Re nationalisation of the East Coast rail

sturll

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

A good thing???

My two penneth on this is that the East Coast is what i would get to London (from Leeds) If you can book in advance it is all fine, ive had return fares for £40, but if you need to travel at short notice as i usually do, then its often £80+ whereas the flight is usually only about £60.

So, with failing business, government bailouts, re nationalisation of a bank, now a rail network with the hint of more - what's next? BA?

People's thoughts on re nationalisation and this??

richardw

Will they cancel the £5 seat reservation that Nat Exp introduced?

PolishBigSpender

To be honest, from what I know of the situation (having fairly well used the East Coast Line when living in the UK) - the problems are caused by the Government demanding a huge premium for the right to run the franchise. GNER failed because of this, now NXEC are failing because of the exact same problem. GNER was a fantastic service, and their first class product was to die for.

[Deleted User]

National Express are a bit different - they want to shed the loss making contract yet hold on to their other two profit-making franchises.

It is entirely correct that they be stripped of all their franchises, it is not acceptable to pass any loss making entity to the taxpayer and keep the profit making entity to yourself.

lorweld

MOVING THREADS FOR BETTER RESPONSES


Hi, Martin’s asked me to post this in these circumstances: I’ve asked Board Guides to move threads if they’ll receive a better response elsewhere(please see this rule) so this post/thread has been moved to another board, where it should get more replies. If you have any questions about this policy please email [EMAIL="abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"]abuse@moneysavingexpert.com[/EMAIL].

daveyjp

PolishBigSpender wrote: »

To be honest, from what I know of the situation (having fairly well used the East Coast Line when living in the UK) - the problems are caused by the Government demanding a huge premium for the right to run the franchise. GNER failed because of this, now NXEC are failing because of the exact same problem. GNER was a fantastic service, and their first class product was to die for.

Its an open tender competition, nothing about Govt setting the level. Nat Express bid too much, people said so at the time, but you reap what you sow.

GNER was brilliant, I've used Nat Express once and even booking months in advance couldn't get a very cheap ticket.

alanrowell

PolishBigSpender wrote: »

the problems are caused by the Government demanding a huge premium for the right to run the franchise. GNER failed because of this, now NXEC are failing because of the exact same problem.

1) GNER failed because it's parent company went bust
2) NXEC ran away from the contract because they couldn't make a profit

So they didn't lose the franchises because of the same problem

rev_henry

daveyjp wrote: »

Its an open tender competition, nothing about Govt setting the level. Nat Express bid too much, people said so at the time, but you reap what you sow.

GNER was brilliant, I've used Nat Express once and even booking months in advance couldn't get a very cheap ticket.

Just as you say. Richard Branson must be hopping with glee now, as he said I think today that the reason Virgin didn't get the franchise was because NXEC put in a ridiculously high bid.

On a slightly different note, did anyone see what John Prescott said about it? First sensible thing he's ever said I think! Although he would say that because he made his way in the Unions, who obviously also like nationalised railways.

vaio

urbankoala wrote: »

National Express are a bit different - they want to shed the loss making contract yet hold on to their other two profit-making franchises.

It is entirely correct that they be stripped of all their franchises, it is not acceptable to pass any loss making entity to the taxpayer and keep the profit making entity to yourself.

isn't that how the private sector works? nationalise losses and privatise profits?

FARE-COP

sturll wrote: »

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

A good thing???

My two penneth on this is that the East Coast is what i would get to London (from Leeds) If you can book in advance it is all fine, ive had return fares for £40, but if you need to travel at short notice as i usually do, then its often £80+ whereas the flight is usually only about £60.

I shall not say that re-nationalisation might not be a good idea, because I believe that it may, but can we de-bunk this myth yet again that you can quote like for like between rail and air fares please.

Does the plane you're on land right in the centre of London??

OK, there are flights into City airport, but realistically - air travel is very rarely city centre to city centre is it?

Rail travel almost always is and those journeys from airport to city are not free, nor do they not take further time.

This might seem flippant to some, but finally, if I'm travelling from London to Edinburgh, I might be a bit annoyed because I've been inconvenienced, but don't mind changing trains at York because of a mechanical failure, although I'm not sure I'd be happy about dealing with the same thing at 10,000 feet.

All of our lives is about making choices.

Jamp

I hope this won't mean the end of the NXEC booking engine as it seems far better for easiliy routing out cheap fares than the others.