So have we all agreed that when Mintball said on Page 7 'That is a monopoly' she was right

Why would increasing revenues, profit, and offering a more frequent and efficient service be limited to just a private operator though - why can't the right management run a public service company for profit - why does the word "public" always equate to non-profit making ?

How is East Coast Mainline making more profit on their franchise than their private predecessors ever did (or didn't) - its simply because a management team has been put in place with incentives to bring the business back into profit and prove to the private operators that the route is worth bidding for with an eye to re-sale within the next one to two years.

There is no reason why similar management incentives cannot be applied to a publically owned franchise without an eye on a future sale - incentivise all the employees to perform against easily described targets and they will.

Whether a business operates efficiently depends on the management structures put in place. Bad management results in an inefficient business whether it be public or private sector.

It should also be noted that there are other influences to why people take the train e.g. can't drive, can't afford insurance, can't afford fuel, can't afford car, lack of parking etc.

In addition, the government needs to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels due to their depletion (and thus increased price) and the impact of the Kyoto agreement. Rail travel instead of car travel addresses all these issues to some extent. For the population to buy into this rail travel needs to be cheap, reliable, be integrated with appropriate gaps between changes at stations and also be integrated with local tram and bus services. This is nigh on impossible at the moment as too many different companies with conflicting interests make up our public transport system at the moment.

A monopoly on rail services on a particular route, yes. A monopoly on transportation along a specific route, far from it.

It always sounds ok, but rarely seems to work though does it.

Then there is the wider discussion of how much of our life should be provided by the state, and how much left to private enterprise.

TBH, I was quite suprised to find trains in the north, and most of the south east run on diesel, rather than electric. Suprised, and then amazed that the gov put such a push on getting people away from petrol and diesel cars yet we still have so much of our rail service that isn't electrified.

We've even got them in Scotland now...

So, if you didn't own a car, there is always the option to walk or cycle your journey. Or you could buy a car, tax & insure it and then find somewhere to park in Central London and pay for that privilege. That really does sound like consumer choice to me

Its working for East Coast, thats all you need to say, whatever the business plan was for East Coast, is working when a privately owned shareholder funded corporation couldn't make a profit let alone satisfy its shareholders.

I don't want to live in a communist state (theres already too many Americans who think we do just that) but there are some things that need to be managed by public ownership, "Managed" is the operative word for managed is what many public services were not in the bad old days of public ownership that people point back to and criticise, if a service was poor, dirty, lacking in customer care, under funded, and did not provide an adequate level of what it was supposed to be providing, then that is bad management, nothign more.

If you had specically chosen not to own a car, then you are indeed limiting your options and opportunities.

Back to the wider scheme though, you could take a bus or a coach. Or you could "park and ride" or you could use some combination of services. If we're specifically talking about London, then many drive/walk/cycle/bus part way or to a particular point before taking a bus/train/tube into London. That sounds like consumer choice to me.

TBH, there's probably a right mid-way point. At one end you have complete private ownership and opportunity (so no franchises, operators just put trains on when they want) through franchises with specified operating conditions, a variety of levels of gov control, all the way over to state ran services at the other end.
I would say that the infrastructure (lines and stations) needs something different to the actual train service provider. Just in the same way that roads aren't controlled by the bus companies.

Rail infrastructure has, since privatisation, always been in the hands of a separate provider. Unfortunately the privately owned provider was so pi[is[/is-poor at operating and managing that service (including being responsible for a number of deaths), that the state had to relieve them of their responsibilities and take it back into public ownership.