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Is there a private train company that has good service, regularly invests and is profitable without government assistance?

• ekianjo 8y ago
  Yup. Numerous private train companies in Japan.
  • xanipher 8y ago
    Most of the Japan railway system was built by the state and privatized later.
    • SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
      Building it isn't the difficult part, keeping it running efficiently is. See: Britain.
      • mcintyre1994 8y ago
        Not too sure what you're getting at, but the only part of Britain's rail network that runs acceptably is TFL which isn't privatised.
      • Lio 8y ago
        Ironically most of the railways in Britain were built independently by private companies then nationalised then privatised again.
    • ekianjo 8y ago
      So what? what is expensive on a daily basis is maintenance and operations. That's the killer.
  • bildung 8y ago
    In Japan the government kept essentially all the companies' debt, and incurred the cost of the 80k employees that were fired. And even now the profitable companies seem to get their profits from shops at the train stations. And from the 6 companies the public railroad was split into, not all are successful: "JR Hokkaido expects to incur a record pretax loss of ¥23.5 billion in the year that ended in March [2017], with the company’s president likening its loss-making business structure — due to loss of passengers caused by falling local populations and the expansion of expressway networks — to “a bucket with holes in the bottom." https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2017/04/04/editorials/privatization-jnr-30-years/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2017/04/04/editorials/p...
    • ekianjo 8y ago
      Of course, you can't have successful train operations in low density areas. Hokkaido, Shikoku, and the extreme west of japan is doomed in that regard. I don't even know how you could expect things to turn differently. But in Tokyo, and Kansai, the private train companies are doing very well.
      • bildung 8y ago
        But that's the point - the profitable tracks were probably profitable before privatization, too (no idea about Japan, but it was the case in Germany). Service in low density areas is the crux of the matter: railroad is a necessary infrastructure there, and if a nation wants to keep quality of life high in these areas, the tracks have to be operated at a loss. It's the same with postal services, broadband access and similar infrastructure. Of course a society as a whole can decide to stop subsidizing these low density areas, but that discussion is largely orthogonal to the privatization topic.
        • chmod775 8y ago
          So much this. On top of that, railroads (the actual rails and public transport lines) also tend to be a somewhat natural monopoly, so even the high profit lines veer towards minimal service and maximal price.
          • ekianjo 8y ago
            Completely wrong about the monopoly part. In the US most of the road tracks were created and driven by private companies. And they were competing on destinations and cost. In Japan right now there are multiple lines that you could take to reach the same destination so there is actually a lot of competition going on.
            • chmod775 8y ago
              There's a limit on the amount of subway lines you can squeeze under a city. Nobody is going to run a parallel lines. The most a government can do is figure out beforehand which private company would build and run those cheapest for a certain line, but then you end up with the cheapest solution again, which is not the solution you actually want for infrastructure your economy depends upon. Also, as the parent pointed out, Japan is a good example for why private companies by themselves aren't enough to run infrastructure like that, since you still need it even if they are unprofitable. And so they need government subsidies. You end up with a company paid for by the tax payer - as if it was nationalized - but with much less control by the government. Basically a money sink that isn't accountable to the tax payer. We have that in Berlin after the public transport was privatized. Can't recommend.