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Devil's advocate: the British railways were privatised in the 1990s in such a way that different companies ran the tracks than the trains, and a bunch of differ
by tragic 10y ago
Devil's advocate: the British railways were privatised in the 1990s in such a way that different companies ran the tracks than the trains, and a bunch of different companies ran different trains. I must say that it would probably be better to have some single vertically integrated monopoly running everything, since in reality the government would curb its worst excesses more easily.
- eveningcoffee 10y agoI do not know how it is even slightest relevant here.
- cracell 10y agoHere's saying if you own the whole system you can optimize things to be more efficient than if you have a ton of separation between the people who run the different pieces of the system. So in the this case maybe AT&T having vertical integration is a good thing. Personally I haven't seen any positives for consumers from Comcast buying NBC Universal so I don't see how this would benefit consumers either.
- eveningcoffee 10y agoSorry, but these two systems are incomparable because you just do not run any random train on the railway. If you would like to find something that is comparable, I'll recommend to look for it related to the roads. Try to imagine a situation were single private company owns all the roads (of one region), including all the highways and local roads and has also a bus company.
- raz32dust 10y agoIt could go either way. In the US, everything tends to favor the business and decisions tend to be more capitalistic. I think government interference would be minimal in the US.
- bogomipz 10y agoI am curious why you think that the government could curb its worst excesses more easily as a monopoly when it fails to do so now when its basically a duopoly.
- ekianjo 10y agoThe french SNCf is a good dxample of a vertical integration not working. Constantly bleeding billions of euros of deficit, trains late, strikes on regular basis, this is just the worst.
- anexprogrammer 10y agoThe limited term franchises are a far greater limitation than the unusual organisation, as it near guarantees short-termism over improving capacity or rolling stock. Though I do agree that returning to the earlier regional railways, along with additional mainline and freight train operators, would have been a better way to organise.