Comment by smcl
3 years ago
I’ve no idea where you get the idea that “the left” (an enormous and diverse block of people) primarily want subsidies for the rich. It seems similar to the same (IMO bad faith) argument American conservatives made about student debt forgiveness - that because a small amount of wealthy people would benefit from a universal thing, it is therefore wrong.
The popular opinions I have seen are:
- “nationalise the railways”
- more frequent, reliable and cheaper services overall
As discussed, nationalising the railways isn’t necessarily the silver bullet many people think, but if you engage with those people and don’t insult/berate them they’ll come round easily. They're not hardline communists, hellbent on the destruction of private companies - they just want better train service somehow and may not fully understand how to get there. That's not to deny the existence of "tankies" and other weirdos, they're just a very very tiny minority.
HS2 should enable the “more frequent” part over the regions it covers. I don’t know how to make services cheaper or more reliable, I imagine subsidies come into it somewhere though, and this inevitably means that yes someone wealthy at some point will benefit from a cheaper rail ticket.
> if you engage with those people and don’t insult/berate them they’ll come round easily
Nope, 10 years of plain simple facts and it doesn't help. It's still Richard Branson that's stealing everyones money, if only the west coast mainline wasn't run by him then it would be £20 return for Manchester to London. HS2 of course will apparently cost £600 return for every journey and nobody will be able to afford it or something.
HS2 should be cheaper than current trains, if there is the demand.
Currently to run 1000 seats London to Manchester return takes two 11 car trains, each with 3 members of staff (driver, manager, shop) on a 5 hour return trip. That's 10 hours of train and 30 hours of staff per return.
To do that under HS2 will be 2h30 return for a single train and not need a shop, so that's 5 hours of staff and train costs, so should be far cheaper operational costs.
Track costs should be far cheaper than maintaining 150 year old structure
Whether those lower train and staff costs translate to lower fares, lower subsidies, or more subsidies elsewhere on the network, is a political decision.
I fear the government is killing demand though - for 2 of my last 3 trips to London down the west coast I've hired a car and driven, and it wasn't terrible.