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How are customers on trains supposed to vote with their wallets? It's not as if you can set up competing parallel networks running trains side by side between i

How are customers on trains supposed to vote with their wallets? It's not as if you can set up competing parallel networks running trains side by side between identical destinations at varying levels of speed and comfort. Capacity is physically constrained, especially on an ancient network like the UK's. Timetable slots are scarce and have to be centrally coordinated and managed. There is no sparkly market magic that will make these constraints disappear and somehow give customers more choice about where to go, when, and with whom. And there is no chance whatsoever that operators can compete on price. The only way to lower prices is nationalise the entire industry and replace privatisation with direct investment, on the basis that transport infrastructure is a social cost with significant indirect benefits, and cannot possibly be run as a self-sustaining profitable business on a national scale. The idea that competition for passengers will somehow make profitability possible is a dilettante-level view that has no insight into how the industry actually operates. We've already had decades of this kind of thinking, and the result has been mediocre services, vastly increased direct subsidies, and ballooning fares.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
toyg 5y ago
I agree wholeheartedly. I would add that the real problem is that the current UK political class is too spineless to take on the responsibility of running a rail network without going broke. So they will continue to maintain some degree of chicanery to provide for plausible deniability when the trains don't run or the system goes bankrupt.
- andy_ppp 5y ago
  How does Japan do it? Can we try to copy them because it’s very good. My 45 minute journey into Tokyo from Chiba was around £125 per month.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    Piecing together the story from https://pedestrianobservations.com https://pedestrianobservations.com and other places, I would not imitate Japan in this regard. - Japan's terrain is fairly ideal for rail. Yes, mountains make for more work, put people are also naturally congregated near the coast, in valleys, etc. Additionally, the largest cities with the high population form a linear chain from roughly Nagasaki to Tokyo. That means more network effects per distance of rail (there's no penalty separate than time delay for traveling through other cities first). - Japan has perhaps the best policy around land use in the developed world. See https://www.sightline.org/2021/03/25/yes-other-countries-do-housing-better-case-1-japan/ https://www.sightline.org/2021/03/25/yes-other-countries-do-... for some details. This helps greatly with density and clustering around rail stations. - The privatization was triggered by the fright around Japan's big deficits after the 80s boom, and perhaps still maintained with some fear of that. That doesn't make it a good idea, of course, but I'm willing to call it more "defensive neoliberalism" than "offensive neoliberalism", but maybe that makes it a little less ideological given that Japan was the poster child for all the neoclassical economic doomsday predictions? - https://pedestrianobservations.com https://pedestrianobservations.com in particular says the privatization and and general being spooked about more debt holds back some construction on paper, but since the rail is so well established already and operationally profitable, there is less to screw up. In conclusion, I'd say that because Japan gets everything adjacent to rail policy so absolutely well done, and the rail network was already functioning so way, it continues to succeed not because but despite privatization.
    - andy_ppp 5y ago
      1) I don’t believe for one second that Japan has better geography than the UK for rail 2) we can do much better with planning, however I’m not sure Japanese planning is the answer, when I lived there I thought most of the accommodation was horrendous. Europeans wouldn’t accept it. 3) is JR Rail etc. private? It seemed too cheap! 4) how is rail profitable in Japan, but not profitable in the UK. It’s cheaper there and far far better!
      - Ericson2314 5y ago
globular-toast 5y ago
> It's not as if you can set up competing parallel networks running trains side by side between identical destinations at varying levels of speed and comfort. Yes, you could. There is an East Coast Mainline and West Coast Mainline and they competed loads over the London-Edinburgh route. But I think in this age of high-speed trains, overhead electrification and 4+ wide tracks, railways are well and truly a natural monopoly. But natural monopoly is not about can't have competition, it's about being thoroughly uneconomical to have competition.
- VBprogrammer 5y ago
  > Yes, you could. There is an East Coast Mainline and West Coast Mainline and they competed loads over the London-Edinburgh route. I've done that route dozens of times in the past. I think it's stretching things to say they are in competition though. For Glasgow it was 40 minutes faster to go up the West coast (if you don't mind the smell of the toilets on the Pendolino) and similarly the East Coast was faster for Edinburgh because it avoided going all the way out to Carluke and back. Of course that missing out the majority of people using those trains were using it starting at an intermediate station, making any competition slightly moot.
  - globular-toast 5y ago
    I was referring more to the historical competition[0]. I don't think it's as relevant today. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_North https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_North
twic 5y ago
> It's not as if you can set up competing parallel networks running trains side by side between identical destinations at varying levels of speed and comfort. To an extent, this does exist on some routes. Both LNER and Grand Central operate trains up the East Coast Main Line, for example. Then there are destinations served by multiple routes, like Cambridge, Oxford, and Bedford, where each route has its own operator. Competition is impractical for most journeys, though.
OJFord 5y ago
> How are customers on trains supposed to vote with their wallets? They can't. > The only way to lower prices is nationalise the entire industry and replace privatisation with direct investment, on the basis that transport infrastructure is a social cost with significant indirect benefits, and cannot possibly be run as a self-sustaining profitable business on a national scale. Hear hear! I'm not sure if you realise you're agreeing with me, but yes, exactly, I agree with you, that was my (intended) point too; I wrote: > bidding for the multi-year contract to operate a line is a poor proxy for (impossible) proper competition where rail users could vote with their feet and wallets. Note the '(impossible)' - I mean that in the sense that I'm generally pro 'leave it to the free market', but that that only makes sense where you can have effective competition, which as you say, you can't with national (especially physical, electricity for example is fungible and so abstracted that it mostly works being privatised on the consumer/payments end at least) infrastructure like train lines! In some hypothetical land where there's multiple lines, multiple services by different operators at the same time competing on service and price, great, I'm all for that, let them compete, don't nationalise it, let people vote with their feet and wallets. But we live in the real world; they can't.
rjmunro 5y ago
> It's not as if you can set up competing parallel networks running trains side by side No, but there are usually National Express or other coach services available on many routes. For longer routes like London - Manchester you can also fly. You can also drive yourself - peak time fares are so high that if there is more than one of you travelling it's often cheaper to do this even if you have to rent the car. You can also pay a taxi firm to drive you, which again will often be cheaper than peak fares for more than one person.
anon98356 5y ago
If I wanted to create a market in trains I wouldn't hold a bid to run a specific line or route. I would hold a bid to operate specific times on a given line. e.g. Operator A would run the 7:00,8:00 and 10:00 and Operator B would run the 7:30, 8:30 and 10:30. There are still limits on how much competitiveness that brings to the market (Operators have very little control over delays) but it would encourage the operators to compare in terms of on train service (and potentially ticket prices as well).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

toyg 5y ago

I agree wholeheartedly. I would add that the real problem is that the current UK political class is too spineless to take on the responsibility of running a rail network without going broke. So they will continue to maintain some degree of chicanery to provide for plausible deniability when the trains don't run or the system goes bankrupt.

andy_ppp 5y ago
How does Japan do it? Can we try to copy them because it’s very good. My 45 minute journey into Tokyo from Chiba was around £125 per month.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  Piecing together the story from https://pedestrianobservations.com https://pedestrianobservations.com and other places, I would not imitate Japan in this regard. - Japan's terrain is fairly ideal for rail. Yes, mountains make for more work, put people are also naturally congregated near the coast, in valleys, etc. Additionally, the largest cities with the high population form a linear chain from roughly Nagasaki to Tokyo. That means more network effects per distance of rail (there's no penalty separate than time delay for traveling through other cities first). - Japan has perhaps the best policy around land use in the developed world. See https://www.sightline.org/2021/03/25/yes-other-countries-do-housing-better-case-1-japan/ https://www.sightline.org/2021/03/25/yes-other-countries-do-... for some details. This helps greatly with density and clustering around rail stations. - The privatization was triggered by the fright around Japan's big deficits after the 80s boom, and perhaps still maintained with some fear of that. That doesn't make it a good idea, of course, but I'm willing to call it more "defensive neoliberalism" than "offensive neoliberalism", but maybe that makes it a little less ideological given that Japan was the poster child for all the neoclassical economic doomsday predictions? - https://pedestrianobservations.com https://pedestrianobservations.com in particular says the privatization and and general being spooked about more debt holds back some construction on paper, but since the rail is so well established already and operationally profitable, there is less to screw up. In conclusion, I'd say that because Japan gets everything adjacent to rail policy so absolutely well done, and the rail network was already functioning so way, it continues to succeed not because but despite privatization.
  - andy_ppp 5y ago
    1) I don’t believe for one second that Japan has better geography than the UK for rail 2) we can do much better with planning, however I’m not sure Japanese planning is the answer, when I lived there I thought most of the accommodation was horrendous. Europeans wouldn’t accept it. 3) is JR Rail etc. private? It seemed too cheap! 4) how is rail profitable in Japan, but not profitable in the UK. It’s cheaper there and far far better!
    - Ericson2314 5y ago

globular-toast 5y ago

> It's not as if you can set up competing parallel networks running trains side by side between identical destinations at varying levels of speed and comfort. Yes, you could. There is an East Coast Mainline and West Coast Mainline and they competed loads over the London-Edinburgh route. But I think in this age of high-speed trains, overhead electrification and 4+ wide tracks, railways are well and truly a natural monopoly. But natural monopoly is not about can't have competition, it's about being thoroughly uneconomical to have competition.

VBprogrammer 5y ago
> Yes, you could. There is an East Coast Mainline and West Coast Mainline and they competed loads over the London-Edinburgh route. I've done that route dozens of times in the past. I think it's stretching things to say they are in competition though. For Glasgow it was 40 minutes faster to go up the West coast (if you don't mind the smell of the toilets on the Pendolino) and similarly the East Coast was faster for Edinburgh because it avoided going all the way out to Carluke and back. Of course that missing out the majority of people using those trains were using it starting at an intermediate station, making any competition slightly moot.
- globular-toast 5y ago
  I was referring more to the historical competition[0]. I don't think it's as relevant today. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_North https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_North

twic 5y ago

> It's not as if you can set up competing parallel networks running trains side by side between identical destinations at varying levels of speed and comfort. To an extent, this does exist on some routes. Both LNER and Grand Central operate trains up the East Coast Main Line, for example. Then there are destinations served by multiple routes, like Cambridge, Oxford, and Bedford, where each route has its own operator. Competition is impractical for most journeys, though.

OJFord 5y ago

> How are customers on trains supposed to vote with their wallets? They can't. > The only way to lower prices is nationalise the entire industry and replace privatisation with direct investment, on the basis that transport infrastructure is a social cost with significant indirect benefits, and cannot possibly be run as a self-sustaining profitable business on a national scale. Hear hear! I'm not sure if you realise you're agreeing with me, but yes, exactly, I agree with you, that was my (intended) point too; I wrote: > bidding for the multi-year contract to operate a line is a poor proxy for (impossible) proper competition where rail users could vote with their feet and wallets. Note the '(impossible)' - I mean that in the sense that I'm generally pro 'leave it to the free market', but that that only makes sense where you can have effective competition, which as you say, you can't with national (especially physical, electricity for example is fungible and so abstracted that it mostly works being privatised on the consumer/payments end at least) infrastructure like train lines! In some hypothetical land where there's multiple lines, multiple services by different operators at the same time competing on service and price, great, I'm all for that, let them compete, don't nationalise it, let people vote with their feet and wallets. But we live in the real world; they can't.

rjmunro 5y ago

> It's not as if you can set up competing parallel networks running trains side by side No, but there are usually National Express or other coach services available on many routes. For longer routes like London - Manchester you can also fly. You can also drive yourself - peak time fares are so high that if there is more than one of you travelling it's often cheaper to do this even if you have to rent the car. You can also pay a taxi firm to drive you, which again will often be cheaper than peak fares for more than one person.

anon98356 5y ago

If I wanted to create a market in trains I wouldn't hold a bid to run a specific line or route. I would hold a bid to operate specific times on a given line. e.g. Operator A would run the 7:00,8:00 and 10:00 and Operator B would run the 7:30, 8:30 and 10:30. There are still limits on how much competitiveness that brings to the market (Operators have very little control over delays) but it would encourage the operators to compare in terms of on train service (and potentially ticket prices as well).