Will Rail Nationalisation Work?
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In this video, we’re going to have a look at how the passenger rail system currently operates in the UK, the issues with this, and how Labour plans to change it in the future.
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I will never understand the notion that public transit should be profitable. Roads are not profitable, sidewalks are not profitable, why should I bus or a train need to be profitable? Just like any other public good it is something that everybody chips in for because society benefits from it.
It only needs to be profitable if it's private operated, as all money that goes in is used to improve the system and pay for the costs, among, of course, profit.
If public, it doesn't, as the money for operation and improvement comes from taxes as well.
Ditto for healthcare. Looking at you, USA 👀
@@SewerShark British Railways were expected to be profitable, that's why they were still using trains from the 1950s right up till it was killed by the Gov.
because profits = quality and ability to pay for itself so the people get taxed less.
Sectorisation was as good as you're ever going to get. So the capitalists scrapped it.
This is the perfect opportunity to label the head of the British Rail as the Fat Controller.
That would be the most british thing ever and wonderful.
Tnthose who don't understand, look up Thomas the Tank Engine Fat Controller.
”For those who understand” ie those who have been living under a rock for 40 years and / or can’t read. Who the hell hasn’t heard of the Fat Controller from Thomas the Tank Engine?
@@dominicchallis2928because in the US version he's referred to as Sir Topham Hatt, so if you're from that way you might not know the fat controller
@@Danelius90that’s such a daft name
@@UKPatriotTV it was the Reverend Wilbert Awdry who wrote that Sunday name, though.
I am a massive advocate of using rail infrastructure for both public transport and logistics the UK is incredibly over reliant on our road network, it shows when simple road maintenance and protests can bring large areas of the country to a standstill, unfortunately the Beeching cuts decimated rail on a local level in many areas and now even if the political will and capital existed those rail lines bases/beds have fallen apart or literally been built over. Without massive intervention from the Government to induce change towards our outlook on public transport or how it can be used to transport goods the railway network of the UK will remain criminally neglected compared to other nations, which is a massive shame considering our proud railway heritage.
There's no money to invest in the rail industry!!!
You don't think that JSO would sit on rail tracks?
@@PeterPete Govt creates money. Learn something
The closures (which were also before and after Beeching) were of lines and services which effectively nobody was using. Many only existed because of historical unfettered capitalism and financial shenanigans which makes the far left's obsession with reopening railway lines because they once existed somewhat ironic. Let's be clear, the weasel words above "induce change towards..." mean the state forcing you to use public transport for ideological reasons.
@@BOZ_11 so why is the majority of the population in the UK poor?
Correction.
The Conservative plan was not to nationalise the railways but to bring the private rail operators under the GBR umbrella, GBR would still operate the franchise system (which was replaced with operator fee system during Covid). It was simple rebranding of Network rail to give the impression of rail reform, but it actually reformed nothing and private companies owned by foreign governments were still involved.
usual tory subterfuge
yes a conservative government wanting to nationalize a railway was a bit wierd
@@BOZ_11 Yes and unfortunately it works, even on those within the rail industry
I think their plan was more like the operating contract system used in London - Arriva Rail London for the Overground, MTR Crossrail for the Elizabeth Line, and KeolisAmey Docklands for the DLR.
@@MurphyOCP-001 No it doesn't, as most DfT ran operator of the last resort are better than the privately ran TOCs (even TPE has improved). Privately ran TOCs are tax payers money steadily streamed to private companies with no freedom or incentives to improve service or reduce cost.
As a foreigner temporarily living in the UK, the rail network here is vast and broadly effective in my view. Ticketing is a nightmare though with the high cost, number of different ticket types and dynamic pricing like airfares. It means you're discouraged from spontaneously using the infrastructure and exploring the nation. If it's a warm weekend and you want to spontaneously take a 1 or 2 hour train to a beach town, it shouldn't cost you so much that you may as well drive - or just stay home.
hopefully having most things under one company should simplify it...
And like cmon can we have oyster but nationwide? thats so simple.
Well, if it's a warm weekend you aren't the only one that gets the idea to drive to a beach. If the train is almost full then paying full price for the tickets is justified. In Germany we have a similar pricing system, but the rebated tickets are usually no longer available short term even if the train isn't full. Then you pay full "flex" price, which is super high. So there is no incentive to pick the less busy train.
@@davidty2006 It won't. When they have a monopoly, particularly a state monopoly, there is no incentive to do anything to encourage customers or indeed treat them well in any way. British Rail was one of the best examples of this principle you will find. Using price to limit peak demand will be a strategy they will use to the full.
That’s because you have proper perspective. It’s easy to become complacent with a good service when you have never experienced a truly bad or non existent service.
You've lower expectations likely due to being from a worse country.
The problem with the current nationalisation proposal is that rolling stock will still be in the hands of the ROSCOs (Angel Trains, Porterbrook, etc) - meaning GBR will still have to cough up enormous amounts to even be able to run the trains in the first place, so unless the Starmer government plans on massively increasing subsidy to the rails to make up for this then I doubt nationalisation will see much of a reduction in fare prices, at least in the short to medium term.
Or the government create their own company and place all new orders with that new company. The ROSCOs then find themselves with the older obselete trains and are forced to do better deals.
There is a slight plus side...
The ROSCOs are getting rid of old BR stock which varies in age though is still operational, Can just buy the old trains for cheap and modernise them something like the class 69 project. Ontop of that can just buy new stock in the future...
Then theres the weirdness thats Direct Rail Services which is owned by department of energy for moving nuclear fuel but has been doing it's own freight and passenger, they got their own trains and they make money.
@@ADAMEDWARDS17 You can't just create a company out of thin air especially in an industry that has such long lag times & supply chains. There isn't even a major British firm they could nationalise as all the major manufactures today are foreign companies; Alstom (France), Siemens (Germany), Hitachi (Japanese). A new company would have to head hunt from the ground up. It would take at least a decade more like two before a new government company would even start delivering rolling stock.
@@bomburthedwarf9036 the capital and experience is still in derby. You could in theory do a deal with the french to buy back the derby yard. Alstrom needs cash ATM so they might even go for it.
@@bomburthedwarf9036No it wouldn't. It's easy. Company doesn't make a profit = it's worthless. Government buys the said UK operating company for a nominal price of £1. Done.
30 mile round trip to my local city with a family of 4:
Car and All Day Parking - £12
Train - £28
158 miles to london Paddington with a family of 4 people:
Car - £28
Train - £170
Why on earth would I spend £142 more for a train 😡😡😡
You forgot to add CC and ULEZ and soon PPM.
They aren't trying to make the trains cheaper they're just trying to make cars more expensive.
You need fuel to run your car, How much fuel cost??
@@SaintGerbilUK Running a car is already expensive compare to catching a train £170 is alot cheaper than the cost of running a car. Here the low down
Average Car Running Costs UK
Purchase/Depreciation per year^ £1,391
Petrol and Diesel^ £889
Car Insurance^^ £796
Repairs and Servicing £472
Motor vehicle road tax £175
Parking fees, tolls, and permits (excluding motoring fines) £29
Garage rent, other costs (excluding fines), car washing, etc. £34
Motoring organisation subscription (eg AA and RAC) £15
Driving lessons £10
Anti-freeze, battery water, cleaning materials £5
Motoring fines £5
Annual running costs for a car £3,834
@@scottpeacock5492 Bro really just went "You think using a train for a day is expensive? Try owning your own transport that you can use anytime, £170 for 1 trip? Pah! try these costs for a 1 year period"
@@scottpeacock5492 It's irrelevant, because there is no equivalence. Car: takes you from where you are to where you want to go, when you want to go. Also carries stuff you need to move from one place to another like food. Train: takes you from a station where you aren't to another station hopefully nearer where you want to go, probably by an indirect route, as long as lots of other people also want to go to the same place at the same time. You can take with you anything you can physically carry. The "other people" thing is why collectivists love it so much, that and the central control over people's lives it provides.
When a plane ticket to another country cost cheaper than going to another uk town, then we might have a problem.
Yes it's a problem. A massive one. Planes are owned and operated by PRIVATE companies. The result, cheap, clean and fast transport.
The railways are slow, dirty and thick. Network rail owns and operates the rail network. Network rail is a non-departmental government body. That's right, the trains are already nationalised.
I'm a Brit living in Austria. Here the Railway is Nationalized. It's clean, on time and most of all not that expensive. In fact it has made a profit which was used to upgrade it's stations. One thing I do like is "Park and Ride". If your going to a concert etc in the middle of Vienna. Why try to find somewhere to park? Park at a station on the outskirts of the city. Get on a train to the city centre. Then train back after the concert pick up your car pay the parking fee (about €4/5 ) and head home. Germany and France Railways also Nationalized.
Like Japan, France is not entirely privatised, it's just SNCF that's Gov owned.
And we have P&R in the UK, People don't use it because spontaneously train ticket buying costs the same as a deposit for a House.
@@HexAyedalso, we do have P&R that is used, it is just P&R buses not trains
@SamWallace-ow2vn It's a fallacy to say Switzerland's railways are "almost entirely privatised". Yes, the operators are companies, but very little of the railway operation is controlled by private entities.
The largest operator SBB is completely owned by the federal state. Most of the other operators, in particular the larger ones like BLS and SOB are partially owned by the state and partially owned by the cantons.
There are lots of operators and some might be completely private but they represent a minority of the passenger traffic.
Sag mir noch einmal das die ÖBB günstig ist mit ihrem Dynamischen preissystem beim NightJet 😂
@SamWallace-ow2vn NS, the Dutch national railway company, is 100% owned by the Dutch state. It was already the case before the EU directive that (at least nominally) split the operation of trains and the infrastructure.
In short, the responsible minister and/or parliament decide what happens. Not in the day-to-day operations, that's left to the company, but to believe that being a state-owned company, as opposed to a state-run enterprise, makes a difference is who's calling the shots... it doesn't work that way.
The Dutch took the liberalisation of the railways further than most European countries, but not as far as the British. On the other hand, the Dutch state is _very_ reluctant to allow competition on the main network - to put it mildly.
Why wouldn't they own the stock? The leasing companies taking a chunk of ticket revenue is part of why costs are so high.
Because it means having to do the maintenance as well, without having the required staff. Also, it's an enormous capital expenditure to purchase new trains. It's not exactly that you can go to the corner shop and get a sixpack: it takes many years before a new train order hits the rails. From a standpoint of fixing the most fixable problems quickly, it makes sense.
Hopefully it improves the rail service, its abysmal at the moment
It's a lot better than British Rail in the 80's.
@@SaintGerbilUKyou mean when they purposely underfunded it so service got worse 😂
@@murphy7801so how well can we fund it now?
We already have record debt and extremely high taxes, which Labour have claimed they won't increase.
@@SaintGerbilUK increase wages, people will spend more going places, make up the shortfall by taxing the ultra-rich!
The ultra rich filled their pockets off of austerity and we're allowing them to get off scot free!
@@SaintGerbilUK BR was a disaster way before the 80's. It didn't take long for the rail system to go downhill after the post war Labour government nationalised GWR/LMS/SR/LNER and near as dammit the entire private owner wagon fleet. By 1955 it was already losing money.
This overcrowding is partly caused by overuse of existing network. The purpose of HS2 was to reduce demand by up to 40% on midland and north rail. The Cheapest option is to transfer fast trains onto separate new line. The full HS2 route needs to be constructed to attain this advantage. The public have been LIED to about cost. 15yrs of costs is about £9billion per year, NHS is £190billion per year.
there's a reason no one had done a franchise system before Thatcher and no other country has made one since its introduction in Britain, because it doesn't work and its flawed.
For crying out loud. It wasn't Thatcher that privatised the railways. She was actually against it and BR did rather well during her period in office. Do your basic research
Doesnt Japan have it?
Every European country now has a franchising system. Particularly in Germany and the Nordic countries and it actually works well. And in the UK it has worked well also, with private operators more than doubling the number of passengers using the networj
It was done to follow an EU incoming directive
@@91DurktheturkHowever the private operators in Germany and the Nordics compete against the state-run operator who runs the bulk of routes in the country - DB in Germany, SJ in Sweden, DSB in Denmark, Vy in Norway, VR in Finland. Britain could easily do this through the form of open access operators (such as Lumo, Hull Trains, Grand Central, etc.) with GBR running the bulk of services.
the description of the william schapps plan isn’t very accurate at all, it was going to be operated under single body called great british railways, true, but it was going to be a body strictly overseeing franchises (the same way the overground works). it wouldn’t reduce privatisation, it would just reduce fragmentation.
Not franchises. The plan was to pay the private companies to run the service, different.
@@crabby7668 sorry, i misspoke. but regardless, to describe it as a form of nationalisation is pretty inaccurate
@@stefanristicmoviesit is nationalisation and outsourcing part of if its operation
@@stefanristicmovies I would tend to agree, but it really depends on how much labour deviate from the original plans
Nationalisation will only work if the Government gets over the perception that the piece of metal must make money. If everything around it benefits and the greater economy is better off, then it's a cost worth bearing. The Government wants people to use fewer cars but does nothing to provide an alternative. The country has been struggling with stagnant productivity for years, why can't decent rail infrastructure be a tool to get people moving about and make more jobs accessible to more people?
you can have both. our state-owned rail here in austria works great compared to most of europe and turns a profit on top of that. in britain however it would not be profitable in the short term because you'd have to make up for the missing investment into infrastructure during the years when it was privatised.
@@tru7hhimself OBB can make profit becuase it owns RCA. Freight if done correctly makes massive profit. The current plan doesn`t include nationalising railfreight in the UK.
@@FrankyLon well, they should nationalise freight as well. after all it is a major part of the railway system.
@@tru7hhimselfPerhaps not the best approach. As private manufacturers would then push private freight to be efficient to offer them competitive prices. Freight rail could offer profitable routes if they actually provide a good service.
ScotRail is run by Scottish Govt not Westminster like you implied
Rails are still network rail though
@@crabby7668 yep since 2002
@@1701Wren what is since 2002?
@@crabby7668 Network Rail has been in existence since 2002
They make mistakes on mistakes on mistakes in every single video. GBR was not meant to be nationalised rail, like they implied, it was meant to work as a franchise holder and a marketing umbrella for PRIVATE franchisees.
It’s always depressing when the best way to get us out of this hole when it comes to rail travel is to wait for the contracts to come to an end then pay the failing companies that have seen no investment from shareholders and only the extraction of wealth through profits from their monopolies given to them by the government
The problem is that these companies cannot fail. In the private sector bad companies fail. In the public sector bad companies make even more money being propped up indefinitely by the tax payers.
@jonathan2847 That's not what happens. Certainly not what happened during the financial crisis and it hasn't happened since.
@jonathan2847 Also, public sector companies don't make money. They provide a service. They're not for profit. I'm not saying nobody involved makes money, but a public sector company is generally incentivised to use money efficiently because the people funding it are directly accountable to the electorate in a way that CEOs aren't.
@@Talisguy "the people funding it are directly accountable to the electorate" when was the last time you heard of a civil servant losing their job due to underperformance? They might be theoritically accountable, but in reality they are not, their are always excuses and political angles. This is why public services are always inefficient.
@@jonathan2847 Say that to the private water companies.
It's cheaper to fly domestically than getting the train
In part because airlines get tax free fuel.
Capacity is also at a premium, driving up costs significantly. One of the reasons HS2 is severely needed in this country.
But even the future of that is grim 😔
only if you live near a airport with cheap airline, and cost to get to airport and back home adds up.
That’s the case almost everywhere that rail is not significantly subsidized by taxpayers not taking rail transportation.
@@prasanta5139 England is a tiny country, I doubt you're ever more than 75 miles from an airport. Sure, car parking charges are super expensive but just slip your mate a 20 in exchange for dropping you off.
Management is not british rail biggest problem. It's the victorian era rail network. Hs2 was supposed to alleviate the congestion problem. But i guess that's in the toilet now.
Is Labour planning on reversing Suniak’s policy on HS2? Or is HS2 officially a dead project?
@@Kishanth.J Labour have said they're not reviving HS2. Sunak actually sold all of the land on the route anyway, so restarting would be extremely expensive
@@cpkingadam5 He sold the land? Why? The already bought the right of way. It one thing to not build it now but it another to stop it from ever being built. Were the sales even legal?
@@Kishanth.J I'd imagine for this exact scenario - to prevent Labour from taking it back up.
@@cpkingadam5 I honestly thought we were past the era where politicians did stuff just to spite other parties, especially when it to the detriment of the people. (At least in the west outside the US)
"They've only been on office for around 2 months"
Dude, as of uploading this they had only been in for 35 days. They've been been in full operation for a month.
Completely irrelevant to the video but my Too Long copy is arriving today!
To clarify, the operator of law resort is basically the government operator. ScotRail and TfW are operators of last resort as the Welsh and Scottish governments have nationalised their railways
Transport for Wales is operationally run by the Welsh Government not the UK government.
Same for Scotrail (by the Scottish Government). If the list includes those, it should also include Caledonian Sleeper (Scottish Government), and Translink (Northern Irish Government)
and theres atleast 4 rail operators under the government, LNER, Northern, Southeastern and Transpennine, Ontop of DRS which is a weird one...
@@davidty2006Those are run by DFT
Welsh government is indirectly run by Westminster 🤐
Didn’t mention that Network Rail is publicly owned. So government run it.
After the privatization of the UK railways, approximately 1,300 miles of railway track were lost.
Which cut off lots of small communities...many of which became angry with the wrong people and still are for the wrong reasons.
I'm not sure that's correct. Since 1997 there have been very few line closures and there have been new lines opened like HS1 and the Elizabeth Line. Where did you get this figure and please can you give an example of a line which closed?
the government still set prices, fees, and routes so no they were not actually privatized.
@@ADAMEDWARDS17 hes a socialist, he wont provide examples ofc.
I think they are getting confused with beeching which was done under nationalised br
They've been in govt 5 weeks, not 2 months.
lol
"im not ginger i'm strawberry blond"
Perhaps they accidentally included the longest-serving member of government: Larry.
They need to nationalise the rolling stock or this is not nationalisation, that is where most of the money goes to.
That would be far too expensive. A better and cheaper option would be for the Government to build new trains and squeeze out the rolling stock operators gradually
@@MurphyOCP-001 And buy up cheap freshly retired ones and put them back into service.
Maybe hire the steam trains every now and then if needed.
@@MurphyOCP-001 it's only as expensive as you want it to be. if you can make the laws you can set the price. if you pass a law that forbids private operation of rail, the companies' valuations would go to near zero. so the real question is: does the government want to make politics for the people or for investors.
Stealing (nationalisation) is tyrannical and evil.
@@davidty2006 Man I wish
Aren't Transport For Wales & Scotrail operated by the devolved governments, rather than the DfT?
ScotRail is. They tried a few private companies but as I understand they failed.
Yes. Also Translink in Northern Ireland.
@@thalesofmiletus2966 one of them was a subsidiary of the dutch railways..
I wonder why private railways work in Japan and not in the UK.
Because the railways in the UK aren't privatized.
I googled it, and stumbled upon a lengthy Reddit post. It discussed the difference between a state-owned infrastructure and company-owned infrastructure.
The funny thing is that the separation of operations and infrastructure, at least nominally, is the result of an EU directive. It worked very well in Sweden, so it became mandatory across the European Union. The British took it a couple of steps further, though, with full privatisation.
One would have to look at the full cost/benefit analysis, but the ever-increasing liberalisation of the European railways has led to some very interesting competition, which has led to better service to the customer. Spain and Italy are the front-runners when it comes to opening up railway lines to competition.
In Italy, the private high-speed operator runs trains alongside Trenitalia, the state operator, and recently broke even financially.
In Spain, you can choose between four (!) operators between Madrid and Barcelona: both a premium and a budget service by state operator Renfe, a budget version by the French SNCF, and an in between version by the Italian Trenitalia (joint venture with an airline).
Between Paris and Milan, you can take both SNCF and Trenitalia, although a landslide has made things a little complicated.
For regional trains, it's more of a mixed bag. These are often not profitable, so they are usually run by the national operator, a regional government-owned operator, or a subsidised private or foreign operator.
As for freight, a mere 5% is transported by rail in Japan, which is even lower than the UK (7%). This is down from 40% in the 1960s. On the other hand, 40% is done by shipping in Japan, but only 12% in the UK.
Long story short: don't just look at privatisation as a goal, but more as a means. Just because it worked in Japan, doesn't mean it'll work in the UK, let alone the rest of Europe. At first glance, Britain might seem similar to Japan: an island nation centred around its capital city. But Japan is a very different country, regulatory, economically, and culturally.
Population density and car subsidies. Japan has made owning a car expensive and painful, nad has invested massively on a rail network, and with a big population density its viable. For most countries this syst3m cant work. The best idea is what the EU is doing, public infrastructure private vehicles, and for routes that arent profitable but needed, subsidies
Well, highways in Japan are all tolled, basically, fuel and toll cost equals to two passenger train tickets, if you are travelling alone, it would be cheaper to take the train, if you are travelling in a group of 3, driving would be cheaper.
I bet if highways in Japan are free like UK, everyone will just drive instead
How foolish do you have to be to believe that a literal government franchise system is "privatisation" in action 😑😑😑
Might have been mentioned before, but Just a note that technically ScotRail & Caledonian Sleeper are actually run by the Scottish Government, and TfW run by the Welsh Government, and not the UK Government’s OLR.
Scotland resident here.
Our prices haven't went down because of nationalisation actually they've went up.
They are on time now though so... Ups and downs
Are there enough of them?
"we are going to build a rail under a company name" "we are going to divide and sell off the assets of the national rail company" "we are going to renationalise the rail under 1 company" "we are going to sell off the assets of the national rail company" - Britain
It's a superficial form of nationalisation that will still result in rolling stock being owned by foreign banks. Why we essentially send money overseas to use our own trains beggars belief. When the government spends £bns on new rolling stock for HS2 i hope they retain ownership of it and don't just give it to Angel Trains, and then pay them even more to use them, that would be ridiculous! But not beyond the scope of British politicians, particularly tories.
First new order for trains from the reformed British Rail can be direct with the manufacturer cutting out the ROSCOs from the contract. The Roscos are then left with the older trains and their share price will start to fall. British Rail can then choose to negotiate a much better deal.
@@ADAMEDWARDS17 Or can just buy old stock the ROSCOs don't want anymore...
If they end the contracts with the ROSCOs then they will simply buy the same rolling stock direct from the three companies that make them, Alstom, Hitachi, Siemens, but would also need servicing and maintenance, as this has been (mostly) offloaded to the leasing companies
@@davidioanhedges which would require well the return of the TMDs and works which is possible.. Crewe and doncaster are still about though downgraded to maintenance than building new trains...
You've used the wrong logo for 'Northern' at 2:45... that's the old 'Northern Rail' logo from two operators ago.
Can you please edit that tiny dot in the top left hand side of the frame when the presenter is in view. I thought my screen had broken.
It's a screw, probably a PH2 head.
@@mandrakejake Does indeed look like a trusty PH2. Probably to hang something, a youtube playbutton maybe?
A plane ticket for about $40, that doesn't even cover the baggage fees on a US flight.
The fact that you qouted Southend to Manchester as £72 is the boldest lie 😂
You missed an opportunity to provide a deeper dive into how the public was swindled in the first place when the previously nationalized railway system was privatized in the the 90s. Why did you skip this?
It isn't going to work. As much as i'm a big supporter of rail renationalisation (because it's common sense) Great British Railways is not the solution to fix Britain's railways. Just bringing passenger rail services into public ownership and not rolling stock leasing and freight rail (despite it being just as important as passenger rail) just makes no sense to me. Rolling stock leasing companies charge millions for rail companies to lease trains. What if Great British Railways is suffering from a lack of funding and they can't afford to purchase trains from leasing firms? If this goes ahead, Great British Railways could certainly go bankrupt before the end of Labour's five year term.
Why did it not work when they were nationalised under "British Rail" adding a Great to it doesn't solve the problems they had.
GBRf is basically BR Version 2 anyway tbh, and DRS is, and always has been Publicly Owned
I agree. Nationalisation needs to be a policy to deliver structural change to an industry to solve problems. When Jeremy Corbin offered mass nationalization I'd have much rather been offered one good nationalization that fixed the structural problems of that one industry. Rail customers will see some easy wins, perhaps with ticketing, but major infrastructure problems will remain.
It's a start, and will not cost silly amounts of money, I suspect the Rolling stock contracts have penalty clauses, and nationalising freight is likely to be expensive as well
It's a start, the rolling stock is a huge issue but by ensuring reliable services and timetables more people will use the trains and in a few years (hoping that growth has occurred and there's money for it) we can debate about the cost of buying and owning our own rolling stock. Building a house starts with one brick.
Between 2006 & 2015 I travelled a lot, both across the UK & abroad. I used trains in the UK, in Holland, & in Italy. I can tell you, trains in the UK versus trains in Holland were night & day!!! In Holland I could hop on a train at Schipol, & be an hour or two away for about 20euro return fare. For £40 (yep double the price) I would get a pre-booked, one-way ticket 3 months in advance for a specific train at a specific time between two different stops about two hours apart, & if I missed it, I was scuppered!!! And would have to fork out an even higher amount to jump on the right kind of train going where I needed to be. Even in Italy, which has a two-tier system of trains; one which stops everywhere & a more expensive express route, the difference was only 20 euro between the two types of ticket, & relatively easy to sort out with conductors.
Yet back when I was a child, taking the train in the UK was something fun, decently-priced, & reliable. It's none of those now.
Scotrail is under the Scottish government not the UK government
They need to cut all dividends and at least half ticket prices. Transport should be affordable and the rail companies shouldn't be filling their pockets in the process
Nationalised seems to work OK in China, Russia, Germany etc. Plus a better service.
Because we want to be more like China or Russia?
@@SaintGerbilUK Why not?
@@SaintGerbilUKI mean most of Europe's rail is nationalised and it's going fine for them
@@SaintGerbilUK Not the political system, that is for sure. But it shows that central government has a place to play in the running of the country. It simply isn't feasible to have an operator that runs stuff and takes the profit from the service - a service that may be profitable, but it isn't benefiting the service.
We don't run roads on profit based system. Or footpaths. Or outdoor tracks.
@@onedaywewill the rail system is a product of their politics, want a train that runs on time better have a good social score.
I think it’s important to mention Railtrack to Network Rail was renationalisation of track and stations.
I know it’s unrelated to the topic, however I would like to see a return of TLDR News US given the looming US general election.
either nationalise of privatise properly
an half assed privatisation was a big mistake
Why doesn't the UK simply copy the EU system? The infrastructure is public, but anyone can operate on the tracks (for a fee and under precisely defined conditions) and there is an agency that allocates the slots. For example, passenger fares fell significantly in Spain and Italy when private passenger transport companies began to use the tracks. Freight traffic in Croatia almost doubled after competitors were able to run on Croatian tracks.
It is currently this kind of system in a way. Not sure how long the low fares in Spain will last (only on selected routes). OuiGo is heavily suubsidised by SNCF on its route between Barcelona and Madrid
That's the open access model, and it's already been a thing here for ages where private operators can bid on slots to run their trains on. This is how Grand Central, Hull Trains, Lumo and a few others operate, with a few more popping up soon to do routes that aren't currently served directly. If anything, the EU actually copied this model from the UK to enforce open access across the continent with some great results (e.g. FlixTrain in Germany and Italo in Italy).
@@ricequackers I do not understand. Does the UK have the same system as the EU, but it doesn't work?
Private enterprise with no room for innovation is boring 🥱
@@markopinteric It sounds like in whichever country you're describing in Europe, the railways are owned by the state whereas in the UK they're not. I guess the issue lies with all the existing rail being already owned and regulation/corruption making it virtually impossible to build more rail.
Publicly owned rail as well as publicly owned water seems to work well in Scotland
No railway system should be privately owned it should be owned by the public, ie government, any profit should be used to subsidise other rail services and not go into shareholders pockets
Next you'll be saying no food production should be privately owned, then no manufacturing, etc until you end up with full blown communism.
Place the operation of a complex transportation system in the hands of an organization that can not fire ineffective employees and as a whole pays no price for failure
@@npcknuckles5887 If food producers make it unaffordable for the majority of the population have anything to eat, then regulation and reform is needed. There needs to be a balance betweeen personal wealth and the needs of society. American style greed is just as bad as soviet style communism.
The fact that you think national rail even makes profit...
The problem with UK model is that it combined the worst of both worlds - privatisation while retaining monopoly. As we see elsewhere in Europe, customers profit the most from liberalisation of the market which brings competition (Czechia is a leader in this with prices dropping massively and quality incrasing significantly since first open access carriers entered a decade ago, but there are now few examples in Italy and Spain as well). While the nationalised model will probably be better than the current mess, it will retain many problems UK railways have today as it doesn't address the main issue.
London Overground is not a franchise but a concession under TFL oversight, and has proven to be quite a success.
I wonder whether scheme is to stay and whether some franchises are to become concessions instead? 🤔
Since covid they are all concessions
@@TheLegoTrainStation Fab, thank you. I didn’t know whether this was reverted 😉
Crikey, I didnt know anything about the Tories starting this officially, and Labour has actually taken over the idea. Fascinating. Well done for educating me, TLDR. Another triumph, thank you.
Calling the current system "privatised" is incredibly disingenuous. The private rail operators all have strict government mandated regulations placed upon them. In addition to that they cannot go out of business, so in effect they're all just state-funded monopolies. There's no way you can call this privatised when it doesn't incorporate any of the core and necessary principles that make the free market function. It's a meaningless label that doesn't correspond to how the system actually functions currently.
Welcome to Conservative UK, where profits are private, and debts are public
"There's no way you can call this privatised when it doesn't incorporate any of the core and necessary principles that make the free market function. "
It's privatized because it's been converted into privately owned property. That's what privatized means.
You give yourself away with this and your reference to the silly concept of a "free market" as one of those libertarian types, your entire stock and trade is in defending capitalism by playing a language game. You try to redefine words like "privatization" so you can pretend unfavorable aspects of something you like aren't really a part of it. Often what you find unfavorable is actually a very sensible feature, but you've chosen to use it as an excuse for what you want not actually working in real life.
Really, you are only fooling yourself. Nobody else on earth believes that a privatized business is innately unregulated! It is something you made up because you are weird.
That's the problem...it's a monopoly so there's no free market competition and therefore no incentive to provide better service which is why it should be publicly owned to ensure consumers aren't taken advantage of.
Lolbert brain rot, with 'mUh FrEe MaRkEt'. Quick, I must defend this economic system! All you types ever do is ignore practical realities. Yeah, bro, energy should be privatised because 'muh competion'. And what do you end up with, with that sort of thinking? Oh wait, a State-owned company that operates as a private one within Britain?!? So crazy!!!
They just like to rail against privatization so they call government failures “privatization”
This channel is so Dyslexia friendly. Very appreciated
Public transport in any form should NOT be aimed for profitability. This is the problem with privatization...
Yes it should with my taxes you people are delusional
Network rail wasn't a private company it was a Government owned company
Damn, 21 seconds
I am speed
u got this video hot off the press then
We should get you to operate the train 😂😂
KACHOW
Yes it will work. Privatisation profit sucks.
Given that the rail problems are caused mechanistically by privatisation, I'd say it it will make the rail less bad
A government franchise system is NOT privatisation. Stop smearing privatisation by associating it with this deeply deeply unfree, semi-socialist system of government control and intervention.
I really hate it how people think of public services. I think this is really good recontextualization for business minded people that think things should be profitable. Which I do actually agree with.
Every business in the world has some parts of their business that don't directly make profits, lets say r&d. Yeah, it contributes to profits, but actual profit is made after manufacture and sale. Or maybe better example would be HR and management that facilitate smooth running of the business.
Thia is how you need to think public services as, these allow people and businesses to make overall more profitable nation.
And it's not like this is only consideration, lets take faming for example. Farming subsidies all around world are high, because this is vital resource that has to be secured. Yeah, it's probably not most effective way to go about it, and it probably even stifles innovation to some extent. But efficiency and innovation doesn't mean shit if there are some events around world and there's lack of food supply.
Yes - I'd argue the shocking state of our infrastructure is why productivity is so poor.
There was no incentive to provide good service before and there will be no incentive after. This is just political shuffling.
It's almost like these are SERVICES rather than products that can be sold for profit.
Yes Hopefully Rail Nationalization work with Great British Railways runs England London Britain Railways system. Freight service are still privatised Thomas.
Apart from DRS because of their weirdness.
On the continent, most freight is either private, or by a handful of state operators, such as DB and PKP. Looking at the Netherlands, where a reasonable amount of freight trains run from the harbours, the freight division of NS (the national operator) was sold to Deutsche Bahn. The same happened with the Danish state freight (which had the incredible name 'DSB Gods'). There is a wide variety of operators running freight trains, private and state-owned, from all corners of Europe.
There is no point in nationalising freight. Because the operations and the allocation of slots are separated anyway, there is no added value in placing all operations, both passenger and freight, into the same company.
It's like running buses and trucks. They're two different things. And since passenger trains are increasingly EMUs, not even sharing locomotives makes sense these days.
Why would you still let private enterprises on the most profitable lines, taking away revenue from the public?
You know its awful when the tories say that privatisation is bad.
People forget how the model of rail in the UK differs from, say, Europe. The cost per km is not actually that different - once you take our bonkers capital costs. What's different is that, in the UK system, the user pays a much higher proportion of the cost whereas in Europe, the taxpayer does so. I'm ambivalent about this, tbh. Part of me feels some other person (ie taxpayer) - who maybe doesn't use the rail system - should not subsidise my trip to London. The other part says we need to encourage more people off the roads and onto greener rail. The third part of me says: "Hey, Other Part: the rail system is over-crowded already!!" Anyway, I have a railcard, travel offpeak and so Bristol/London is actually pretty affordable for me....
They can just call it British rail. This calling everything Great British whatever is cringe.
What about calling it gbr
All jingoism is cringe, and policy slogans shouldn't be part of government infrastructure nomenclature - looking at you, Dept for Levelling Up
If you call things ‘great British’ it automatically means things will work out great doesn’t it? Perfect logic😂
Great Britain just means "big" Britain, which refers to a larger area of geography than "Britain". It is not saying we are great. UK rail might make more sense unless it doesn't include Northern Ireland, but I think they just want it to sound more like British Rail.
None of it will be "Great"; it will all be an utter mediocrity. Romanticism over "Greatness" (which no longer exists) is what's truly cringe. People need to accept that Britain is a dump.
Nice video in general, just one thing to clarify; after devolution the UK has more than one government - ScotRail is run by the Scottish government, not the UK govt. Please don't overlook such things as it does a disservice to the devolved nations. The video also doesn't address whether the UK govt will try and take ScotRail off the Scottish govt?
This of course would not exactly be popular up here!
"will it work" yes. rail networks naturally work better if they are nationalized. it would require a monumental fvckup for it to work even slightly worse.
So why didn't it work when it was British Rail?
@@SaintGerbilUK Wdym it didn't work under BR? The railways have become way worse under privatisation, expecting foreign companies to care about the interests of the public is naive.
@SaintGerbilUK I can't verify whether or not it did, but the rail service consistently worked better when parts of it were temporarily put under state control after the railway privatisation than it did when it was entirely private.
Also, pretty much all nearby nations that have better rail service than us have a state-run rail company (EU law forbids a rail network from being completely nationalised, so some private train companies must exist, but we're going against the grain for Europe by having _no_ state-run railway options at the moment on the national level.)
@@SaintGerbilUK The problem with British Rail was, it was a public service, that was expected to turn a profit. Regional Railways couldn't afford to buy new trains, their shining star being the Class 158. Even when it was privatized, companies like Serco-Abellio Northern Rail and First Transpennine Express were blocked from buying new rolling stock from the Gov.
Contract expiry dates are wrong, for example "The rail contract between the Secretary of State for Transport and First Greater Western Limited, dated 14 June 2022, which ends on the expiry date of 25 June 2028.
This direct award rail contract replaces the Great Western 2020 rail franchise agreement."
Please make tldr ireland
Ps keep up the good work 👍
You posted that twice, clearly nobody wants Ireland
But you'll have to have one channel for Northern Ireland and another for Southern Ireland. I don't see how this will pan out.
@@SunbathinginAntarctica Northern Ireland is the UK channel
@@martinbilis8875 I know, I was just being goofy with pixelcraft's comment.
Scottish govt, not “the Govt” (e.g. UK Govt) runs Scotrail and Caledonian Sleeper
BR: Ah shit here we go again
No. It might be called that, but it won’t be the BR that was.
Scotrail is not owned or run by Westminster. It is owned and run by Holyrood. (Last time I checked) . The private operators cost the the UK more in subsidies than British Rail ever did. The companies do not give a monkey's about the service, as long as they keep just at the minimum levels. BR actually made a profit, however the governments of the time kept the profits and refused to invest in BR properly. Might be worth doing some fact checking.
1 view
15 seconds
TLDR has fallen off the rail. 😔
Maybe they nationalised?😅
British national policy is a series of trial and error experiments on the global stage.
Join the EU --> Quit the EU
Rwanda good --> Rwanda bad
Privatize railways ---> Nationalize railways
Says a lot on the quality of leadership and depth of parliamentary deliberations.
i'm glad that the companies are being nationalised but I want to see the end of ROSCO's. At the moment ROSCO's are owned by big banks and lease the trains to the franchises.
Franchises should be able to buy their own trains and once paid off would become an asset for the franchise, I genuinely believe this would help reduce overcrowding on the railway as franchises must run with the minimum amount of trains to avoid high leasing costs where as if they owned them they may build up a reserve stock as they replace older trains.
Some companies do own their own trains, tho very few, ROSCO's are a massive bane tho
I'm not really wanting to defend ROSCOs but without them there would always be problems with franchise holders finding the capital to buy new trains and questions of what happened to the trains when the franchise ended. Trains are far more complicated than buses so you can't just move trains from one route to another casually.
They have been getting rid of old BR stock, alot of that would be quite cheap and still operational.
Nothing really wrong with older trains long as they work and are modernised every now and then. ex: LNERs class 91 sets those are 30 years old yet nothing really wrong with them...
@@davegold very true, but if all the franchises become nationalised the government would own the trains anyway. I suspect we could then see some trading happen between the regions as operators replace old trains.
@@Exo98761not necessarily because the trains are leased by the operating companies from the Bank owned roscos. The government will have to nationalise the roscos to have any trains to run.
Any trains owned by an operating company (very few if any) will go with them if the contract lapses and there is no provision for the government to take them
In short the government could end up with a situation exactly the same as tories intended or with no trains to run a service, if they are not careful.
They aren't careful..
I took the Dogu Express in Turkey just a week ago. More than 1300Km distance, from Kars to Ankara. Costed me only €14.
UK is an archipelago, Japan is an archipelago.
UK has private railways. Japan also has private railways.
UK's rail system is not profitable or on time. Japan's rail system is profitable, affordable and on time.
Solution?
Just copy that Japanese rail model.
Stop trying to reinvent the wheel. (UK is failing at it.)
There is already a world-class gold standard that has been perfected and they measure lateness down to the second.
japans system sucks hard in rural areas though.
They pay a transport tax. We don’t.
In Japan you cannot own a car unless you can proove you have off road car parking before you buy it. As a result far fewer people own cars so have to use trains, metros and buses. This is sort of hapening in London where car ownership is falling (not least because people cannot afford cars and rent). So Japanese railways have a big advantage.
@@22pcirish The UK may not have a specific "Transport tax," but it certainly funds and subsidizes its rail network, much like Japan does.
Here are some numbers and facts.
In 2023, the UK government allocated approximately £17 billion ($21 billion USD) to rail infrastructure and operations. This includes funding for Network Rail (which maintains and develops rail infrastructure) and subsidies to train operating companies. This spending represents about 0.67% of GDP.
In Japan, public spending on rail infrastructure in 2023 was around ¥1-1.5 trillion JPY (approximately $7-10 billion USD). This includes subsidies to rural railways, maintenance of the Shinkansen network, and other public investments in rail infrastructure, amounting to approximately 0.15-0.2% of GDP.
So, in short, you are paying tax money for the rails-more than Japan, yet getting worse outcomes.
Japan, the place which takes trains being 1 minute late too seriously...
5:15 The years on this picture were not updated btw
Perhaps they can return the radio and TV transmitters back to the broadcasters? The present owners are headquartered in NYC.
I am not sure many of the contributors on here fully understand what the Labour party actually intend to do concerning the railways.
Great British Railways will oversee the rail network in England, Wales and Scotland. May of the current franchises do not run out until 2027-2030 so their is no immediate noticeable change. Furthermore Starmer will not nationalise the rolling stock, GBR will continue to lease them and although projected savings through nationalisation are forecast to be in the region of £2 Billion thre are no guarantees for lower rail fares only a committment to a ' Best Fares ' policy.
How does continually leasing rolling stock from private companies save taxpayers money? Answer, it doesn't.
Solve one problem at a time. You cannot go to Trains'R'Us and buy a bunch of them. That will take years and years. Plus, they don't have the staff to maintain these trains.
@@SeverityOne
You are missing the point entirely.
It is within the governments powers to A) Buyout the rolling stock companies B) Renegotiate the leases C) Nationalise them and pay compensation over a fixed number of years.
If the Labour government had the political will to do so taking control of the rolling stock within the lifetime of this parliament can be done.
They do not have the will therefore it won't happen.
The issue with the rolling stock is that the capital investment required is huge. For example the new fleet on SWR cost £1 billion, and that's just one operator. To buy out all the ROSCOs would cost billions.
I don't like the fact that the ROSCOs skim profit off the railway either, but the service they provide is essentially financing investment in train fleets with private money, which reduces capital investment and makes the leasing fees become part of operating expenses, which is easier for any business to swallow.
If the government had to stump up the billions up front to buy trains, it wouldn't, the money would go to hospitals instead
Technically Trefnidiaeth Cymru and Scotrail aren't operated by the UK government, but rather the devolved governments of Cymru and Scotland
If you are old enough you will remember the total chaos of British Rail.
Privatisation has also failed.
We don’t need the old system back again. Put the customers first.
There’s something wrong when it’s cheaper and quicker to fly to your destination.
The trouble is most people here aren't that old. The rails system as bad as it is today, is still better than British Rail.
@@ksec6631But that’s because the government spends more money. Don’t you think it’s weird how more tax payer money goes in after privatisation?
Privatisation never existed for it to "fail" in the first place. A government franchise system is NOT, I repeat NOT privatisation.
@@npcknuckles5887 Have you lot ever heard of the “True scotsman fallacy”
@StanTorrent It's a smear of privatisation and I recognise it as such. Don't sit there and tell me that this deeply deeply unfree, heavily government-controlled, semi-socialist system is "privatisation". It is not, and I will not be gaslit by socialists into accepting that it is.
While on holiday in the UK, I got the train from Charing Cross to a station that was exactly halfway to Hastings, (I can’t remember the name of the station). To get the train was £24. A few days later I got a train return from this stop to Hastings and it was £10.10. How is this seem as acceptable? it’s simply not so when I was on holiday I drove everywhere because the trains are prohibitively expensive.
.it will only cause more strikes.
The rail unions are in full support of it, have welcomed it, and pushed to get the franchises operated under the operator of last resort ... so no it will make for less strikes
@@davidioanhedges of course they are.
@@davidioanhedgesthatcher was right to destroy unions
I don’t quite understand how anyone would think the model of privatisation would work… there is little to no competition in any routes, the only real exception is the east coast main line but even then you have to get below york to get any sense of true competition to which point it doesnt work to increase competition. Without competition there’s no incentive to do better and/or reduce cost so and we end up like we are 🤷🏼♂️
In Wales the railway system is operated by Tranport for Wales which come under the Welsh Government.
Where will the government get the money to do this? I'm not getting my hopes up about this tbh.
Doesnt the government already subsidise some of the companies that run the railways
@@ahhlewis_mapping Yeah they do but to subsides the rest of the railway network is just not looking like a great idea for Labour.
Some corrections. The Williams Shapps rail plan was not written in any part by shapps he just put his name on it before publication. GBR under the tories wasn't ever to nationalise but rather coordinate the existing private operators under GBR similar to how it was under covid. Network rail has been nationalised for a decade previously, though were created as essentially nationalised but receiving some small amounts of private funding.
So, most importantly, there won't be any changes on the prices.
8am 200 quid one way. 9 am, 25 quid one way
That's why I always end up driving.
“You have caused confusion and delay”
The fact train drivers get 75k a year is crazy to me
You think it should be more or? It’s a very important job
@@tempejkl it should be less
@tempejkl driving a train is not a specialist job so should only get at most 50-60k
@@CCrux-yt Driving a train is a lot more complicated than what you might think. And if done wrong can kill hundreds
I hate my life, but this process of 'rail nationalisation' (as the kids call it) will be glorious!!! I sincerely hope that Mr. Boris Johnson PM will put this plan into action as I love a good bit of nationalism.
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maybe...just maybe you operate at a loss because the commuter rail is a public service.
I rather have a functional rail network getting people to work helping the economy than a nationalized network where ownership is constantly being changed.
The question on the public's lips is though will any of this result in lower (affordable) prices, and will these prices be standardised and not fluctuate constantly? This is the main reason why we want re-nationalisation.
Fluctuating prices are not always bad. You see the railway operates most efiiciently with cyclic scheduling and uniform rolling stock and as such offers roughly constant capacity throughout the day. Yes you can play with train length and frequency to some extent, but the more such intervention the more complex and costly the operation becomes. So evening out the demand for the capacity by incentivising the travel in less popular times by cheaper prices is actually beneficial for everybody.
the fundemental issues of inadequate infrastructure won't go away without abandoning the cost cutting mindset of the uk
Privatisation for the railways was never a good idea, simply because of the lack of competition. There was no incentive for a company to improve services on a particular route as they were the only ones running it. That said, if people think it is suddenly going to get better because the government run it (lol) they're in for a shock, and it won't be any cheaper. It's almost a surprising thing for a government to do nowadays because when a train is late today, people blame the operator, and then the government. Under nationalisation their whole ire will be directed at the government.
Also, this page is wrong: 5:17. Thameslink's contract, for example, doesn't expire until 1st April 2028. According to this page all routes will be back in government hands in about 8 weeks.
Why wouldnt nationalisation work. Its a way of covering costs while making investment without paying out to share holders. I cant see the negative in that.
If they increase service to my station and make it so I aint paying nearly £1 a minute for train fare that would be a win, but they already operate the train operator I use lol