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The infrastructure isn't privatised though, it's maintained by Network Rail.
by veltas 3y ago
The infrastructure isn't privatised though, it's maintained by Network Rail.
- bluescrn 3y ago"Privatise the profits, Nationalise the losses!"
- dffdsa432 3y agoWhat about losses from federally funded corporations like USPS and Amtrak that are bailed out every year? Amtrak loses over $1 billion/yr and they are still "nationalized." USPS loses multi billions per year.
- ehnto 3y agoUSPS costs billions, public services don't need to be profitable they just need to be paid for. Taxpayers pay for it with their taxes. When we sell our public investments for a quick buck we complain when the real cost of the service gets priced in. The trouble is, we pay the same taxes still, they just no longer go to the service we privatised, so we feel it in the pocketbook individually. Presumably those taxes are going elsewhere now, but I was very happy with them going to core public services.
- cycomanic 3y agoThe USPS is "loosing" money because it was told to prefund it's Healthcare having to set aside $100 billion in 10 years (unlike any other company) . Moreover, it's much more a service than a business, e.g. it can not really set its own prices. https://www.barrons.com/articles/usps-louis-dejoy-post-office-pelosi-mail-in-ballots-51597687253 https://www.barrons.com/articles/usps-louis-dejoy-post-offic...
- dffdsa432 3y agoI don't get it. The USPS has lost billions due to government policies and can't enforce prices due to government policies. They are forced to deliver to unprofitable routes and have prices set to inflation due to government policies. Private delivery services like Amazon and Fedex are generally profitable and don't have these issues. Why is a government alternative better?
- richbell 3y ago> They are forced to deliver to unprofitable routes and have prices set to inflation due to government policies. Private delivery services like Amazon and Fedex are generally profitable and don't have these issues. I, for one, think it's a good thing that people are entitled to their mail regardless of the profitability of their mail route. That's the point of a public service.
- vharuck 3y agoA cynic would say Congress's actions, loading the USPS with costs while denying it control over prices, is so that people ask "Why is a government alternative better?"
- cartoonworld 3y agoNone of the competitors offer a similar service to USPS. Among other core competencies, USPS has nationwide daily coverage of the entire United States and centuries(?) of experience interoperating the the respective mail services of every country in the world and then some. Amazon wont even take MY package one town over.
- Karunamon 3y agoNone of the competitors are allowed to offer a similar service to USPS. That said, the service provided by the USPS nowadays is primarily delivery of paper waste into a receptacle I am obligated to empty because very occasionally they also use the same box for packages.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoIs fedex forbidden from delivering to a lonely hut in Alaska for the same price as USPS?
- Karunamon 3y agoQuite literally yes when we are talking about letters. Even if they did it for cheaper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes
- falcrist 3y agoUSPS isn't losing money. It's a public service. It costs money.
- panick21_ 3y agoAmtrak is the least subsidies mode of Transportation. It has to compete with road transport and the subsidies given to highways, roads and parking is orders of magnitude larger then what Amtrak gets. Amtrak gets surprisingly small amount of money.
- sarchertech 3y agoFreight rail also has priority over Amtrak, which causes all kinds of problems with scheduling and adds insane delays.
- panick21_ 3y agoI mean sure, we can talk for hours about issues with Amtrak. However that doesn't change what I said so I'm not sure why you are bringing it up. Amtrak most likely wouldn't be profitable if they had priority.
- sarchertech 3y agoI think you may have conditioned by HN to assume that any comment is a refutation. I brought it up because it’s an additional piece of the explanation for why amtrack can’t support itself on ticket prices alone.
- panick21_ 3y agoFair. I'm just saying that its one of many factors so I was confused why you would bring it up specifically.
- sarchertech 3y agoMostly because it’s the single biggest thing that keeps me from using Amtrak. The last few trips I’ve taken, we ended up sitting waiting on freight trains for many many hours. Each big city we came to we had to stop and wait without having any idea how long it would take for “freight traffic to clear”. I love train travel, and I’m not price sensitive at all, but the delays were completely absurd.
- katbyte 3y agoPublic infrastructure does not need to make a profit, its there to provide a service not make money. USPS delivers to remote addresses no one else’s will on route that will never make money.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoThey are not bailed out, is the highway maintenance service ‘bailedout’? They don’t build themselves you know
- UncleMeat 3y agoWe need to rearrange our brains. USPS provides a valuable service to the country. It does not need to make a profit. It should be evaluated based on the value it generates for the people. Why does something like the mail system get treated differently than something like road development, which is not expected to bring in any revenue at all let along a profit?
- zzbzq 3y agoThey don't lose money, they cost money. You can't measure the losses if they even exist
- arethuza 3y agoOne example that Ben Elton gave in his excellent "The Great Railway Disaster" documentary was not training new train drivers! https://www.channel4.com/programmes/ben-elton-the-great-railway-disaster https://www.channel4.com/programmes/ben-elton-the-great-rail...
- badcppdev 3y agoPeople literally died before it became Network Rail due to badly maintained infrastructure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railtrack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railtrack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southall_rail_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southall_rail_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladbroke_Grove_rail_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladbroke_Grove_rail_crash Edit: To be 100% clear the badly maintained infrastructure was the responsibility of a for profit private company at the point where people died.
- veltas 3y agoSouthall: > The passenger train operating company had failed to inform Railtrack and the signaller that the automatic warning system (AWS), which warns drivers of adverse signals, had been turned off in the cab of the HST. But Ladbroke Grove was Railtrack's fault entirely (within the first few years of its creation). Meanwhile it's been 20 years since National Rail was created, when do we get to blame current governments and National Rail for bad infrastructure?
- KaiserPro 3y agoWhich was private under railtrack, but after a number of high profile crashes and failures was taken into public ownership again. Railtrack made a lot of money by selling off land, and other assets, under invested and generally underperformed
- tsukikage 3y agoNot disagreeing, but words are important here to get at precisely what happened. > Railtrack made a lot of money "Made" implies creation, growth, increase. This is the opposite of what happened. The money wasn't made. It was /extracted/. They /extracted/ a lot of money. Railtrack doesn't have that money. Their succeeding entity doesn't have that money. The government doesn't have that money. The taxpayer doesn't have that money. None of that money was invested such that any of these entities might benefit from it in any way. It was removed from the system into private wallets. The private owners plundered and fled, and the remaining skeleton was socialised again so it might regrow a bit of flesh from public taxes for the next extraction cycle.
- mnd999 3y agoThere’s also water, energy, busses outside of London, Openreach (especially them), and pitty the poor people of Hull with that Kingston shitshow.