Companies using RPI to put up prices

[Glaucus]

I beleive thats the suggestion - an additional, competing service. Not an existing service.

But as I said for other different reasons its a non-starter anyway.

Nope, as I said double the network capacity. Which he disagreed with. His suggestion was rearrange existing slots.

So currently have
Tames link at 7:39 and every half hour

New system

Thames. Link at 7:30, 8:30 and so on
And virgin at 8:00, 9:00 and so on.

 

[Glaucus]

I beleive thats the suggestion - an additional, competing service. Not an existing service.

But as I said for other different reasons its a non-starter anyway.

Nope, as I said double the network capacity(which isn't simple and current infrastructure can't handle it). Which he disagreed with. His suggestion was rearrange existing slots.

So currently have
Tames link at 7:30 and every half hour

New system

Thames. Link at 7:30, 8:30 and so on
And virgin at 8:00, 9:00 and so on.

Massively increasing over heads while providing no or pretty much no compition.

 

[Nitefly]

I just checked out the price for Oxford to Manchester....

Next train, 3 hours.... £62!

£62!!!!

 

[[TW]Fox]

I just checked out the price for Oxford to Manchester....

Next train, 3 hours.... £62!

£62!!!!

When was the last time you decided to immediately travel from Oxford to Manchester with zero advance notice whatsoever?

Rail can never cater to every single need you'll ever have. Hardly anyone travels in the way you are suggesting!

 

[anything I don't mind]

The problem with making it all public (government run for no profit) is this will remove incentives to improve the rail system. The incentive for improving the rail system in a private train industry of competing train operators would be increases in profits. But it becomes so convoluted when the government regulates the train industry to the extent that it has because then they have offered so many operators a specific deal that they end up shooting themselves in the foot if they offered someone else a deal. So instead of having a train operator go bust they do everything they can to prevent that sort of thing and in the end the consumer loses out with high prices and low standards.

So what incentive would a government run rail industry have at a) spending the profit on improving infrastructure b) what incentives to they have for improving standards like punctuality and cleanliness etc.

There are no incentives, trick question, all they have is some bureaucrat who can come in with fines and mandates and threats, but at the end of the day, if you don't like the public run rail network you can stick it, because you ain't got no other choice, so to speak.

Also, if it is not for profit, then why not just let the government run it all and make it so cheap that there is hardly any profit, just cover the costs? another trick question, because that is unsustainable.

 

[[TW]Fox]

Nope, as I said double the network capacity(which isn't simple and current infrastructure can't handle it). Which he disagreed with. His suggestion was rearrange existing slots.

So currently have
Tames link at 7:30 and every half hour

New system

Thames. Link at 7:30, 8:30 and so on
And virgin at 8:00, 9:00 and so on.

Massively increasing over heads while providing no or pretty much no compition.

I don't even know why we are discussing it as the current system prevents it from a legal perspective anyway.

 

[[TW]Fox]

The problem with making it all public is this will remove incentives to improve the rail system.

Indeed. British Rail made almost no attempts to improve the rail system.

Well, apart from pioneering the design of tilting trains, obviously. Oh, and designing and introducing the worlds fastest diesel powered train which held the world diesel speed record for almost 3 decades. Oh, and performing complete infrastructure upgrades like the entire ECML electrification project along with custom built IC225/Mark 4 stock. Public ownership stifles innovation in rail across the world, doesn't it? We'd never have seen the fabulous French TGV network if it was publically owned, would we? No incentive for that.

Oh, wait..

 

[Glaucus]

The problem with making it all public (government run for no profit) is this will remove incentives to improve the rail system. .

Well no, becuase under network rail it has improved.

You don't have. To implement it like a normal public company. There are halfway houses which are a much better idea and would work even better with out unions.

I don't even know why we are discussing it as the current system prevents it from a legal perspective anyway.

As an alternative system.

 

[Nitefly]

When was the last time you decided to immediately travel from Oxford to Manchester with zero advance notice whatsoever?

Rail can never cater to every single need you'll ever have. Hardly anyone travels in the way you are suggesting!

True, but I dislike the way that trains mercilessly rip people off who need to make a journey at last minute. I honestly find it morally repugnant.

Hence I'd rather avoid them at all costs (but never the cost of one of their rip-off tickets ).

 

[feedtheram]

another problem with this argument is that it ignores the decades of underinvestment in the network which we are making up for now.

i work on a project updating the telecoms network for the railway - it should have been done 10 years ago as the current system is both falling apart and not fit for purpose.

it would also help if ****** stopped pinching our copper cable

 

[[TW]Fox]

True, but I dislike the way that trains mercilessly rip people off who need to make a journey at last minute. I honestly find it morally repugnant.

Do you feel the same way about airlines and hotels?

It's basic capacity management. If they were not allowed to do this you'd simply lose the chance to travel cheaply if your plans are fixed. There is finite capacity - tiered pricing allows you to control this capacity.

 

[Glaucus]

What's wrong with your new antennas and why, is there still no signal around them.

The new communication system is going to be epic and save so much time and issues.

 

[[TW]Fox]

why when is there still no signal around them.

Dude, seriously, save big internet debates for when you are not posting on the iPhone.

 

[Nitefly]

Do you feel the same way about airlines and hotels?

It's basic capacity management. If they were not allowed to do this you'd simply lose the chance to travel cheaply if your plans are fixed. There is finite capacity - tiered pricing allows you to control this capacity.

I've never found the mark up to be as bad for flights or hotels.

I can book a return flight to Amsterdam in January for £60, something which is obviously more planned ahead by its nature, granted. But that's cheaper than a single from Oxford to Manchester this evening. I simply refuse to believe that the running costs of a train are that high!

 

[[TW]Fox]

I've never found the mark up to be as bad for flights or hotels.

Then you clearly do not take many flights or stay in many hotels!!!

Just as a quick check I've popped to the Virgin Atlantic website for a return price on the NEXT flight to JFK.

£1374.

Yes - over a THOUSAND pounds. Economy. It was £350 when I was booking in advance.

Hotels are exactly the same - the advance purchase non refundable rate is almost always quite a bit less than the walk-in-off-the-street rate.

This is common knowledge.

I can book a return flight to Amsterdam in January for £60, something which is obviously more planned ahead by its nature. That's cheaper than a single from Oxford to Manchester this evening. I simply refuse to believe that the running costs of a train are that high!

What a bizarre comparison. What if you wanted to travel to Amsterdam this evening? I'll tell you - you'd be paying almost 3 times as much - £150.

It's basic business sense - as capacity reduces closer to the departure time of a service or occupancy time of a hotel room or whatever, the price increases. This encourages people to book in advance - so you KNOW what the loading levels are like - and means you can spread demand by offering cheaper tickets on less heavily loaded services.

 

[anything I don't mind]

Nope, as I said double the network capacity. Which he disagreed with. His suggestion was rearrange existing slots.

So currently have
Tames link at 7:39 and every half hour

New system

Thames. Link at 7:30, 8:30 and so on
And virgin at 8:00, 9:00 and so on.

I never disagreed with doubling the network capacity, I was disagreeing with your assertion that, that it was i was saying. I was correcting your misunderstanding of what I was saying.

Well that is another one, what incentive do the train operators have for increasing the frequency of trains? None realy, that is why they are all jam packed with people. They make more money per train when the people are over flowing out the windows, than if they were comfortably seated. As the passengers do not have a choice of different train operators, they know that they can continue to run the same train frequencies without losing any business. If there was competition people would gravitate towards the train that was least full based on their cost and time preference and other factors, eventually the market would reach a happy medium. If not then another train operator would be welcome to enter the route and change the game, so to speak.

 

[Glaucus]

And how would several train operators change that. It will still be a monopoly.
Unless you get to a point where you can run several trains at the same time. It will always be a monopoly. There's simply no way around it. How does a train just enter the route. I don't think yu understand how trains work and what capacity the track can deal with.

Increasing number of trains means much much more money has to be spent on the infrastructure.

 

[[TW]Fox]

Well that is another one, what incentive do the train operators have for increasing the frequency of trains? None realy, that is why they are all jam packed with people. They make more money per train when the people are over flowing out the windows, than if they were comfortably seated. As the passengers do not have a choice of different train operators, they know that they can continue to run the same train frequencies without losing any business. If there was competition people would gravitate towards the train that was least full based on their cost and time preference and other factors, eventually the market would reach a happy medium. If not then another train operator would be welcome to enter the route and change the game, so to speak.

This is a utopian vision, I cannot think of anywhere in the world where it operates like this. You try travelling on New Jersey Transit, or the Tokyo Rail network, or any major commuter rail system in the world at rush hour and finding a carriage full of empty seats. You won't.

 

[Nitefly]

What a bizarre comparison. What if you wanted to travel to Amsterdam this evening? I'll tell you - you'd be paying almost 3 times as much - £150.

It's not bizarre - I may well book a flight to Amsterdam in January, I may want to travel to Manchester one evening. Yes the former does require more planning but then you'd expect it to, you are going to a different country.

In fact, I think a flight to Amsterdam this evening for £150 is fairly reasonable, when I still pop out my monocle to £62 Ox-Manc.

I do take your point though regarding certain trips being good value when you do have the luxury of advance notice on certain lines (I hadn't seen that post before).

 

[[TW]Fox]

It's not bizarre - I may well book a flight to Amsterdam in January, I may want to travel to Manchester one evening. Yes the former does require more planning but then you'd expect it to, you are going to a different country.

I would imagine only a very very small proportion of people often find themselves travelling on a 320 mile round trip with 10 minutes notice. Advance tickets are available right up until the night before travel - it is reasonable that the majority of people about to undertake a 320 mile round trip would probably know about it the night before. The obvious exception is people who travel for work but most of these would drive for flexibility anyway even if the train was much cheaper.

Would you really 'might want to travel to Manchester one evening'? You live in Oxford - it's 3 hours away! It's not the sort of place you might casually pop at no notice for a nice meal and if it is you are very very much in the minority.

In fact, I think a flight to Amsterdam this evening for £150 is fairly reasonable, when I still pop out my monocle to £62 Ox-Manc.

If you were to decide now to travel to Manchester on Christmas Eve - which lets face it is more likely than deciding to travel in 36 seconds time - you'd pay just £27.50 which on the face of it is quite reasonable. It would cost at least that to drive and park.

I do take your point though regarding certain trips being good value when you do have the luxury of advance notice on certain lines (I hadn't seen that post before).

As with any system you need to play it to suit you. All that would happen if walk-on fares were the same as advance fares is that we'd all pay more. You'd just get everyone on the 4pm train full and standing paying £50 rather than managing capacity by offering £20 advance tickets on the trains either side and £30 advance tickets on the 4pm train up to a certain quantity, followed by £60 walk-on tickets on the day....

I am a huge car enthusiast and love driving but I often use the train and simply wouldn't do this with a 5 Series parked on the drive if I didnt clearly feel it offers reasonable value and convenience in some circumstances. I'm not some hapless train user trying to justify choices forced on me

Neither am I saying the fare structure is perfect. There are unbeleivable quirks in it. The best one is this..

Tiverton Parkway to Taunton Single: £8.50 (15 miles)
Tiverton Parkway to Plymouth Single: £9.40 (60 miles)
Tiverton Parkway to Bristol Single: £19.50 (60 miles)

These are all walk-on fares.