4 ms·

This is the explanation that makes the most sense to me. I'm not sure what the fix is - having multiple companies sharing the same track seem dubious but maybe

This is the explanation that makes the most sense to me. I'm not sure what the fix is - having multiple companies sharing the same track seem dubious but maybe that's answer. Either that or let a bunch of companies put down redundant lines.

vanderZwan 7y ago
EU intervention. It worked for getting rid of roaming prices for mobile phone carriers in Europe, and that also requires cooperation between different carriers. Why wouldn't something like that be possible for rail?
- thu2111 7y ago
  EU intervention solves nothing. Forcing roaming prices down just pushed up other tariffs, which didn't matter to the Commission because their ideological goal is to unify Europe into a single country, not get people the best mobile deals. It was only possible at all because the phone industry already built all the infrastructure for roaming on it's own. The problem is lack of demand. The article posits there is huge untapped demand for night trains but there isn't. Rail companies can and do run services on each others tracks but rail lines are frequently at capacity, timetabling wise, so it's not always easy to just drop in and run extra trains in the same way many airports have free slots for extra planes. And of course airlines are still mostly national too. Indeed it's best kept away from the EU. It has a habit of suspending transport and trading rights as part of unrelated political disputes with its neighbors in order to pressure them to obey Brussels. If you want train connections to be mysteriously severed because of some dispute with the UK or Switzerland over fishing or trade unions then asking the EU to organise it is the right way to go. If you'd like train timetables to be set taking into account what the railways can do, leave it to the private sector and get governments out of the way.
  - vanderZwan 7y ago
    > Forcing roaming prices down just pushed up other tariffs I pay less than twenty euros a month for 10 GiB of data throughout all of Europe. What are you talking about?
    - thu2111 7y ago
      The phone companies lost a lot of money when roaming tariffs were forced down and that was reflected in tariffs for the majority of people who never roam. There are studies about this. Did you think that in the relatively competitive mobile market price controls can be enforced with no impact at all? It was a form of wealth transfer from the poor to the rich.
      - vanderZwan 7y ago
        > The phone companies lost a lot of money when roaming tariffs were forced down and that was reflected in tariffs for the majority of people who never roam. There are studies about this. Then show those studies, because as I'm pointing out, my "tarifs" have not increased in the slightest.
        thu2111 7y ago
        There's some discussion on Wikipedia! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_roaming_regulations#Consequences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_roaming_regulat... In Norway, prices increased by 66% when RLAH was introduced.[20] The same argument was being used by Danish operators. In Denmark several operators increased monthly subscription prices by 10–20 DKK.[21] Swedish operator Comviq removed roaming services on its plan “Fastpris mini” 15 June 2017.[22] The operator Hallon is doing the same to its smallest plan “LITEN” starting 1 October 2017.[23] In Denmark, operator Telmore introduced "TELMORE Home" without roaming services, even when travelling to countries outside the EEA.[24] Vodafone UK introduced "UK-only plans" that disallow roaming altogether.[25] This is possible because, while the Regulation disallows operators from charging extra for roaming when available, it does not force them to make roaming available in the first place. Of course, price rises are very unpopular. History gives us lots of experience of price controls to draw on. The effects of price controls are often subtle and hard to anticipate. For instance, unavailability of new services for which the investment can no longer be justified, cutting R&D budgets, elimination of services to some customer segments entirely and so on. If you look at KPN in the Netherlands, the cost of the price controls is estimated at being 100M euros or more. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/nl/Documents/technology-media-telecommunications/deloitte-nl-next-roaming-strategy.pdf https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/nl/Documents/... Their yearly net profit in 2018 was about 292M euro. So price controls aren't enough to cripple these businesses, they can absorb the hit. But obviously forcing people to spend money on something isn't free, even if the effects are obfuscated.

vanderZwan 7y ago

EU intervention. It worked for getting rid of roaming prices for mobile phone carriers in Europe, and that also requires cooperation between different carriers. Why wouldn't something like that be possible for rail?

thu2111 7y ago
EU intervention solves nothing. Forcing roaming prices down just pushed up other tariffs, which didn't matter to the Commission because their ideological goal is to unify Europe into a single country, not get people the best mobile deals. It was only possible at all because the phone industry already built all the infrastructure for roaming on it's own. The problem is lack of demand. The article posits there is huge untapped demand for night trains but there isn't. Rail companies can and do run services on each others tracks but rail lines are frequently at capacity, timetabling wise, so it's not always easy to just drop in and run extra trains in the same way many airports have free slots for extra planes. And of course airlines are still mostly national too. Indeed it's best kept away from the EU. It has a habit of suspending transport and trading rights as part of unrelated political disputes with its neighbors in order to pressure them to obey Brussels. If you want train connections to be mysteriously severed because of some dispute with the UK or Switzerland over fishing or trade unions then asking the EU to organise it is the right way to go. If you'd like train timetables to be set taking into account what the railways can do, leave it to the private sector and get governments out of the way.
- vanderZwan 7y ago
  > Forcing roaming prices down just pushed up other tariffs I pay less than twenty euros a month for 10 GiB of data throughout all of Europe. What are you talking about?
  - thu2111 7y ago
    The phone companies lost a lot of money when roaming tariffs were forced down and that was reflected in tariffs for the majority of people who never roam. There are studies about this. Did you think that in the relatively competitive mobile market price controls can be enforced with no impact at all? It was a form of wealth transfer from the poor to the rich.
    - vanderZwan 7y ago
      > The phone companies lost a lot of money when roaming tariffs were forced down and that was reflected in tariffs for the majority of people who never roam. There are studies about this. Then show those studies, because as I'm pointing out, my "tarifs" have not increased in the slightest.
      - thu2111 7y ago
        There's some discussion on Wikipedia! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_roaming_regulations#Consequences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_roaming_regulat... In Norway, prices increased by 66% when RLAH was introduced.[20] The same argument was being used by Danish operators. In Denmark several operators increased monthly subscription prices by 10–20 DKK.[21] Swedish operator Comviq removed roaming services on its plan “Fastpris mini” 15 June 2017.[22] The operator Hallon is doing the same to its smallest plan “LITEN” starting 1 October 2017.[23] In Denmark, operator Telmore introduced "TELMORE Home" without roaming services, even when travelling to countries outside the EEA.[24] Vodafone UK introduced "UK-only plans" that disallow roaming altogether.[25] This is possible because, while the Regulation disallows operators from charging extra for roaming when available, it does not force them to make roaming available in the first place. Of course, price rises are very unpopular. History gives us lots of experience of price controls to draw on. The effects of price controls are often subtle and hard to anticipate. For instance, unavailability of new services for which the investment can no longer be justified, cutting R&D budgets, elimination of services to some customer segments entirely and so on. If you look at KPN in the Netherlands, the cost of the price controls is estimated at being 100M euros or more. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/nl/Documents/technology-media-telecommunications/deloitte-nl-next-roaming-strategy.pdf https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/nl/Documents/... Their yearly net profit in 2018 was about 292M euro. So price controls aren't enough to cripple these businesses, they can absorb the hit. But obviously forcing people to spend money on something isn't free, even if the effects are obfuscated.