never recovered its build costs we introduced a plethora of unsuccessful diesel designs and failed to standardise the fleet. The first major line to be electrified was the WCML and the rest of the network was supposed to progressively follow with the entire network being electrified by the late eighties which obviously didn't happen. Secondary routes were ripped up with indecent haste sometimes less than 24 hours after the last train whereas if they had been mothballed as in many other European countries they could have been reinstated giving the extra capacity that is now desperately needed. We then had nearly fifteen to twenty years of little or no investment in the railway infrastructure and very few new trains until the system was privatised and the private sector was then handed a system that had twenty years catching up to do and it is a sad fact of life that private sector enterprises have by definition show a profit and pay a dividend to shareholders. I feel a little sorry for some of the franchise companies because they have based projections for costs and service improvements based on promises of infrastructure and line speed upgrades made by the government and network rail that have either not been delivered on time or at all.
The UK is building HS2 at an extremely high cost. It seems to me that this is a poor decision especially, when the whole UK rail network is mismanaged by the private sector. I would have thought that it might be a good idea to re-nationalise the rail network and make it work for the nation not for the shareholders. It looks as though the Government is simply piling more shit on top of an already big pile of shit.
As a retired railwayman with forty two years service under his belt I'd just like to say this about rail privatisation - WE TOLD YOU SO BUT YOU DIDN'T BELIEVE US. YOU NAIVE FOOLS REALLY DID THINK THAT THE FARES WOULD DROP AND THE TRAINS WOULD RUN ON TIME.
@@pauljohns8662 They privatized the entire UK. Natural resources, assets, services, homes and property, even fish (a Brexiter's wet dream), all sold to the highest bidder and is all going to shite. Who would have expected it!!
That was 5 years ago but still our railways are always as congested and trains always being delayed. And with more new trains coming into service will not make any difference to how we travel. And not forgetting the Coronavirus that has temporary stopped commuters from working from home.
what a very well informed documentary, what with pointing out hs2 isn't just for speed, but for increased capacity on the original network, and for pointing out when a TOC is owned by foreign states.
I'm not sure I'd agree that having a state owned company from another country benefiting from the privately run railways in this country is "a success," it doesn't say much about the confidence our own government has in handling the finances of our own railways
in South Australia, the government owns the vehicles, infrastructures however companies bid to maintain the vehicles and service, they are then fined if the service is underperforming and if they are not doing the best to improve the service, they are nixed out the door... Serco was an operator here until their services... were no longer required.
@@sydelton1289 I don't know why heritage railways would want more than one of them (one would be a good example as a lesson from history), but I guess "whatever floats your boat."
One thing I appreciated about this at the time was how Nick and Margret and all the people involved in this documentary broke it all down into fairly simple terms,
I love how they gloss over the cost of renting a train off a bank. I mean it’s like renting a sofa from Brighthouse. But they politely refer to it as sweating assets! This is the problem. The public don’t get what’s going on because our news media are on the side of the companies. Not the public.
Do you not remember? He caused a right outcry when he said that and ended up having to grovel to his secretary.. who alas took it in good humour and didn’t give him the knee to the happy sacs he rightly deserved.
Just as highways are government owned and paid for, so should the alternative transport system, the railroads. Living in the US I have envied the British for having such an extensive passenger rail system, but I can see that it is attempting to operate well above capacity. I think the same is true of The Tube. Investment in upgrades may be hampered by the need for private operators to make a profit for their stockholders.
Trains here are better than made out to be, i live in Rotherham and i can get a train to doncaster where i can then get one to london, so you can get almost everywhere on one
I used to regulary travel from the coast of Mid Wales to London, back in the 80s it was quite exciting, you never really knew what would happen or how you would get home. Now it's rather boring, the trains are seldom late and are always there. I could even know what time I would be walking through my front door after catching the train in Cologne.
the fundamental problem is that the cost of the operation (laying and maintaining the tracks) is publicly owned, and thus the bill footed by the taxpayer, while the parts that make the money (the tickets and the rolling stock) are privately owned, very often by other governments' own publicly owned rail companies. the taxpayer pays the vast majority of the cost while money flows out of the country straight into the pockets of private owners and other countries' taxpayers
Not so much a reply as an agreement. This comment form ZLDL is totally true. One suspects that various British governments, of all types have cared less for the needs of the majority of the populace and more for the profits of their mates. Don't forget that Transport Minister Marples (at the time of the Beeching cuts) was a major part of a road building firm (See Wikipedia for more) and thus hardly a fan of railways.
European owned National rail companies are the ones who own most of the franchises. So we pay through the nose to subsidize European National rail companies. Who ever would have thought that's the way privitizaion would have panned out.
I commuted in to the centre of London on a South Eastern line in 1968 and 1969. I remember the trains being quite crowded, but usually they were on time. I also remember travelling on steam trains from Kings Cross to the Midlands in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Again I recall the trains being quite punctual. The only problems I remember occurred in inclement weather conditions. Trains were hours late in the winter of 1962 - 1963. I also recall standing on Oxenholme station, I think in January 1972,when there had been some heavy winds. The night trains were still coming through at close to midday. Eventually I arrived in Birmingham many hours late.
Some of it is. Hull Trains tend to be great, though can be expensive at times. But London and South East and Manchester metro area..... absolutely deplorable.
The host stands looking at a middle section of train, and says, "One train, split into two." (This enabled a through line to London by diverting, apparently, 1/2 a train--and took years to accomplish at untold expense.) Hilariously, as he struggled not to roll his eyes, the colossal theme music from 2001:A Space Odyssey swelled, presumably at the magnificence of the accomplishment. My guess is that fares are so high because, obviously, trains and infrastructure are aging badly and need replacement; but the simple decision to split a train into two cars? Taking years? During that costly interval, a lot of hours were logged, dragged on by a lot people who get paid a lot of money to fill their time doing something or other. The more time, the better. And who pays the cost? Those who pay train fares.
Well in Czech Republic we have state owned tracks , national operators but private companies could buy time slots for trains or compete for state subsidized contracts for routes.
No that's not true. The last of *Northern's* Pacers was withdrawn in late November 2020, but the Transport for Wales 142s and Great Western Railway 143s will remain in service until between mid-December to the 31st of December 2020, so another couple/few weeks, and TfW are trying to get permission for their 143s to continue briefly in early 2021 as not all of their 769s are/will be in service then.
@Miles Holder they're also getting /already have ex-Class 319 units, which will be reclassified as Class 769 as the units are being modified to fit a diesel engine to allow them to operate on nonelectrified tracks, but crucially still utilise the electric supply where available
56:36 If there is no direct line of action and accountability from the passengers to the operators, then the competition becomes not on merit but on existence. The fact that the process that chooses which operators gets a franchise has little to no impact from the actual users, negates the whole idea of competition before it has even started. Imagine the same for cars. You have no input on what car you get, and the one you got was decided based on a variety of factors were cost always seems to be the deciding factor anyway. A cost that is not fully known before the operation of the car begins, and might even have assumed there'd be some future improvement in efficiency. There would be little incentive to do anything *but* cut and underestimate cost.
Canadian trains are even worse. What are you talking about. 7 trains a day between Ontario and (fake)London. No electrification whatsoever. Bud cars made in the 1950s. Via rail is a disgrace. Amtrak is doing a better job and that’s something
BR took on a massive problem after the war. It didn't help that, like the United States, the British .government was more committed to the role of the motor vehicle which received massive infrastructure funding. No wonder with post war debt and a host of other problems the government mandarins of the time cut corners by modernising the rolling stock but not the infrastructure.
Singapore, despite it's small size, is the best example of how to run an efficient rail service, it is state owned with 1 state operator and 1 private operator, and the trains are always on time. It could be said that in the Victoria era Britain had a good public transport system with trolleybuses and railway's in most towns, of course, successive governments decided to focus more on car use, now it seems we are going the opposite way again 😀, can the government not just get behind improving public transport and stick with it, make it efficient or give the private companies that run services the incentive to build new railway lines and connect more towns to cities 🤔
Japanese rail is the best in the world and is privatised it's even run by monopolies. I think the British system needs some accountable they need to give companies the whole lot rail maintenance signals and trains not split up by other companies but all owned by one company split up by sections like Japan the British government can lease it and if the service is bad straight up get rid off the company and find another. The infastructer is bad just straight up bad
How I think it should work the government creates packages that have the train, railways, signals, minor stations. The government owns the major hub stations and maintains them. The packages are then leased to companies through a bidding war. The government then holds these companies accountable by cancelling the lease if they're trains are late by a certain percentage or by how people vote on what is the worse company through polls these can be ran by the government if the train service is exceptional that get a tax cut.
6:30 "... _it got so bad I went to see a behavioral therapist about it you know, and she just said "you have the wrong kind of anger", which unfortunately sounds a bit too much like..."_ Is it saying something that when he paused at that point, I immediately thought _"the wrong kind of snow"_ ... --and I've never once set foot outside North America? (P.S.: I actually did burst out laughing when he immediately proved me correct)
Don’t live near a station, never been on a train for forty years, how lucky am I? I can watch all the carnage from a distance, safe in the knowledge none of it affects me.
they should have a meeting about a meeting about a meeting to decide wether a meeting is required before the meeting that could lead to a conclusion that the meeting is on the meeting of a meeting in which the meetings were decided. They will have a meeting about that that meeting first, though.
I nearly saw my dinner again when I watched 'Tricky Dickey' Branson try to 'sell' awesomeness through his railway service. My God, didn't HE scarper when the Government wouldn't continue to replenish his begging bowl!!! That's capitalism for you!
At a tiny local station there were 4 lines running through. Platforms at the outside 2 lines and through traffic on the inside 2 lines for express and goods.
So, to make uptime when trains are running behind by 3 minutes, to avoid any bottle necking & even more delays, stops are cut out. Fine. That makes sense. But as Nick said, the passengers at these stations will huff as their train will chuff past. Yet no mention of those passengers, who have also paid their fares, is made. Do they get compensation? They should do, but I suspect they are given the run around when trying to complain. And it's hardly fair either, that the 'country bumpkin' stations are the ones that are cut from a schedule, as you can bet it's the smaller towns/villages who have a service cut. Not to mention you'd be pretty annoyed if you were on that train, with that stop being your destination. Why should that passenger then have to pay even more, to go back in the other direction, to reach their destination, with no guarantee that the same won't happen again? Once again, compensation is probably available, but I bet it's made as hard as possible to get, with all the finger pointing & the shifting of responsibilities in the Blame Game. I know this is 8 years old, but is it any wonder that all those concerns about HS2 came true? And the cost almost tripled? And big chunks have now been axed. Many people who refused to move because their home was in the way, were forced out with compulsory purchase orders, against their will. They were effectively evicted from home. All that stress & trauma that must have caused to quite a few people is unimaginable. And now, they were put through all of that for nothing. They didn't need to be forced out of the homes they never wanted to leave in the first place. It wouldn't surprise me if some of those people have developed mental health illnesses, or attempted, or have committed, suicide, as a result.
What they dont tell you is that when you buy in advance for off-peak travel, the UK prices are amongst the cheapest in Western Europe. Its mostly the commuters who get stung. A lot of people can now work from home or adjust their hours; if its possible for your job to be flexible or work from home but your employer doesnt offer it, change employer. As for the Unions, they are half the problem. Many rail staff still have their old government terms and conditions yet that's not enough for the Unions, they want more and more. I have started taking the bus from Somerset to London due to strikes, the Unions are running out of feet to shoot themselves in.
Great cars though. I normally drive in small vans and rent a VW Polo once every so often but a friend has a good job now and bought/leased a Mercedes S class. Goddamn that thing drives smoothly
The good old British tapping themselves on the back... The state was incompetent in running the train service (or to be more precise the Tories defunded it in order to justify privatization). The Tories sold it off to private companies for them to prosper while increasing subsidies. Privatized Railways hiked the prices because you know, no actual competition (which is supposedly the point of privatization). The railways remain shit but now the profits go to private hands. This sounds like a failed state, something you would expect from a third world country.
On top of that, we're meant to support the move as good for businesses too, but all the money is basically funneled overseas to other countries' rail operators who use our fares to subsidise their own trains.
@@Reddsoldier Although due to bid issues Abellio Scotrail is/was being subsidised by the Dutch government. Due to various factors a lot of franchises are actually losing cash and will soon be run as more of a contract to operate services with the government rather than the operator taking the revenue risk. Stagecoach stopped chucking everything at winning contracts when it could see that the conditions imposed by the government were unworkable.
This was just the beginning, wait and see, the working class and middle class that voted for Brexit will be surprised, it’s the same people that will benefit that benefit from privatisation of BR, Thatchers friend and the Merc man will love it, the rest not so much.
I live in UK but travel to Japan a lot for work & this is just one of many countries around the world which has an amazing train network that is very clean & amazingly punctual & when I say punctual I mean in Japan to the second. When I return home back to the UK I feel so embarrassed & annoyed about our train network. Over priced mostly dirty delayed trains. Compared to other countries with great train networks we live in a small country so why the hell for years have we had a terrible over priced service? The members of government here in the UK need to go to Japan & take so notes on how they run the train network there including having a bullet train (HS2) since 1964. If we had reasonably priced service on time thousands more people would use it for commuting to & from work which also has the green bonus of getting these people out of a lot of cars & on trains. Come UK give the people what they deserve. It will in return help the economy.🇬🇧👍
Comparing the systems is interesting. JR East is totally private, but they own the stations, rolling stock and infrastructure. They're accountable for everything, so it's in the best interests of the company to deliver a clean, efficient, punctual and safe service as there's nobody to pass the buck on to. On top of this in the centre of Tokyo there are lots of different train companies that often compete along similar routes, so there is a level of competition that exists here that isn't present in the UK. Three interesting side notes: 1) Generally speaking, your employer will reimburse your travel costs monthly as a post-tax addition to your salary. To the Japanese, paying £4.000 of your own money to get to work is insane. If your company doesn't cover your commuting costs, that's a good indicator that they're garbage and not worth working for. 2) Punctuality is important everywhere in Japan. If your train is delayed, you are entitled to a certificate of delay (chien shomei sho) to give to your boss. It's stamped by the train operator to say you are late because of their shortcomings and you are not at fault. 3) The bullet train is ridiculously expensive if you don't have a JR travel pass. A flight to Osaka from Tokyo is usually half the price of the bullet train.
*Sir Alex Ferguson really took all the time to set out and see the horrific of privatisation of railways. Time to bring Man U under pubic ownership as well.*
Odd to see how shiny and nice the virgin Voyagers looked, nowadays the crosscountry voyagers are completely different and overcrowded with a heap of fresh misery when a signal failure occurs
If privatisation is to succeed then the whole thing needs to becomeme open access (more competition and more services like Grand Central who have one of the best if not the best rated service in the UK and less red tape for service improvement like virgin faced) as well as a long over due modernisation project (this is needed either way as I have met lead engineers from networkrail who are trying to recruit computing graduates such as myself to fix the shit show of a signaling system we have here that for the most part hasn't been touched since the 60s/70s and this is from the houses mouth itself). Privatised is not the word id used to describe this as im a fan of the pre big for model (yes the model will need work to modernise it) I'd rather a competitive system like what Grand Central or Hull trains offer that this sham. Also there are few exceptions to the rule like Chiltern railways who are competing for all major stops en-route like Birmingham and Oxford I have lived along the route for the last few years and been doing the calc Oxford and Birmingham are far better value outta Marylebone than Euston or Paddington not to mention their amazing preservation of old facades at Wycombe, Birmingham Moor Street, Leamington and so on which we need more of.
Privatisation CAN work, just look at the Czech Republic - there are issues here and there, but still, nothing dramatic and the service keeps improving year by year.
To me commuting is the worse thing anyone can do to waste their life. Sure, one can read/listen to a book, or find other productive ways to not totally waste the commute, it can still be soul crushing. Only one of three things can solve this: - *Companies should not concentrate in big city centres, and should hire people from their local area* (or allow WFH as a policy and covid19 showed us it is possible). Education should be equally provided to all so finding skilled talent in a small village or surroundings should not be a problem. Adequate infrastructure can also be made available in remote places. Basically, we go back 400-500 years to an agrarian style society, but without all the feudal horrors. - better cycling routes. - invent teleportation.
@@MrJimheeren Yes, we both agree. London was allowed to become this big because 'The City' was the centre of commerce of the whole country, heck all of Europe, and companies wanted to be there. If they followed my suggestions and companies were encouraged (read forced) to open in other cities, you would have seen London much smaller and other cities become larger. Maybe a metro area in the north to include Bolton, Manchester, and Liverpool (which by the way are still smaller than Greater London area wise). That would be preferred. Someone living in Liverpool wouldn't need to commute every day to Manchester like some do into London, because both cities to have enough variety of jobs on offer. You see this is European countries. The difference between the largest city and the next largest one is much lower than in the UK.
The only solution for the UK’s railways is to change all of the relevant laws to bring in an external body from a country like Japan, China or Taiwan and give them direct and complete control and not allow anyone else to interfere, including Network Rail and the U.K. trade unions, all of whom have been deliberately holding back progress on the railways for very selfish reasons for far too long given the failure of HS2 - standards would improve, fares would come down, there would be far less rail strikes nor disruptions, rail projects would be completed in half the time and for half the costs that they do now, while maintaining and repairing existing lines would be far easier, as would re-opening previously closed lines
It is astounding see the sorry state of affair of train service in Great Britain today, whereas GB ruled the biggest empire for centuries the world has ever has seen.
I am happy with privatisation. I am usually in Glasgow, but go back to Newcastle a lot. LNER is really good (it is owned by the DfT as a correction for a failed private franchise) and ScotRail is usually cheap. Different franchises can focus on different markets. I do think that some companies should buy their own trains more often. The rolling stock companies are a dubious middleman.
@@alexturlais8558 the east coast mainline works well nationalised. ScotRail works well privatised. To get from Glasgow to Edinburgh, then Edinburgh to Newcastle. Hence I am happy with the status quo.
Yeah that never made sense to me why it is split up into Network Rail, the rolling stock companies, and the operators. There can be the discussion on whether public or private ownership is better but to me this seems the railway system in Britain takes the worst of both worlds.
@@churroman183 they should have split it back into individual railways that each own, operate, and maintain their own track, rolling stock, and infrastructure, just like the big four...
People say that it's these private companies to blame but it's actually all on the government. It is the government who own the infrastructure which is aging and breaks down often. Train companies are responsible for the hiring of staff to run the trains, so only driver shortages could be blamed on the private rail companies. Also, with passenger numbers increasing all the time but infrastructure being aged and difficult to update, with the frequency of train running also difficult to achieve, the rail system simply cannot keep up during the morning and evening rush hours, with millions trying to get to work in other cities.
i still dont get why that myth that the pacer uses a wagon chassis is still around, their frame was derived entirely from high speed freight vehicle 1 which, dispite its name, was one of 4 vehicles for testing different high speed suspension designes, none of it was derived from an actual goods waggon. the pacer actually recieved the best suspension that BR had at the time as it had come directly from the vehicle theyd used to research it (the same suspension design was also used on the APT-E). pacers still had a bouncy ride though due to the lack of bogies
@@highpath4776 oh yeah it was a Leyland bus body, my problem is people saying it was a waggon chassis/frame and suspension, when that all in fact came from HSFV1
Mountford and Hewer were defiantly voting Tory in the 80s and 90s. They did this. BR was overcrowded and late, there's no escape from that in an overpopulated area, but at least it was cheap.
I thought Hewer was a lifelong Labour voter though? He only left the Labour party a few years ago, as a result of the situation his co-worker Rachel Riley found herself in?
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 69 | คู่เอก "กุหลาบดำ vs นาบิล"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/PNM6U8e_HMo/mqdefault.jpg)
![CAMPปลิ้น | EP.77[2/2] "รับทราบ" แก๊งเพื่อนรัก 10 ปี ที่ไปไหนก็มีตำนาน!](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ifc0ofD51B0/mqdefault.jpg)
If he wanted a legitimate evaluation of the Virgin Rail experience, he should not have announced that he was going to be on board. Virgin excels at free PR and they certainly laid it on thick for him so that they were presented in the most positive light.
Travelling First Class in a mostly empty carriage and being served nice food whilst 2 coaches down the economy class peasants are crammed in, being gouged £2 for a packet of crisps, and the toilet door doesn't shut properly... ah the legitimate Virgin Rail experience lol
still, could be worse, could be a Northern Rail Pacer. I was getting those to and from work every day at my old job and was very glad not to have to get on one again when I left
Agreed. He's make a useless mystery shopper.
I rather think he was trying to make a point.
In the Republic of Ireland, Irish Rail is nationalised and 100% owned by the Irish Government.
Oldest Intercity trains are 16 years old.
Oldest Commuter trains are 17 years old in Dublin, 20 years in Limerick, 26 years in Cork.
Statistics on the Intercity service between the two largest cities, Dublin and Cork.
Punctuality in 2018: 87.6%
Reliability in 2018: 99.6%
One way standard class ticket: €21.49 (£19.39)
One way first class ticket: €53.99 (£48.72)
Distance: 252 km (157 miles) approx.
Average scheduled journey time: 2 hrs 41 mins
And statistics on what I think is their busiest Commuter service, the Heuston Commuter in Dublin.
Punctuality in 2018: 96.5%
Reliability in 2018: 99.3%
Those are some pretty good prices. I took the bus from Dublin to Cork a couple of years ago because my friends insisted it was cheaper and faster. I regret that decision until this very day
Yeah well BR was so badly run something had to be done
I don’t think any country should take ROI as a good example of how to run a nationalised railway
England would do anything for Stats like that
Taking Ireland as a example of a functional railway is pretty funny lol
The trouble is that eight years on, things are no better. If anything they're worse than they were in 2015. This documentary has aged incredibly well. Well made too.
Not the exact same focus but I feel like this acts as a similar companion piece and modern update: th-cam.com/video/ZHjPeC1dGv4/w-d-xo.html
I used the train lately and they were terrible so going back to car
2:08
Nick: To be honest I must confess neither of us uses the trains every day.
*Me, who uses the train every day:*
Me. I used to drive them. I always got a seat.
@Joseph Turner, Really? Cool! And I never get a seat 😂
I know two posho’s who never use the train (let alone public transport) but will ‘give it a go’ are not the best people to tell a frustrating story experienced by millions of people
They are FIRED😂😂😂😂
"Man of the people" drives a Merc and keeps peacocks.
Exactly.
He is either deluded or taking the piss, he probably doesn't even drive the Mercedes and has a driver most of the time.
being wealthy and enjoying it as he pleases; and being empathic with 'the people' isn't exactly one-or-the-other.
Driving a Merc is irrelevant - many of my friends who are actually not rich by any means (and can be classified as low or working class) drive Mercs. However, being a friend of Maggie "the witch" Thatcher is definitely something reserved for the elites of society.
xd
What's lacking in this documentary is an interview with Sir Humphrey Appleby who, I am certain, would have a very concise explanation for any and all shortcomings of the British Rail system. Btw for the price of 5000 pounds mentioned at the beginning of the film you can get one year's travel on almost all public transport in expensive Switzerland without any restrictions. And in first class.
Heck, for that price, you could get all-access yearlong passes for all transport forms in Belgium (the rail company SNCB and the regionally-operated public transportation companies) and could still buy yourself a nice ring.
I had a 2hr journey on a train north from Bangkok cost me 40p not £155! 😆
Train from Belgrade in Serbia to Thessaloniki in Greece costs around €25 and takes 15.5 hours.
@@xBatboys4 Speed of 15km/h
@@NextSound170 nah more like 30-60 kmph, and it does not matter so much you can look outside and enjoy the scenery. You will not be bored trust me. Especially if you have never been on this route.
Hopefully Crossrail and HS2 will solve Greater London's congestion issues when they're finally completed in 2100.
Cross rail has done well
Elizabeth line has done well
Hello from the future, The Elizabeth Line has worked well. Hopefully HS2 will be similar.
@@SCRtrainguy Eh, it's a 4 fold capacity improvement to Euston and (in it's full form) a massive time saver from Birmingham to Leeds. It also includes finally building a new station in Birmingham, and a new route into Euston.
@@SCRtrainguy1. It’s faster than 12 mins when it’s all done. 2. It’s more about capacity.
I calculated that East Midlands Railways is 3x as expensive to take as the Dutch state railways for the same distance.
Even the royal train isn’t being operated by a British company.
Don’t want to alarm you but the royal train is ran by network rail owned by the British goverment but the locomotives are leased from DB which I will admit is German but the royals are also of German descent
Checkmate
Jimbob I think I said "being operated" in my comment. What did you not understand? Your comment is completely irrelevant. I know that the Royal Train is owned by Network Rail. It is being operated and maintained by DB Cargo.
It’s in the first paragraph of its Wikipedia article.
Thatcher knew privatisation was politically extremely difficult and so she fought shy of it. Major allowed it into the April 1992 Tory election manifesto and then against all the odds won the election so had to do it. It was a fight between Treasury, Dept of Transport and Government with BR almost entirely left out of the debate. The resulting British compromise, implemented quickly and arguably incompetently, was the worst of all worlds.
British rail was struggling they were not upholding high standards not to mention in the 1990s there fleet still had some older locomotives the class 101, 309 ect Lots of old First gen DMUS and EMUs also to mention MK1 and 2 coaches also the locomotive fleet.
Are rail systems as broken down over 30 years by sell off not work over price ticket slow late
the problem with Britain's railways is the 50 year lack of repair to the network that is now being fixed by Network Rail and caught up with at great expense.
I remember this airing originally and thinking things weren’t great then. Now though we really are in the absolute pits.
"Across the UK"-shows a map of England lol
To HM Government in London... Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland may as well not exist. They only like having them part of the UK for their tax money.
scotland and wales do there own thing anyway
@@williamg209two Scotland and Wales have partially devolved governments, meaning that they can control some things themselves but not others
@@RWL2012 I know
@@williamg209two OK
Whoever decided to split the railway into bits and pieces and privatize them had no idea on the technical and economical necessities of rail traffic. While trains used to be seen as a public service in the "good old days" , they are now a means to extort money from those who have no viable alternative transport available!
It's chaos
It's very interesting to compare this to what happened here in Germany after 1994, when the two former public railways (of East- and West-Germany) joined to form Deutsche Bahn AG (an "AG" is a company whose shares are traded at stock exchanges).
Well, to make it short, the results were kind of similar.
The "Pacer" is quite interesting too. In Germany, we did something like this too, but in the late 1950s. The resulting train was called "Schienenbus" (roughly: Railbus), or technically, the VT95.
Thanks for sharing. I thought DB was a successful story
Thank you! I have travelled quite often with DB. Often nice, sometimes very unpleasant.
Here in DK we bought new trains, IC4, about 14 years ago.
IC4 turned out to be a bit of a failure so now the the old IC3 trains are being renovated and shined up to run a little longer.
Decades ago Denmark chose to continue with diesel instead of electrifying the rails and it is biting us in the bottom, as we are doing it now but it would have been cheaper to do back then. So until they are done electrifying and buy new trains we continue with IC3 and IC4.
@@Degofhas In Germany it really depends on where you live. I'm living in the Rhine-Ruhr area, where the DB operates the S-Bahn (= S-tog), which connects the dozens of cities with each other.
The whole system suffers from a lack of maintenance, and delays are very common. Really, the DB and especially the S-Bahn are a running gag here.
( th-cam.com/video/uODtMWbG0SU/w-d-xo.html )
@@wuloki A friend of mine lives in Neuss and he jokes about the S-bahn all the time. It doesn't matter if it has anything to do with the bahn. If he is slow to reply to a message - blames the S-bahn. If he is lacking behind in a game - it the S-bahns fault. Got a speeding ticket in the car? - It's because of the S-bahn 😂😂
I lived in Hamburg for a while and took the train to Berlin. It was pleasant every time but when I went to Frankfurt it was a pain in the ass! The trains are nice to be in though!
I have the impression that in many areas in Europe not enough money and effort is put in to train service. It really a shame because the population density and relatively short distances in Europe makes for conditions for trains and we should be much better at it!
@@Degofhas That asks for a long answer...
In Germany, commuter trains (S-Bahn) and long-distance trains are two completely different things. The company in charge is Deutsche Bahn (German Railways), but they're split up into various subcompanies which handle the various parts of the system. The S-Bahn network is operated by it's own company, same as with the long-distance trains.
The big problem - and that's my oppinion - is that we privatized the railway. Until the mid 1990s, all rail services were operated by Deutsche Bundesbahn ("German Federal Railways"), and even though they didn't make any profits (like few public transport services do), they did their job quite well.
In the 1990s the German government hopped onto to the "let's privatize everything and let the free market handle it" bandwagon, and that's when things started to go downhill. The newly founded "Deutsche Bahn AG" (AG = joint stock company) postponed maintenance to make their books look good for the shareholders, and split up into a dozen or so companies to dilute responsibility.
“Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?”― Tennessee Williams.
It's like hearing and seeing the same proces we went through in the Netherlands. The government overhere has privitised about every public service you can imagine. Healthcare, Public Transport, Energy....you name it! And as it goes over in the UK, it doesn't work. It is a disaster.
It doesn't matter whether it's public or private the key is to have good management. The trouble is when it's public the politicians keep interfering and when it's private they're out to rob as much money from the public as possible.
When the railways were nationally owned the union's insisted diesel trains had to carry a crew of three driver assistant driver and guard. That was because steam trains had a driver, fireman and a guard they forced the government to pay for three when only one was necessary. In practice the assistant driver and guard who had nothing to do usually signed on at the depot and then went home.
If you travelled on an intercity train by the time you got to the destination there were discarded sandwich packets, newspapers and drinks cartons everywhere because cleaning was the job of people at the depot. About the only thing good about being private is that half an hour after they serve drinks and sandwiches some one comes along with a plastic bag to collect the litter.
Compared to Britain I thought your trains in the Netherlands were pretty good but I remember going through one station which was being modernised and it took three years to finish the job. When we asked why they told us it was an argument between the national government and the city who should pay for it
Part of the issue is society’s obsession with working to rigid hours. If more companies allowed for flexible starting times within, let’s say, a 3 hour window between 8am & 11am then the peak rush would be more spread out.
Where we are now with our railways is the culmination of nearly fifty years of poor management and under investment. In my opinion it goes back to the modernisation plan, we should have gone directly from steam to electric traction which would have meant keeping steam for longer but instead we opted to use diesels as a stop gap and in doing so we scrapped an almost new steam fleet that never recovered its build costs we introduced a plethora of unsuccessful diesel designs and failed to standardise the fleet. The first major line to be electrified was the WCML and the rest of the network was supposed to progressively follow with the entire network being electrified by the late eighties which obviously didn't happen. Secondary routes were ripped up with indecent haste sometimes less than 24 hours after the last train whereas if they had been mothballed as in many other European countries they could have been reinstated giving the extra capacity that is now desperately needed. We then had nearly fifteen to twenty years of little or no investment in the railway infrastructure and very few new trains until the system was privatised and the private sector was then handed a system that had twenty years catching up to do and it is a sad fact of life that private sector enterprises have by definition show a profit and pay a dividend to shareholders. I feel a little sorry for some of the franchise companies because they have based projections for costs and service improvements based on promises of infrastructure and line speed upgrades made by the government and network rail that have either not been delivered on time or at all.
The UK is building HS2 at an extremely high cost. It seems to me that this is a poor decision especially, when the whole UK rail network is mismanaged by the private sector. I would have thought that it might be a good idea to re-nationalise the rail network and make it work for the nation not for the shareholders. It looks as though the Government is simply piling more shit on top of an already big pile of shit.
As a retired railwayman with forty two years service under his belt I'd just like to say this about rail privatisation -
WE TOLD YOU SO BUT YOU DIDN'T BELIEVE US. YOU NAIVE FOOLS REALLY DID THINK THAT THE FARES WOULD DROP AND THE TRAINS WOULD RUN ON TIME.
@@pauljohns8662 They privatized the entire UK. Natural resources, assets, services, homes and property, even fish (a Brexiter's wet dream), all sold to the highest bidder and is all going to shite. Who would have expected it!!
The NHS is the biggest prize of all!
The old service would have been better if you'd not always been striking.
PENZANCEPETE ….. stop BLOODY STRIKING !! £60K a year is ample enough stop being greedy
Thatcher
That was 5 years ago but still our railways are always as congested and trains always being delayed. And with more new trains coming into service will not make any difference to how we travel. And not forgetting the Coronavirus that has temporary stopped commuters from working from home.
what a very well informed documentary, what with pointing out hs2 isn't just for speed, but for increased capacity on the original network, and for pointing out when a TOC is owned by foreign states.
I'm not sure I'd agree that having a state owned company from another country benefiting from the privately run railways in this country is "a success," it doesn't say much about the confidence our own government has in handling the finances of our own railways
This is exactly why I moved to zone 2 and simply cycled to work.
in South Australia, the government owns the vehicles, infrastructures however companies bid to maintain the vehicles and service, they are then fined if the service is underperforming and if they are not doing the best to improve the service, they are nixed out the door... Serco was an operator here until their services... were no longer required.
I can't believe they've got the username and password on the monitor and showed it on TV... and people wonder how infrastrcture gets hacked...
2020 and the pacers are still running
They are on the way out. To Chase water etc
@@sydelton1289 I don't know why heritage railways would want more than one of them (one would be a good example as a lesson from history), but I guess "whatever floats your boat."
are they ?? where?? id love to get a final ride on one.
@@thomarmstrong3538 On northern i’m fairly sure none are running. Heard rumours that there’s still a few on TfW tho
November and the Pacers are almost gone!!!
FOUR HUNDRED POUND A MONTH??!! That's my fucking rent.
And having to stand the entire time as well
One thing I appreciated about this at the time was how Nick and Margret and all the people involved in this documentary broke it all down into fairly simple terms,
8:14 Disappointing? More like des... des...
Disgraceful!
Disgusting!
Despicable!
Sodor did it right
‘Your friend Maggie Thatcher’ tells me everything I need to know.
I love how they gloss over the cost of renting a train off a bank. I mean it’s like renting a sofa from Brighthouse. But they politely refer to it as sweating assets!
This is the problem. The public don’t get what’s going on because our news media are on the side of the companies. Not the public.
"at one moment in the day for the ... typists"
"The typists"? Was he speaking in the 1990's or the 1890's?
1990s, unfortunately.
Do you not remember? He caused a right outcry when he said that and ended up having to grovel to his secretary.. who alas took it in good humour and didn’t give him the knee to the happy sacs he rightly deserved.
"cheap and cheerful" service. ha!
Just as highways are government owned and paid for, so should the alternative transport system, the railroads. Living in the US I have envied the British for having such an extensive passenger rail system, but I can see that it is attempting to operate well above capacity. I think the same is true of The Tube. Investment in upgrades may be hampered by the need for private operators to make a profit for their stockholders.
the higher costs are probably from backhanders and boardroom "performance" bonuses. Oh, and for snazzy paint schemes on the trains.
Yeah, why the whacky paint and advertising? Who's not using trains to commute? Paint them all one colour, much cheaper.
As an American what is it like to have trains? Cause i live right across the street from a station (and a CSX freight yard) and see 1 train a day.
Trains here are better than made out to be, i live in Rotherham and i can get a train to doncaster where i can then get one to london, so you can get almost everywhere on one
I used to regulary travel from the coast of Mid Wales to London, back in the 80s it was quite exciting, you never really knew what would happen or how you would get home.
Now it's rather boring, the trains are seldom late and are always there.
I could even know what time I would be walking through my front door after catching the train in Cologne.
the fundamental problem is that the cost of the operation (laying and maintaining the tracks) is publicly owned, and thus the bill footed by the taxpayer, while the parts that make the money (the tickets and the rolling stock) are privately owned, very often by other governments' own publicly owned rail companies. the taxpayer pays the vast majority of the cost while money flows out of the country straight into the pockets of private owners and other countries' taxpayers
Not so much a reply as an agreement.
This comment form ZLDL is totally true.
One suspects that various British governments, of all types have cared less for the needs of the majority of the populace and more for the profits of their mates. Don't forget that Transport Minister Marples (at the time of the Beeching cuts) was a major part of a road building firm (See Wikipedia for more) and thus hardly a fan of railways.
European owned National rail companies are the ones who own most of the franchises. So we pay through the nose to subsidize European National rail companies.
Who ever would have thought that's the way privitizaion would have panned out.
£400 per month just to get to and from work. That's just mind-blowing.
This comment did age well. 2022 with fuel prices for cars through the roof.
i worked in train maintenance for over 22 years and if you really knew what went on you'd never hand another penny over to these crooks
Tell us!
I commuted in to the centre of London on a South Eastern line in 1968 and 1969. I remember the trains being quite crowded, but usually they were on time. I also remember travelling on steam trains from Kings Cross to the Midlands in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Again I recall the trains being quite punctual.
The only problems I remember occurred in inclement weather conditions. Trains were hours late in the winter of 1962 - 1963. I also recall standing on Oxenholme station, I think in January 1972,when there had been some heavy winds. The night trains were still coming through at close to midday. Eventually I arrived in Birmingham many hours late.
I always thought UK had a good rail system. Seems I was misled all these years.
It has but it also has a problem with overcrowding due to increasing passenger numbers, particularly at peak times.
Some parts work well others are utter dreadful to use
in my experiance southern is proububly the crappyest
Some of it is. Hull Trains tend to be great, though can be expensive at times. But London and South East and Manchester metro area..... absolutely deplorable.
lovely service if you dont use it then one do not see the problems first hand.
For three years from 1979 I rode a return service from Manchester to Euston every two weeks. It was usually on time, and sometimes early in to Euston.
The host stands looking at a middle section of train, and says, "One train, split into two." (This enabled a through line to London by diverting, apparently, 1/2 a train--and took years to accomplish at untold expense.) Hilariously, as he struggled not to roll his eyes, the colossal theme music from 2001:A Space Odyssey swelled, presumably at the magnificence of the accomplishment. My guess is that fares are so high because, obviously, trains and infrastructure are aging badly and need replacement; but the simple decision to split a train into two cars? Taking years? During that costly interval, a lot of hours were logged, dragged on by a lot people who get paid a lot of money to fill their time doing something or other. The more time, the better. And who pays the cost? Those who pay train fares.
That Virgin Trains boss looks far too relaxed to say he runs such a shoddy service!
Virgin Trains hasn't operated the West Coast Main Line for a year now.
Well in Czech Republic we have state owned tracks , national operators but private companies could buy time slots for trains or compete for state subsidized contracts for routes.
It’s funny how the pacer is still running on a newly state funded line
The great result of Maggie Thatcher's privatisation frenzy.
Here we are in December 2020 and the last of the over 100 Pacer trains have finally been withdrawn
No that's not true. The last of *Northern's* Pacers was withdrawn in late November 2020, but the Transport for Wales 142s and Great Western Railway 143s will remain in service until between mid-December to the 31st of December 2020, so another couple/few weeks, and TfW are trying to get permission for their 143s to continue briefly in early 2021 as not all of their 769s are/will be in service then.
@@RWL2012 the Northern Pacers were what I was talking about, here, we had the vast majority of them, over 100 of them
@Miles Holder they're also getting /already have ex-Class 319 units, which will be reclassified as Class 769 as the units are being modified to fit a diesel engine to allow them to operate on nonelectrified tracks, but crucially still utilise the electric supply where available
56:36
If there is no direct line of action and accountability from the passengers to the operators, then the competition becomes not on merit but on existence. The fact that the process that chooses which operators gets a franchise has little to no impact from the actual users, negates the whole idea of competition before it has even started.
Imagine the same for cars. You have no input on what car you get, and the one you got was decided based on a variety of factors were cost always seems to be the deciding factor anyway. A cost that is not fully known before the operation of the car begins, and might even have assumed there'd be some future improvement in efficiency. There would be little incentive to do anything *but* cut and underestimate cost.
What misery...Glad my family emigrated to Canada...Britain invented the railway and used to lead the world...
From 'first' to 'worst' in a lot of things, not just railways.
Canadian trains are even worse. What are you talking about. 7 trains a day between Ontario and (fake)London. No electrification whatsoever. Bud cars made in the 1950s. Via rail is a disgrace. Amtrak is doing a better job and that’s something
BR took on a massive problem after the war. It didn't help that, like the United States, the British .government was more committed to the role of the motor vehicle which received massive infrastructure funding. No wonder with post war debt and a host of other problems the government mandarins of the time cut corners by modernising the rolling stock but not the infrastructure.
What is the song at around 29:30?
Fascinating!
you had your chance in 2017 and 2019, Britain. smh 🤦♂️
Singapore, despite it's small size, is the best example of how to run an efficient rail service, it is state owned with 1 state operator and 1 private operator, and the trains are always on time.
It could be said that in the Victoria era Britain had a good public transport system with trolleybuses and railway's in most towns, of course, successive governments decided to focus more on car use, now it seems we are going the opposite way again 😀, can the government not just get behind improving public transport and stick with it, make it efficient or give the private companies that run services the incentive to build new railway lines and connect more towns to cities 🤔
Japanese rail is the best in the world and is privatised it's even run by monopolies. I think the British system needs some accountable they need to give companies the whole lot rail maintenance signals and trains not split up by other companies but all owned by one company split up by sections like Japan the British government can lease it and if the service is bad straight up get rid off the company and find another. The infastructer is bad just straight up bad
How I think it should work the government creates packages that have the train, railways, signals, minor stations. The government owns the major hub stations and maintains them. The packages are then leased to companies through a bidding war. The government then holds these companies accountable by cancelling the lease if they're trains are late by a certain percentage or by how people vote on what is the worse company through polls these can be ran by the government if the train service is exceptional that get a tax cut.
they did then not enough money being made
6:30 "... _it got so bad I went to see a behavioral therapist about it you know, and she just said "you have the wrong kind of anger", which unfortunately sounds a bit too much like..."_
Is it saying something that when he paused at that point, I immediately thought _"the wrong kind of snow"_ ...
--and I've never once set foot outside North America?
(P.S.: I actually did burst out laughing when he immediately proved me correct)
As if he thought preserved buses where in a graveyard
Don’t live near a station, never been on a train for forty years, how lucky am I?
I can watch all the carnage from a distance, safe in the knowledge none of it affects me.
How in earth did you manage never in your entire life set foot on a train. But yeah British trains are the worst but so is everything in England
The trouble with Britain's railways is politicians.
8:02 Trains never arrive on time
Indian Railways: Allow me to introduce myself 😂
Or Amtrak enters the room
Via rail Canada joins the chat
It because they're so heavy due to all the clingons. Weighs them down and makes them slower lol.
And this my friend Japan....!
51:20 but you went back to Northern Ireland and said the passenger numbers there had doubled, BUT THAT THE SUBSIDY STAYED THE SAME!!!
She hardly ever gets a seat? What a tragedy!
what is happening durg social distancing bus to oxford seats 90 odd i see 15 on it on the front BUS FULL Why bother taxi would be better
they should have a meeting about a meeting about a meeting to decide wether a meeting is required before the meeting that could lead to a conclusion that the meeting is on the meeting of a meeting in which the meetings were decided. They will have a meeting about that that meeting first, though.
same as watch out for notices notice or till further notice
I nearly saw my dinner again when I watched 'Tricky Dickey' Branson try to 'sell' awesomeness through his railway service. My God, didn't HE scarper when the Government wouldn't continue to replenish his begging bowl!!! That's capitalism for you!
At a tiny local station there were 4 lines running through.
Platforms at the outside 2 lines and through traffic on the inside 2 lines for express and goods.
So, to make uptime when trains are running behind by 3 minutes, to avoid any bottle necking & even more delays, stops are cut out. Fine. That makes sense. But as Nick said, the passengers at these stations will huff as their train will chuff past. Yet no mention of those passengers, who have also paid their fares, is made. Do they get compensation? They should do, but I suspect they are given the run around when trying to complain. And it's hardly fair either, that the 'country bumpkin' stations are the ones that are cut from a schedule, as you can bet it's the smaller towns/villages who have a service cut. Not to mention you'd be pretty annoyed if you were on that train, with that stop being your destination. Why should that passenger then have to pay even more, to go back in the other direction, to reach their destination, with no guarantee that the same won't happen again? Once again, compensation is probably available, but I bet it's made as hard as possible to get, with all the finger pointing & the shifting of responsibilities in the Blame Game.
I know this is 8 years old, but is it any wonder that all those concerns about HS2 came true? And the cost almost tripled? And big chunks have now been axed. Many people who refused to move because their home was in the way, were forced out with compulsory purchase orders, against their will. They were effectively evicted from home. All that stress & trauma that must have caused to quite a few people is unimaginable. And now, they were put through all of that for nothing. They didn't need to be forced out of the homes they never wanted to leave in the first place. It wouldn't surprise me if some of those people have developed mental health illnesses, or attempted, or have committed, suicide, as a result.
Lord Sugars two old right hand guys on the trains...
Does anyone remember the serple report like beaching the 2nd
You think British trains are never on time Come to the US 😂
4 days late isn’t uncommon.
Now look at Hong Kong's MTR
And on top of that, 2 states don't have ANY rail service, and neither does Las Vegas.
We have trains?
@@andyjay729 but that sweet sweet monorail!
Would be interesting to see an updated 6 years later report.
I don't believe for a second he has a 'usual berth' in standard class...the penchant for a very expensive Merc gives that one away.
What they dont tell you is that when you buy in advance for off-peak travel, the UK prices are amongst the cheapest in Western Europe. Its mostly the commuters who get stung. A lot of people can now work from home or adjust their hours; if its possible for your job to be flexible or work from home but your employer doesnt offer it, change employer.
As for the Unions, they are half the problem. Many rail staff still have their old government terms and conditions yet that's not enough for the Unions, they want more and more. I have started taking the bus from Somerset to London due to strikes, the Unions are running out of feet to shoot themselves in.
You stick to driving around in your Mercedes.
Great cars though. I normally drive in small vans and rent a VW Polo once every so often but a friend has a good job now and bought/leased a Mercedes S class. Goddamn that thing drives smoothly
De Dutch railway is getting a fine from the ministry of transportation for every delayed train.
In several levels off delay.
As a current railwayman of 37 years service, i can tell you it was better managed when BR ran it, privatisation has been a failure.
PENSIONERS GETTING TOGGGING UP money for their pensions whilst being share holders 🙄🙄🙄🙄
The good old British tapping themselves on the back... The state was incompetent in running the train service (or to be more precise the Tories defunded it in order to justify privatization). The Tories sold it off to private companies for them to prosper while increasing subsidies. Privatized Railways hiked the prices because you know, no actual competition (which is supposedly the point of privatization). The railways remain shit but now the profits go to private hands. This sounds like a failed state, something you would expect from a third world country.
On top of that, we're meant to support the move as good for businesses too, but all the money is basically funneled overseas to other countries' rail operators who use our fares to subsidise their own trains.
@@Reddsoldier Although due to bid issues Abellio Scotrail is/was being subsidised by the Dutch government. Due to various factors a lot of franchises are actually losing cash and will soon be run as more of a contract to operate services with the government rather than the operator taking the revenue risk.
Stagecoach stopped chucking everything at winning contracts when it could see that the conditions imposed by the government were unworkable.
This was just the beginning, wait and see, the working class and middle class that voted for Brexit will be surprised, it’s the same people that will benefit that benefit from privatisation of BR, Thatchers friend and the Merc man will love it, the rest not so much.
I live in UK but travel to Japan a lot for work & this is just one of many countries around the world which has an amazing train network that is very clean & amazingly punctual & when I say punctual I mean in Japan to the second. When I return home back to the UK I feel so embarrassed & annoyed about our train network. Over priced mostly dirty delayed trains. Compared to other countries with great train networks we live in a small country so why the hell for years have we had a terrible over priced service? The members of government here in the UK need to go to Japan & take so notes on how they run the train network there including having a bullet train (HS2) since 1964. If we had reasonably priced service on time thousands more people would use it for commuting to & from work which also has the green bonus of getting these people out of a lot of cars & on trains. Come UK give the people what they deserve. It will in return help the economy.🇬🇧👍
Comparing the systems is interesting. JR East is totally private, but they own the stations, rolling stock and infrastructure. They're accountable for everything, so it's in the best interests of the company to deliver a clean, efficient, punctual and safe service as there's nobody to pass the buck on to. On top of this in the centre of Tokyo there are lots of different train companies that often compete along similar routes, so there is a level of competition that exists here that isn't present in the UK.
Three interesting side notes:
1) Generally speaking, your employer will reimburse your travel costs monthly as a post-tax addition to your salary. To the Japanese, paying £4.000 of your own money to get to work is insane. If your company doesn't cover your commuting costs, that's a good indicator that they're garbage and not worth working for.
2) Punctuality is important everywhere in Japan. If your train is delayed, you are entitled to a certificate of delay (chien shomei sho) to give to your boss. It's stamped by the train operator to say you are late because of their shortcomings and you are not at fault.
3) The bullet train is ridiculously expensive if you don't have a JR travel pass. A flight to Osaka from Tokyo is usually half the price of the bullet train.
more money to share holders
*Sir Alex Ferguson really took all the time to set out and see the horrific of privatisation of railways. Time to bring Man U under pubic ownership as well.*
Odd to see how shiny and nice the virgin Voyagers looked, nowadays the crosscountry voyagers are completely different and overcrowded with a heap of fresh misery when a signal failure occurs
If privatisation is to succeed then the whole thing needs to becomeme open access (more competition and more services like Grand Central who have one of the best if not the best rated service in the UK and less red tape for service improvement like virgin faced) as well as a long over due modernisation project (this is needed either way as I have met lead engineers from networkrail who are trying to recruit computing graduates such as myself to fix the shit show of a signaling system we have here that for the most part hasn't been touched since the 60s/70s and this is from the houses mouth itself). Privatised is not the word id used to describe this as im a fan of the pre big for model (yes the model will need work to modernise it) I'd rather a competitive system like what Grand Central or Hull trains offer that this sham. Also there are few exceptions to the rule like Chiltern railways who are competing for all major stops en-route like Birmingham and Oxford I have lived along the route for the last few years and been doing the calc Oxford and Birmingham are far better value outta Marylebone than Euston or Paddington not to mention their amazing preservation of old facades at Wycombe, Birmingham Moor Street, Leamington and so on which we need more of.
Virgin trains were great ! But they lost their franchise. This alone explains everything that was wrong with private railways .
They should take a look at the train system in northern spain.
They’ve got it sussed !
Splitting trains and reconnecting them is quite common in austria
Take this into context with Canadian National along with Canadian Pacific and Amtrak along with Penn Central.
Privatisation CAN work, just look at the Czech Republic - there are issues here and there, but still, nothing dramatic and the service keeps improving year by year.
Czech railways are nationalised though, České dráhy operates passengers services and ČD Cargo operates freight.
Look at the US, the railroads are all private and doing quite well for themselves.
Didn't expect this video to get into Bird Law at 37:20
This should be shown on a loop every day in Whitehall.
To me commuting is the worse thing anyone can do to waste their life. Sure, one can read/listen to a book, or find other productive ways to not totally waste the commute, it can still be soul crushing.
Only one of three things can solve this:
- *Companies should not concentrate in big city centres, and should hire people from their local area* (or allow WFH as a policy and covid19 showed us it is possible). Education should be equally provided to all so finding skilled talent in a small village or surroundings should not be a problem. Adequate infrastructure can also be made available in remote places. Basically, we go back 400-500 years to an agrarian style society, but without all the feudal horrors.
- better cycling routes.
- invent teleportation.
Do you realize how big London is. And a lot of people don’t want to live in a big city
@@MrJimheeren Yes, we both agree. London was allowed to become this big because 'The City' was the centre of commerce of the whole country, heck all of Europe, and companies wanted to be there. If they followed my suggestions and companies were encouraged (read forced) to open in other cities, you would have seen London much smaller and other cities become larger. Maybe a metro area in the north to include Bolton, Manchester, and Liverpool (which by the way are still smaller than Greater London area wise). That would be preferred. Someone living in Liverpool wouldn't need to commute every day to Manchester like some do into London, because both cities to have enough variety of jobs on offer. You see this is European countries. The difference between the largest city and the next largest one is much lower than in the UK.
The only solution for the UK’s railways is to change all of the relevant laws to bring in an external body from a country like Japan, China or Taiwan and give them direct and complete control and not allow anyone else to interfere, including Network Rail and the U.K. trade unions, all of whom have been deliberately holding back progress on the railways for very selfish reasons for far too long given the failure of HS2 - standards would improve, fares would come down, there would be far less rail strikes nor disruptions, rail projects would be completed in half the time and for half the costs that they do now, while maintaining and repairing existing lines would be far easier, as would re-opening previously closed lines
Public in India needs to see and understand it. Specialy Ministry of Railways, Government of India.
You have expressed a concern voiced by many. Thank you. Unfortunately Indian Rail is at risk of going down the tube.
i dont see any meaning of handing over railway to private sector...indian railways needs to pull up infra ,ops part of them is satisfactory
It is astounding see the sorry state of affair of train service in Great Britain today, whereas GB ruled the biggest empire for centuries the world has ever has seen.
Three trains London to Manchester. Not many would beat that.
"Just like our trains and our sport, we got there first and now we're the worst"
-Jay Foreman, 2009
trouble is fences get higher and we get older
I am happy with privatisation. I am usually in Glasgow, but go back to Newcastle a lot.
LNER is really good (it is owned by the DfT as a correction for a failed private franchise) and ScotRail is usually cheap.
Different franchises can focus on different markets.
I do think that some companies should buy their own trains more often. The rolling stock companies are a dubious middleman.
Youre happy with privatisation yet go on a nationalised service?
@@alexturlais8558 the east coast mainline works well nationalised.
ScotRail works well privatised. To get from Glasgow to Edinburgh, then Edinburgh to Newcastle.
Hence I am happy with the status quo.
Yeah that never made sense to me why it is split up into Network Rail, the rolling stock companies, and the operators. There can be the discussion on whether public or private ownership is better but to me this seems the railway system in Britain takes the worst of both worlds.
@@churroman183 they should have split it back into individual railways that each own, operate, and maintain their own track, rolling stock, and infrastructure, just like the big four...
@@rufusfromjohto7515Appreciate this is an old comment but how do you feel now ScotRail is also under public ownership? Genuine question btw.
Funny in the days of steam everything ran on time and snow didn't stop anything, now it is a farce, an expensive one at best.
now 2 inches of snow and cant open the doors to get a snow plough out.
People say that it's these private companies to blame but it's actually all on the government. It is the government who own the infrastructure which is aging and breaks down often. Train companies are responsible for the hiring of staff to run the trains, so only driver shortages could be blamed on the private rail companies. Also, with passenger numbers increasing all the time but infrastructure being aged and difficult to update, with the frequency of train running also difficult to achieve, the rail system simply cannot keep up during the morning and evening rush hours, with millions trying to get to work in other cities.
i still dont get why that myth that the pacer uses a wagon chassis is still around, their frame was derived entirely from high speed freight vehicle 1 which, dispite its name, was one of 4 vehicles for testing different high speed suspension designes, none of it was derived from an actual goods waggon. the pacer actually recieved the best suspension that BR had at the time as it had come directly from the vehicle theyd used to research it (the same suspension design was also used on the APT-E). pacers still had a bouncy ride though due to the lack of bogies
Possibly as the body is bulit on the basis of the leyland national bus. as were other railbuses of the mk1 dmu era.
@@highpath4776 oh yeah it was a Leyland bus body, my problem is people saying it was a waggon chassis/frame and suspension, when that all in fact came from HSFV1
The last one just disappeared I believe, last week. They're finally gone!
@@richardwills-woodward5340 they're still around in Wales and the west, and I believe the northern 144s are still going
@@Trainman10715 Just checked - you maybe right about Wales and the West Country. Northern's last one has just been withdrawn last week.
All lot of people working in offices would probably be able to work from home, they would avoid those delayed trains and expensive monthly tickets
and save money then railways lose money to the share holders.
Privatisation has been the disaster of our age.
go thank the iron lady and the actor.
@@toyotaprius79 Yes.
the moral of electrification Is do it as soon as you got the offer...
In Denmark we got the IC4 from ansaldobreda and It too cannot cope with leafs
Mountford and Hewer were defiantly voting Tory in the 80s and 90s. They did this. BR was overcrowded and late, there's no escape from that in an overpopulated area, but at least it was cheap.
I thought Hewer was a lifelong Labour voter though? He only left the Labour party a few years ago, as a result of the situation his co-worker Rachel Riley found herself in?
@@JeSuisRene Actually yes, having looked it up you're right.