labour and alp incompetence re transport

medusala

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Tube staff in the UK have just achieved a deal whereby they get 52 (not its not a typo) days leave a year. Despite the tube system being broke, many old trains, no air con, bugger all security, prices going up by twice the price of inflation etc under the diretion of Red Ken the unions continually achieve huge pay rises. The same sort of muppetry occurs on the railway despite the misery inflected on commuters. Sure incompetent management is to blame for giving in to the unions but the unions are so strong that they always cave in.

Similar to NSW. Bob Carr has caved in and paid way over inflation increases to public servants in many areas. Despite the transport system being stuffed he gives these workers major pay rises. This will ensure a shortage of money for the system for years to come. It just goes to show when the ALP spends more money on health, education etc all it does is waste it on wage rises.

The AFR the other day carried an interesting article showing the alp state govts had actually decreased infrastructure spending despite hefty overall increases in public spending. The ALP far from running public services better thant the Libs have significantly run down investment.

Thus infrastructure and services are getting worse whilst spending and taxes are being increased and the unions are laughing. People talk about lib voters greed and self interest. Well how about a few workers in the transport industry ripping off the entire public transport community in their hundreds of thousands.
 

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Contra Mundum

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#2
medusala said:
Tube staff in the UK have just achieved a deal whereby they get 52 (not its not a typo) days leave a year. Despite the tube system being broke, many old trains, no air con, bugger all security, prices going up by twice the price of inflation etc under the diretion of Red Ken the unions continually achieve huge pay rises. The same sort of muppetry occurs on the railway despite the misery inflected on commuters. Sure incompetent management is to blame for giving in to the unions but the unions are so strong that they always cave in.

Similar to NSW. Bob Carr has caved in and paid way over inflation increases to public servants in many areas. Despite the transport system being stuffed he gives these workers major pay rises. This will ensure a shortage of money for the system for years to come. It just goes to show when the ALP spends more money on health, education etc all it does is waste it on wage rises.

The AFR the other day carried an interesting article showing the alp state govts had actually decreased infrastructure spending despite hefty overall increases in public spending. The ALP far from running public services better thant the Libs have significantly run down investment.

Thus infrastructure and services are getting worse whilst spending and taxes are being increased and the unions are laughing. People talk about lib voters greed and self interest. Well how about a few workers in the transport industry ripping off the entire public transport community in their hundreds of thousands.
Ahem! just one problem - the English rail system was privatised by Thatcher. The problems with the tube system stem from lack of co-ordination between the private rail networks (which is the reason why they where nationalised in the first place). So I am afraid Labour in England inherited the consequences of a ideological jihad for privatisation rather than being the root of the problem. So although a bit of union bashing is enjoyed by all on this forum - the English example you give is specious.

Since when has the Mayor of London had anything to do with the setting of wages and conditions of employees of a private rail company? I know the tenticles of the Red Menace are all embracing to the paranoid sons and daughters of privilege but you are giving him to much credit here.

Please read: http://www.publicworld.org/docs/britrail.pdf
 

Freo Big Fella

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#3
From the limited time (a year and a half) I lived in England, I personally can't see how the tube system can be fixed, it's impossible to run a metropolitan underground railway and get the infrastructure perfect, regardless of how much money you throw at it. If you build a hole in the ground, logic dictates that crap is going to slide in.

As far as the whole union thing goes, it is pretty ridiculous, however, it doesn't seem much different to the WA Liberal party, which is pretty much beholden to the Small Business lobby.
 

Mr Q

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Then you could look at the example of the Perth Southern suburbs railway. The Coalition initated the plan with an intention to run it from Mandurah to Perth (about 60km IIRC) via Kenwick - an additional 12 minutes travelling time, and missing most of the urban areas except for the southern fringe. All done to make the route cheaper. They claimed that it was "only" an extra 12 minutes each way - I see that as nearly half an hour each day, not something commuters really want.

(For non-Perthites, Mandurah is on the coast well south of Fremantle, while Kenwick is in the south-eastern corridor of the city)

Fortunately the current (Labor) government realised that the only practical route was the direct route (that's why the freeway goes that way!) and put up the cash for the shorter but more expensive route.

That said, I've heard of people that object to the current route despite the fact that they will live five minutes walk from one of the proposed stations, where a forty minute drive into the city during peak hour will be cut to a twelve minute train trip. Go figure....

Then again, another argument I've often heard against it being built is that it isn't yet necessary and won't be for another ten years. Silly argument. If you wait until its required it will still take three years to build, it will still disrupt public transport - that will be under more pressure than it currently is, and have three years of serious traffic disruption when the road network is under way more pressure than it is now.
 

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#5
Another good example of Labor's attitude to public transport is its efforts in Victoria.

When the Kennett Government announced that the Melbourne public transport system was to be broken up and privatised, the amount of job losses was incredible (e.g. instead of every station being manned, they came up with this "premium station" idea and the railways lost about 1000 staff).

Since then, one of the private operators, the British based National Express, has gone belly-up, forcing it's train and tram subsidaries to be back under one operation, being Connex. The National Express owned National Bus Co. still exists.

Whilst the W-Class tram situation was bad, it was handled well for safety reasons and more stations are becoming manned again...as opposed to what happened under Kennett where as a passenger, you didn't feel remotely safe using any part of the system.
 

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#6
pazza said:
Another good example of Labor's attitude to public transport is its efforts in Victoria.
Privatisation and trains is stupid. The suppossed advantage of privatisation is competition and efficiencies. It is not as though you can get to a station and choose to catch a train to antother destination. "Ohhh I was going to go to work in town, but hmmmnnn the 8.05 bus to Dandenong looks appealling, maybe I'll go there instead".

The London example is a bit misleading. They got permission for a 35 hour week. They will actually be at work for 37.5 hours a week. Those extra 2.5 hours will add up and be traded in for days off. In exchange for all this they get the pre-dawn starts and after midnight finishes and get to put up with all the irate customers complaining about how the system works. The failings of which are rarely down to the drivers or station staff.
 

medusala

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Mark Perica said:
Ahem! just one problem - the English rail system was privatised by Thatcher. The problems with the tube system stem from lack of co-ordination between the private rail networks (which is the reason why they where nationalised in the first place). So I am afraid Labour in England inherited the consequences of a ideological jihad for privatisation rather than being the root of the problem. So although a bit of union bashing is enjoyed by all on this forum - the English example you give is specious.

Since when has the Mayor of London had anything to do with the setting of wages and conditions of employees of a private rail company? I know the tenticles of the Red Menace are all embracing to the paranoid sons and daughters of privilege but you are giving him to much credit here.

Please read: http://www.publicworld.org/docs/britrail.pdf
Your article may have more merit if it was by someone not so clearly biased and who could actually spell.

The tube is run by Transport for London under PPP arrangements with a number of companies. The boss of TFL is answerable to Ken Livingstone who gave his blessing for the deal on the basis it was ok if it meant fares werent going to rise.

Re the train system, the ownership of the tracks themselves has been nationalised. Problems with the tracks, signalling etc account for over 50% of delays to trains. Thus you cant blame the private operators for all the problems of the transport system.

South West Trains has invested over 1 billion quid in new rolling stock in the last few years. Do you really think British Rail would have invested this money on just one section of the network? Of course they wouldnt, slam door type trains are still in operation even though they were introduced over 40 years ago as are the old Routemaster buses. Public ownership resulted in massive underinvestment in infrastructure.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1055-970196,00.html

from the above article.

Taking the railways out of the public sector was, by any rational measure, a runaway success, whatever the takings at the National Theatre box office may tell you. A far more reliable set of figures by which to judge privatisation has been produced by the economists Michael Pollitt and Andrew Smith. They subjected the policy to a witheringly-close analysis for Cambridge University and found that under privatisation the railways carried more passengers and freight farther than ever before, more cheaply and with no cost in safety. Indeed, there are very good reasons to believe that it was safer to take a trip on a privatised train travelling over privately-maintained track than ever it was in the days of British Rail.
 

medusala

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Freo Big Fella said:
From the limited time (a year and a half) I lived in England, I personally can't see how the tube system can be fixed, it's impossible to run a metropolitan underground railway and get the infrastructure perfect, regardless of how much money you throw at it. If you build a hole in the ground, logic dictates that crap is going to slide in.
The underground in Hong Kong runs on time 99% of the time. It also is extremely cheap for passengers to use. Likewise the system in Singapore runs extremely well.
 
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medusala said:
Your article may have more merit if it was by someone not so clearly biased and who could actually spell.

The tube is run by Transport for London under PPP arrangements with a number of companies. The boss of TFL is answerable to Ken Livingstone who gave his blessing for the deal on the basis it was ok if it meant fares werent going to rise.

Re the train system, the ownership of the tracks themselves has been nationalised. Problems with the tracks, signalling etc account for over 50% of delays to trains. Thus you cant blame the private operators for all the problems of the transport system.

South West Trains has invested over 1 billion quid in new rolling stock in the last few years. Do you really think British Rail would have invested this money on just one section of the network? Of course they wouldnt, slam door type trains are still in operation even though they were introduced over 40 years ago as are the old Routemaster buses. Public ownership resulted in massive underinvestment in infrastructure.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1055-970196,00.html

from the above article.

Taking the railways out of the public sector was, by any rational measure, a runaway success, whatever the takings at the National Theatre box office may tell you. A far more reliable set of figures by which to judge privatisation has been produced by the economists Michael Pollitt and Andrew Smith. They subjected the policy to a witheringly-close analysis for Cambridge University and found that under privatisation the railways carried more passengers and freight farther than ever before, more cheaply and with no cost in safety. Indeed, there are very good reasons to believe that it was safer to take a trip on a privatised train travelling over privately-maintained track than ever it was in the days of British Rail.
You're right to point out the bias in article quoted, but it is amusing to see you come back with an equally biased and equally flawed article in reponse. Kind of defeats the original criticism doesn't it?
 

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Jim Boy said:
You're right to point out the bias in article quoted, but it is amusing to see you come back with an equally biased and equally flawed article in reponse. Kind of defeats the original criticism doesn't it?
I think an article in The Times quoting research from respected individuals carries a bit more weight than a socialist blogger who can't use spell checker.

Which part of the research carried out by economists at Cambridge University was biased and flawed?
 

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#11
OK medusula I concede the article is written by a socialist nutter but you do yourself no favours by quoting from the Times! That's a Murdoch paper is'nt it?. By the way what are you doing in London - working for Price Waterhouse; Baker McKenzie or Littlefields perhaps?

Is it your line that the privatisation of British Rail has has no adverse impact on the running of the rail system. is it

I have e-mailed my mate in the Transport and General Workers Union - the tube employees are on 5 day rolling twelve hour shifts - you will find that in Australia persons who work twelve hour shifts get more holidays as well. " This is to compensate for the lack of sleep and extra hours they work [I realise you will probably argue this is not justified]

"Those ruddy faced working class people should not get extra holidays say what -I often work fifteen hour days in my accounting/law firm and I don't even get overtime - Lazy Blighters!"
 

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medusala

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Mark Perica said:
Is it your line that the privatisation of British Rail has has no adverse impact on the running of the rail system. is it
The Times is the most centrist of the qualities now that The Independent has gone left wing in order to get more readers. The Torygraph, Sun and a few other tabloids are all more right wing than The Times.

If the tube was open til 3am and there was a no strike agreement then I wouldnt have such a problem with their pay and holiday demands.

There have been problems with rail privatisation, probably the biggest one hsa been Railtrack and its nationalised successor which runs the tracks. People forget how bad BR was though. I can recall a mate who never bought a ticket. He figured with the fine at 10 quid he would have to be caught more than once a week to make it worthwhile paying. He got caught 2 or 3 times in a year. All the rolling stock was extremely old. Average train times in Britain arent any better than 100 years ago. Safety was lacking under BR. Some of this has improved ie there is quite a new bit of rolling stock but punctuality, the state of stations, safety etc are still poor but probably better than they would otherwise have been. To blame the current problems on privatisation is stupid, these problems have been building up over decades under BR.
 
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medusala said:
Which part of the research carried out by economists at Cambridge University was biased and flawed?
If your looking for bias, simply making bland statements such as "the minister nominally in charge at the time was John Prescott, neither Trotskyist nor Stalinist, just hopeless" without any backing argument is bias.

And making arguments along the line of "even though the casualty toll of Hatfield and Paddington combined was the same as the Clapham rail crash, which occurred when British Rail was still firmly in the public sector" is not only in bad taste, but just plain silly. Two fatal crashes better than one? Shouldn't rail safety always be improving? Where no lessons learnt from Clapham?

and passges such as "Without shareholders, there is no incentive for Network Rail to cut costs and, inevitably, they have exploded, with the amount spent on maintenance rising from £2.8 billion in 1999-2000 to £5 billion last year. Those costs are set to rise after the decision to ban private contractors from maintenance work. " are clearly designed to suggest that the huge rise in maintenance costs came not from additional work after the realisation that not enough mainetence was being done (IIRC the primary cause of Hadfield), but instead that the unions are destroying an otherwise healthy system through sheer greed.

Your linked article is worthless tripe.
 

medusala

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Jim Boy said:
Your linked article is worthless tripe.
No its not because it refers to research by Cambridge University economists. This research proved the case that the rail system had actually improved under privatisation. Which part of their research would you particularly like to label as incorrect?
 

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#15
Firstly you tried to link in the ALP with a diatribe mostly about the Tube in London. I'm not quite sure what an Australian Labor Party could have done about the Tube, but there it is.

Secondly, you seem to like linking Red Ken with the British Labour government. Now if there's one thing I know, its that Livingston might be a Labour person, but he is definitely not liked by the national government who definitely tried to stop him getting the job of Mayor of London.

Thirdly, your attack on the ALP is linked to the rail network in Sydney - usually considered a lost cause - yet there are examples of the rail network improving under Labor governments in other states.

In fact if we look at public transport here in Perth, it is divided into two parts - the privatised bus network and the public rail network. The public trains run fairly well 99% of the time, while the bus network's reliability has fallen dramatically since it was privatised in attempts to improve "efficiency"

So was your bash of the ALP just a misguided right-wing nutbag attempt to incorrectly smear the other side of politics?
 

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Mr Q said:
Firstly you tried to link in the ALP with a diatribe mostly about the Tube in London. I'm not quite sure what an Australian Labor Party could have done about the Tube, but there it is.

Secondly, you seem to like linking Red Ken with the British Labour government. Now if there's one thing I know, its that Livingston might be a Labour person, but he is definitely not liked by the national government who definitely tried to stop him getting the job of Mayor of London.

Thirdly, your attack on the ALP is linked to the rail network in Sydney - usually considered a lost cause - yet there are examples of the rail network improving under Labor governments in other states.

In fact if we look at public transport here in Perth, it is divided into two parts - the privatised bus network and the public rail network. The public trains run fairly well 99% of the time, while the bus network's reliability has fallen dramatically since it was privatised in attempts to improve "efficiency"

So was your bash of the ALP just a misguided right-wing nutbag attempt to incorrectly smear the other side of politics?
In fact Mr Q, the Metropolitan Transport Trust (the predecessor of the current privatised bus service in Perth) was formed in the 40s because the private bus companies could not co-ordinate one another into a coherent transport system. I think the argument is no more sophisticated than "privatised good: public ownership bad" - that is an argument you cannot win.
 
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medusala said:
No its not because it refers to research by Cambridge University economists. This research proved the case that the rail system had actually improved under privatisation. Which part of their research would you particularly like to label as incorrect?
A rabid biased author does not stop being a rabid biased author just because they choose to pick and choose a few pieces from a reputable source. Anyway the the research appears to be fatally flawed if it is based on pre-Hadfield data.
 

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Mr Q said:
Firstly you tried to link in the ALP with a diatribe mostly about the Tube in London. I'm not quite sure what an Australian Labor Party could have done about the Tube, but there it is.

Secondly, you seem to like linking Red Ken with the British Labour government. Now if there's one thing I know, its that Livingston might be a Labour person, but he is definitely not liked by the national government who definitely tried to stop him getting the job of Mayor of London.

Thirdly, your attack on the ALP is linked to the rail network in Sydney - usually considered a lost cause - yet there are examples of the rail network improving under Labor governments in other states.

In fact if we look at public transport here in Perth, it is divided into two parts - the privatised bus network and the public rail network. The public trains run fairly well 99% of the time, while the bus network's reliability has fallen dramatically since it was privatised in attempts to improve "efficiency"

So was your bash of the ALP just a misguided right-wing nutbag attempt to incorrectly smear the other side of politics?
a) thats why the title is labour (ie UK labour) and alp. Both are clueless on transport partially because they are beholden to the unions.

b) If thats the one thing you know you are in real trouble. Livingstone is back in the labour party and was the official labour candidate for London Mayor (which he won). The govt has allowed the mayor a significant say in the running of transport in London.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/insideldn/politics/politics_060604.shtml

c) The transport system under Cain/Kirner was an absolute joke. If Bracks really believes privatisation was so bad then when an operator failed why didnt he take back those services in to public ownership?
 

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Jim Boy said:
A rabid biased author does not stop being a rabid biased author just because they choose to pick and choose a few pieces from a reputable source. Anyway the the research appears to be fatally flawed if it is based on pre-Hadfield data.
The research isnt flawed, after Hatfield the ownership of the rail network has been nationalised. 50% of all train delays are due to electrics, signalling etc. The govt owned operator has to pay out hundreds of millions in fines each year to the private operators of trains. Thus if your compare stats now and then you are comparing a fully privatised system with one partially privatised. There have been a number of fatalities since the govt took over the tracks despite the cost to taxpayers increasing exponentially.

BTW why is it acceptable to privatise QANTAS and BA yet not the train networks? Cant remember anyone complaining about Virgin Blue/BMI/Go/Easy Jet etc starting up and offering cheap fares.
 
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medusala said:
BTW why is it acceptable to privatise QANTAS and BA yet not the train networks? Cant remember anyone complaining about Virgin Blue/BMI/Go/Easy Jet etc starting up and offering cheap fares.
Because there is competition on airlines. If you want to go Melb-Syd and you think Virgin suck, then you go via QANTAS, therefore incentive for Virgin to improve. No incentive with trains, if your operator sucks, that's just tough luck.
 

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Jim Boy said:
Because there is competition on airlines. If you want to go Melb-Syd and you think Virgin suck, then you go via QANTAS, therefore incentive for Virgin to improve. No incentive with trains, if your operator sucks, that's just tough luck.
to a certain extent but then you could argue in some cases trains compete with planes ie many more people now fly Ldn-Edinburgh rather than catch the train.

Even so there are valid reasons why replacing a public monopoly with a private one can work. The govt (if it has a clue) can insist on targets and penalties related to safety, punctuality, new rolling stock etc. ie a discipline can be imposed that a public organisation could never have. In fact thats why the train operator in Victoria gave up its licence because it couldnt meet those commitments and turn a decent profit. Unlike the case in Britain with Rail Network the public wont have to pick up a big tab for the cost.
 
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medusala said:
to a certain extent but then you could argue in some cases trains compete with planes ie many more people now fly Ldn-Edinburgh rather than catch the train. .
And yet world-wide, probably the best train operator that competes realistically with planes is SNCF - state owned.
medusala said:
Even so there are valid reasons why replacing a public monopoly with a private one can work. The govt (if it has a clue) can insist on targets and penalties related to safety, punctuality, new rolling stock etc. ie a discipline can be imposed that a public organisation could never have. In fact thats why the train operator in Victoria gave up its licence because it couldnt meet those commitments and turn a decent profit. Unlike the case in Britain with Rail Network the public wont have to pick up a big tab for the cost.
No, the people in Britain just had to put to up with four years of "late, dirty and overcrowded trains" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1509731.stm. But maybe they should have caught a plane to work!
 

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You have proved my point exactly with Connex. Now another operator will take over the route and taxpayers havent had to fork out billions unlike Rail Network.

The company is investing £900 million in new trains and delivery is likely to start soon.

It is anticipated the first of the new green and white liveried trains could be seen entering service early in 2002.

More than £500 million is earmarked for infrastructure and station improvements and the franchise will include four-yearly reviews to give the programme more flexibility.


Pity the operators in NSW couldnt be sacked and replaced with someone who could do a better job.

See below article, the main obstacle to better deliver of services is the state owned operator of the tracks. This is why brand new trains are laying idle and why the maximum train speed is so incredibly low. These issues can not be fixed by the private train companies yet they are constantly blamed for the problems of the system.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2473103.stm

re the French they massively subsidise the operation of the railways. Their method of finance makes it very hard to work out the exact amount of subsidy but it is inconceivable for the UK to spend the same amount as the French. The govt wont even financially commit to CrossRail even though its govt policy and business in London has offered to pay for a substantial portion of the cost via higher property taxes.
 
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