Scotrail Loses Franchise And Dutch Company Takes Over What Do People Think

[gordiescotland1]

What do people think of this any experiences of Scottish railways or dutch railways?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-29531099

[mikey4444]

My solution would be to take all our railways back into public ownership although I don't expect this view to popular here on AB.

I can't see the point in giving away tens of millions of pounds each year, in taxpayers subsidies, to the shareholders of privately owned but publicly-used infrastructure concerns.

Flipping heck.... we will be privatising water next ( Of...I forgot...that con has already been committed ! )

[janbee]

Mikey, I'm with you on that. 100%

[mikey4444]

Nice to know there are two us at least janbee !

[janbee]

Should NEVER have been sold off. 100% immoral and disgraceful.

[mushroom25]

it's not the dutch railways that you'd need to compare the current scotrail operation with but Abellio, the particular entity that has won the bid. they currently run trains in east Anglia - just google "Abellio Greater Anglia" for all sorts of tales of woe from users.

[mikey4444]

Keep going janbee...I am enjoying this ! All our Tory voters must still be at lunch !

[Buenchico]

Abellio run our local rail franchise (Abellio Greater Anglia). I believe that most rail users around here would say that 'the jury is still out' on their level of service but they do seem to have already achieved considerable improvements on what National Express did before them. Further, they seem better at publicly challenging Network Rail about how they manage the infrastructure.

[Buenchico]

>>>just google "Abellio Greater Anglia" for all sorts of tales of woe from users

There have, indeed, been plenty of problems with rail services around here since Abellio took over but the vast majority of them have actually not been the fault of the train operator.

For example, there have been lots of problems with weekend engineering works over-running, resulting in the start of mainline services being delayed for several hours on Mondays (or, in one case, the entire Monday schedule being cancelled) but that's the fault of Network Rail, not Abellio Greater Anglia.