r/Glasgow Tools

Title
Author	dddiamonddd
Comment	> The competition in the current railway structure is in the tender process, not on the customer end. I wouldn't say that's a red herring. I know it's at the tender end, I've seen it first-hand, and my point is that the process is nowhere near as competitive as it should be. The fact that nationalisation isn't a potential option for the government means that someone has to get the contract at the end of the tender process and it'll always be someone seeking to make profit out of it. There's no real incentive to provide a great service to the end users - whoever is tendering for it only needs to be slightly more competitive than whoever else is tendering in terms of costs or bold promises, and that doesn't necessarily translate to a better service for the end users (which it, so far, hasn't done). I'm not a great fan of capitalism in general, but the competition does mean that there is pressure on enterprises to offer a great service to customers in order to win customers from competitors. By no means does that consistently lead to a great experience for customers, but it's pressure to do so nonetheless. But that pressure cannot exist with trains. And there's no real pressure at the tendering side for them to do so either. With no pressure to do better, why bother being better? Even when they are so shite that the government steps in, they know the government won't be cutting them off immediately, they still get a good few years to squeeze us, and the contract is just going to be offered up to some other profit-making organisation. So I am 100% all for adding in a government-backed arms-length organisation to the tendering process, and if a profit-seeking organisation does get the contract, they're going to have to work much harder to justify why they should be allowed to squeeze profits from a public service. But I think I'd prefer if we just went directly for nationalising them completely and shutting for-profit companies out of the core of the railways. I'm fine for Virgin or whoever to keep running long-distance trains, but my ability to get in to the city shouldn't be reliant on a company that resents the existence of my train station continuing to grit their teeth and operate the line anyway.
Reddit Link	https://www.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/m1re6o/not_paying_for_train_tickets_has_had_a/gqfmu8k/
Created	Wed 10th Mar 2021 11:04am
Status	normal ()

> The competition in the current railway structure is in the tender process, not on the customer end.

I wouldn't say that's a red herring. I know it's at the tender end, I've seen it first-hand, and my point is that the process is nowhere near as competitive as it should be. The fact that nationalisation isn't a potential option for the government means that *someone* has to get the contract at the end of the tender process and it'll always be someone seeking to make profit out of it. There's no real incentive to provide a great service to the end users - whoever is tendering for it only needs to be slightly more competitive than whoever else is tendering in terms of costs or bold promises, and that doesn't necessarily translate to a better service for the end users (which it, so far, hasn't done). I'm not a great fan of capitalism in general, but the competition does mean that there is pressure on enterprises to offer a great service to customers in order to win customers from competitors. By no means does that consistently lead to a great experience for customers, but it's pressure to do so nonetheless. But that pressure cannot exist with trains. And there's no real pressure at the tendering side for them to do so either. With no pressure to do better, why bother being better?

Even when they are so shite that the government steps in, they know the government won't be cutting them off immediately, they still get a good few years to squeeze us, and the contract is just going to be offered up to some other profit-making organisation. So I am 100% all for adding in a government-backed arms-length organisation to the tendering process, and *if* a profit-seeking organisation does get the contract, they're going to have to work much harder to justify why they should be allowed to squeeze profits from a public service. But I think I'd prefer if we just went directly for nationalising them completely and shutting for-profit companies out of the core of the railways. I'm fine for Virgin or whoever to keep running long-distance trains, but my ability to get in to the city shouldn't be reliant on a company that resents the existence of my train station continuing to grit their teeth and operate the line anyway.