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Note: I have spent the last 7 years working in consultancy, much of which has been involved with both Metro Rail (eg TfL) and Heavy Rail in the UK. There are c

Note: I have spent the last 7 years working in consultancy, much of which has been involved with both Metro Rail (eg TfL) and Heavy Rail in the UK. There are certainly some messy aspects to UK Rail, but the current system was not nearly as bad as made out by some posters , and there are some very good arguments against further centralisation. A lot of the problem as I see it has been the misalignment between Network Rail (running the tracks) and the train operating companies (TOCs). Firstly, NR is a huge and bloated bureaucracy - it is incredibly slow moving, and many of the problems (e.g. lack of modern rolling stock) can be directly traced back to problems with NR signing off on new rolling stock (they have to authorise each type of rolling stock to be run on each line). Second, there are definite problems with timetabling - the TOCs are told the timetables they have to run. Unfortunately, the people who designed the timetables haven't worked out that in some congested areas (eg the approaches to Waterloo station in London), there is no way on earth that the timetables and service frequency of movements in and out of the stations are actually going work. Thirdly, NR's investment in new systems has been very patchy. It is worth noting that the Welsh Government removed control of the Central Valley lines (serving the valleys North of Cardiff) from NR, and took direct control themselves, because they were sick of decades of underinvestment from NR, which generally takes a very London-centric approach. Going forwards, I'm hopeful that we will see NR effectively split up into regional entities aligned with the TOC regions, so we can get much better alignment between infrastructure and rolling stock / services in each region. This may also enable a more equitable distribution of funding for infrastructure, which would enable infrastructure and service improvements especially in the North. Finally, commuter rail and long distance passenger volumes have grown vastly over the past 20 years, which is a good thing. What is needed is infrastructure investment (particularly in modern signalling systems - ETMS) to enable trains to run much more closely together, and enable a higher service density. However, I think it is unlikely that the government will be prepared to make this investment.

mrow84 5y ago
This isn't an area I know anything about, but is it correct to say that the points you are making are in some sense orthogonal to the nature of the ownership, i.e. public or private? I struggle to see how much meaningful competition can be achieved, so remain unclear about the value of private ownership, but it strikes me that decentralisation is perfectly within the realm of possibility for a publicly owned entity.
- qmmmur 5y ago
  What they fail to mention is that those two aspects were broken up initially by the government after privatisation in the first place because the accountability and running of both aspects simultaneously was so bad.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  Network Rail which the GP was mostly talking about isn't privately owned. Rail Track, its predecessor was privately owned but it collapsed in 2002 after the Hatfield train crash. Following that it was bought by the government to create Network Rail.
  - mrow84 5y ago
    The thrust of steve_gh's argument seemed to be that decentralisation of that (publicly owned, as you are noting) body, and particularly alignment with the train operating company regions, would improve the situation. I wanted to get their views on any industry-specific constraints around the orthogonality of "centralisation" and "ownership", because I feel like they are too frequently conflated (not by anyone in this thread, to be clear), despite not being inherently linked - but there might be some good reasons for that in the context of the current state of the British railway network.
KaiserPro 5y ago
The timetables bit is key here. the reason a lot of services failed so horribly in 2018/2019 was because as OP pointed out, greyling fucked up the timetabling. Not only that, they decided to pick a fight with the unions on southern rail, which turned out to end in a messy stalemate. https://www.londonreconnections.com/ https://www.londonreconnections.com/ has some good references.
mcdowall 5y ago
I similarly spent a few years working in this space (TfL, digitising their data and website etc). It always struck me just how nuts the weekly meetings between different station operators and TOCS within the GLA would be, essentially a shouting match to determine who would have to keep their station open that weekend. Resultant timetable changes on the fly were always fun content to keep updated. Timetabling (at that point) remained very much a manual process, I think they had to bring a poor chap out of retirement who wrote them by hand.

mrow84 5y ago

This isn't an area I know anything about, but is it correct to say that the points you are making are in some sense orthogonal to the nature of the ownership, i.e. public or private? I struggle to see how much meaningful competition can be achieved, so remain unclear about the value of private ownership, but it strikes me that decentralisation is perfectly within the realm of possibility for a publicly owned entity.

qmmmur 5y ago
What they fail to mention is that those two aspects were broken up initially by the government after privatisation in the first place because the accountability and running of both aspects simultaneously was so bad.
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
Network Rail which the GP was mostly talking about isn't privately owned. Rail Track, its predecessor was privately owned but it collapsed in 2002 after the Hatfield train crash. Following that it was bought by the government to create Network Rail.
- mrow84 5y ago
  The thrust of steve_gh's argument seemed to be that decentralisation of that (publicly owned, as you are noting) body, and particularly alignment with the train operating company regions, would improve the situation. I wanted to get their views on any industry-specific constraints around the orthogonality of "centralisation" and "ownership", because I feel like they are too frequently conflated (not by anyone in this thread, to be clear), despite not being inherently linked - but there might be some good reasons for that in the context of the current state of the British railway network.

KaiserPro 5y ago

The timetables bit is key here. the reason a lot of services failed so horribly in 2018/2019 was because as OP pointed out, greyling fucked up the timetabling. Not only that, they decided to pick a fight with the unions on southern rail, which turned out to end in a messy stalemate. https://www.londonreconnections.com/ https://www.londonreconnections.com/ has some good references.

mcdowall 5y ago

I similarly spent a few years working in this space (TfL, digitising their data and website etc). It always struck me just how nuts the weekly meetings between different station operators and TOCS within the GLA would be, essentially a shouting match to determine who would have to keep their station open that weekend. Resultant timetable changes on the fly were always fun content to keep updated. Timetabling (at that point) remained very much a manual process, I think they had to bring a poor chap out of retirement who wrote them by hand.