9 ms·

Hard but entirely relatable. Deutsche bahn is horrible, privatizing it in the 90s was one of many failures of that movement and was leading to crumbling infras

Hard but entirely relatable. Deutsche bahn is horrible, privatizing it in the 90s was one of many failures of that movement and was leading to crumbling infrastructure, an insurmountable hardware and technical debt and now to the most complex train system probably in the world. Hopefully some people learn from it - privatizing critical infrastructure like this is doomed to fail. You get the bad from a public company and the bad from the government bureaucracy.

AmericanChopper 2y ago
> privatizing critical infrastructure like this is doomed to fail It worked great for rail in Japan, so I’m not sure that’s the obvious lesson to learn.
- dash2 2y ago
  It worked OK for the UK. Passenger numbers, which had been steadily falling, started to increase. On the other hand, there are complaints about high fares.
  - pantalaimon 2y ago
    This has been true for Germany too. Passenger numbers are at an all-time high, but that's part of the problem - the infrastructure is at it's limit, but building new infrastructure is met with strong resistance by locals. e.g. the planned relief for the notoriously overcrowded Hamburg - Hannover track got effectively canceled, and this is only about the get worse with increased traffic from the new tunnel to Denmark that is set to open by the end of the decade.
  - daghamm 2y ago
    Are you sure about that? I still remember "traingate", the smear campaign that followed Jeremy Corbyn (1) and how leaked CCTV video proved him right much later (2). (1) https://www.politico.eu/article/jeremy-corbyn-walked-past-empty-seats-to-make-crowded-train-protest-virgin-public-transport-ownership-labour-leadershiop/ https://www.politico.eu/article/jeremy-corbyn-walked-past-em... (2) https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/virgin-release-traingate-footage-proves-corbyn-told-truth-traingate-55552/ https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/virgin-release-traing...
  - GordonS 2y ago
    I think very few Brits would agree that rail privatisation has "worked". Poor and old carriages, overcrowded, slow, late trains, and generally a lack of investment. Oh, and ridiculously high fares (often well over air fares!), which seem to increase above inflation every.single.year.
    - dash2 2y ago
      Some of us remember pre-privatisation as being a lot worse: carriages were older, trains were slower and there were less of them, staff were ruder and didn't care about their customers, announcements were inaudible. Fares were probably lower though.
      - GordonS 2y ago
        Unfortunately I'm old enough too :) Yes, it's true that things were pretty grim. I remember being embarrassed when a colleague from Norway travelled with me in a filthy, worn train carriage stinking of piss :( But IMO that doesn't excuse the lack of poor management since then. Things could be much, much better.
        dash2 2y ago
        I think the question is, will nationalization make things better? Historically, the UK has not done very well with nationalized industries. Maybe this time will be different.
  - NikkiA 2y ago
    Passenger numbers were generally CLIMBING in the 80s, Intercity was massively popular and successful, which was the reason for sectorization - let the bits that should be funding the system as a whole succeed, and let the bits that need subsidies fail. Sectorization was, of course, the prelude to privatization.
    - dash2 2y ago
      Here is evidence that you are mistaken: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GBR_rail_passengers_by_year_1830-2023.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GBR_rail_passengers_... This is only a Wikimedia page, so if you have better evidence that contradicts it, feel free to present it. But note that it cites trustworthy sources.
- heraldgeezer 2y ago
  It HAS NOT worked great for Sweden. Source: I live in Sweden there was a DN article recently about it. Here it is https://archive.is/zaGtb https://archive.is/zaGtb Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20240721074607/https://www.dn.se/ekonomi/jarnvagen-vittrar-sonder-mitt-framfor-vara-ogon/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240721074607/https://www.dn.se... (Its all too segmented, the trains, the track all different companies now nobody sees the full picture) and https://archive.is/MztnY https://archive.is/MztnY Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20240726054426/https://www.dn.se/ekonomi/sj-far-riva-friends-arena-om-de-vill-ha-mer-tagdepaer/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240726054426/https://www.dn.se... (The land is not enough to fix trains and the land next to it was reserved but somehow sold to build a sports arena because the train land section became a company that had to post good numbers) I hear UK is not too happy about their rail too. https://youtu.be/DlTq8DbRs4k?si=yNWcAUZ69nN1B29O https://youtu.be/DlTq8DbRs4k?si=yNWcAUZ69nN1B29O Seems like it just does not work to separate rail and traffic like that.
  - daghamm 2y ago
    Came here to say this. Alos, one important thing that happened in Sweden was that the part that was not privatised was also ran like a for profit company. The railway infrastructure "CEO" basically stopped a lot of repair work and long term projects and was able to show some very good numbers to the goverment, which they very much liked. 10-15 years later things started falling apart, by which time she was long gone.
    - soco 2y ago
      If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and follows all the Wall Street bad practices... So much for obstinately calling it "not-privatized", when by all practical matters it is.
  - TimK65 2y ago
    100%. That was a whole series of articles in DN about how the Swedish railways have been run into the ground. Separating maintenance from operations is a terrible idea and has never worked well on any railway that I'm aware of.
- notTooFarGone 2y ago
  Japan did it differently than the EU counterparts: >The most basic, fundamental difference between the British and Japanese railways is how they were privatised. In Britain, the tracks were split from the trains. from a ft article I apparently can't link The split of infrastructure and the invisible hand of the train operator market seems to be a correlation.
- a_bonobo 2y ago
  It's actually a different system - Japan's network was privatised and split into competing companies with all shares publicly traded (bar some exceptions), the Deutsche Bahn was privatised into a single, state-owned company. As such it is beholden to slow, non-deciding German governments, including investments into the network.
  - kaashif 2y ago
    But if it's state owned, surely it's not privatised? In what what is the ownership private if it's 100% public?
  - senorrib 2y ago
    How is that privatized, then? If it’s state-owned, the only thing that changed was the legal framework that applies to the entity, none of the incentives of privatization actually applying to it.
robin_reala 2y ago
Can’t comment on the 90s, but it only seems to have become truly unreliable in the last 5 years maybe? I take a train through Germany 2-3 times a year, and delays and faults are pretty much inevitable on every journey.
- attendant3446 2y ago
  I can't say what it was like 5 years ago, but I take a DB train 2-3 times a week and I can never be sure that I'll get to my destination on time, or that I'll even get there on the train.
- meroes 2y ago
  I’ve been to Germany twice to visit family. All of my trains had delays (one was because a suicide though), and every time Ive heard from family, they are also having train delays. It’s very unreliable. My experiences in France were quite the opposite. So much for stereotypes.
ben_w 2y ago
> now to the most complex train system probably in the world. Having seen the US attempt and lived with the UK railway, the German one is definitely a huge improvement. Yes, it does go wrong sometimes, but my experience at university in the UK was the end of term had two carriages with twice as many passengers as seats, that regularly terminated 20 minutes before the official destination, and my experience visiting the UK now that I live in Berlin is that the UK rail fares are (or often were pre-pandemic) more expensive than the flights to the UK. There's even a standard "money saving trick" on UK fare prices where you split a journey from A to B into A->C, C->B, where C is one of the stops in the route from A to B so you don't need to disembark. That doesn't mean there's no room for improvement, neither the UK nor the US railways are role models. (I assume Japan is still a role model for rail? Not heard much since the 90s…)
- fullspectrumdev 2y ago
  The ticket splitting thing you refer in the UK to works in other countries also.
  - hifromwork 2y ago
    How does it work? In my country (at least non-regional trains) the ticket price is calculated as ax+b where b is a constant price and x is the distance in kilometers. So splitting the ticket is always more expensive than buying two separate ones (but there are other reasons to do it, for example it's a trick to use when there's not enough seats to ride a->c directly - but that's an edge case)
    - iggldiggl 2y ago
      The UK is also relatively unique in extending full passenger rights even to split tickets as long as you adhere to the usual minimum connection times. (Apparently not out of the goodness of the train operating companies, though, but rather some interpretation of UK contract and customer protection laws which seem to demand equal treatment even for separately bought tickets.)
    - 2y ago
brainwad 2y ago
Deutsche Bahn is wholly owned by the federal government (https://www.deutschebahn.com/en/group/ataglance/aufsichtsrat_dbag_en-6929158 https://www.deutschebahn.com/en/group/ataglance/aufsichtsrat...). This is exactly the same relationship as SBB has to the Swiss government. I don't think the corporatisation (not privatisation) is the problem in this case.
- deutschepost 2y ago
  DB is just a holding company. The companies below are not 100% state owned.
rob74 2y ago
"Privatizing" is not the correct word for it - DB was reformed and is now a company instead of a government agency, but it's still 100% owned by the state. Which however didn't stop it from acting like a profit-oriented private company, favoring short term savings over long term sustainability, which led to the sorry state in which German rail infrastructure is today. IMHO the major issue with the reform is that the trains and the infrastructure were left in the same company (with other train operators forced to use the tracks provided by the "incumbent"), which leads to all kinds of conflicts of interest.
- snowpid 2y ago
  " Which however didn't stop it from acting like a profit-oriented private company, " Except it does not make any profit. It is tightly controlled by the government. They could change any management behaviour. But they don't. So its just a goverment agency.
- notTooFarGone 2y ago
  It's the words that were used in the 90s. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnprivatisierung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnprivatisierung
  - rob74 2y ago
    That's a general article about privatizing state-owned railways all over the world. If you look at the part referring to Germany, it links to https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnreform_(Deutschland) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnreform_(Deutschland), and "Bahnreform" is the term that's more commonly used to refer to what happened in Germany.
- weissbier 2y ago
  I think it's worth adding the fact, that not only the Deutsche Bahn has been privatized, but also the Deutsche Bundespost (mail service/telecommunication) has been privatized and split into Deutsche Post and Deutsche Telekom coming from the same policy. As far as I know this all boils down to the fact, that the European Union (or better it's predecessor) wanted to get rid of state monopolies. It did work out for the "Deutsche Post" (more or less) and very good for "Deutsche Telekom". But "Deutsche Bahn" was a failure coming from that policy.
snowpid 2y ago
Besides the point that Deutsche Bahn is goverment owned, it is worth pointing out that Western and Eastern German had " to crumbling infrastructure, an insurmountable hardware and technical debt and now to the most complex train system probably in the world. " + much much debts. Calling the Deutsche Bahn private is a very good indicator that the person isn't able to look up Wikipedia Article and think critically.
- notTooFarGone 2y ago
  The process was called Bahnprivatisierung. See Wikipedia article here. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnprivatisierung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnprivatisierung Translating that to english is train privatization. Does this lead to a privately OWNED company? I never said that. The decision to privatize and to make austerity measures instead of investments shows today. In the past 30 years the streets were more important for governments and it shows.
  - snowpid 2y ago
    It is important to click one more on the header on Wikipedia. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisierung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisierung and this is refers to my POV. In German private means privately owned. It is rare that people out of Germany care about the legal status of Deutsche Bahn thus I used the German meanings and many posters as well.
  - snowpid 2y ago
    " o make austerity measures instead of investments shows today. In the past 30 years the streets were more important for governments and it shows. " I refer to the time before 30 years. It was a very problematic time in West and East Germany though were a Goverment Agency by legal.
usrusr 2y ago
Privatization has brought some truly crazy incentives into the spotlight. Like how bridge maintenance is paid by the company, but when a worn out bridge needs replacing it's suddenly a government investment. I consider it safe to assume that the reason for this is that it had been just the same when it was still a government org, but a government org will see its responsibilities very different from a company eagerly cosplaying shareholder-value while the sole shareholder happens to be the government they can freely rip off because of an ongoing legacy approach to the principal-agent problem. As for delays, I think one reason, besides lack of maintenance and the massive interdependence in that large network that allows neither a star nor a main axis simplification is the high speed Autobahn: if they weren't overambitious in terms of travel times they would perhaps put bigger time buffers in their schedule and that would certainly help a lot.
ApolloFortyNine 2y ago
Japan did it in 1987 and the shinkanzen is still well known for its on time percentage. And they don't cheat either with an x minute grace period. On time means the minute on the timetable. So it's certainly possible.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  Japan is also heavily consolidated compared to other countries. The largest shareholders for all the privatized rails in Japan are a mixture of Mitsubishi Group, Mitsui Group and Mizuhou Group. Western anti-trust doesn't allow that level of consolidation - everything is basically owned by a handful of Keiretsu. I highly recommend reading "Corporate Financing and Governance in Japan" by Takeo Hoshi and Anil Kashyap to learn about this [0]. [0] - https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262582483/corporate-financing-and-governance-in-japan/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262582483/corporate-financing-a...
  - pxeger1 2y ago
    It’s hardly consolidated compared to Germany??
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      The Japanese economy is significantly more consolidated than Germany's. Vertical and Horizontal Integration (like what the 3 groups above do) is heavily regulated and litigated against in the EU [0][1], especially under Vestager. Japan on the other hand doesn't actually regulate against either forms of market dominance. All three of those groups (called zaibatsu/keiretsu) have had market dominance in Japan since the 16th century. That's why I recommended reading that book above - Antitrust in the Western sense doesn't actually exist in Asian countries, all of whom modeled their economies on Japan and with Japanese advice (METI) and aid (eg. ADB). [0] - https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/antitrust-and-cartels/procedures/article-102-investigations_en https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/antitrust-and-cartel... [1] - https://www.cliffordchance.com/content/dam/cliffordchance/briefings/2023/06/eu_vertical_agreements_June_2023.pdf https://www.cliffordchance.com/content/dam/cliffordchance/br...
mensetmanusman 2y ago
If you privatize with the right rule structure and policing from the government, with payment as a function of being on time or not. You can have a good system.

AmericanChopper 2y ago

> privatizing critical infrastructure like this is doomed to fail It worked great for rail in Japan, so I’m not sure that’s the obvious lesson to learn.

dash2 2y ago
It worked OK for the UK. Passenger numbers, which had been steadily falling, started to increase. On the other hand, there are complaints about high fares.
- pantalaimon 2y ago
  This has been true for Germany too. Passenger numbers are at an all-time high, but that's part of the problem - the infrastructure is at it's limit, but building new infrastructure is met with strong resistance by locals. e.g. the planned relief for the notoriously overcrowded Hamburg - Hannover track got effectively canceled, and this is only about the get worse with increased traffic from the new tunnel to Denmark that is set to open by the end of the decade.
- daghamm 2y ago
  Are you sure about that? I still remember "traingate", the smear campaign that followed Jeremy Corbyn (1) and how leaked CCTV video proved him right much later (2). (1) https://www.politico.eu/article/jeremy-corbyn-walked-past-empty-seats-to-make-crowded-train-protest-virgin-public-transport-ownership-labour-leadershiop/ https://www.politico.eu/article/jeremy-corbyn-walked-past-em... (2) https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/virgin-release-traingate-footage-proves-corbyn-told-truth-traingate-55552/ https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/virgin-release-traing...
- GordonS 2y ago
  I think very few Brits would agree that rail privatisation has "worked". Poor and old carriages, overcrowded, slow, late trains, and generally a lack of investment. Oh, and ridiculously high fares (often well over air fares!), which seem to increase above inflation every.single.year.
  - dash2 2y ago
    Some of us remember pre-privatisation as being a lot worse: carriages were older, trains were slower and there were less of them, staff were ruder and didn't care about their customers, announcements were inaudible. Fares were probably lower though.
    - GordonS 2y ago
      Unfortunately I'm old enough too :) Yes, it's true that things were pretty grim. I remember being embarrassed when a colleague from Norway travelled with me in a filthy, worn train carriage stinking of piss :( But IMO that doesn't excuse the lack of poor management since then. Things could be much, much better.
      - dash2 2y ago
        I think the question is, will nationalization make things better? Historically, the UK has not done very well with nationalized industries. Maybe this time will be different.
- NikkiA 2y ago
  Passenger numbers were generally CLIMBING in the 80s, Intercity was massively popular and successful, which was the reason for sectorization - let the bits that should be funding the system as a whole succeed, and let the bits that need subsidies fail. Sectorization was, of course, the prelude to privatization.
  - dash2 2y ago
    Here is evidence that you are mistaken: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GBR_rail_passengers_by_year_1830-2023.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GBR_rail_passengers_... This is only a Wikimedia page, so if you have better evidence that contradicts it, feel free to present it. But note that it cites trustworthy sources.
heraldgeezer 2y ago
It HAS NOT worked great for Sweden. Source: I live in Sweden there was a DN article recently about it. Here it is https://archive.is/zaGtb https://archive.is/zaGtb Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20240721074607/https://www.dn.se/ekonomi/jarnvagen-vittrar-sonder-mitt-framfor-vara-ogon/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240721074607/https://www.dn.se... (Its all too segmented, the trains, the track all different companies now nobody sees the full picture) and https://archive.is/MztnY https://archive.is/MztnY Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20240726054426/https://www.dn.se/ekonomi/sj-far-riva-friends-arena-om-de-vill-ha-mer-tagdepaer/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240726054426/https://www.dn.se... (The land is not enough to fix trains and the land next to it was reserved but somehow sold to build a sports arena because the train land section became a company that had to post good numbers) I hear UK is not too happy about their rail too. https://youtu.be/DlTq8DbRs4k?si=yNWcAUZ69nN1B29O https://youtu.be/DlTq8DbRs4k?si=yNWcAUZ69nN1B29O Seems like it just does not work to separate rail and traffic like that.
- daghamm 2y ago
  Came here to say this. Alos, one important thing that happened in Sweden was that the part that was not privatised was also ran like a for profit company. The railway infrastructure "CEO" basically stopped a lot of repair work and long term projects and was able to show some very good numbers to the goverment, which they very much liked. 10-15 years later things started falling apart, by which time she was long gone.
  - soco 2y ago
    If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and follows all the Wall Street bad practices... So much for obstinately calling it "not-privatized", when by all practical matters it is.
- TimK65 2y ago
  100%. That was a whole series of articles in DN about how the Swedish railways have been run into the ground. Separating maintenance from operations is a terrible idea and has never worked well on any railway that I'm aware of.
notTooFarGone 2y ago
Japan did it differently than the EU counterparts: >The most basic, fundamental difference between the British and Japanese railways is how they were privatised. In Britain, the tracks were split from the trains. from a ft article I apparently can't link The split of infrastructure and the invisible hand of the train operator market seems to be a correlation.
a_bonobo 2y ago
It's actually a different system - Japan's network was privatised and split into competing companies with all shares publicly traded (bar some exceptions), the Deutsche Bahn was privatised into a single, state-owned company. As such it is beholden to slow, non-deciding German governments, including investments into the network.
- kaashif 2y ago
  But if it's state owned, surely it's not privatised? In what what is the ownership private if it's 100% public?
- senorrib 2y ago
  How is that privatized, then? If it’s state-owned, the only thing that changed was the legal framework that applies to the entity, none of the incentives of privatization actually applying to it.

robin_reala 2y ago

Can’t comment on the 90s, but it only seems to have become truly unreliable in the last 5 years maybe? I take a train through Germany 2-3 times a year, and delays and faults are pretty much inevitable on every journey.

attendant3446 2y ago
I can't say what it was like 5 years ago, but I take a DB train 2-3 times a week and I can never be sure that I'll get to my destination on time, or that I'll even get there on the train.
meroes 2y ago
I’ve been to Germany twice to visit family. All of my trains had delays (one was because a suicide though), and every time Ive heard from family, they are also having train delays. It’s very unreliable. My experiences in France were quite the opposite. So much for stereotypes.

ben_w 2y ago

> now to the most complex train system probably in the world. Having seen the US attempt and lived with the UK railway, the German one is definitely a huge improvement. Yes, it does go wrong sometimes, but my experience at university in the UK was the end of term had two carriages with twice as many passengers as seats, that regularly terminated 20 minutes before the official destination, and my experience visiting the UK now that I live in Berlin is that the UK rail fares are (or often were pre-pandemic) more expensive than the flights to the UK. There's even a standard "money saving trick" on UK fare prices where you split a journey from A to B into A->C, C->B, where C is one of the stops in the route from A to B so you don't need to disembark. That doesn't mean there's no room for improvement, neither the UK nor the US railways are role models. (I assume Japan is still a role model for rail? Not heard much since the 90s…)

fullspectrumdev 2y ago
The ticket splitting thing you refer in the UK to works in other countries also.
- hifromwork 2y ago
  How does it work? In my country (at least non-regional trains) the ticket price is calculated as ax+b where b is a constant price and x is the distance in kilometers. So splitting the ticket is always more expensive than buying two separate ones (but there are other reasons to do it, for example it's a trick to use when there's not enough seats to ride a->c directly - but that's an edge case)
  - iggldiggl 2y ago
    The UK is also relatively unique in extending full passenger rights even to split tickets as long as you adhere to the usual minimum connection times. (Apparently not out of the goodness of the train operating companies, though, but rather some interpretation of UK contract and customer protection laws which seem to demand equal treatment even for separately bought tickets.)
  - 2y ago

brainwad 2y ago

Deutsche Bahn is wholly owned by the federal government (https://www.deutschebahn.com/en/group/ataglance/aufsichtsrat_dbag_en-6929158 https://www.deutschebahn.com/en/group/ataglance/aufsichtsrat...). This is exactly the same relationship as SBB has to the Swiss government. I don't think the corporatisation (not privatisation) is the problem in this case.

deutschepost 2y ago
DB is just a holding company. The companies below are not 100% state owned.

rob74 2y ago

"Privatizing" is not the correct word for it - DB was reformed and is now a company instead of a government agency, but it's still 100% owned by the state. Which however didn't stop it from acting like a profit-oriented private company, favoring short term savings over long term sustainability, which led to the sorry state in which German rail infrastructure is today. IMHO the major issue with the reform is that the trains and the infrastructure were left in the same company (with other train operators forced to use the tracks provided by the "incumbent"), which leads to all kinds of conflicts of interest.

snowpid 2y ago
" Which however didn't stop it from acting like a profit-oriented private company, " Except it does not make any profit. It is tightly controlled by the government. They could change any management behaviour. But they don't. So its just a goverment agency.
notTooFarGone 2y ago
It's the words that were used in the 90s. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnprivatisierung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnprivatisierung
- rob74 2y ago
  That's a general article about privatizing state-owned railways all over the world. If you look at the part referring to Germany, it links to https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnreform_(Deutschland) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnreform_(Deutschland), and "Bahnreform" is the term that's more commonly used to refer to what happened in Germany.
weissbier 2y ago
I think it's worth adding the fact, that not only the Deutsche Bahn has been privatized, but also the Deutsche Bundespost (mail service/telecommunication) has been privatized and split into Deutsche Post and Deutsche Telekom coming from the same policy. As far as I know this all boils down to the fact, that the European Union (or better it's predecessor) wanted to get rid of state monopolies. It did work out for the "Deutsche Post" (more or less) and very good for "Deutsche Telekom". But "Deutsche Bahn" was a failure coming from that policy.

snowpid 2y ago

Besides the point that Deutsche Bahn is goverment owned, it is worth pointing out that Western and Eastern German had " to crumbling infrastructure, an insurmountable hardware and technical debt and now to the most complex train system probably in the world. " + much much debts. Calling the Deutsche Bahn private is a very good indicator that the person isn't able to look up Wikipedia Article and think critically.

notTooFarGone 2y ago
The process was called Bahnprivatisierung. See Wikipedia article here. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnprivatisierung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnprivatisierung Translating that to english is train privatization. Does this lead to a privately OWNED company? I never said that. The decision to privatize and to make austerity measures instead of investments shows today. In the past 30 years the streets were more important for governments and it shows.
- snowpid 2y ago
  It is important to click one more on the header on Wikipedia. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisierung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisierung and this is refers to my POV. In German private means privately owned. It is rare that people out of Germany care about the legal status of Deutsche Bahn thus I used the German meanings and many posters as well.
- snowpid 2y ago
  " o make austerity measures instead of investments shows today. In the past 30 years the streets were more important for governments and it shows. " I refer to the time before 30 years. It was a very problematic time in West and East Germany though were a Goverment Agency by legal.

usrusr 2y ago

Privatization has brought some truly crazy incentives into the spotlight. Like how bridge maintenance is paid by the company, but when a worn out bridge needs replacing it's suddenly a government investment. I consider it safe to assume that the reason for this is that it had been just the same when it was still a government org, but a government org will see its responsibilities very different from a company eagerly cosplaying shareholder-value while the sole shareholder happens to be the government they can freely rip off because of an ongoing legacy approach to the principal-agent problem. As for delays, I think one reason, besides lack of maintenance and the massive interdependence in that large network that allows neither a star nor a main axis simplification is the high speed Autobahn: if they weren't overambitious in terms of travel times they would perhaps put bigger time buffers in their schedule and that would certainly help a lot.

ApolloFortyNine 2y ago

Japan did it in 1987 and the shinkanzen is still well known for its on time percentage. And they don't cheat either with an x minute grace period. On time means the minute on the timetable. So it's certainly possible.

alephnerd 2y ago
Japan is also heavily consolidated compared to other countries. The largest shareholders for all the privatized rails in Japan are a mixture of Mitsubishi Group, Mitsui Group and Mizuhou Group. Western anti-trust doesn't allow that level of consolidation - everything is basically owned by a handful of Keiretsu. I highly recommend reading "Corporate Financing and Governance in Japan" by Takeo Hoshi and Anil Kashyap to learn about this [0]. [0] - https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262582483/corporate-financing-and-governance-in-japan/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262582483/corporate-financing-a...
- pxeger1 2y ago
  It’s hardly consolidated compared to Germany??
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    The Japanese economy is significantly more consolidated than Germany's. Vertical and Horizontal Integration (like what the 3 groups above do) is heavily regulated and litigated against in the EU [0][1], especially under Vestager. Japan on the other hand doesn't actually regulate against either forms of market dominance. All three of those groups (called zaibatsu/keiretsu) have had market dominance in Japan since the 16th century. That's why I recommended reading that book above - Antitrust in the Western sense doesn't actually exist in Asian countries, all of whom modeled their economies on Japan and with Japanese advice (METI) and aid (eg. ADB). [0] - https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/antitrust-and-cartels/procedures/article-102-investigations_en https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/antitrust-and-cartel... [1] - https://www.cliffordchance.com/content/dam/cliffordchance/briefings/2023/06/eu_vertical_agreements_June_2023.pdf https://www.cliffordchance.com/content/dam/cliffordchance/br...

mensetmanusman 2y ago

If you privatize with the right rule structure and policing from the government, with payment as a function of being on time or not. You can have a good system.