Railways

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El Pollo Diablo
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Re: Railways

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Mon Mar 01, 2021 1:42 pm

I think the thinking is, "we [the government] are paying loads more now for the railways, therefore passengers should pay more for tickets to offset the subsidy". Which is economic illiteracy of the highest order.
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Re: Railways

Post by plodder » Mon Mar 01, 2021 3:43 pm

El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Mon Mar 01, 2021 1:42 pm
I think the thinking is, "we [the government] are paying loads more now for the railways, therefore passengers should pay more for tickets to offset the subsidy". Which is economic illiteracy of the highest order.
It would kind of make sense if it also applied to motorists.

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Re: Railways

Post by Herainestold » Mon Mar 01, 2021 5:46 pm

plodder wrote:
Mon Mar 01, 2021 3:43 pm
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Mon Mar 01, 2021 1:42 pm
I think the thinking is, "we [the government] are paying loads more now for the railways, therefore passengers should pay more for tickets to offset the subsidy". Which is economic illiteracy of the highest order.
It would kind of make sense if it also applied to motorists.
There should be a combination of taxes on automobile use and subsidies to rail to make it cheaper to take the train than drive.
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Re: Railways

Post by plodder » Mon Mar 01, 2021 6:22 pm

I don't know if the train needs to be cheaper (although it ought be, eyeballing it), because the train is a whole lot more pleasant in many ways. But the price differential should be narrowed, not widened, I agree.

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Re: Railways

Post by science_fox » Tue Mar 02, 2021 9:59 am

El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Mon Mar 01, 2021 1:42 pm
I think the thinking is, "we [the government] are paying loads more now for the railways, therefore passengers should pay more for tickets to offset the subsidy". Which is economic illiteracy of the highest order.
I thought it was also ' the railways are so busy (at least when there were commuters at commuting times into commuting places), so we should reduce those numbers by making it more expensive'.

Which equally misses the point.
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Re: Railways

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Mar 03, 2021 8:48 am

I've moved the road safety derail into a new thread.

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2237&p=72069#p72069

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Re: Railways

Post by Turdly » Wed Mar 17, 2021 7:57 am

EPD, any idea what the actual plan is for the Hope Valley line, or where I can find it?

BBC news link for those who don't know what I'm on about
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Re: Railways

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Wed Mar 17, 2021 8:28 am

Turdly wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 7:57 am
EPD, any idea what the actual plan is for the Hope Valley line, or where I can find it?

BBC news link for those who don't know what I'm on about
This is one of those announcements which have been made repeatedly by the government (see also: every other major rail scheme), claiming each time that it's a new thing. It's been a while, so forgive me if the details are a little scant, but my memory is that the upgrade was a lot of things shy of electrification. So that's track upgrades (I don't think four tracking, I think it's replacing the rails to achieve faster speeds), and junction redesign to allow more and faster trains, and resignalling (though not ETCS resignalling, because hand waves, which suggests in turn that the line won't get ETCS now for decades). I'd have to read up a bit more though. £137m isn't a lot, so it can't be that much they're doing.
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Re: Railways

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Wed Mar 17, 2021 8:58 am

Nicked this from New Civil Engineer from last year:
The scheme on the Hope Valley railway line between Manchester and Sheffield involves building new passing loops around the Bamford and Dore sections of the line enabling more trains to run and increasing passenger and freight capacity.

Plans for the line include building a new section of track alongside the existing railway to the east of Bamford station to create a passing loop, which will allow faster passenger services to overtake slow moving freight trains.

At Dore, Network Rail plans to extend the existing Dore South Curve section of track, between West View Lane and Dore South Junction, to allow enough standing room for freight trains. This will then allow passenger services to pass without a waiting freight train blocking either the Hope Valley or Midland Main Lines.

A second track serving Dore and Totley station will be created and a new platform constructed. This will be accessed by a new footbridge and lifts.

A Transport & Works Act Order (TWAO) for the scheme, which is seen as a key enabler for the Northern Powerhouse Rail route upgrade, was granted by the Department for Transport (DfT) in February 2018.

At the time, Transport for the North said it was pressing for the release of funds for the detailed design work during 2018/9, with a view to starting on site in April last year.

Since then progress on the scheme has stalled.
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Re: Railways

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Wed Mar 17, 2021 9:03 am

For me this is a prime example of the DfT's processes not being fit for purpose. There's no reason for the decisions over this to have taken this long. East West Rail was similar. The time it takes to get to spades in the ground is just excrutiating.
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Re: Railways

Post by kerrya1 » Wed Mar 17, 2021 4:21 pm

I've no idea what it will mean for services and ticket prices, but Scotrail is going to be nationalised from next year https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland- ... s-56432919

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Re: Railways

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Thu Mar 18, 2021 10:55 am

kerrya1 wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 4:21 pm
I've no idea what it will mean for services and ticket prices, but Scotrail is going to be nationalised from next year https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland- ... s-56432919
There's no direct reason to think tickets or services would change all that much, at least in the short term. The main decisions that affect those things are independent of the ownership model, in the main, and are driven by government policy. The Scottish government, compared to the UK govt, is better in some ways (subsidising tickets more) and worse in others (underfunding the railway by comparison).
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Re: Railways

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Fri Mar 19, 2021 1:51 pm

If truth is many-sided, mendacity is many-tongued

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Re: Railways

Post by plodder » Fri Mar 19, 2021 7:42 pm

El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Fri Mar 19, 2021 1:51 pm
sh.t's gonna get real:
https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-set-for ... l-dispute/
Are they justified? When the last strikes happened down at Southern there was lots of talk about safety critical etc but it didn’t half look like protecting ways of working that had been superseded by technology.

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Re: Railways

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Mar 20, 2021 12:01 pm

plodder wrote:
Fri Mar 19, 2021 7:42 pm
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Fri Mar 19, 2021 1:51 pm
sh.t's gonna get real:
https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-set-for ... l-dispute/
Are they justified? When the last strikes happened down at Southern there was lots of talk about safety critical etc but it didn’t half look like protecting ways of working that had been superseded by technology.
I was commuting with Southern during all that bruhaha and while it was a pain in the arse the unions were right. Driver-only trains are less safe, not just because of cases where the driver has a heart attack but also because of the kind of grim stuff reported in the Violence against Women thread.

If anything there should be a guard in every carriage armed with a dart gun full of bromides.
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Re: Railways

Post by plodder » Sat Mar 20, 2021 4:22 pm

There was still going to be a train supervisor, they just weren’t as skilled or well paid as a guard because technology (iirc)

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Re: Railways

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Sat Mar 20, 2021 5:04 pm

plodder wrote:
Fri Mar 19, 2021 7:42 pm
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Fri Mar 19, 2021 1:51 pm
sh.t's gonna get real:
https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-set-for ... l-dispute/
Are they justified? When the last strikes happened down at Southern there was lots of talk about safety critical etc but it didn’t half look like protecting ways of working that had been superseded by technology.
So, I dug into this a bit more yesterday and it looks like it's an attempt to, frankly, use the current crisis to challenge the RMT over maintenance and operations practices. So, for example, where there are places that the union has stood in the way of more efficient working methods, reducing unnecessary cyclic maintenance, and so on (and there are certainly inefficiencies in those areas, but I don't know how the union plays a role in them) using the fact that the railway has no money and, frankly, no bugger is travelling on them (so many fewer people would be impacted by a strike) to sort it out. The DfT is pushing NR to do it and NR kind of don't have much of a choice.

An example I do know of where the union is standing in the way of a more efficient railway is in Scotland, where the plan to consolidate signalling to two or three regional operating centres has been effectively postponed indefinitely in several areas, keeping open old mechanical signal boxes, because the union is insisting on no redundancies, and signallers can't be relocated more than 100 miles.

On the point of driver only operation, the railway standards and safety board (ie the people who know the most about railway safety) say that DOO is no less safe than guarded trains. Now, I don't completely believe that, but I don't believe either that train guards are actually that much use for protecting passengers. What they are useful for though is paying union subs.

If there was a national rail strike this year, it'd be the first since 1994, so let's see what happens
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Re: Railways

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Mar 21, 2021 4:07 am

plodder wrote:
Sat Mar 20, 2021 4:22 pm
There was still going to be a train supervisor, they just weren’t as skilled or well paid as a guard because technology (iirc)
Yeah there was lol, which would last at most until the franchise came up for renewal, at which point staff and/or conditions would be axed for competitiveness. We both know how this works.
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Re: Railways

Post by plodder » Sun Mar 21, 2021 6:58 pm

yes, we both know the railways are obsessed with health and safety, far more than other modes of transport (except probably aviation)

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Re: Railways

Post by dyqik » Sun Mar 21, 2021 7:28 pm

plodder wrote:
Sun Mar 21, 2021 6:58 pm
yes, we both know the railways are obsessed with health and safety, far more than other modes of transport (except probably aviation)
That's possibly mostly a function of the size of accidents. A train or plane (or ferry or cruise ship) crash will usually involve a few hundred people, maybe a thousand if two are involved, in a single newsworthy incident.

While a car crash involving four vehicles might involve ten people or so, and probably won't make the national news.

Buses* and coaches sit somewhere in the middle, of course. And buses, trains etc. tend to involve paying passengers rather than private users.

Railways also have the problem that there's a lot of knock on disruption caused by an accident.

*Buses also largely don't get up to highway speeds, limiting the hazards from crashes.

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Re: Railways

Post by plodder » Sun Mar 21, 2021 7:34 pm

yeah, also that it’s easier to point the finger if there’s a railway crash, it’s rare to hear of someone from the county council getting hung out to dry because of a neglected unsafe junction.

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Re: Railways

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Mon Mar 22, 2021 8:42 am

plodder wrote:
Sun Mar 21, 2021 6:58 pm
yes, we both know the railways are obsessed with health and safety, far more than other modes of transport (except probably aviation)
Sadly perhaps not as obsessed as we should've been over the last five years or so. There'a big relative increase in trackside deaths in the last five years, particularly of workers.
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Re: Railways

Post by wilsontown » Sat Mar 27, 2021 8:08 pm

Bad accident in Egypt:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... uthorities

The explanation that the crash was caused by someone pulling the emergency cord doesn't really make sense. Even in Egypt you'd expect there to be some sort of rudimentary signalling system in place to prevent a train stopped out of course getting clobbered by another train.
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Re: Railways

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Mar 28, 2021 11:04 am

wilsontown wrote:
Sat Mar 27, 2021 8:08 pm
Bad accident in Egypt:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... uthorities

The explanation that the crash was caused by someone pulling the emergency cord doesn't really make sense. Even in Egypt you'd expect there to be some sort of rudimentary signalling system in place to prevent a train stopped out of course getting clobbered by another train.
Well it does say the Egyptian railway is plagued by lack of maintenance. Maybe the system was slow, unreliable or broken. Infrastructure is in a pretty sh.tty condition in most of the world, normally only getting fixed after accidents.
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Re: Railways

Post by shpalman » Thu May 20, 2021 6:26 am

having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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