First West Coast

[DVL418]

RE: First West Coast

(13/08/2012 22:25)First Class Wrote:  

(13/08/2012 21:05)wirralbus Wrote:  First Class how can you blame BR , the BR era is now 15 years ago for most franchises now , most franchises are getting to there second term now in the case of some like East Coast are on to there third franchise holder at the moment .

Well, for starters, there is the rolling stock issue. A lot of BR stock is still about, most if it life expired and in need of renewal. The DfT is primarily to blame here, and in the case of Merseyrail, the PTE. Things like the Pacer fleet should never have been commissioned by BR in the first place.

You also have the Beeching Report, which BR implemented, albeit again with government influence.

My pet hate is the legacy BR systems used to manage the fare systems, inherited from BR. It can add weeks on to projects because the computer systems are so outdated, slow and unbelievably complex. Again, you could argue that ATOC/DfT should have sorted this by now.

Dr Beeching now we are going back in time!

Have you actually read his report? I have.

He was the 1960's equivilant of Bob Diamond - an external (ICI) businessman brought in by the motorway loving Tory minister Ernest Marples with a remit of 'making the railways pay'. He completely mis-understood/ignored the contribution of branch lines to and used dubious pen and paper passenger census data and simplistic cost accounting techniques to provide his 'evidence' for the report recommendations. Before he could be stopped many strategic diversionary lines had been chopped along with swathes of Britain from the railway map. Other lines were simply left to rot by withdrawl of investment.

Fortunately, once his protector Marples had gone to spend more time with his road building friends wiser heads quietly binned most of his recommendations, but the damage was done and the result is several key gaps in the network whilst the south east (location of the bulk of Tory marginal seats) sees gross overprovision and duplication despite many lines/services being ruinously unprofitable.

On the fare system - perhaps the reason why we are stuck with such a clunky system is that ATOC wont pay their share for a new one out of their members profits?