Which is odd, because most other businesses are constantly changing their prices but we don’t get anything like the fuss when they happen to put some of those prices up.

The reason, of course, is government.  In Britain the government regulates a certain number of fares, usually on the busy London commuter routes.  Or, to put it another way, in Britain the government uses violence and the threat of violence to regulate fares.  It is in January that the government allows rail companies to increase their fares in line with inflation plus or minus a small percentage.

Not only is this practice wrong but it also distorts the market leading to overcrowding (see A generic piece on overcrowding).  It also deprives rail companies of the sort of price signals they need to run their businesses successfully.  Because they don’t know how much people are genuinely prepared to pay for a seat, against how much they are prepared to pay to stand, companies don’t know what sort of mix of seating and standing they should be providing.  Nor do they know how many trains they should run and whether increasing the number of trains would justify the cost of, for instance, new signalling. 

Worse still, while allowing rail companies to charge something nearer the market rate is a step in the right direction so long as regulation and the threat of regulation exists, companies are unable to plan for the future.

So, you would allow train companies to charge whatever they like?
Yes.

But wouldn’t they charge the earth?  And when they do wouldn’t that mean that lots of people could no longer afford to get to work and end up unemployed?
What we have here is a conflict between the short term and the long term.  The advantages of market prices will for the most part only be seen in the long-term while the disadvantages (higher prices) will be seen almost instantly. 

One of the sad things is that we don’t know how severe the short term pain is likely to be.  It might indeed lead to the doomsday scenario but equally other things might happen.  For instance, in many cases employers may find that they don’t need all their employees to show up on the dot at 9 o’clock in the morning.  So, it may be possible for many of them to travel off-peak.  Equally, many rail companies may take the view that the profit-maximizing price isn’t that much higher than it is at the moment or that a better way to gain goodwill would be to approach it at only a slow pace, say 20% a year or so.

What sort of long-term gain do you see?
It is difficult to gaze into the future.  That’s one of the weaknesses being in favour of freedom.  You can’t predict with any certainty what will happen.  For instance, it may be the case that something comes along which replaces railways for good.

I could speculate on rail companies running longer trains or double-deck trains or having different classes of carriage: guaranteed seat, standing-room only etc or introducing seats that are locked out of use at peak hours, but I really have no idea what would happen.  All I can be sure about is that it is likely to be a lot better than the situation that we have at the moment.

Notes for the next version

“Outrage”.  We need a better explanation as to why.  I think a lot of it is to do with fear: “I’ve got my job, bought my house and if the fares go up too much one of them is going to have to go.  Hey, I could even end up destitute.” Hmm, actually that’s the fear of fare freedom.  The outrage at a rise is different.

We need something on the history of this.  Before 1940 there was almost no fare regulation at all.  Things seemed to work fine.  Certainly, there was nothing like the outrage we get these days.  OK, there were some problems immediately after the First World War with delays and overcrowding.  I’ve heard the explanation that this was to do with the introduction of an eight-hour day but I would like to get to the bottom of this.

“Not only is this practice wrong...” Weak.  What I want to get across is that the government is using violence and violence is wrong.  I want to point out the inherent niceness of freedom.

Price signals.  Too technical.  I think we need to imagine a situation where price signals would have an impact and avoid using the term entirely.

Could do with a piccie as well.

Actually, I’m not even sure this is the right article.  “A generic piece of fares” might be more appropriate.

As President Raul Castro agrees to allow people to buy and sell cars in Cuba, there are concerns the move could spell the beginning of the end for many of the island’s classic American cars.

This sent flecks of spittle flying around me, but the text does not actually appear on the BBC site I wonder where it came from. Although Michael Voss sounds a bit sad, he does point out that Cubans will be glad to see the back of these cars. One man inherited a car from his father, but would rather have the money to start a business. Well, that’s kind of the point of free markets right there: you can swap stuff you don’t want for stuff you do.

When I heard that news I started thinking about what advice I would give (fantasising that I might ever be asked).

I started coming up with a long list of sensible things like: ending the wheel/rail split, liberating fares, tearing up the Transatlantic air treaties, privatising the road network etc.

But then it occurred to me that what I am doing here is suggesting ways of making the world a better place.  That is not necessarily what politicians want.  What politicians want is to keep their jobs, be popular and climb the greasy pole.  In that case what you really want to be doing, as Ernest Benn said is to be: “...looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy”

Fortunately, for Justine, most of the non-existent troubles already have plenty of wrong remedies.  Hence, we have CrossRail and HST2 and fare control.  About the only good solution is the proposal to raise the motorway speed limit to 80mph.  That is likely to be hugely popular even if (much to my annoyance) it comes from the EU.  Get your paws all over that one, Justine.

“But what about the economic crisis?”, I hear you say.  That’s the wonderful thing.  The Secretary of State can almost completely ignore it.  Sure, one day it will happen and it will happen to the Department of Transport good and hard.  HST will be cancelled, CrossRail will be abandoned, fares will go up.  It may even be so bad that the government sells the motorways to get it through the week.  But when that happens it becomes oh-so easy for a Secretary of State for Transport to say: “Oh dear, unexpected economic conditions, no money, nothing I can do etc, etc.”

So, just from a political standpoint (putting prosperity, wealth generation and morality to one side for the time being) I see no reason why Justine Greening shouldn’t promise the earth.

What has she got to lose?

Some overcrowding

The reason for this is simple enough: plain ordinary supply and demand.  Normally prices adjust so that supply and demand are in balance.  But when fares are artificially held down by the government - as they are in London - supply falls and demand increases.  In this case it means less space and more passengers and thus, overcrowding.

[As an aside. I always find it funny how the same people who condemn high fares also condemn overcrowding which is a direct result of low fares.]

There is also an issue with investment.  Even if the incentives lined up there would be a problem.  Train operating companies (last time I looked) typically have a government-mandated franchise period of about 7 years.  But trains take 20 years to justify the investment so it makes no sense for operators to buy longer trains - let alone build the longer platforms needed to accommodate them. [Not that they could given that these are owned by Network Rail.]

Now the overcrowding situation in Tokyo is far from perfect but if I had to be overcrowded I would be overcrowded in Tokyo.  There is more standing room so you are more likely to be able to stand up straight and there are more doors per carriage so it’s easier to get out.  And if you are extraordinarily lucky and manage to get a seat it is at least comfortable.  I can’t help but think that this is due to Japan’s rather more sensible private railway system in which operators own both the trains and the track and can do more or less what the like with them.  [Except, incidentally, when it comes to fares which like London are held down.  Hence the overcrowding.]

Isn’t all this just a case for state ownership?
We tried that.  It was called British Rail and there was plenty of overcrowding there too.

Why was overcrowding so bad on British Rail?
Because politicians liked keeping fares down but disliked shelling out for new rolling stock.

But if fares were free wouldn’t the train companies put them up sky high?
I don’t know what would happen initially.  When markets are introduced overnight all sorts of funny things happen because the price signals aren’t in place.  It takes a while for things to adjust and (in this case) for train companies to work out just what their customers really want.  What you have is a choice between short-term pain and long-term gain or short-term gain and long-term pain.  There is no short-term gain, long-term gain option to my knowledge.  [Writing this I am reminded of Brian Micklethwait’s quest for examples of where freedom makes things better overnight.  Not here I’m afraid, Brian.]

It is worth remembering that in the days when fares were freer (before nationalisation) although people grumbled (particularly about freight rates - but that’s another story) it wasn’t that big an issue.

Isn’t it pretty obvious what people want? What they want is a seat.
Is that true?  Sure they want a seat but how much do they want it?  Let’s face it on many lines in London you can get a seat if you are prepared to pay the First Class fare.  But how many people are prepared to do that?  The truth is that people are prepared to forgo the comfort if it means saving some money.

For what it’s worth, my guess is that given enough freedom and enough time things will work out for the better for just about everybody.  Some companies will change their working hours for some staff encouraging them to travel outside the peak.  Train companies will have a variety of classes ranging from luxury to standing-only depending on what people are prepared to pay.  And standing will be nicer.  One of the worst aspects of standing in London is that you can never stand up straight.  You’re always standing at a slightly contorted angle.  Usually because you are bang next to a seat.

But I think you would also find that train companies would invest heavily on routes people wanted to use.  They would lengthen trains and platforms and improve headways and remove bottlenecks.

Flying 101 livery

This Way Up livery

Snopes has a video of their quirky pre-takeoff announcement. Novel at first, but possibly annoying if you fly with them all the time. I do like the liveries, though. The side of a plane is an interesting canvas, it’s nice to see some imagination used to paint it.

I think Emirates first class wins on bling factor alone. The features sound nice, too:

Enclosed suites afford passengers in first class a high degree of privacy. The suites feature sliding doors, a personal mini-bar, wardrobe and a 23-inch wide viewing monitor. The seats recline to form a fully flat bed. A divider that separates adjoining suites can be lowered for passengers traveling together. Like business passengers, first-class fliers have access to an exclusive lounge.

Here is the relevant bit of google maps.  Zoom in a couple of times in the middle of that, and you will see the area I’m talking about.  You will see it even better if you click on “satellite”, which I have only recently learned to do.  Do that and you can see actual railway lines and actual airplanes.

My most recent wanderings around there saw me trying to find a path beside the river, starting at the north end of the Woolwich Ferry, going west.  I didn’t get very far.  I soon came upon industrial estates and jetties sticking out, places where actual work was being done, and actual transport, on the river.  (A surprising amount of freight still seems to move up and down the river these days, in among all the more eye catching and frequent pleasure boats.) In the industrial estates pedestrians are not encouraged, although I did venture into one of them, until I got to a wall and had to turn around and go back.  As for the jetties, random pedestrians can’t get anywhere near the river near them.  Basically the Thames footpath stops.

On an earlier expedition, I had started at the same point, north end of Woolwich Ferry, and travelled East.  For a while, fine, there was a rather nice park right next to the river.  But then it again stopped.  There does seem to be an aspiration to have a continuous Thames Path in that part of London, on the north of the river as well as the south (which already has such a path), just as there is everywhere else.  But it is taking a very long to time to join up in that particular part of London.  At present the path there exists only in rather forlorn and run-down little fragments.

So, anyway, on this most recent trip going west along the river, frustrated by industry, I turned right, northwards, back towards the docks and the airplanes.  And I bumped into Crossrail.

It’s pretty hard working out where all the various railways in that part of London go, just as footpaths are also hard to identify.  Maps are not always helpful, often showing stations but not the lines between them, especially if they are in tunnels.  (Although, as I have only just now discovered, if you click on “Public transport” in Google Maps, then things like underground railways become a lot clearer.  (No, scrub that.  It doesn’t become clearer, because the blue line calling itself the Docklands Light Railway does not appear where the DLR physically is.  It merely connects the stations, like a crow flying between them.  There are separate graphics, sometimes but not always, for where the railway actually is.  Very confusing.))

Basically, there are two branches of the Docklands Light Railway, one going north of the docks, and one to the south of them and then under the river to the Woolwich Arsenal.  Plus, there is also a defunct regular railway line, that starts off on the north side of the docks, but then goes under them, and then goes along the middle of a long straight boulevard called variously (depending which side of the boulevard you are on), Connaught Road, Factory Road and Albert Road, between the docks and the river, just south of the southern branch of the DLR, and then it too disappears into a defunct tunnel that goes under the river to the south.

However this defunct railway and its defunct tunnel will soon both be funct again, because Crossrail will be making use of it.  At present, the line is a charming rural wilderness trail, fenced off, and dividing the Connaught Factory Albert boulevard down the middle.  So make up your mind good and early which side of the Connaught Factory Albert bourlevard you need to be on.

But although this means that although Crossrail will be going within a couple of hundred yards of the City Airport, which is right in among the docks to the north of where Crossrail will be, there are not now any plans for the trains to stop at this spot.  It will stop at the top left of the docks, as it were, at a station called Customs House, nearly half a mile’s walk to the airport, and it will stop on the other side of the river, but, so far as I can work out from the www, not near to City Airport.

There already is a Docklands Light Railway stop at City Airport, on the southern bit of it.  However, the DLR is, for users of City Airport, very slow and frustrating.  It takes an age to trundle its toy train way, stopping at every little stop on the way, from real London out to these docklands, which are beyond even the regular Docklands that people mean when they say that.  I imagine most users of City Airport arrive by car, typically driven by someone else.

The relationship between City Airport and Crossrail seems to have been quite acrimonious (sorry I read this on the www recently but I forget where).  The impression I get is that Crossrail is perceived by City Airport almost as a bug rather than a feature, which seems a bit strange.  It’s as if Crossrail is threatening to flood City Airport with Ryanair plebs, rather than the genteel taxi-delivered suits it now caters to.

Or, maybe all this Crossrail activity is driving up local land prices and threatening to complicate various expansion plans that City Airport has.  City Airport is certainly very busy.  Airplanes land or take off there pretty much continuously.  So I guess they figure that getting yet more people to their airport is not their problem.  Their problem is making their airport shift more people to and from the air.

I have lots of photos of this part of London that I have taken on my various trips.  I hope to post some of these at my personal blog in the nearish future, but promise nothing.  If any such snaps do materialise, I will put a link to them here.

To add insult to injury, there is a new rule that you must have insurance unless your vehicle is declared SORN, even if you are not using it on the road. It so happens that my insurance expires tomorrow but I have no plans to use the bike for a few weeks. I don’t want to pay for insurance I don’t need, and if I do SORN the bike in the middle of the month I won’t get the full refund. Perhaps more importantly, I don’t have time to research insurance quotes and I don’t have time to visit the Post Office for SORNing and re-taxing.

Politicians and bureaucrats do not consider the full costs of their interference in people’s lives.