4 ms·

> I wonder if the companies are different (greedier?) now No. Stuff like UK rail privatization or US electricity deregulation happened. It's just that today,

by dahauns 10y ago

> I wonder if the companies are different (greedier?) now No. Stuff like UK rail privatization or US electricity deregulation happened. It's just that today, even in die-hard free market countries, people have come to realize that infrastructure and private/for-profit don't mix well most of the time.

dnautics 10y ago
> people have come to realize that infrastructure and private/for-profit don't mix well most of the time. It's too bad. Because singapore, which arguably has the world's best (or maybe second best, after Seoul) public transit system, is basically an entirely privatized system.
- snaily 10y ago
  Wait, what? While the Singapore MRT (subway, metro) system is top-tier (along with Seoul and Hong Kong) it is not a deregulated free market wet dream. The public Land Transport Authority built and still owns most of the assets, and enacts strong regulation for the duopoly of service providers (SBS and SMRT) - not only on service levels, but also on operational processes. Even so, there's awkward UX quirks on the boundaries between lines run by the different companies. If anything, the Singapore MRT runs closer in spirit to a US taxicab system - that is, surprisingly regulated on a global scale.
  - dnautics 10y ago
    You are conflating unregulated with privatized, these are related but totally different concepts.
- sfifs 10y ago
  It's is merely privatized in name. They're basically owned by the government. Shareholding just passed from one government body to another.
  - dnautics 10y ago
    Both comfortdelgro and SMRT are publicly traded companies, hardly "privatized in name". Can you buy shares in BART or Caltrain?
    - sfifs 10y ago
      SMRT is owned (bought out) by Temasek. It's not traded anymore. Even before the privatization, Temasek owned a majority of shareholding http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/majority-of-smrt-shareholders-vote-in-favour-of-rail-asset-sale/3166256.html http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/majority-of-smr... Comfortdelgro is certainly widely owned - but they're into busses and taxi mainly, not infra heavy stuff like subways. For various reasons, Governments will make state owned companies publically traded. That doesn't mean they're not going to toe the government line in decisions if it has majority stake.
      - dnautics 10y ago
        North East Line, Sengkang lines are run by ComfortDelGro. I wasn't aware that SMRT was bought out by the government recently (the last time I rode the MRT, last year, it was still private). It doesn't seem that the buyout was orchestrated as some sort of bailout, especially given that the systems seem to be solvent enough to support at least one for-profit. It, then, remains to be seen if refolding SMRT will result in a net degradation or net improvement in services... This will be an interesting 'control' experiment.
robk 10y ago
UK rail privatization was/is a good thing. UK rail used to be atrocious when it was state run.
- Quarrelsome 10y ago
  are you out of your mind? Go look at the books and tell me the massively subsidised, overpriced, delayed system is value for money. Its mental with constant gouging left, right and centre. You're just using the final years of British Rail when it was intentionally being run into the ground as justification for your political view. The UK STILL has not solved its problem of wrong tracks and seemingly never will, trains are still absurdly expensive compared to cars and the government still ploughs billions of pounds into what is supposed to be a "privatised" system. Its fucked. Our only future transport hope in this country is automated cars.
Zach_the_Lizard 10y ago
In the US, the government took over public transit, usually after making life hell for it, and then proceeded to not adequately fund maintenance. NYC is a great example. In exchange for access, two companies signed contracts with the city that limited prices to $0.05. They built a large portion of the existing lines and made a good chunk of change. But the City wanted to own them, and inflation stepped into the picture decades later. Turns out, a nickel wasn't worth the same anymore and couldn't cover costs. Rather than allow prices to rise, the City bought up the two companies while building a third system (the IND). It also doubled fares after unifying. Hmm.... Then it put out an elected board to vote on fare increases. Guess what the winning stance was? No increase. Eventually the system decayed as the subsidies didn't cover maintenance and deferred maintenance eventually became a major issue. The system today still has 1930s and 50s technology. If anything, the US public transit systems (which had similar stories in other cities) are evidence against American governments running infrastructure. We are underfunding other important pieces of infrastructure from roads to bridges to sewers, so the next few decades should be fun as cheaply built suburbs deal with infrastructure costs rising.
- rmah 10y ago
  I lived in NYC for over a decade. Generally speaking, the train (aka subways) is comprehensive, fast, safe and reliable. While a few parts may be very old, the trains are all relatively new and quite nice. Oh, and fares have increased many many times. Many people always complain when it does. And NYC is still building new subway lines. Construction is underway right now on a new east side line.
- ant6n 10y ago
  The new York subway is used often as an example of how well the private sector can build infrastructure. But really, those two private systems (bmt, irt) where the original PPP. New York city actually backed those systems with municipal loans (bonds), which is a pretty big subsidy - and a setup of "private profits, public losses". In any case, the two private systems are badly designed relative to one another: bad transfers, redundancies. The IND built by the public is overall much better designed. The fact that both the private and public where able to build giant subway systems in the 10s-40s but it all fell apart after, should give some idea that it wasn't anything inherent to being public or private that allowed building it and made it difficult later, but other factors.
zerebubuth 10y ago
I think that a big problem with the UK rail privatisation was that it split a large, badly-run monopoly up into smaller, regional monopolies. Some of which have proved to be just as badly-run. In some ways this seems similar to the breakup of the Bell telephone monopoly. A necessary part of a free market is that consumers have choice. In the franchised UK rail system, there are very few routes on which one can choose between different suppliers. The franchise system also imposes huge barriers to new entrants to the market. Therefore, there is little incentive for companies, having won the franchise, to improve the service more than the minimum necessary. The core infrastructure of the UK rail network is still owned and run by Network Rail, which is publicly owned, so the core inefficiencies remain.
- ant6n 10y ago
  The structure they have now actually does make some sense. Now we have public ownership of infrastructure, but private operation. The infrastructure, a rail network, is inherently a monopolistic affair, and competition is actually inefficient. The private operators compete for the contract to run a franchise for a couple of years. The "choice" is not for the passenger, the choice is for the government to decide which private company to give the franchise, to give access to the infrastructure, and to provide subsidies. The competition basically happens at the bidding level.

by dahauns 10y ago

dnautics 10y ago

> people have come to realize that infrastructure and private/for-profit don't mix well most of the time. It's too bad. Because singapore, which arguably has the world's best (or maybe second best, after Seoul) public transit system, is basically an entirely privatized system.

snaily 10y ago
Wait, what? While the Singapore MRT (subway, metro) system is top-tier (along with Seoul and Hong Kong) it is not a deregulated free market wet dream. The public Land Transport Authority built and still owns most of the assets, and enacts strong regulation for the duopoly of service providers (SBS and SMRT) - not only on service levels, but also on operational processes. Even so, there's awkward UX quirks on the boundaries between lines run by the different companies. If anything, the Singapore MRT runs closer in spirit to a US taxicab system - that is, surprisingly regulated on a global scale.
- dnautics 10y ago
  You are conflating unregulated with privatized, these are related but totally different concepts.
sfifs 10y ago
It's is merely privatized in name. They're basically owned by the government. Shareholding just passed from one government body to another.
- dnautics 10y ago
  Both comfortdelgro and SMRT are publicly traded companies, hardly "privatized in name". Can you buy shares in BART or Caltrain?
  - sfifs 10y ago
    SMRT is owned (bought out) by Temasek. It's not traded anymore. Even before the privatization, Temasek owned a majority of shareholding http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/majority-of-smrt-shareholders-vote-in-favour-of-rail-asset-sale/3166256.html http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/majority-of-smr... Comfortdelgro is certainly widely owned - but they're into busses and taxi mainly, not infra heavy stuff like subways. For various reasons, Governments will make state owned companies publically traded. That doesn't mean they're not going to toe the government line in decisions if it has majority stake.
    - dnautics 10y ago
      North East Line, Sengkang lines are run by ComfortDelGro. I wasn't aware that SMRT was bought out by the government recently (the last time I rode the MRT, last year, it was still private). It doesn't seem that the buyout was orchestrated as some sort of bailout, especially given that the systems seem to be solvent enough to support at least one for-profit. It, then, remains to be seen if refolding SMRT will result in a net degradation or net improvement in services... This will be an interesting 'control' experiment.

robk 10y ago

UK rail privatization was/is a good thing. UK rail used to be atrocious when it was state run.

Quarrelsome 10y ago
are you out of your mind? Go look at the books and tell me the massively subsidised, overpriced, delayed system is value for money. Its mental with constant gouging left, right and centre. You're just using the final years of British Rail when it was intentionally being run into the ground as justification for your political view. The UK STILL has not solved its problem of wrong tracks and seemingly never will, trains are still absurdly expensive compared to cars and the government still ploughs billions of pounds into what is supposed to be a "privatised" system. Its fucked. Our only future transport hope in this country is automated cars.

Zach_the_Lizard 10y ago

In the US, the government took over public transit, usually after making life hell for it, and then proceeded to not adequately fund maintenance. NYC is a great example. In exchange for access, two companies signed contracts with the city that limited prices to $0.05. They built a large portion of the existing lines and made a good chunk of change. But the City wanted to own them, and inflation stepped into the picture decades later. Turns out, a nickel wasn't worth the same anymore and couldn't cover costs. Rather than allow prices to rise, the City bought up the two companies while building a third system (the IND). It also doubled fares after unifying. Hmm.... Then it put out an elected board to vote on fare increases. Guess what the winning stance was? No increase. Eventually the system decayed as the subsidies didn't cover maintenance and deferred maintenance eventually became a major issue. The system today still has 1930s and 50s technology. If anything, the US public transit systems (which had similar stories in other cities) are evidence against American governments running infrastructure. We are underfunding other important pieces of infrastructure from roads to bridges to sewers, so the next few decades should be fun as cheaply built suburbs deal with infrastructure costs rising.

rmah 10y ago
I lived in NYC for over a decade. Generally speaking, the train (aka subways) is comprehensive, fast, safe and reliable. While a few parts may be very old, the trains are all relatively new and quite nice. Oh, and fares have increased many many times. Many people always complain when it does. And NYC is still building new subway lines. Construction is underway right now on a new east side line.
ant6n 10y ago
The new York subway is used often as an example of how well the private sector can build infrastructure. But really, those two private systems (bmt, irt) where the original PPP. New York city actually backed those systems with municipal loans (bonds), which is a pretty big subsidy - and a setup of "private profits, public losses". In any case, the two private systems are badly designed relative to one another: bad transfers, redundancies. The IND built by the public is overall much better designed. The fact that both the private and public where able to build giant subway systems in the 10s-40s but it all fell apart after, should give some idea that it wasn't anything inherent to being public or private that allowed building it and made it difficult later, but other factors.

zerebubuth 10y ago

I think that a big problem with the UK rail privatisation was that it split a large, badly-run monopoly up into smaller, regional monopolies. Some of which have proved to be just as badly-run. In some ways this seems similar to the breakup of the Bell telephone monopoly. A necessary part of a free market is that consumers have choice. In the franchised UK rail system, there are very few routes on which one can choose between different suppliers. The franchise system also imposes huge barriers to new entrants to the market. Therefore, there is little incentive for companies, having won the franchise, to improve the service more than the minimum necessary. The core infrastructure of the UK rail network is still owned and run by Network Rail, which is publicly owned, so the core inefficiencies remain.

ant6n 10y ago
The structure they have now actually does make some sense. Now we have public ownership of infrastructure, but private operation. The infrastructure, a rail network, is inherently a monopolistic affair, and competition is actually inefficient. The private operators compete for the contract to run a franchise for a couple of years. The "choice" is not for the passenger, the choice is for the government to decide which private company to give the franchise, to give access to the infrastructure, and to provide subsidies. The competition basically happens at the bidding level.