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Post by jonjel on Mar 5, 2018 12:07:24 GMT 1
Rail travel was booming when road transport was pretty dire. If you went from Bristol to Newcastle by road then you really needed an overnight stay, and if you did it in a truck it was a 3 day round trip.
What really upsets me is, if I want to go to Edinburgh on business it is far cheaper for me to fly, and the door to door journey time is very much quicker, even allowing for the book in times either end. As for people telling me that if I book ahead then the fares are very much cheaper, well I did not know granny would be ill tomorrow three months ago.
I booked a train journey from Bristol to Venice quite a few years ago and did it with the help of a lovely British Rail ticket office. All went without a hitch.
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Post by alancalverd on Mar 13, 2018 9:55:16 GMT 1
Interesting that the average passenger subsidy in continental Europe is at least equal to the fuel cost of flying - around 20p per passenger mile*. Time to get rid of intercity trains, with all their fragile and inflexible infrastructure, and replace them with free aeroplanes? Forget HS2, how about London City to Birmingham International in 15 minutes, tomorrow, with no new investment or land required?
Old aviators' motto, seen on flying club bar walls: "A mile of road will take you nowhere. A mile of runway will take you anywhere."
*That's how the cheap seats are priced on EasyJet, Ryanair and all their competitors. Business and last-minute passengers cover the aircraft depreciation, landing fees and crew salaries, and the bit in the middle is sold at marginal operating cost with a profit, not a subsidy.
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Post by fascinating on Mar 13, 2018 20:54:18 GMT 1
How many people do you think could be moved per day between London City and Birmingham?
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Post by alancalverd on Mar 14, 2018 9:18:19 GMT 1
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 14, 2018 19:46:10 GMT 1
I think you'd better tell Nick that, nay - he has clearly misunderstood the level of subsidy available to our rail services. How so? You dispute the £4 billion pa figure? It was given by the leading campaign group for renationalisation.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 14, 2018 19:48:10 GMT 1
So why are railways subsidised at all? Road travel isn't, motorists pay about 75% of the price of their fuel in tax. You're forgetting the highway network drivers need to drive about on. Because this is built and maintained out of general taxation, the huge subsidy it provides to drivers is never recognised. But it's not a subsidy, ffs! It's paid for over and over, many many times, by road tax.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 14, 2018 19:50:08 GMT 1
I think you'd better tell Nick that, nay - he has clearly misunderstood the level of subsidy available to our rail services. Thank you for your recalibrated table, but I still don't understand what the figures in square brackets denote. I'm surprised that the passenger mileage figure for Italy is so low. We have both travelled a lot on Italian trains Jean. Maybe I am different but when I go to Italy, usually on business I have the choice of hiring a car or going on the trains and I nearly always go by train, and of course bus. They are cheap efficient and generally not to bad. The same in France. I booked a friend on a journey from Hampshire through to southern France and the most expensive part of the trip was from Hampshire into London. On the contrary if I travel within the UK just about my last choice is train. They are expensive and journeys can be pretty convoluted. I really don't want to go into London and then out again to perhaps a town in the North. And don't misunderstand me, I really like travelling by train. I am not against nationalisation as some political ethos but at the moment our railways are not fit for purpose. They used to be. I used to travel with a friend from Bristol into London to do a days work and as long as we left after 9, coming back at any time after 6 it was dirt cheap. The Japanese recently took out a full-page ad apologising for the terrible shame of the bullet train being twenty seconds late.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 14, 2018 19:56:53 GMT 1
From the passenger's point of view it doesn't really matter who owns the railway system, since only one train at a time can use the track. But that's not the issue. You could say the same for any utility - and you probably do. Efficient focussed management, motivated investment, the interests of directors aligned with those of customers, the interests of decision makers being intelligent capable people instead of jobsworth hangers-on clerks who couldn;t otherwise compete in the marketplace, the responsiveness of business to error and complaint, thereby ensuring improvement, etc.etc.etc... Yep. Otherwise known as "a good thing". Unfortunately people don;t work "on principle", even in the Soviet Union. But at least the iceberg can be seen, and avoided.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 14, 2018 20:00:29 GMT 1
But no one has responded to the meat of my post. Why not stick the measly £2.50 on a rail ticket - averaged out per mile, of course - and save the Exchequer - the taxpayer - over $4 billion a year? Stick a bit more on, and let business work as it's meant to? Then you'd have a rail service that worked to everyone's satisfaction - because that is in the interest of the business (the main difference between private and nationalised industry.)
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Post by alancalverd on Mar 14, 2018 21:10:03 GMT 1
Mostly because the misguided of every nation except ours, think that rail travel should be subsidised in order to reduce road congestion and provide affordable transport to those who don't have a car or can't drive.
The suburban rush hour is bad enough now that those who do have second cars insist on doing the school run. Without a train service there would be no "choice" of schools and a major plank of Tory policy would crumble. City commuters would have to gamble with other people's money from somewhere other than the City of London and the Tory vote would collapse. The poor would take to the streets on bikes and motor bikes and seriously impede the free flow of Tories. Richard Branson would have to run his businesses at a profit instead of relying on taxpayer subsidies, and the acceptable face of the Tory party would starve. Southern Rail could not be bailed out by the taxpayer during a strike and the strikers would win. The survival of the Conservative party requires a privately owned, taxpayer subsidised railway system.
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Post by fascinating on Mar 15, 2018 13:48:00 GMT 1
But no one has responded to the meat of my post. Why not stick the measly £2.50 on a rail ticket - averaged out per mile, of course - and save the Exchequer - the taxpayer - over $4 billion a year? Stick a bit more on, and let business work as it's meant to? Then you'd have a rail service that worked to everyone's satisfaction - because that is in the interest of the business (the main difference between private and nationalised industry.) Average revenue per passenger journey is around £6. Your proposal is to increase that by more than 40%. That must result in a sharp drop in the amount of people using trains, so the revenue will not cover the £4 billion subsidy, and there will be even more cars on the roads.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 16, 2018 17:55:51 GMT 1
Mostly because the misguided of every nation except ours, think that rail travel should be subsidised in order to reduce road congestion If that's the reason - and it isn't, as is obvious from the history of such subsidy - it would be going to freight. Get a bus. If you're so poor yet have such an urge to travel, hitchhike, or get a bike. If you're so dimwitted and incompetent that you're so poor and can't muster the foresight and delayed gratification to even learn to drive, it's probably best for your own safety that you stay close to home. Look - the argument that society as a whole should "look after" the incompetent is a valid and interesting one, though clearly the way Welfare statism has managed it so far is seriously flawed and iatrogenic. But such an argument really doesn't belong in this arena - we're talking about two or three quid on your journey. Motorists have to absorb much larger increases in their costs every year - and those increases go almost entirely directly to the Exchequer. And the idea that your average motorist these days is any the less impoverished or undeserving than rail users is preposterous. Ban school runs then, if the urge is to use Government power to interfere in everyone's private travel arrangements. Huh? No one has suggested get rid of the train service! The question is why the hell doesn't it work better, and why on earth does it cost the taxpayer so much money? Every rail business in this country used to make money - it was government interference in the two world wars, and then the disaster of nationalisation, that put an end to a perfectly well functioning enterprise. I see no reason at all that every rail company shouldn't be making money now, in the way every healthy business should do - let them charge a fair price: evidently, that's all it would take. Have strict regulation on how much profit can be made from what is in effect localised monopolies, of course - but let the capitalist mnechanism operate as it should - if you really want a better service, that is. Don't forget Global Warming, and the plight of the guerillas in Rwanda. Nothing to do with Branson. And he's certainly not a Tory either. Any more? Any more bids? Going, going...come on, crowd, you're surely not let Alan be the Bonkers Bollocks Champion yet again?
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 18, 2018 19:18:35 GMT 1
But no one has responded to the meat of my post. Why not stick the measly £2.50 on a rail ticket - averaged out per mile, of course - and save the Exchequer - the taxpayer - over $4 billion a year? Stick a bit more on, and let business work as it's meant to? Then you'd have a rail service that worked to everyone's satisfaction - because that is in the interest of the business (the main difference between private and nationalised industry.) Average revenue per passenger journey is around £6. Your proposal is to increase that by more than 40%. Nonsense figures, obviously - but even so, what would be the problem with that? If it did - what's the problem with that? From a business point of view, it's irrelevant. What matters is the bottom line. Apple don't sell their iPhones at a loss just so they can get more of them out there, costing them even more money. British Leyland did that with the Mini, but that was a typical who cares? cock-up of a lackadaisical nationalised industry accounting error, not a deliberate policy. Okay, some serious points at last. I repeat - it's £2.50 extra on the journey. Now, if there are really people so anally calculating that they decide not to travel by rail but instead switch to their cars because of the price of a cup of coffee, then so be it. They'll soon learn the error of their ways, with every rise in the price of petrol, unaccountable hitch in insurance costs, the average budget increase in car tax, or for that matter a few encounters with the standard council extortions of parking fees. More cars on the roads - more government revenue, by the truckload. More passengers on trains - more government expenditure, by the billion. I'm a taxpayer - I know which I prefer.
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Post by fascinating on Mar 19, 2018 8:16:25 GMT 1
I will put it more simply for you: if you impose an increase of £2.50 a journey by rail, with the aim of eliminating the rail subsidy, that will not work because the increase will reduce the numbers of passengers, meaning you won't get enough revenue to cover the subsidy.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 19, 2018 8:40:32 GMT 1
I will put it more simply for you: if you impose an increase of £2.50 a journey by rail, with the aim of eliminating the rail subsidy, that will not work because the increase will reduce the numbers of passengers, meaning you won't get enough revenue to cover the subsidy. Yes, I got it the first time - it's not a complicated point; it's just a wrong one. It's quite obviously wrong, because rail passengers are not in fact the poor bedraggled paupers you lefties are fond of imagining: they're people who can afford to travel by rail, usually on a commute to a well paid job in the city. And guess what - on a train where they're probably having to stand, because it's so crowded. More passengers than ever before - and this despite the subsidy being cut in half, and despite rail fares more expensive than ever before too. Are these facts simple enough for you? Here's something more simple, if not, straight out of Jeremy's playbook. People are dying waiting in ambulances because there's no room and no nurses in the hospitals! And still the government insists on their cruel and heartless policy of "austerity"! Austerity my hat.
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