Man of Honour
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No but I have to deal with southern rail at 6am... so I can possibly imagine!
Sounds dreamy
Trains in the UK vs other countries
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No but I have to deal with southern rail at 6am... so I can possibly imagine!
Sounds dreamy
Soldato
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No but I have to deal with southern rail at 6am... so I can possibly imagine!
You have my condolences sir!
Germany has strong workers rights and unions so strikes happen every now and then. Trains are generally punctual but the idea that they run like clockwork 'because German Efficiency' is a myth. They are clean, frequent, capacious and cheap though.
The prices people pay for season tickets in the UK are staggering. 4k Euros buys you a Bahncard 100 here which is completely unlimited travel across the entire country for a year, including trams and buses in cities.
No real surprise it's cheaper here though, half the UK railways are now operated by European state-owned companies so their margins are funneled out of the UK into foreign government coffers ultimately. Arriva is Deutsche Bahn so UK commuters on Arriva are subsidising my public railways over here, thanks chumps!
The prices people pay for season tickets in the UK are staggering. 4k Euros buys you a Bahncard 100 here which is completely unlimited travel across the entire country for a year, including trams and buses in cities.
No real surprise it's cheaper here though, half the UK railways are now operated by European state-owned companies so their margins are funneled out of the UK into foreign government coffers ultimately. Arriva is Deutsche Bahn so UK commuters on Arriva are subsidising my public railways over here, thanks chumps!
Man of Honour
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The London Underground is in public hands and runs just fine. The government is perfectly capable of running a rail network.
I noticed that too. Once you get past the outskirts of London they are ghost trains.
A lot like most buses now. Many rural routes got canceled because the bus companies basically priced themselves out of the market and people stopped using them, because it's cheaper to drive.
I use Deutsche Bahn, but rarely, maybe once or twice per year, usually from Hannover Flughaven to Bielefeld and back, or Dortmund Hbf to Bielefeld and back.
I'm not an avid rail user in the U.K., so it's difficult to compare how they stack up, but D.B. trains are almost always spotless, and rarely late, aside from once standing on a platform at Bielefeld in temps of -2C, and seeing the word SPATER come up above my train info on the board.
I called my son, who lives in Bielefeld, and who'd just dropped me at the station, he said, "It means later dad, your train is delayed."
I was having a sandwich and a bottle of wine once in the restaurant car of an ICE, (Inter City Express), train, from Düsseldorf to Bielefeld, when my wife said, "The difference between German train restaurant cars and British ones, is that you could eat your dinner from the floor on German ones, but in the British ones, it looks like people HAVE been eating on the floor."
Incidentally, there was a strike on D.B. this past May.
I'm one of those who is always irked by being told "we can't nationalise the railways". Yes, we're always told we can't, but there has never been a proper study to my knowledge outlining exactly why. Nationalising the railways doesn't mean running as non-profit, that's just silly.
I know at least on my line the rolling stock is leased and they provide the bare minimum at peak times (6 or 8 when it should be 10 or 12 IMO) so we're packed in like sardines - presumably to save a few quid. Surely the leasing gets rid of the idea that loads of new carriages would have to be bought immediately by a public firm.
Wait for franchises to expire instead of buying them out, that's one big expense gone?
Would it really be a bad thing to have both the infrastructure AND the services in public ownership? At least they could, you know, communicate so the arse knows what the elbow is doing.
Unions can be an issue either way but we're hardly in the 70s where everything's at a complete standstill.
I know at least on my line the rolling stock is leased and they provide the bare minimum at peak times (6 or 8 when it should be 10 or 12 IMO) so we're packed in like sardines - presumably to save a few quid. Surely the leasing gets rid of the idea that loads of new carriages would have to be bought immediately by a public firm.
Wait for franchises to expire instead of buying them out, that's one big expense gone?
Would it really be a bad thing to have both the infrastructure AND the services in public ownership? At least they could, you know, communicate so the arse knows what the elbow is doing.
Unions can be an issue either way but we're hardly in the 70s where everything's at a complete standstill.
Flew to Copenhagen from Luton last year. We left a lot of time to get to Luton, fearing British Rail would sting us. FGW/GWR and East Midlands were on time, so we had a lot of sitting around.
Once we arrived in Copenhagen all trains from the airport were cancelled due to overrunning engineering works (it wasn't even the weekend). On the way back, the train was over 50 minutes late due to a signalling failure and we almost missed the flight.
Back in the UK all the trains back home from Luton were on time. Was mildly amused, the whole experience seemed the wrong way around...
Genuine question - what is the theory behind state-run businesses being more strike-prone? Is it that the government is seen as more responsive to strike action because MPs fear unpopularity? That historically the state has run some of the biggest and most necessary businesses (mail deliver, transport...?)
I got a similar attitude expressed to me by a Chinese friend when she and I passed a smashed up bus shelter as we were walking along. She said: "Why would people do this to their own community? This is where they live? This is their bus stop? Why do they want to destroy it." I didn't have a good answer. I just guess some people don't feel the community they live in is theirs.
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East Coast ran fine under public ownership too. Privatising that again was utterly balmy.
Zero risk.
You strike in a private company there's the chance your competitors take market share from you, possibility the company loses orders etc and ultimately the possibility the company goes bust.
You could strike every day in a national aliased industry, the government isn't going bankrupt
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The flaw with that argument is that in the system we have there is no chance of a competitor taking the market from you until the next time the lease is renewed. That's why Southern don't care and neither do the drivers since they know Southern are going to lose it anyway.
At one time, trains on the Continent were rather spartan compared to the UK, other than in Scandinavia it was rare to find fully upholstered seats in second class. Hard plastic/leatherette or even wood the norm! I think it's a bit better now but I have the distinct memory of travelling from Hook of Holland to Copenhagen by the day train, 11 hours sat in one of these:
http://www.railfaneurope.net/pix/de/car/express/DB/Bm/232_8.jpg
"We have ways of making you sore..."
http://www.railfaneurope.net/pix/de/car/express/DB/Bm/232_8.jpg
"We have ways of making you sore..."
This is pretty much it, along with every other important utility in this country.
Associate
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Trains in Europe go faster, are more punctual and cheaper.
In the UK we are getting ripped off, paying for a poor service and subsiding the French and German railways which are excellent.
Railways need to be nationalised immediately in my opinion.
In the UK we are getting ripped off, paying for a poor service and subsiding the French and German railways which are excellent.
Railways need to be nationalised immediately in my opinion.
Not just foreign-owned, foreign state owned.
The UK opened up it's infrastructure to private companies, foreign governments say "mugs", snap them up and start creaming profits off for themselves (from British commuters), while getting paid subsidies (from British taxpayers).
It's an absolute farce.
Everything is run different in other countries.
In our country the rails, electricity, gas, electric, water, local government and health services are getting worse the more privatised they become. Anyone over the age of like 35 remember when we never really heard of such disputes from such services compared to these days? Nuff said.
My message here sounds rather politically Labour motivated, but to be honest and for the most part I dislike labour just because of Jeremy Corbyn, I voted Tory just as a strategic vote to make sure he don't become our leader.
In our country the rails, electricity, gas, electric, water, local government and health services are getting worse the more privatised they become. Anyone over the age of like 35 remember when we never really heard of such disputes from such services compared to these days? Nuff said.
My message here sounds rather politically Labour motivated, but to be honest and for the most part I dislike labour just because of Jeremy Corbyn, I voted Tory just as a strategic vote to make sure he don't become our leader.
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