East Coast rail to be state-run

[muriel_volestrangler]

It's the headline you'd thought you'd never see again:

The government says it intends to take the East Coast rail service, run by National Express, into state ownership.

The troubled rail franchise, which is expected to have lost £20m in the first half of the year, is suffering from falling passenger numbers.

...
"They might well have wanted to pay a certain sum of money, in return for an agreement that they don't have to meet much larger obligations over a long period of time," Lord Adonis said.

"If I had agreed to that, the rail franchising system as it now exists, and is broadly running successfully, would have collapsed."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8127851.stm

Does this mean New Labour has finally decided to see if privatising things is worth it, rather than always going for the private option on ideological grounds? Or am I being too optimistic?

[Anarcho-Socialist]

1. I don't think we're going to find out

I can't imagine the next Tory government holding it in the public sector for too long. They'll offload it to some private contractor to deliver a poor service at high cost to the customer.

It's a shame, as government could use publicly-owned routes to entice people into greener travel by rail.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. The thing that surprised me most about rail travel in the UK

was the variable pricing system, just like an airline.

In 2007, I had to attend a conference in Bath, and my original plan was to arrive two days early, play around in London for a bit, and then head to Bath. Since my trip was going to be too short to make a BritRail Pass worthwhile, I decided to just buy single tickets, making advance purchases as soon as I arrived at Paddington.

Well, due to the Great American Passport Fiasco of 2007, I had to postpone my arrival till the day of the conference's opening reception, so I had to go straight to Bath from Paddington without ever leaving the station. The walk-up fare turned out to be a whopping £48! Advance purchase one-way tickets were as low as £9.

That's just insane.

[mwooldri]

3. Add to that different operators... and you have a nice muddle.

Different train operators have different pricing on essentially the same route. London to Brighton: you have two choices: the slower First Capital Connect for £17 return offpeak, or the faster Southern for £20.90. Similar story between London and Birmingham: London Midland is cheaper than Chiltern, which is cheaper than Virgin - but you get what you pay for: Virgin is *much* quicker than London Midland.