Oswaldtwistle
Banned
Please don't.......your knowledge and input is valued..
What would happen if we stopped subsidising the railways?
- Thread starter Oswaldtwistle
- Start date
Please don't.......your knowledge and input is valued..
Oswaldtwistle
Banned
Nothing wrong with wanting to live somwhere smaller, just don't expect to 'have your cake and eat it', whether by car or by rail.......
As you rightly point out, many of the problems of cities- from cholera to air quality have been solved. I agree that living in London might be overwhelming for many people, but there are plenty of smaller cities and towns with work, shopping and leisure on hand.
I'm begining to wonder if the commuter railways haven't actually brought us many of the same problems the car has.
Oswaldtwistle
Banned
I think commuter services account for a fair bit of the subsidy (because they sit empty during the day)
i think most of the rest goes on the few remaining branch lines, but I've no idea what the breakdown is...
Can anyone confirm? Presumably the main inter-urban lines could continue in this (very theoretical) world, even if the fares went up a bit.
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
I have a job which involves a lot of travel and as I refuse to drive, trains are really important to me.
My ideal scenario is that we get British Rail back. Curly sandwiches and Stalinist staff are a small price to pay for trains that aren't hopelessly overcrowded because it's more profitable to run them that way.
My ideal scenario is that we get British Rail back. Curly sandwiches and Stalinist staff are a small price to pay for trains that aren't hopelessly overcrowded because it's more profitable to run them that way.
cybertect
It's grim up north (London)
You might be right, but on what time-scale do you think that kind of re-structuring of our cities could be achieved?
London took the best part of 150 years to grow its suburbs (starting from being the biggest city in the world at the early the 19th century). Rapid densification would require huge amounts of demolition and re-construction, which isn't going to happen in the forseeable future (short of creating family-in-a-room urban slums). Certainly it couldn't happen quickly enough to cover a rapid reduction in rail transport.
Perhaps in some ways they have. So has the aeroplane: people shoot off in large numbers and poke about in previously pristine parts of the world, and things come back we'd rather didn't. The ocean-going sailing ship brought those kind of problems too. So too, probably, did the invention of the wheel and the use of animals for hauling things about and riding on. Mobility has its downsides as well as its benefits, like most things we do. But wouldn't life be dull, restricted and poverty-stricken if we couldn't get about...
The point I was trying to make is that I don't think it will ever happen...
Even if we all lived in a more urbanised setting and that is a trend that is partially happening we would still need public transprt and it would still need to be subsidised. The "peaks" are also changing. One operator near me now has their PM peaks servives already starting at midday on some routes.
Anyway, busy day for me as well tomorrow. Nighty night.
Anyway, busy day for me as well tomorrow. Nighty night.
Oswaldtwistle
Banned
Well of course it won't, but this is a theoretical discussion on a web site......
Night from me too, I've had great fun on urban today, several really interesting threads on the various boards at the moment
Be back tomorrow.......
roryer
道可道非常道，名可名非常名
Surely what would happen immediately is that all non-profitable routes would be canned, and probably the land would be sold off, aka beeching axe. Rural, and semi rural etc.
The heavy commuter lines and long distance intercity lines would remain, they are pretty much profitable anyway, but perhaps the TOCs would try to cream the profits from tampering with the pricing as the deal for subsidies is that they adhere to ruiles on fares.
The problem is that in offering a network, less used lines must be subsidised, this is the same as for roads, rural roads do not justify the spend on them as the traffic is too little. We subsidise maintainance and construction of roads to rural areas in the interest of providing a full network, so we might as well ask what would happen if the road network was privatised? I would personally support privatising the roads, while nationalising railways. Hypothetically speaking of course.
The heavy commuter lines and long distance intercity lines would remain, they are pretty much profitable anyway, but perhaps the TOCs would try to cream the profits from tampering with the pricing as the deal for subsidies is that they adhere to ruiles on fares.
The problem is that in offering a network, less used lines must be subsidised, this is the same as for roads, rural roads do not justify the spend on them as the traffic is too little. We subsidise maintainance and construction of roads to rural areas in the interest of providing a full network, so we might as well ask what would happen if the road network was privatised? I would personally support privatising the roads, while nationalising railways. Hypothetically speaking of course.
PacificOcean
Unhinged User
I read (in a newspaper, so take with a pinch of salt), that the only profitable part of the whole of the BR network is the Gatwick Express.
ymu
Niall Ferguson's deep-cover sock-puppet
A citizen's wage should be paid for out of increased taxation. It should be a universal benefit because then we could remove the ginormous social security bureaucracy and just have the Inland Revenue sort it out via tax codes.
I'd set the citizen's wage at around £10k/year and claw it back through an additional 30% tax on everyone (the mean income being just over £30k on current GDP). So someone on £15k would pay an extra £4500 in tax, and be £5500 better off, someone on £150k would pay an extra £45000 in tax, a net increase in their tax contributions of £35000. Someone on £33k (the current mean income) would notice no difference.
cybertect
It's grim up north (London)
That was a pop factoid toward the end of BR's days
IIRC, however, it was the only part of the network outside the Inter City routes that made a regular profit.
Oswaldtwistle
Banned
Hi again. I really hope no-one is taking this too seriously, but I reckon it is fun to think the unthinkable every once in a while.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7922551.stm greeted me on the BBC news site this morning. If I'm reading that right, London has nearly double the national unemployment rate.
Surely, then it doesn't make sense to spend billions shipping workers into London from outside? We currently have a situation where (through taxes on his petrol) the low paid Sunderland shift worker is subsidising the Surrey stockbroker to commute into London, get paid stupid amounts of money and then take that money out of town and spend it elsewhere.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7922551.stm greeted me on the BBC news site this morning. If I'm reading that right, London has nearly double the national unemployment rate.
Surely, then it doesn't make sense to spend billions shipping workers into London from outside? We currently have a situation where (through taxes on his petrol) the low paid Sunderland shift worker is subsidising the Surrey stockbroker to commute into London, get paid stupid amounts of money and then take that money out of town and spend it elsewhere.
Hmmm.
Despite your OP, I'm getting a distinct whiff of Eau de Troll
Five billion a year for the advantages the rail network brings doesn't seem a lot to me in the scale of the government's usual overall budget of aroun 750bn, let alone the recent trillion dollar bailouts.
And the one billion a year for the much better service from BR would be even better value.
The only developed nation without a comprehensive intercity and commuting rail network I can think of is the USA, and do you really want to mimic their transport problems?
Meanwhile, for some other unthinkables, how about we place the extranality costs of motoring onto drivers - pollution, road deaths, child asthma, noise pollution?
Oswaldtwistle
Banned
Hmmm.
Despite your OP, I'm getting a distinct whiff of Eau de Troll
Hi. This is meant to be a light hearted look at 'what if'. One persons 'thread intended to spark lively debate' is another persons troll, I guess. It can be a fine line sometimes, I admit, but I hope I'm staying the right side of it.
I'm not convinced railways take that many cars off the roads, as I explained above. And those that do are proberbly the profitable inter-city routes into London that would survive in a post-subsidy world.
q.v. rail corporatisation and subsequent privatisation in New Zealand. A fucking mess, and the taxpayer picks up the pieces at the end. Mean time half the network and most of the rolling stock has gone south as the private sector strips it bare.
A lot of the shit that gets bandied about in the UK is so familiar from the free market paradise that was NZ from 1984-1999. Have the Tories talked about vouchers for education and health yet?
A lot of the shit that gets bandied about in the UK is so familiar from the free market paradise that was NZ from 1984-1999. Have the Tories talked about vouchers for education and health yet?
Pretty sure they do. Look at how the roads clog up whenever a reasonably busy line goes down. I remember it being mayhem after the Hatfield Crash when a lot of the system had gone down. It's not only passenger vehicles either: think of how many heavy lorries it would take to do the work of a 1,500-ton coal train for a start...
It's worth mentioning that the fast inter-city routes take traffic from internal flights too.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
Fair enough - I rather interpreted the proposal here as "government pulls out of the railway business" i.e. they neither subsidise nor regulate.
Either way I think it would end up being politically unsustainable, regardless of whether prices went way up or operators pulled out.
cybertect
It's grim up north (London)
Well, you did say "but there was no move to do anything else" so I took you at your word
absolutely the plain truth.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
depends what you mean by profitable - the east coast franchise includes a £1.4 billion payment to the government over it's 8 year lifespan.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
without rail subsidies the cornish lines would probably not survive, which would mean the government would need to pay for widening at least the A30, and quite possibly the M5 at around £20million per mile to accommodate the extra holiday traffic (which already makes the entire road network pretty much grind to a holt each weekend through the summer)... plus there'd be a negative impact on tourism to the area, which'd mean more government funding for increased benefit payments, regeneration schemes etc
same with many of the coastal and touristy routes, which act to relieve gridlock on bank holidays and peak holiday times, and stop people from flying abroad as much with the loss of income and increased carbon emissions that would entail.
essentially rail subsidies offer excellent value for money (though it'd be better value for money if TOC's and contractors shareholders weren't creaming off money), and anyone suggesting otherwise needs... well at least needs to have a good hard think about things
Oswaldtwistle
Banned
Didn't realise freight was subsidised.....
Although of course the inter-city lines are profitable......
Would I vote to stop the subsidy tomorrow, if I was able? No, but only because I don't think the money saved would be put into something more worthwhile. If I thought it was, I must confess I might be tempted.
And, if I'm being totally honest with myself, if someone was waving a cheque for £100 under my nose (my share of the 5 billion), with the promise of a repeat every year for life, I'd be tempted too.
Does that make me a bad person? Possibly, but £100 a year is a lot to me, and at least I'm honest about it
Freight operators are open access and not directly subsidised (that's right isn't it, davesgcr?!), but they obviously benefit from what Network Rail get since that maintains the infrastructure.
Didn't realise freight was subsidised.....
Although of course the inter-city lines are profitable......
Would I vote to stop the subsidy tomorrow, if I was able? No, but only because I don't think the money saved would be put into something more worthwhile. If I thought it was, I must confess I might be tempted.
And, if I'm being totally honest with myself, if someone was waving a cheque for £100 under my nose (my share of the 5 billion), with the promise of a repeat every year for life, I'd be tempted too.
Does that make me a bad person? Possibly, but £100 a year is a lot to me, and at least I'm honest about it
Yeah - but that 100 quid is soon going to be eaten up by the cost of buying and running a car - which everyone in the UK would have to do if there was no train network.
I like hypotheticals but I'm afraid that whiff of troll is just getting stronger. You'd seriously abandon the entire UK train network for the possible return of 100 quid?
Oswaldtwistle
Banned
Then it's proberbly time to knock this one on the head. It honestly wasn't intended to be a troll, but it's obviously turning into one.
You'd seriously abandon the entire UK train network for the possible return of 100 quid?
Oh heck, when you put it like that it makes me look awful.
Proberbly not, when it came down to it.
davesgcr
Reading books
Freight gets a block grant "called a network grant" which subsidises their activities - its related to their track access rights (where it specifies in some detail the trains they run - (e.g. down to 1601 Grain to Daventry) - this has been increased in recent times. They also get money for freight only lines, and for whats left of the Channel tunnel freight.
Moreover - there are funds for new , sensititve flows where significant and sensitive lorry miles are reduced - e.g supermarket flows within Scotland from Grangemouth to Inverness etc. Special train movements (one off) are charged at a fixed rate.
Plus funding for infrastructure projects like digging out the Southampton tunnel for bigger containers - this Christmas's special offer !
Moreover - there are funds for new , sensititve flows where significant and sensitive lorry miles are reduced - e.g supermarket flows within Scotland from Grangemouth to Inverness etc. Special train movements (one off) are charged at a fixed rate.
Plus funding for infrastructure projects like digging out the Southampton tunnel for bigger containers - this Christmas's special offer !
Similar threads
