Losing Track: 10. Whose Loss? (Channel 4, 1984)

[@Zentron]

37 years on, this ep is still relevant!

[@Kiinell]

Great documentary. Nostalgic and very informative. Thanks very much Stablestaple.

[@soundnicetome]

Remember watching this with interest way back in the 80s...a superb transport documentary,never thought I would see this again ..thanks for posting. Like others have said would love to obtain a copy of this doc somehow..please try and obtain more of the series on YT..keep it coming ??

[@cdgh99]

"computers will allow people to shop and work from home" "the computer could create a new class of home worker, poorly paid and isolated" Not an inaccurate prediction

[@manusmacgearailt667]

This is so relevant now, we hear people saying that the pandemic marks the end of commuting - I actually kind of miss the journey to school now.

[@stevieinselby]

Now step forward to 2022...

[@sr7791]

@@stevieinselby the job can be done at home,the next step will be the employer saying “it doesn’t have be your home but a home in India or China”this will be for a fraction of the cost and as long as the person in these countries can use a computer and speak English it will be very easy to do,we’ve already seen it with manufacturing,the U.K. home worker will join the U.K. factory worker on the dole queue

[@I7275-p2d]

@@sr7791that’s a very good point and one not widely considered I feel.

[@anthonydavies5248]

The death of public transport really did leave you screwed without a car...

[@stablestaple]

You're very welcome - let's hope the other episodes surface in some form in the near future. Cheers.

[@soundnicetome]

A superb documentary,thank you for posting these parts. `Beeching`...dont even go there??

[@StuartVallantine]

On watching all ten episodes you should come to the conclusion that the Conservative Party has never been, nor ever will be a true advocate of public transport policy in the UK. Once we get into our heads that the free market approach to our buses and trains have failed, we might get somewhere. Just look at the state of buses outside London. Or the differences between Northern's trains and those operated by Thameslink and Southeastern (who attracted some critics in the South East of England). The people of Greater Manchester and other Metropolitan areas have known this since bus deregulation. Since this series, bus patronage has fallen to 195 million in TfGM (Transport for Greater Manchester) boundaries. The prophecy of fewer buses and higher fares came true - albeit under the 1985 Transport Act which they claim led to increased competition outside London. Though bus franchising would be a welcome step in Greater Manchester, public ownership - i.e. the return of Greater Manchester Transport or municipal operators - would make our buses a true public service again. Public control and public ownership would offer the best of both worlds. A fantastic series with a sound warning of what we later received on the 26 October 1986 and thereafter.

[@foamdataservices]

And here we are, over 30 years later and outside London there STILL isn’t an integrated or adequately funded public transport service and the countryside is even WORSE off as local authorities can’t even afford to repair potholes on major routes, never mind expanding bus services on unprofitable small town and village routes.

[@richardwestwell4902]

At 3:59 the real culprit of the destruction of the railway network. Look at the sign "Marples" a road construction company owned by the Minister of Transport Ernst Marples who commissioned the Beeching report. He actually transferred the company into his wife's name to try and avoid "conflict of interest". It was only many years later it became apparent what a complete disaster the closing of many railway lines meant for Britain as finally government realised you cannot build your way out of road congestion.

[@CMD_Line]

Still the same public transport issues today. Interesting they still faced the same wider issues too. The electric bikes, roads, pollution and working from home. We have come far. 🤔

[@allgoo1964]

Big majority of cars coming into inner cities are used only twice a day. Once in the morning and another in the afternoon to go home. The rest of day, they just sit and taking up a space.

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

allgoo19 thats called progress :)

[@Westhamsterdam]

The average life a car being used is just 4% - 6%, 96% of a car´s life is spent parked!

[@sr7791]

@@Westhamsterdam that makes car travel the most costly and least economical form of transport

[@chrisbell5920]

This programme is 36 years old, yet the issues it raises and the problems it highlights have not improved at all. Nothing has changed for the better. Nothing. Then they offer us bread and circuses with the White Elephant that is HS2, promising that if I can get to Birmingham ten minutes sooner my life will be fantastic and all my rural isolation problems will be over. No, they won't. Spend the £80+ billion on upgrading current railway infrastructure, operate the railways as a public service rather than a cash cow for shareholders and DO AWAY WITH THE FRANCHISE SYSTEM.

[@None-zc5vg]

They've handed public services and utilities to crooks.

[@vincitveritas3872]

Think franchise system has gone now. A positive from Covid 19..

[@AlasdairMacCaluim]

HS2 is about releasing capacity on the classic network. It is very much needed.

[@peterbradshaw8018]

Can someone tell me why the Euston Arch was demolished? Crazy!

[@mikewa2]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/g3K5dn6cg8uphaM

[@Keithbarber]

At about 13:30 - they were right about computers And a lot of investment in making cycling safer has happened I've not had a car since 1997, and my pushbike costs circa £2.50 a week on repairs and maintenance, and fuel bill is £0.00

[@mikewatt8706]

And you suck fumes deep into your body

[@Ponchoed]

No worries, thanks so much for posting these great videos!!

[@PeaveyPV20]

Theres been a few stations and even lines reopened since this was made so progress is been made, but to be honest even in areas with good public transport i still know very few people without a car, could have a bus or train that takes folk to work every 10 minutes and they would still not give up there cars, folk are more anti social these days and keep cars as a status symbol

[@MrAlitrab]

@3:18 there is a THEORY that in the future computers will allow people to shop from home!! If only they could of seen the present day future then!

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

MrAlitrab but did it lower the amount of cars on the road though..

[@syedadeelhussain2691]

Excellent series for someone doing a degree in Transportation Economics.

[@srfurley]

There was a book published to go with this series; it may be possible to find a secondhand copy somewhere.

[@steveluckhurst2350]

Gill Akers 12:30 is a typical example who move to the country and wonder why it's not like the town!

[@Ponchoed]

Any chance you have any of the other videos in this 10-part series besides this, Beeching and Nationalisation? 1 Speed 2 Company and Nation 3 Nationalisation 4 Modernisation 5 Beeching 6 Tram Towns 7 Cars and Concrete 8 Capital City 9 Limited Change 10 Whose Loss?

[@bobtudbury8505]

how about beeching and the labour party who actually closed the lines, beeching produced a report, labour closed the lines and more on top of beechings report

[@sutherlandA1]

Boggles the mind that the Europeans and japanese were developing electric high speed bullet trains while the uk were still using steam and introducing diesel

[@MrSvenovitch]

haha electric bikes, even in 1985

[@matternoddy]

2022 not much change since this film was made regarding public transport.

[@bretwaldablahblahblah3578]

fred west was an e-bike pioneer @14:44 amazing

[@dougalmcdougal8682]

This documentary is almost 40 year old … Bit foresaw . E bikes Computer and working from home And the general demise of public transport in the UK This team should be knighted

[@richardadkins6998]

A lot of the predictions 30+ years on have become true, especially about bus and railways. What a stupid country this really is.

[@None-zc5vg]

It's no stupid to the people and interests controlling the political system.

[@Mork2001]

Jim Hacker should have been the Transport Supremo !

[@storiesfromdifferenteras]

3:20 unlimited pleasure is a lie

[@heathcliffearnshaw1403]

What insanity. And it could have been so different , and better and not this ugliness. But that would have required a benevolent dictatorship , the unbenevolent variant of which we have already arrived at anyway in 2019.

[@clemensschlage2243]

and nothing really changed

[@stablestaple]

Wished I did. Sorry.

[@allgoo1964]

Subsidize the bicycle industry. Give away free bicycles. More gas tax(raise vehicle registration tax, driver's license fee etc.) for building the new bicycle road. And top priority. Stop the automobile subsidies, stop giving away the free roads and gas subsidy. Make the new road and maintenance only with the money the drivers are wiling to pay.

[@Chasworth]

Silly

[@deep_dive6699]

The counter point to the lack of public transport in rural areas is that: 1: Cars in rural areas allowed far greater mobility than the limited number of choices public transport allowed even before the beaching axe. 2: Public transport in rural areas is uneconomic due to high fixed costs and low ridership. 3: Public transport is less environmentally friendly when operated at low ridership. 4: Public transport did not become more uneconomic due to cars but due to improvements in the efficiency of the general economy making wage labour generally more expensive. It thus became cheaper to invest in a personal capital expense (a car) that it did to pay somebody to buy a piece of capital equipment (a train and railway, both not volume production so becoming progressively more expensive than a car) and pay someone to operate it.

[@trainrover]

Really queer that the producer approved the Detroit Diesel engine-sounding audio sample, clip to that county bus departing the kerb, 21'18"→21'27" . . .

[@TheWacoKid1963]

That's the true sound of a Bristol RE Have a listen to this one kzbin.info/www/bejne/pYPCfo16bdKobK8

[@Bradonomous]

Trains good. Cars bad. I just saved you 5 hours.

[@deep_dive6699]

As I progress through this video it becomes more obvious that this is a piece of Transport 2000 propaganda. "The countryside is rapidly disappearing under roads". Actually the UK has a very low density of trunk roads by European standards, they take up relatively little space and arguably the environmental impact of motorway embankments are a net positive Vs monoculture farming. The countryside will look full of roads if the method you choose to view it is either from roads themselves or on OS maps. Look on Google earth and roads are barely visible.

[@StuAnderson90]

woah hang on.... a thousand millions pounds? that sounds like a 7 year old wrote that who has no concept of a real number... isn't a thousand million pounds £11m or a billion pounds... why carn't they speak in proper english with proper figures not stuff made up by a child

[@olly5764]

No, a Thousand Million is correct, as while this is the American Billion, a British Billion is a Million Million, so a thousand Million, Ten thousand Million, Nine hundred and Ninety Nine Thousand Million are all correct

[@deep_dive6699]

olly5764 that was partially true at the time, in practice the "American billion" is the defacto billion today and was pretty easily understood at the time.

[@brunoignaciogi]

but that makes problems with spanish speakers that still use the 9 digit thousand million and the 12 digit billion.

[@janicepinola3871]

Do you understand what pedantic bell-end means? Incidentally, if you are going to critique in this way, maybe check your own spelling (carn't) and syntax.

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

Stu The man bobody knew what a billion was back then. You know, inflation.

[@Area51UFOGynaecology]

propaganda?

[@deep_dive6699]

Documentary makers are cherry picking statistics, "many people believe that cars are the most important form of transport" how about cars deliver 85% of public passenger miles! Cars allowed a massive increase in personal mobility, with massive increases in economic development. It was never the case that people used to go everywhere by public transport and then cars came along and ruined it, most car journeys were new journeys. Even in the 80's at the lowest point of public transport ridership of rail was 50% of what it was at the peak, today it is about the same as peak. It would be basically impossible to replicate the mobility achieved by the road system by public transport (currently available modes). It is a shame that pro public transport seems also to be anti car (well anti other people's usage of cars!) The solution to the negatives of cars will be autonomous cars, E-VTOL, electric bikes, not a return to outdated public transport.

[@janicepinola3871]

Talk about cherry picking statistics! " cars deliver 85% of public passenger miles" Well no shit! Now. If trams were as prevalent as they once were, what do you think that figure would be. Had they not been systematically bought up and dismantled by the automobile and oil interests while the govt watched, this would not be the case. Obviously cars are the dominant form of transport in places where the populace has been left with NO OTHER OPTION! Stupid!

[@sr7791]

You must be a car sh@gger