Labour Party Pledge to REnationalise British Railways

[Zaune]

The Independent

'We know there is overwhelming support from the British people for a People’s Railway'

Jane Merrick
Sunday, 20 September 2015

Jeremy Corbyn unveils his first official policy since becoming leader of the Labour Party, with plans for a “People’s Railway” under which his government would fast-track a renationalisation of England’s rail network.

The plans would lead to a third of franchises being brought under public ownership by 2025 if he became prime minister at the next election. Mr Corbyn will announce that each route would be renationalised when its franchise expired. Some five out of 16 franchises are due to expire between 2020 and 2025, including East Coast, Southern and TransPennine Express.

Mr Corbyn will make rail renationalisation Labour Party policy at his first conference as leader, which starts in Brighton next Sunday. The move will fuel the Conservative Government’s claim that the new Labour leader is a threat to the economy. However, a poll two years ago showed that two-thirds of voters support renationalisation.

The Labour leader told The Independent: “We know there is overwhelming support from the British people for a People’s Railway, better and more efficient services, proper integration and fairer fares. On this issue, it won’t work to have a nearly-but-not-quite position. Labour will commit to a clear plan for a fully integrated railway in public ownership.”

The policy is the clearest statement of intent by Mr Corbyn that he plans to push ahead with his agenda, despite backing down on other issues in his first week. The Labour leader performed a U-turn over singing the national anthem at official engagements, ruled out leaving the European Union and also signalled that he would not push ahead with scrapping a renewal of Trident by appointing a team of shadow defence ministers who are all in favour of the nuclear deterrent. Also during his first week, newly appointed shadow Chancellor John McDonnell apologised for comments about the IRA that he made in 2003.

But Mr Corbyn is making clear he intends to progress his central policies on rail, the economy and welfare. Bringing rail franchises into public ownership as they expire had been backed many times at the party’s conferences but successive leaders had ignored the policy. A party source said this time it will get approval by the leadership.

The new shadow Transport Secretary, Lilian Greenwood, will head a party taskforce to develop the plans. The move will indicate to the public that “change is overdue”, the source said. The taskforce will invite contributions from transport and disability-access campaigners, passenger groups, local authorities, rail-industry representatives and rail employees as part of what Labour called an “inclusive process”.

A YouGov poll in 2013 showed 66 per cent of people support public ownership of railways, including 52 per cent of Tory voters.

While the East Coast mainline was temporarily under public ownership between 2009 and 2015 it achieved high passenger satisfaction and punctuality scores.

Ms Greenwood said: “We are going to put into practice Jeremy’s commitment to a new type of politics by using this taskforce to get a very broad range of views about what this new model of public ownership will look like. But we are going to start from the principle that franchises will be brought into public ownership when they expire.”
read more: Could Corbyn's plan to renationalise the railways actually work?

The cost of taking all routes into public ownership immediately would be billions of pounds but supporters of part-renationalisation, where routes are brought into state control when franchises expire, claim there would be minimal cost to the taxpayer because the operator would make money from fares.

Private rail companies are already heavily subsidised by the Government. Other countries operating state-run rail networks include France, Canada, Germany and Italy, although in the latter two local train services are open to private tender.

Rail fares have soared above the rate of inflation since 2004 and from January will have risen by up to 35 per cent since 2010.

The Labour taskforce will examine how public ownership could reduce the cost to the taxpayer of Britain’s heavily fragmented rail network, which the party said is up to 40 per cent less efficient than the best-performing European railways, and remove the burden to the taxpayer of administrating bids for franchises, which cost private operators up to £10m to prepare.

It will also draw up plans to reverse declining passenger satisfaction, address overly complex ticketing and compensation arrangements and deliver integration with other modes of transport such as buses and cycling.

Well it's about bloody time!

[Eternal_Freedom]

While I can see the benefits, I just wish they'd call it something other than "the People's Railway." Every time I hear that (or the older "People's Post Office") I can't help but think of the USSR and how good this will look on the front page of Pravda.

[Zaune]

You have a point there. Still, since Labour are going to be painted as raging Trotskyites in the yellow press anyway then they might just as well embrace it as a unique selling point.

[Iroscato]

I'm just enjoying how much this has shit the Tories up. I must admit I really wasn't expecting this massive slide to the left in Labour (at least not this decade) and it looks like they weren't either. Watching them scramble is great stuff.

[K. A. Pital]

While I can see the benefits, I just wish they'd call it something other than "the People's Railway." Every time I hear that (or the older "People's Post Office") I can't help but think of the USSR and how good this will look on the front page of Pravda.

Because our railway didn't suck and could be 15-20 minutes late on a trip distance anywhere between 1500 to 7000 km? After moving from f. USSR and China to Europe I discovered how railways can truly suck on a crazy level, when trains that ride like 200 km are 30 or even 50 minutes late. And the only reaction I had was a massive WTF. This shit would never happen in Asia (Russia, China, Japan, etc.).

[Darth Tanner]

Its unclear how much nationalisation he can get away with under EU law though, he would be prohibited from doing his immediate cancel the current franchise plan and would have to setup a state enterprise to tender into the auctions when the next rounds come up, that would delay a full return to state control to 2029 atleast assuming the state enterprise won all the auctions.

I'd not be too happy with this idea really despite it being popular, the most logical end result will be the state undercutting all the private operators and then not investing or spending anywhere near as much to actually run the trains unless they want to splash even more tax payers money. I'm not old enough to remember British Rail but letting politicians make your spending plans is a recipe for cheap ass service.

[Simon_Jester]

While I can see the benefits, I just wish they'd call it something other than "the People's Railway." Every time I hear that (or the older "People's Post Office") I can't help but think of the USSR and how good this will look on the front page of Pravda.

Because our railway didn't suck and could be 15-20 minutes late on a trip distance anywhere between 1500 to 7000 km? After moving from f. USSR and China to Europe I discovered how railways can truly suck on a crazy level, when trains that ride like 200 km are 30 or even 50 minutes late. And the only reaction I had was a massive WTF. This shit would never happen in Asia (Russia, China, Japan, etc.).

I will note that in some respects it is easier to be on time for a long train journey than a short one. On a long trip, if there's a one-hour delay in service at one place, you can run the train 5% faster for the next twenty hours and make up for lost time. Since most of the distance will be long, straight stretches of track through rural areas, this is safe. You can't do that if you were only going 200 kilometers in the first place, or if you're traveling constantly through low-radius turns in suburban areas where it's unsafe for a train to speed up more than needed.

That said, you're not wrong about your basic point- which is that Westerners tolerate a high degree of laxity and inferiority in passenger trains. This may be because we view trains as a 'secondary' form of passenger transport, analogous to how ocean liners became secondary with the rise of intercontinental jet aviation.

[K. A. Pital]

Japan has a very dense railway network that runs through what is essentially - by now - an endless city-suburb-city cycle But they keep it operating smoothly. I think attitude does matter a lot. Maybe some people view it as secondary because of the rates of automobile ownership and falling ridership, but then how would you know rail ridership would even fall in the first place if the service wasn't as bad as it is? Japan has lots of cars, but rail usage is tremendously important.

[salm]

I think distance is a lot less important than capacity. If you have to run lots and lots of trains on the same tracks you can not necessarily let one train run faster if it is late because the track might be occupied by a slower train that would normally be bahind the late train.

I never understood the exorbitant complaining about late trains anyways. If you go by car you have plenty of fluctuation caused by trafic jams, closed roads or construction work, but somehow when a train is 10 minutes late it´s like the end of the world.

[K. A. Pital]

That's because you are not accustomed to a train service that really has the trains running on time except for really dire emergencies. Living in Asia and then moving to Europe is a "train shock" for many of my Chinese and Japanese friends. Hell, it was shocking for myself, and I have less demanding attitudes than people from East Asia.

A late train is not a problem only if your connection is direct. If it is not, 10 minutes late for one train can mean anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours late for the total journey.

[salm]

I don´t know. This whole country is full of people who are accustomed to this train service and they complain non stop about late trains, even though 95% are on time.

[K. A. Pital]

I don´t know. This whole country is full of people who are accustomed to this train service and they complain non stop about late trains, even though 95% are on time.

Maybe because they are not 95% on time in their particular location? I know for sure they aren't 95% on time in mine.

[salm]

To me it seems more like selective perception mixed with "socially accepted complaining" common in small talk, you know, like talking about the weather.
The train is allways late, this summer is never good and the snow 15 years ago was better.

[Soontir C'boath]

Depends on what the standard is for on-time performance. Amtrak/NY MTA/etc use terminal to terminal performance and it looks the same as in Europe. So even if an Amtrak train is ten minutes late into Philly, it can "make up" that time before it terminates in DC and be counted as a train being on-time. Even then, padding is pretty much built into the travel time to account for possible delays already. So if a train is say, 20 minutes early into DC, it just means it didn't encounter any problems.

[salm]

Here they use a 2 tier system. Everything under 5 minutes late is considered punctual, that is about 95% of all trains. Everything under 15 minutes is the second tier which is over 98% - 99% of all trains.

Japan appears to have extremely punctual trains. Apparently it counts as delayed even if a train is 1 minute late.

[K. A. Pital]

Under 6 minutes, as per international guidelines. But they are looking to raise the bar to 3 minutes, which may display a lot of these late-but-on-time trains that people complain about. I can certainly see why it could be a problem if you change trains with a 3-5 minute interval (which Deutsche Bahn so often offers by default and which is also acceptable in the local carriers' automated traffic information websites). And it could be a massive problem if you are changing from a 15-minute interval train that's only 5-6 minutes late to another train that has an interval of 20-30 minutes. In fact it can ruin the entire trip, making the time double or even triple, depending on what other endpoint connections you have. Just one such instance is not even reflected in the statistics because the other train you missed is on time. And the bus you would have gotten at the end station is also on time. Only your one train is 5 minutes late which counts as on time. But you, as the traveller, are 20-50 minutes late. Paradox! )))

[salm]

When they sell you a ticket they should make it more obvious that the time beween changing trains is very short. They do show it when they sell you the ticket but it usually gets filtered out by my brain like an internet advert. They should make something pop up or something like that if the time you have to change is less than 10 or so minutes.

At least conneting trains wait for late trains if the delayed train is large enough. Is there a statistic that shows the average delays you have with cars due to trafic/construction and things like that? I can´t find anything.

[K. A. Pital]

Cars (and buses) suck even more if there a jam (like, a real stau), I am not arguing in favor of cars. I am arguing in favor of more efficient management of a public railway service and lower tolerance brackets. If the tolerance bracket was 3 minutes, most problems would go away as automated systems never offer a less-than-3 minute interchange.

That being said, I understand the problems of a very intensively used network, but if Japan and Switzerland can do it, and if China can, with train departure intensity at some stations reaching crazy numbers, there is no excuse for Germany or Britain not to step up and get better at this, no?

[salm]

Depending on if Japan and Switzerland have significantly higher overhead costs I´d agree with that.

[Vendetta]

The reason Britain doesn't get better at it is because it's not profitable.

At the moment there's no competition in the British rail system, even if there's more than one operator performing the journey you want, you pay the operator that runs the station you board at, so they have absolutely no incentive to offer any different fares between destinations, or to compete on quality of service or rolling stock. If a shitty Pacer is your only way between stations then you're going to have to put up with that, and you're not getting any form of discount for sitting on what is basically a converted bus on train wheels.

So there's absolutely no incentive for the operators not to horribly gouge rail passengers (twice over because they get huge subsidies from tax money as well) because they get their franchises no matter how shit they do at the job (see: West Coast Mainline, whilst operated by the state it was the most efficient, most punctual, and best quality train service in the country, so of course they awarded the franchise to Virgin who do a demonstrably worse job with their existing franchises).

This is why even a majority of tory voters support renationalisation, because when the rail system was privatised it was done so incompetently it seems almost designed to fuck up horribly.

[K. A. Pital]

It was designed to give lots of cash to particular people. That's not a bug, it is a feature.

[jwl]

Its unclear how much nationalisation he can get away with under EU law though, he would be prohibited from doing his immediate cancel the current franchise plan and would have to setup a state enterprise to tender into the auctions when the next rounds come up, that would delay a full return to state control to 2029 atleast assuming the state enterprise won all the auctions.

I'd not be too happy with this idea really despite it being popular, the most logical end result will be the state undercutting all the private operators and then not investing or spending anywhere near as much to actually run the trains unless they want to splash even more tax payers money. I'm not old enough to remember British Rail but letting politicians make your spending plans is a recipe for cheap ass service.

Why not just ignore the EU and do it anyway? It worked for prisoner votes.

I'm all for railway renationalisation, partially at least.

[Minischoles]

Good, the current train system is the worst of both worlds - privatised but massively subsidised by the government, with ever declining standards and ever rising prices.

[His Divine Shadow]

While I can see the benefits, I just wish they'd call it something other than "the People's Railway." Every time I hear that (or the older "People's Post Office") I can't help but think of the USSR and how good this will look on the front page of Pravda.

The Democractic Railway of the Peoples Republic of Britain.

[Hillary]

While I can see the benefits, I just wish they'd call it something other than "the People's Railway." Every time I hear that (or the older "People's Post Office") I can't help but think of the USSR and how good this will look on the front page of Pravda.

Actually, I disagree there. I think one of the really positive points about Corbyn is that he isn't ashamed to say what he believes in. He's a socialist and he's happy to be one. If the word is ever going to be detoxified and the narrative wrenched from the right-wing media, socialists have to stand firm behind their beliefs.

Hopefully it will change the argument from "You're a socialist", "No I'm not" to "You're a socialist", "Yes I am; why is that wrong?". Make the discussion about policies and values rather than scare tactics and labels. No guarantee it will work, but there's more chance with this approach than the timid Miliband effort.

Labour have to stop trying to appease those people who won't vote for them anyway (or will only do so if they throw all their values out of the window as they did with Blair).