Are British Commuter Trains Really This Bad?

Capital expenditure is funded by Network Rail, the infrastructrure owner. To be fair, under Chief Executive John Armitt, who took the helm at NR when it was created out of the ashes of Railtrack, he’s managed to put is house in order and is funding more infrastructure improvements - mainly small quick win projects such as re-doubling a stretch of line in Cornwall which was short sightedly singled in the 1980s.

But rolling stock is owned by the Rolling Stock Companies who have an effective monopoly between them; they just jack up their hire fees and this gives the train operators a disincetive to hire extra stock. In the example of the Bristol area suburban services quoted above, First Gt. Western who took over these services in 2006, tried to run them with less rolling stock and they’ve got their fingders burned. The short franchises tend to deter investment. The TOC’s have often said longer franchises (15 years or more) would encourage investment. It is significant that one of the few TOC’s which has invested in extra rolling stock is Chiltern, who operate out of London Marylebone and have a 20 year franchise. They’ve also jointly funded infrastructure improvements with Network Railwork.

I,ve been reading this thread for a while and like to throw in a comment. My take on it seems to be the real underlying problem is UK is past the breaking point in capacity where it needs it most with no room for expansion, being an island. This includes highway and airline, ect. This being further hardened by a system that doesnt promote innovation, just squeezing profit out an existing infrasture. If all forms of transportion are beyond capacity, and no room for expansion, then reform is just a hot potato, the meat is in the fact you can’t put 8 lanes of highway in when 6 lanes are touching buildings on both sides, the same with the track. No amount of money can fix that, goverment or private. I pose this as a question. It just seems to me the human race as a whole gotten down to wasting time covering sypmtoms, not fixing the cause. I see it here all the time. we blow are noses and think were good, when we need to wrap ourselves in a blanket and sweat the germs out.

Soory about the soapbox[soapbox][#offtopic]

Virgin trains are looking to extend their 53 9 car Pendolino train’s to 11 car’s That;s 106 extra car’s in total

Yes, but as reported in the latest issue of ‘Modern Railways’ this attempt has stalled because the Dept. of Transport wont give the necessary gauarantees to the Rolling Stock Co (ROSCO), to enable it to go ahead and fund the extra carriages. As a result, a useful window to add the extra cars to the Pendolinos provided by their first overhauls will be missed, and thus the cost of the exercise, if it goes ahead at all, will be much increased.

Alas the above sorry saga is all too typical of our fragmented rail network in Britain.