It was the sensible solution though.
I can see Virgin running east and west coast routes at the end of it, it looks like their figures were stacking up properly .

Compared to what? The DRO running it as they do the East coast route?

They are going to have Virgin run it for now but then must run another franchise bidding session to chose who will run it for about two years or so while they wait for the two reports to come in and a new scheme to be devised.

This doesn't sound very sensible to me as that will cost even more money. Just let DRO run it and avoid a pointless franchise bidding process for an interim contract.

They won't do that and what they will do is try and conclude everything so the bidding for the long term franchise is complete before the next general election. Just as Major rushed through rail privatisation they will do this to ensure the West coast main line continues to be run privately despite evidence that the DRO does it cheaper on the East coast as far as the tax payer goes. Political ideology is in full force here.

SNCF aren't stuck in the 1970s.

But then again, FS Trenitalia are.

In this day and age, you would have thought that the correct mentality would prevail. That is, 'state owned company makes profits - less need to tax us all to death - everyone's lives improve'

I won't hold my breath, though.

Spoken like a true red flag waver.

Anyway, in the real world...

Absolutely no point whatsoever reading that.

Why not find an article written by someone who isn't going to be massively biased towards the left, and deals only in facts?

That's a bit like trying to prove that Hitler was right by pointing to a load of KdF literature.

Jesus H.

There is absolutely NO POINT WHATSOEVER to the DRO running the West Coast line. The simple reason is - DRO took over East Coast because the franchisee went bust, after taking over from Virgin, who ran it well and produced good figures.

Incidentally does anyone have any figures as how DRO are performing on the East Coast? Financially as well as time-wise and service quality wise?

The VITAL difference is that Virgin have a good track record ('scuse the pun). They're largely on time, their trains are great, they've reduced travel times, they've introduced new rolling stock, they're not overly dear, they make a profit, and - this is the biggie - customers LIKE THEM. There is no reason whatsoever to remove them in favour of a government department, and had their East Coast franchise not been transferred, then the state would not NEED to run the East Coast line in the absence of anyone else to do it. Virgin would still be on it, everyone bar the 'Nationalise Everything Brigade' would he happy, and this debate wouldn't be happening.

I have seen you do this before. Someone posts a link to an article that you disagree with and it's "biased" with no attempt to argue against the points raised. Haven't you learned that is an epic fail on a forum such as this yet?

Just because you disagree with something or haven't got the brains to be able to construct a reasonable counter argument doesn't mean its biased.

Why the DRO was brought in doesn't matter (other than it points to a flawed franchising processes) . What matters is, it is cheaper to have DRO running it than a private company. The DRO gets 0.5p a mile tax payer funded subsidy per passenger on the east coast, Virgin gets 3.6p on the west coast. Do you want to pay more tax?



The vital difference is the cost to the tax payer. If the government can save a substantial amount of cash by having DRO run the route it has not got to let ideology get in the way. What you rather happen? Virgin run the line requiring a much higher level of subsidy?

By the way Branson is quoted by his biographer as saying rail franchises are a license to print money and Virgin are at the forefront of tax avoidance like Vodafone and Amazon. You couldn't really make it up. We give him tax payers money to run the railways and his companies avoid paying tax the UK on their profits.

And it IS going to cost a fortune to sort the mess out and have private companies continue to run franchises up for renewal (Great Western is up in 2013 as well) because they can't just let the incumbents run them in the interim while they try and sort it all out because it is illegal to do so!

But it IS biased! It's in the bloody Guardian!

You would - and have, and so have others on here - been just as incredulous when someone lists - say - Daily Mail article offering a different point of view from what's popular on here.

What rubbish. Of course it matters.

Of course, it doesn't matter to you, because that's what you want to happen across the board.

Those in the real world can point the the other, successful, franchises.

Did you find those figures, by the way?

tut tut, you should know better, profit is BAD, socialism is GREAT, that is the Sin Bin mantra

the fact none of them can earn over 40K a year tells you everything you need to know.
(edit:adjusted for London weighting)

POJ/E as always.

Virgin did not run East Coast.

:31tbqkwu

Of course, it doesn't matter to you, because that's what you want to happen across the board.
'"

Those two definitions are not mutually exclusive.

Apologies, I'm getting missed up with Cross Country. I did of course, mean National Express.

And GNER before that.

Again you have to define "success". For me success means providing a service to agreed levels that costs the tax payer the least. The debate is can a private company like Virgin ever do that?

Does the above have to come at the expense of customer satisfaction?

Here's something that I have never understood about train travel, and certainly the inter-city train travels rather than the cattle truck local systems - why do they over-sell certain services ?

I've just this morning received a promotional email from Cross Country Trains advising me how to make sure that I get a seat on my next journey, which made me stop and read it twice - why shouldn't I expect to have a seat for my next journey ?

Can you imagine presenting a marvellous new invention called "railway" to the patent office or to a government health and safety committee in order to obtain permission to build thousands of miles of track for your new public transport system, and at the point where they ask you how many seats will be in each carriage you reply "70" and they write that number down and then you say "plus approximately another forty or fifty standing", thats the point when they'd put their pens down and ask you "and how fast did you say these trains of yours will be travelling ?"

You simply wouldn't get permisssion to run a railway if you had to apply for planning permission today.

Surely a scheduled service, like the once-per-hour five carriage train that runs down the length of the country from Aberdeen to Plymouth every day, should have the capability to monitor its capacity between its ten or twelve various sectors and when that capacity is full then refuse to book any more tickets and recommend that you choose a different time ?

You know, like airlines do ?

Virgin for instance ?

They don't, it is usually customers piling on to a train they haven't book on, imagine the uproar if the rail companies insisted on every customer booking a seat for every journey,

Why should it?

Imagine the uproar if they tried to do that at airports ?

Its just a mindset that allows a person to book one service and then do something completely different which no other sector seems to tolorate - if you booked car hire for Tuesday but turned up on Monday for it, booked a ticket for a theatre but went to the cinema instead with the same ticket, you'd be laughed at wouldn't you ?

I use the East Coast line pretty frequently and I've always been impressed with the service since EC took over from National Express.

Punctuality has never really been an issue (and the few delays I have experienced weren't the fault of EC) whilst services are clean and comfortable. I also have to say that, surprisingly, the First class service is a big improvement on National Express' efforts.

The only bugbear is that EC took away free WiFi in standard class - but they're hardly alone in charging for that.

I'm in complete agreement with you on inter-city services. The long-haul coach operators don't allow anyone to stand either. So we have airlines at one end of the spectrum and coaches at the other. In the middle there are the railways who get away with it (and many other elements of poor operational standards), simply because that's how it's always been