TSSA Euro Thanks

[albert]

I have mixed feelings about this given I live in Netherlands and I'm a British citizen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvagsSOlAy4

The Twitter post also exposes some MP's playing the blame game in the comments below: https://twitter.com/PeoplesMomentum/status/816276282128420864/video/1

Rather controversial just as the 2017 rail ticket price hike was reported.

For clarification, the Dutch are a Public/ Private partnership for most services, health and transport being the most significant. The government own everything but with the private sector set the prices and limit profits whilst not making it unappealing for the private sector companies to operate. I get a 40 mile rail journey for £4, a trip to Germany for under £30 if booked early.

Most significantly, in NL, the company pays for all travel to and from work, so if you live 200 miles away, you only lose your time and not your money getting to the office. In fact with that type of distance or even 50 miles you can opt for an NS Business Card which gives you free travel country wide, and special lounges where you get free beer! You also get free bike rentals at most stations. All paid by your employer.

[TeaLeaf]

I have mixed feelings about this given I live in Netherlands and I'm a British citizen.

I'm not aware that ability to laugh at a political spin video is linked to your nationality or country of residence!

All joking aside, it's not even half the argument in that video, so there's little else you can do other than take it with a huge pinch of salt as it leaves more unanswered or unmentioned that it promotes.

[albert]

True, there are so many circumstances that these different countries operate with in order to run their transport systems and run our rail services.

The only things that are straightforward are that they are a) cheaper than the UK and b) not fully privatized like the UK.

I worked out that when I left the rat race and started driving to Slough from Farnham I was paying £3950 per year for my season ticket for rail and TFL services. Not it's £4600 per year.

The only concern I have now is that the cost of nationalizing would be crazy and the process slow. They would be better off regulating the fares better like the Dutch do.

[TeaLeaf]

The only things that are straightforward are that they are a) cheaper than the UK and b) not fully privatized like the UK.

Even that's not as straight forward as it seems.  Cheaper depends on your point of view.   You pay one way or the other, either through direct taxation or ticket fares and there are other factors too.    

The Netherlands railway receives far more subsidy per passenger mile than the UK railways do, so whilst the UK pays more nominally in subsidising railways, we (passengers) use it far more and get better tax payer value from it.   The UK currently pays 53% less per passenger mile than Netherlands does, and that extra cost in the Netherlands comes out of general taxation and your pay packet.  For example:

In the Netherlands your starting direct taxes rate is 36.55% on the first â,¬19,982 of income, rising to 40.4% and then 50.2% for everything over â,¬66.421.  Compare that to the UK where it is much less, so the affordability is better in the UK and the UK Government pays less.

Another aspect is things like capital investment.   Receiving £3m per year from Greater Anglian sounds great (and for which the video says 'thank you'), but the flip side of the coin is that they had to agree to invest £1.4bn into the infrastructure over the term of their franchise in order to get that £3m per year, so it might look a little less attractive with that context?  

There's also other intangibles to consider:  
How do you value having a working train infrastructure and then compare it from nation to nation where land availability and price varies so massively.  
What about working practices?  Anyone know of a country with out-dated working practices in the rail sector?  (anyone travelling on Southern is excluded as the answer is too easy for you).

Then there's the whole privatisation versus nationalisation debate (cue can of worms opening):
Does privatisation mean more expensive or less successful?  Not necessarily.  Since the 1920's peak, UK train passenger numbers have more than halved in the period to the mid-1990's.   Since 1995 and privatisation, passenger numbers have increased dramatically, possibly due to the massive capital investment programme, recouping the 'nationalised' losses in passenger numbers, then exceeding the pre-1920's passenger records and are now projected to exceed 230% those of 1995 by 2020.  Some would call that a clear success for privatisation despite the ticket prices we have to pay.

The ultimate example of nationalisation was (no not the EU, not yet), was the USSR.   They're not exactly the shining example wanted for the nationalisation case.  Even in the UK, during the last period of UK nationalised railway ownership, passenger numbers fell by over 50%.

All of the above factor into the ticket price, so it's far from simple.


Anyway, please be reassured I have counter examples for all of the above, so I'm not arguing one way or the other, just noting that it is not as simple as it might seem to state that one is cheaper than the other, or that nationalised is better than private ownership!

And now that I have opened the can of worms........I'll be exiting stage left. :getmecoat: