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[quote user="futuremodal"] Cog, I will venture that if you look at a mirror, you'll see a brick wall staring back.  You are dead set in avering that hauling passengers makes money for rail while hauling freight does not.  I'm sorry, but this runs against every accepted theory of transportation economics.  However, you did let the cat out of the bag by acknowledging that the whole system is subsidized, passsengers included.  Question:  If hauling passengers by rail makes money, why the subsidy? Question:  What type of "subsidy" is used to fund roads and rails?  If it is fuel taxes and lorrie fees that pay for roads, then that is not a subsidy, but a user fee.  A subsidy occurs when the beneficiary gets an earmark that was collected outside the actions of the said beneficiary. Over here, fuel taxes are around 40 cents at the federal level, and range from 12 cents to 40 cents at the state level, so total fuel taxes are usually no more than 20 to 25% of the market price of the fuel.  Over there, it is my understanding that fuel taxes are 100% or more of the market price of fuel.  Indeed, fuel taxes are used for generating revenue to your general funds, right?  So no matter how you slice it, 100% of your road expenditures come from fuel taxes. Now, stay with me on this.  I am assuming that the railroad subsidies also come from the fuel taxes.  That's subsidies for both the infrastructure entity and the 25 or so operating companies.  So what you guys have done is to tax the nominal road users onto the passenger trains, and in doing so you have ostensibly crowded out the freight users from using rail effectively.  So your freight moves by the less efficient mode than that predicated for moving freight in greater than lorrie-load quantities, and your citizenry moves by the less individualized mode that that predicated for individual freedoms, and apparently you have not found a way or a will to fit the one into the other for the economic benefit of your society. So what would happen if you guys decided to end all subsidies for rail, and only tax road fuel for use in the maintenance and development of your road system, like we do here in the States?  I think we both know what would happen - more people would opt to drive than to take the train as pump prices more closely reflect the market price of the fuel, and conversely more freight would opt for rail transport even over short haul distances over 300 km as those avenues open up. Why wouldn't that be a good thing?  I have a hunch what your reply will be, but still............ BTW - haven't you guys heard of bi-modal lorries?  Very low modal transfer costs, well adapted to short haul freight corridors.  I would think such technology would have taken off even more so over there than here in the States, but that doesn't seem to be the case.  Possibly because you've clogged your raillines with the less than optimal load factor inherent in passenger rail. BTW2 - If real time intramodal competition was deem "unworkable, inefficent, and stupid" according to the Ministry of Running Out of Negative Adjectives For Things We Haven't Even Tried Yet, what do you call the last decade or so of trying to change a nationalized integrated rail system into a privatized overly separated but exclusively franchised rail system?  You dogged the system you didn't even try, yet the one you guys did try wasn't exactly proof otherwise, was it?  Now you want to go to a privatized integrated rail system, one I bet will continue to drain the fuel tax fund for even more subsidies just so you guys can pay monopoly rail rates.  [8] The whole point of open access is to get that intramodal competition, yet you guys seemingly went out of your way just to prevent such intramodal competition, so it wasn't really open access, was it?  I guess Jay needs to change the title of the thread to "Trouble in less than open access paradise". [/quote] Slaps forehead many times. Right; for the final time. 1) there are passenger operations which pay  PREMIUMs to the Treasury for operating. One is GNER which will pay the govt £1.2bn over 10years, the other is GW which will pay £1.3bn over the same time. If these horrible passenger trains did not make cash then would they be paying premiums? Er no. Also Heathrow Express (15miles, 100MPH very very high fares) also makes cash, thats probabley because there is a very captive market. But hey. And that is a private company and not a franchisee of the govt. The freight operators which run in this country do make profit; however they are helped by paying basically marginal costs toward infrastructure and various govt grants which acknowledges the societal benefit in getting heavy lorries off the roads. There are bulk hauls WHICH ARE SUBJECT TO INTRAMODAL COMPETITION ON AN OPEN ACCESS BASIS which in the times of BR were subject to super profiteering by the operator. One problem with OA is with competitive bidding for contract, the price of the slot bid for will fall to move the goods in theory if there are a choice of rails - when there is a a monopoly supplier of rails that doesn't quite add up. Therefore regulation. I do not know what the annual budget for roads is in purely care and maintain or for adding infrastructure. Taxation is, as a general rule not hypothecated in the UK. I pay may VAT on goods, or pay my income taxes part of that maybe allocated to the road network. When I fill my car up with petrol part of that may be allocated to buying tanks. However there are external prices to pay for travelling on the road in terms of time, accidents (appx £500K is spent each time there is a fatality on the road in the Uk - there were 3500 last year), congestion and pollution to name some. If subsidies were ended for the railway system we would be left with very little railway (probabley about 1k if that) - google the Serpell Report if you wish which would result in yes - a lot more people travelling by car. Now why would society find itself willing to pay a price to stop that - possibly because in terms of congestion, pollution and the like. In a small, very very crowded Island which this is there isn't the land available to build 16lane motorways either. So, as a balance there is a degree of "subsidy" toward public transport which recognises this and gives the consumer a choice of travel; which in your hypothetical world would not exist. A Piggyback trial was run; but for reasons unknown it was cancelled and no more came of it. Perhaps Axle loadings were too heavy for most lines or there was a problem with clearances I do not know. It has been tried and discarded at present but may make a return.  And, if we only charged fuel prices to a C/M on the roads for car users; then the same for lorries as well wouldn't the real cost of using a lorry come down? That is the logical extension of  your argument. And as the major centres of consumption for a mostly service based economy are within 100 -150 miles of the major ports then the railways would be even more pushed out then they are at present. Real time intramodal competition is happening. Way back at the beginning of this thread I stated that the idea about bidding for slots on the railway was dismissed not the idea of intramodal competition. The idea for slot bidding to the highest bidder was dismissed by the Treasury and the Department of Transport during their sadly very few reality checks in the process of flogging the railways to the bus bandits and a now bankrupt infrastructure owner.  The reasons why? I have explained them to you. I do not see abrick wall; I have stated that freight operators make money; however they are helped in various ways and because of various factors they operate on very tight margins which maybe unacceptable in the US and Canada. I cannot comment on that. Yes, passenger operations do make a profit; not many I grant you but some do. Otherwise why would companies be paying premiums to run them? Those which are subsidised are on the basis that the contribution of removing people from an overcongested road network, greater accesibilty etc etc.  The train (pardon the pun) of thought which you may grasp is that - if everybody travelled by road, then they maybe forced back onto an unsubsidised pssenger train due to congestion blah blah blah. Well, no govt has ever tried this theory and it would be a brave one to do so. So in conclusion. There is intramodal competition in the freight industry. There is  competition in a very limited amount in the passenger franchises. Some franchisees actually pay money for the privelage of running that franchise. Freight does make money however its cost structure is different than the passenger cost structure. I have not let the cat out of the bag anywhere, If you read what I have written then you will actually see I have been repeating the same set of answers to the same question which has been repeatedly been posed. Yeghes da.
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