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Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

• stretchwithme 11mo ago
  And, yet, railroads were privately created and operated before government got control of them. Subways too.
• wood_spirit 11mo ago
  Does Britain have any privatisation success stories? Or any public-private partnership (PPP) success stories? Does any country have any success stories? I can’t think of any.
  • rPlayer6554 11mo ago
    Japan’s rail privatization was extremely successful and it’s considered one of the best rail networks in the world now.
  • ApolloFortyNine 11mo ago
    Japan's rail system has some of the best farebox ratio's across their system (many of their lines actually make money, which if you compare to other countries, is pretty much unheard of in North America). [1] And they actually continue to expand their service. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio
    • dboreham 11mo ago
      Japan has a culture of running trains on time though. There is no MBA figuring out that they can pay themselves a bigger bonus by firing the backup train drivers needed to ensure on-time service.
      • tjpnz 11mo ago
        And even if there was they couldn't thanks to unions and some of the strongest worker protections in the developed world. That doesn't even touch on the loss of face for proposing such a thing.
        • simgt 11mo ago
          Is it really their recipe for greatness? We have very strong unions and worker protections in France, and our trains are unreliable as fuck. I'd be more inclined to think that their highly developed feelings of pride and shame are bigger drivers.
          • tjpnz 11mo ago
            Spoken to a few ojiisans here over the years and they'll always mention the value placed in making sure everything's well maintained. If you go out past midnight in Tokyo you'll frequently see gangs of workers on the lines doing inspections and installing new equipment. Can't comment on other countries but if you're not doing enough upkeep things will turn to shit fast.
      • M95D 11mo ago
        > There is no MBA figuring out that they can pay themselves a bigger bonus by firing the backup train drivers needed to ensure on-time service. They have other problems... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amagasaki_derailment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amagasaki_derailment
    • komali2 11mo ago
      I disagree and am working on an article arguing that Japan rail privatization represents a failure, as does its much lauded pedestrian friendliness. The premise is basically that Tokyo is the busiest city on planet earth and so should therefore have the best public transit and pedestrian infrastructure by a huge margin, when in fact it still gives unbelievable space to cars (Shibuya crossing should have been permanently closed to cars 20 years ago). As for trains, during rush hour trains can be so full you might be squashed against the door unable to move - incredibly unsafe, leads to daily injuries, and some argue have something to do with the heinous levels of sexual assault on trains. Not to mention even in Shinjuku station most platforms don't have guardrails to prevent accidental or purposeful death by trains, another outsized problem in Tokyo. But the most glaring issue is around the very design of the system. Privatization results in requiring riders to sometimes exit a station of one company, go all the way up to ground level, walk a block or to two another different company station, and then ride another train. A government managed system wouldn't have this issue, it would simply combine the stations at design time.
      • hshdhdhj4444 11mo ago
        I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted when those are legitimate problems. I disagree that this is a failure of privatization (other than the last point) and I also disagree that Japan’s success is a vindication of privatization (although it does show that above average systems are possible through privatization) but those are reasonable discussions to have
        • komali2 11mo ago
          I believe the public transit systems in most countries are so bad and underfunded that Japan's seems holy in comparison. And don't get me wrong, it's one of the best. For transit nerds like me though, it's frustrating when all the evidence points to the same conclusion: more trains, more pedestrian throughput, no cars, and yet no city has gone this route full throated. I was genuinely shocked on at the amount of space given to cars on my first trip to Copenhagen last month. I was promised bicyclist utopia, instead I was presented with massive lanes for cars, confusing intersections, and in a construction area being forced onto a narrow sidewalk full of pedestrians. Frankly I don't know any city on earth getting it right. I've heard maybe Shanghai but from videos I've seen of car culture in the PRC, I doubt it. The bar is just very low in this world right now.
    • _jab 11mo ago
      In the US, one of the highest farebox recovery ratio transit systems has historically been BART, which is 2019 was 72%, and even today is around 50%. Unfortunately, having a very high ratio also makes systems much more vulnerable to collapse during periods of economic downturn, which is exactly what BART has been dealing with since ridership collapsed during Covid. I'm no expert in this topic (in other words, I just asked Claude this), but AFAICT part of the reason Japanese rail systems did better appears to be that they are owned by diversified companies that own numerous other assets, like hotels, restaurants, and office complexes.
      • rPlayer6554 11mo ago
        Every major station I went to in Japan had a huge mall with restaurants connected to it owned by the rail company. Inside stations were rail company owned gift shops, convince stores, etc.
        • jrockway 11mo ago
          I think that connecting outlying areas (especially ones you the railroad build yourself) to department stores is what got Japanese rail companies going, but it's probably less important now than it was initially. Farebox revenue covers profitable operation of the railroad. It even appears to cover upgrades; browse around on the satellite view of Tokyo and you can see many private companies moving their above-ground infrastructure to (expensive!) subways because ... trains hitting cars interferes with their ability to earn money. It is honestly something that I have trouble wrapping my head around. The business is so good you can afford to make it better, but the business is a commuter train? Weird! I think Japan is successful because of a less pervasive car culture than the US. People expect to walk 30 minutes to the train in the morning, that's just something you do. It would be unheard of in the US (and also dangerous in many suburbs, because they are designed to move as many giant SUVs as possible per hour, not to let pedestrians and cyclists get to the train station). Also, a big caveat is ... all of this is Tokyo and Osaka, very large, rich, and dense cities. When you go out into the middle of nowhere in Japan (even an hour out of Tokyo, think the Hachikō line, etc.), rail service kind of sucks and is subsidized heavily.
  • joshuaissac 11mo ago
    It's hard to measure this. British Telecom lost its monopoly around the same time it was privatised. Is today's (very competitive) telecommunications market more a result of privatisation or of the loss of BT's monopoly? Another way to look at it would be, are BT's customers better off now, than when it was a government company?
    • arethuza 11mo ago
      I would say BT got worse immediately after privatisation and now have got better - largely I suspect due to competition.
      • exasperaited 11mo ago
        Post-privatisation, Bonfield-era BT really was an abusive monopoly. I do not think the problems have gone away; dealing with OpenReach is very often as kafkaesque as it would have been.
        • arethuza 11mo ago
          Oh yeah - OpenReach is a bit of nightmare, but less of a nightmare than some energy suppliers I can mention...
    • nyreed 11mo ago
      BT was deep into preparations for a nationwide fiber rollout at the time of privatisation in the early 80s. The project was cancelled, the fledgling factories equipment and expertise were instead exported to South Korea, enabling their widespread fiber penetrance. That delayed fiber rollout in the UK by decades. Was that a success? Could be they were too early to justify the cost? But without someone pushing ahead, who develops the technology?
      • panick21_ 11mo ago
        Do you have some source on this, sounds interesting. It could of course also have just been a failure if tried to early. So we should just assume this would have worked out perfectly.
  • fulafel 11mo ago
    Don't know about britain, but generally a popular neoliberal thing with PPPs is to copy the private sector and "turn capex into opex". If you lease a road or school for 20 years, it doesn't show up as debt in your books, which the city has made necessary for itself, because it has saddled budgeting framework with some arbitrary debt caps that are constantly at the limit. This can be sold as a success story depending on how it's told - it lets you get the school you need after all (even if it's wasting money vs doing it the normal way). And it's making the participating companies great profits, just don't mention whose pockets it comes out of.
    • graemep 11mo ago
      That has happened in Britain. it was how Gordon Brown claimed a balanced budget while running up what would be classified as off balance sheet debt if anyone other than the government did it. A lot of things like hospitals were financed this way. I would say the motive here was mostly to avoid increasing the government debt numbers. it would not work if the government did not exempt itself form the rules applied to everyone else.
    • panick21_ 11mo ago
      This isn't really true, running things in the government also cost a huge amount of opex. Sure you do get one time payment and the resulting company will have to be hired but it will usually also have to start to compete. This could potentially result in more or less opex. Running an airline just so you don't have opex seems a bit silly to me for example.
      • fulafel 11mo ago
        Well, the brits eventually decided against it after a thorough investigation found it to be a waste of money - "a January 2018 report by the National Audit Office found that the UK had incurred many billions of pounds in extra costs for no clear benefit through PFIs". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_finance_initiative#Ending_of_PFI_for_new_infrastructure_projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_finance_initiative#End... Another antifeature is the lack of transparency. The costs and operations of the private company aren't public, which means the public doesn't know if the quality problems are due to skimping on costs or mismanagement etc and don't get the feedback necessary for decisionmaking for subsequent contracts. Regarding your airline analogy: my criticism wasn't about the private sector, my criticism was about copying it (poorly) in the public sector. There's things to criticise in the private sector side accounting incentives as well but it's a different kettle of fish.
  • InTheArena 11mo ago
    Depends, do you travel through any of the airports in Europe, use many of the train services in Europe, get power from spain, portugal or (non-nuclear) France? Fly on a Airbus, or a Boeing with RR engines? There are legit reasons to be skeptical of privatization, but yes. It works well when it works. Dogmatic responses (free market == everything, only government and unions can provide service) are not helpful.
    • paganel 11mo ago
      Airbus is by all intents and purposes a (multi-)State controlled company with privatized profits. You don’t get to have hefty defense contracts in countries like Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia if you’re de facto a private company, which they aren’t.
      • constantcrying 11mo ago
        >You don’t get to have hefty defense contracts in countries like Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia if you’re de facto a private company, which they aren’t. This is false. Saudi Arabi buys equipment from private companies. Most US Defense contractors are private companies, of course countries all around the world buy from private companies. The defense contracts of Airbus have nothing to do with them being partially state owned.
  • spacebanana7 11mo ago
    In the UK the airline and telecom privatisations were largely successful (BA, Rolls Royce, BT, etc). BP did okay too. For some reason things that happen in the air seem to privatise much better than things that happen on the ground. MG might be the exception, but it’s a bit of a weird situation in that it went from being owned by a loss making British state owned enterprise (Leyland) to being owned by a loss making Chinese state owned enterprise (SAIC). Still makes popular, cheap and not very reliable cars though.
    • microtonal 11mo ago
      For some reason things that happen in the air seem to privatise much better than things that happen on the ground. I know that there are some nuances to this, but this makes sense right? If you think you can compete on say London-Amsterdam, your airline can in principle decide to compete there (yes, they need slots, etc.). If you want to compete with rail between Amsterdam and Berlin, you are either going to pay an insane amount for extra infrastructure (too expensive) or you have to let companies bid on exploiting a line. But you can never have two companies competing at exactly the same times.
      • spacebanana7 11mo ago
        Yeah there’s probably a way in which railways and water are natural monopolies, so are more difficult to privatise.
        • fhennig 11mo ago
          Yes, it's the tracks. Planes don't need tracks.
          • gcanyon 11mo ago
            > Planes don't need tracks. But let's all take a moment to acknowledge that it would be awesome if they had them. Can you imagine the shenanigans you could get up to designing a nationwide 40,000-foot-high rollercoaster system?
  • immibis 11mo ago
    Surely it depends on how you measure success. I'm sure a lot of politicians got very rich, so that's a success from their point of view.
  • gwbas1c 11mo ago
    But but but... Someone got rich! Thus it has to work. (And if privatization doesn't work, we'll just repeat that it works over and over until people believe that it works.)
  • edent 11mo ago
    It depends on what you count as a success. The privatisation of BT meant that there was no specific monopoly on ISPs during the Internet boom. While the privatised BT had a monopoly on the wires - customers could choose from hundreds of different dial-up and, later, ADSL ISPs. Similarly, the privatisation of the mobile phone networks means that the UK had some of the cheapest airtime contracts in the EU. Yes, there are still gaps in network coverage, but there were at the peak 5 different MNOs for customers to choose from each competing and driving down prices / increasing coverage. Energy has been mixed. Companies like Octopus have provided things like real-time electricity APIs. I can't imagine an organisation like British Gas launching something like that. Similarly, if your power supplier has crap customer service, you can move. And people do! In that sense, it has been a success. Pickfords was also privatised. People forget that house-moving companies were nationalised during WW2. The liberalisation of that market has been a success. You can argue about things like Rolls Royce, BP, British Airways etc. But I don't think they offset the utter failures of privatising water, trains, etc.
  • jhonof 11mo ago
    CDPQ has been good at making transit in Canada, but they are working on behalf of the Quebec Pension Plan so it's kind of a weird situation. I largely agree with you.
  • wtcactus 11mo ago
    Depends. According to BBC & Friends, or according to reality?
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  • sschueller 11mo ago
    You can't privatize what can't make money in itself. By that I mean, rail is beneficial to the entire economy of a country. This profit is not something a rail company can benefit from but a country can. Serving low traffic areas are a loss business but vital for a country to grow. Same for fiber infrastructure, running fiber into a desolate town may not be profitable but giving the chance for some kid in that town to build the next unicorn from his home benefits the entire nation. Not all talent is in the cities.
    • hshdhdhj4444 11mo ago
      Italy has seen tremendous success with privatizing High Speed rail. I think the difference is that the infrastructure (tracks and stations) is still owned by the state and leased out competitively to private train operators. It’s kind of like the airline model.
      • magicalhippo 11mo ago
        They've been doing that here in Norway as well for regular trains. The result is that the train operators get f'ed in the a by poor track maintenance and old trains. It has been so bad that when the trains run people joke it's "train for bus". Also us customers can no longer buy one ticket that gets us from A to B but often have to contend with 2-3 different operators.
      • tsukikage 11mo ago
        > the infrastructure (tracks and stations) is still owned by the state ...so, a bit like Network Rail, then?
      • naasking 11mo ago
        > Italy has seen tremendous success with privatizing High Speed rail. I think whether privatization helps or hurts depends a lot on how corrupt or inept the government is, ie. the more corrupt or inept, the more privatization can probably help.
      • bryananderson 11mo ago
        Italy has not exactly privatized high speed rail. The public rail operator Trenitalia is by far the largest high speed rail operator in the country. And it’s great. What Italy has done is open the rails to access by private companies in addition to the public one, most notably high speed operator NTV/Italo. Arguably this competition has helped spur on the public operator to greater heights. But it’s not the same at all as what Britain did (privatizing the public operator itself).
  • Hilift 11mo ago
    No. The UK refuses to accept reality, which is a poverty rate 12% higher than the US, and families with three or more children poverty rate of 47%. The cost of benefits and other costly boondoggles compete with these failed public works ventures. The largest water utility has £20 billion debt and will probably need to be un-privatized. They probably breathe a sigh of relief knowing that France is twice as bad financially, so that feeds the denial mass delusion. And the economy doesn't have the fantasy growth that was expected, so automatic additional borrowing. And it's budget season. Yay!
    • exasperaited 11mo ago
      > The UK refuses to accept reality, which is a poverty rate 12% higher than the US, I'm sorry but any US figure you use to support this allegation is probably nonsense. US figures about joblessness and poverty are a joke, and typically in international comparisons they still use things like "access to air conditioning" as an indicator of poverty even though they are meaningless.
      • robtherobber 11mo ago
        I was going to say just that. The whole statement is ridiculous.
    • hshdhdhj4444 11mo ago
      Yay Brexit!
  • dickiedyce 11mo ago
    LOL. Yes, Scottish Water was never privatised, and that's been a great story of success... even if it's only because it's not any of the failed English water companies.
    • giraffe_lady 11mo ago
      Yeah I was going to say. Every one of these privatizations was a success from the point of view of the people who made them happen. They weakened worker power and increased the amount of money available to be extracted by the wealthy. If they happened to also make these important systems worse, well, that's our problem.
  • exasperaited 11mo ago
    No. Because privatising natural monopolies always creates unwelcome outcomes for everyone except the new shareholders.
  • tialaramex 11mo ago
    I'm the wrong person to try to steelman this, but lets have a go anyway with a couple I know well: 1. Internet Service Provision Britain chose to separate the intrinsically geographic monopoly of Last Mile Copper Loops from its existing non-intrinsic monopoly telephony provision. British Telecom, which had once been publicly owned, was obliged to distinguish "BT Openreach", the part of their company which inherits the local loop monopoly and which also offers (non-monopoly) long distance network transit and other useful stuff - from the consumer facing BT, which is a fairly ordinary PLC. I know a BT employee, the regulators really care that they can't collude with Openreach. This means that the tiny company providing my Internet access (Andrews & Arnold) doesn't need to own a large brick building down the street, or even a cabinet in that building, or negotiate a deal with a monopoly behemoth who can set their own terms unfairly. Instead, they pay Openreach to move packets from my home to a nearby city, and then they can choose to pay Openreach or its competitors to move those packets from the city to their routers. BT Openeach is a monopoly, but it's an ordinary public company just with a lot of regulations to ensure it behaves equally for A&A as it does for its owners BT. BT isn't a monopoly but it does have lots of customers, I think its services are crap or alternatively that they're too expensive (A&A is more expensive but much, much better, if BT were much cheaper than they are maybe that's a good deal for somebody) This arrangement means most UK residents have dozens of potential reasonable ISP options, with a range of pricing and terms, including lots of "All you can eat" type packages, even if they don't live in a big city. People like me who do live in a big city get slightly more options (a Cable TV company, a local fibre startup), which can go cheaper and higher bandwidth, but only a few people are stuck with a single practical option as is common in the US - basically only people in very rural areas, and usually their option is community owned, so it may not be cheap but it's at least owned by actual people who might care. 2. Energy Britain separately privatised the gas and electricity supply. Now on the surface this is lunacy because of course that's a geographic monopoly. But they're not complete idiots, so what was actually privatised was mostly the customer service/ end user billing part of the problem. My gas and electricity come from the same place as my neighbour, inevitably because they're the same pipes and wires, but my bills and my customer service are from my choice which happens to be Octopus. Does this achieve anything useful? Eh, maybe. I don't think a local energy monopoly would be anywhere close to as good at either customer service or billing. Octopus seem to have some idea what they're actually doing. On the downside these firms have ended up costing tax payers a bunch of money because of course when one goes bust the gas and electricity are still working but the government is on the hook to ensure somebody else handles billing them for it and that's complicated. This happens far too often when there is stress on the financials of these firms e.g. the Ukraine situation fluctuated energy bills with little notice. Edited: fix s/citizen/resident/ what matters isn't your passport but where you live
  • threemux 11mo ago
    In the US, some have failed, some have worked. In my home state of Maryland, the PPP (P3) for redeveloping the Travel Plazas along I-95 is often cited as a success story and they are indeed widely considered top notch rest stops. It's a small-ish thing, but it did work. https://mdta.maryland.gov/Partnerships/tp3Overview.html https://mdta.maryland.gov/Partnerships/tp3Overview.html I don't know enough to say if Seagirt is considered a success but I do know Baltimore's port does very well. The Purple Line is/was a failure.
  • panick21_ 11mo ago
    There have been lots of privatizations all over the Western world and most are not well known, its the negative examples that are very much talked about. And many or most are somewhere between fully private and fully public anyway, so the picture is much more muddy. I think to say its all a failure would be very reductive. I think many of the telephone operator privatization worked pretty well in most places and buildup of user business for those companies and more competition, mostly from formerly public operators competing in other markets. But it also depends on the country. Some of the airline privatization seems to me also sensible. In my country (Switzerland) government owned some banks or partly old them and sold some stock in them, witch seems sensible to me. Some water infrastructure was privatized and regulated in many countries and for the most part this has worked fine, maybe not in Britain. Denmark seems to have done quite a lot of privatization and it was mostly considered pretty well done. I was really surprised how much of this was done all over Europe, often by 'left' governments. Once you start researching you find more and more. Would be the work for an economists thesis or something to try to do a full accounting of this across all European nations.
  • faidit 11mo ago
    The New Economic Policy in Soviet Russia (1921) and Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening up in China (1980s) both saw privatizations and significant economic improvement. But those were corrections of rare cases of having way too much (ie, near-absolute) state control, where even stuff like private barbers had been illegal. That said, in the case of Russia of course, wider privatization in the 1990s was disastrous in many ways
    • Ray20 11mo ago
      > in the case of Russia of course, wider privatization in the 1990s was disastrous in many ways When you effectively hand over state property to high-ranking communists for less than five percent of its real value, that is not a privatization.
  • simgt 11mo ago
    > Does any country have any success stories? Apparently South Korea is doing pretty well with its healthcare: financing is public, service delivery is private (but heavily regulated).
    • cmrdporcupine 11mo ago
      That's the same model we have in Canada here mainly. Provinces pay for the service, but family doctors and most other practitioners are private businesses that then bill the government based on a set fee schedule. The exception I guess is hospitals which are kind of a mixed structure of some kind and doctors in them are salaried employees not businesses of their own. The problem with this approach is it intrinsically creates conflict between the doctors and the gov't about how fees are structured, and the patient gets stuck in the middle. That and inconsistent standards, structure, and quality. Couple that with conservative governments that sometimes have ideological antipathy to socialized medicine generally, and there's a recipe for difficulties. I'm given to understand that the NHS in the UK is not like this, and most doctors are salaried? I could be getting some details wrong.
      • p_l 11mo ago
        NHS services originally (tories have been chipping at it a lot) had all NHS services delivered by NHS staff and infrastructure, with I think one major exception being dentistry. In Poland we have public insurance system (also slowly killed by government) but in reality nearly all providers are private or, at most, owned by local government (city etc.)
  • blibble 11mo ago
    telecoms, wired broadband is competitive and has variety of different levels of service at different price points water/electricity/gas have been abject failures railways have been a mixed bag some things are better (quality of service is much better), some things are worse (subsidy and cost) but a good chunk of that is under direct government control, and has been for a very long time the only private bit is/was the TOC, "train operating company" (and roscos... which are another subject) TOCs essentially just put a driver in the cab, and collect the fares and send them to the government they don't maintain the track, they don't set the fares, they don't set driver pay, they don't control the service pattern if your train service sucked during the last few years: it's probably the government's fault
  • indoordin0saur 11mo ago
    Hong Kong is considered to have the best subway system in the world and it is private and for-profit. Though the largest shareholder of its stock is the Hong Kong government.
    • p_l 11mo ago
      In many countries that is considered a state-owned business
  • deleted 11mo ago
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  • guywithahat 11mo ago
    One could argue the rails were a success. The article argues deaths went up after privatization, but that's only because the miles being ridden went up significantly as well. Actual deaths per mile are down. Further the drop in ridership in 2021 was due to covid, and the financial strain was caused largely by the rail industry re-investing heavily before covid.
  • hylaride 11mo ago
    > Does any country have any success stories? Yes, but it depends on how/why things are done. You don't hear about the successes because it's not a story worth telling. Charter schools are a good example. They have mixed success when deployed. In many places they're deployed by right-wing politicians primarily to weaken public schools (and their unions). This can be done via a variety of ways, such as letting the charter schools charge extra (thereby essentially subsidizing private schools), allowing the schools to "expel" problem children, thereby dumping the public system with them, etc. The result is usually a framework that isn't designed to actually make education better. In some places (Sweden is a good example), charter schools were implemented by a centre-left government because all attempts at school reform failed due to a variety of reasons. The result was by most measures successful as the charter schools couldn't pick and choose kids, were still held accountable, and it resulted in the public schools having to stop fighting reform in order to sort of compete. The Canada line in Vancouver (metro link to the airport) was build on time and on budget and is still run by a P3 company, as is the new REM line in Montreal. The incentives here were ONE company was given a contract with clearly laid out incentives and minimal political meddling after that (as opposed to other P3s where the government is highly involved and subcontracts, etc get doled out to connected firms, etc). The UK car industry was mostly privatized, but judgement on its post-privatization failure mostly goes down political lines (eg should a government continue to subsidize poorly made cars in the name of employment). Same with most of the rest of industrial Britain, which under public ownership was uncompetitive in most cases. That being said, most would consider Rolls-Royce to be successful and was privatized in the 1980s. BP's privitization was mostly a success, even with all its issues. Canada privatized CN rail and it is now one of the most efficient freight railroads in North America. Telecom privatization in the EU has mostly been a success (though one could argue that the EU has pushed for too much competition, which has meant that while mobile prices are generally very low, it has made it harder for companies to invest). Many airlines outside of the USA were also publicly owned pseudo-monopolies. Flying is cheaper than it's ever been, even if no longer glamourous. The TL;DR is of course it's a mixed bag and depends on so many factors. Many UK industrial firms were so poorly run under private ownership that they were so far behind they couldn't catch up and compete once privatization did happen.
  • n1b0m 11mo ago
    The privatisation of the water industry in the UK certainly wasn’t and is considered a failure due to rising bills, poor infrastructure, and severe pollution from sewage overflows.
  • sandbags 11mo ago
    I'd argue that privatising telecomms has been a win. I think because it's quite open to competition (even if there has been a good deal of consolidation). The challenge with so many UK privatisations is that the idea of real alternatives/competition ranges from laughable to extremely laughable.
  • purple_turtle 11mo ago
    Some communist era enterprises failed (or would have failed) on open market and entirely deserved this. Extreme absurdities included hunting whales to fulfil production quota, then dumping carcasses into sea as they were not needed for anything. Some species were hunted into extinction this way, for no benefit whatsoever.
  • ahmeneeroe-v2 11mo ago
    Very fair question. Let's also consider the inverse. Are there any modern government run success stories in Britain?
  • andy_ppp 11mo ago
    All things where you can't have genuine competition are a disaster. I'm not against taking these things away from government but it might be better to have a non-profit that isn't as directly controlled by the whims of politicians. Independent similarly like the Bank of England with very clear metrics/goals on how to run the company.
  • constantcrying 11mo ago
    >Does any country have any success stories? Both Airbus and Volkswagen were set up by Governments. T-Mobile is arguably quite successful.
  • retube 11mo ago
    British Airways?
  • DrBazza 11mo ago
    British Telecom. Party lines and waiting a couple of months to be connected were part of the fun times in the 70s. Imagine having one mobile phone provider.
• wtcactus 11mo ago
  I hear these stories about UK private rail system being terrible for more than a decade now. But, truth is, I go there frequently and the times I had to use it it was quite fine. Lots of trains and they arrived on time (and they were fairly clean). It was much, much better - by any account of imagination - than the public railway we have here in Portugal. And I’m guessing they cost the taxpayers a lot less too (but that part I didn’t check).
  • drcongo 11mo ago
    (Nearly?) all of the the "private" rail operators in the UK are actually the national operators of other countries - Germany, France, Italy and I think Netherlands. The national rail operators mostly know how to run a decent service, but in the UK passengers pay multiples of what those operators charge in their home country and the service is definitely not as good.
    • martinald 11mo ago
      You are aware National Express (UK company) operates a lot of train routes in NRW in Germany, too? Equally Ariva (UK company, was owned by DB, now UK) in the Netherlands? The EU basically mandates privatisation of railways. They require track and trains to be run by different operators (DB InfraGO in Germany, ProRail in NL, etc) to the train operators. They then require (nearly?) all passenger rail operations be available to private companies to bid on. The EU is taking the Netherlands to the ECJ over the fact the Netherlands won't allow it: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_1648 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_... Also the EU requires open access operators access to said separate tracks. That's why you're seeing all the competition in high speed routes (especially) in the EU. They have to pay a track access fee but are free to request to run whatever route it is. The last point (well, all are really) is a big problem for many national operators as they make a lot of revenue from 'premium' intercity operations that cross subsidies the local trains. A lot of that "margin" is going to be eroded by the competition.
      • drcongo 11mo ago
• slightwinder 11mo ago
  Similar problem with "Deutsche Bahn" in Germany. Probably also the reason why this German political NGO is writing this article. Are there any other countries with similar problems or history in their public transportation-systems?
  • panick21_ 11mo ago
    Privatization in Germany and Briain are completely different ...
• graemep 11mo ago
  It implies railways were les safe post privatisation. This is misleading. There were more accidents and deaths, but that was because of a huge increase in miles travelled. Deaths per billion kilometers fell consistently before and after privatisation. A lot of the problems lie in tracks and their maintenance, and the tracks were re-nationalised many years ago. It is not efficiently run (see HS2!). They are expensive, but that is partly because rail workers are well paid. Train drivers can be paid as much as aircraft pilots. Their ability and willingness to strike affects both costs and people's willingness to rely on public transport. The big constraint is lack of subsidies. it probably makes little difference whether the system is privately owned but tightly regulated, or publicly owned so much as willingness to subsidise it. This is also shown by the failure of franchises taken back into public ownership to improve.
  • fergie 11mo ago
    > They are expensive, but that is partly because rail workers are well paid This is in fact an interesting by-product of privatisation: train drivers became rarer due to shareholder reluctance to train and recruit them. They consequently became more expensive. A somewhat fun side effect of the free market, especially given the prevailing assumption that moving public sector employees into the private sector would drive down their pay and conditions.
    • RobinL 11mo ago
      Is that true? My understanding is they command very high wages because their unions are strong and they have a lot of leverage: by striking they can impose extremely high costs on the wider economy (not to mention bad press for politicians).
      • thesuitonym 11mo ago
        These two things are related.
      • cedilla 11mo ago
        Labour shortages makes finding scabs hard.
• TriangleEdge 11mo ago
  How does the govt pick executives or companies for owning the railways? I am thinking of the three credit bureaus in the US. These companies suck, and offer 0 innovations, but we are stuck them for the foreseeable long term.
• dickiedyce 11mo ago
  As a Scot who travels on Scottish, English, and Welsh railways, and on Swiss and German railways... Scotrail (now in Public ownership) is pretty good. And I say that as someone in the Highlands, which has had the worst of it in the last 30 years. There's been recent investment, and even the re-opening of closed lines and finally new stations where they've been desperately needed (Inverness Airport, Kintore, Laurencekirk). But still plenty more to do. I visit the south semi-regularly, and worked in London in the 90's. Rail around London seems to have really improved over the last few years. Swiss Rail (SBB) is still the poster child for a decent rail system. Clean, on time, reasonably priced (compared to UK rail), and easy to use. What was eye-opening for me was recent travel in Germany (München to Basel in CH)... DB was dreadful and the stations were in an awful state of repair.
  • arethuza 11mo ago
    Scotrail was shockingly bad when Abellio were running it - much better now and certainly much better than the likes of Avanti West Coast...
  • mentalgear 11mo ago
    Fun fact: DB (Germany public-private national rail company) has become one of the UK's biggest train service providers - even the Queen's train was under their service. DB (Schenker) buys stakes in transportation all over the world - with German tax payer money: A fact that many Germans do not like given the very poor train service in their own country.
    • luesterklemme 11mo ago
      DB Schenker was sold recently. So your point is not entirely correct anymore. Also yes, it did invest tax payer money but was profitable doing so.
      • fransje26 11mo ago
        > DB Schenker was sold recently Ah, the traditional privatize the profit, and nationalize the losses then. Great.
• abracos 11mo ago
  For context: The website is called Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung. Rosa Luxemburg was a Polish and naturalised-German Marxist theorist and revolutionary. A very biased source
  • niek_pas 11mo ago
    Politically colored ≠ biased
    • istultus 11mo ago
      Bias - an inclination of temperament or outlook [1] Politically colored = an inclination of outlook [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bias https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bias
  • dddw 11mo ago
    Tot have a certain political angle does not imply a bias by definition
    • slightwinder 11mo ago
      Everyone is biased by definition. Knowing in which direction someone drifts and how strong they move supports your media literacy.
      • dddw 11mo ago
        I think the thing that bothers me in the comment is "very biased". If everything is biased, there is not a lot of point in pointing that out.
  • naIak 11mo ago
    Post a right-wing source, get flagged in minutes. Post literal Communist rhetoric, get to the front page with lots of excuses in between.
  • htk 11mo ago
    Absolutely, I flagged this post for this very reason. Far left or right websites are no place to get a reliable account of things.
• arpinum 11mo ago
  I'm undecided if privatisation was a failure. I don't know the counterfactual scenario well enough. The article paints a picture that British Rail was doing just fine, making all capital investments necessary, and at low taxpayer cost. I'm somewhat skeptical that it would continue like that for 30 years. Any better analysis?
• FridayoLeary 11mo ago
  The central claim of the article makes sense. Tickets are too expensive and that's all i care about as a consumer. I don't agree with many of the authors arguments and his proposed solutions. > the case against fragmented and privatized operations focuses on three key arguments. The first is that railways are complex systems where commercial boundaries at engineering interfaces are a threat to safety and efficiency. The second is that railway operations are geographic monopolies where market conditions are — at best — contrived. The third is that railways are a public service that cannot fail — hence, introducing private interests into the railways is merely a way to sequester income into private hands while the state shoulders the financial risk. In other words, private interests’ role is simply to extract profit that could otherwise be reinvested into the system. That is true of most infrastructure. The closest parallel i can think of is the airline industry. It may never be perfect but these problems are solveable. Next the claim that moving decisions away from Westminster will make things better. That is highly debatable. Finally the main point. The nationalised railway worked well in the 90s so it would work well today. That is such an obviously flawed argument i won't even bother discussing it. I think the local government in London has far more direct control of local transport and it is horribly inefficient and expensive. Finally look at the ongoing, slow motion train wreck which is the hs2 rail project. At this stage it's just a government employment program for labourers. It's way, way too expensive and they should have pulled the plug on it years ago or drastically deregulated idk. As it is we have the worst of both worlds. However, it is interesting that Thatcher didn't want to privatise the rails. Does anyone know what her opinion on it was?
  • martinald 11mo ago
    Well it didn't work great in the 90s. There's a great documentary about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJfaKKVS5Hc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJfaKKVS5Hc from 1990. The problems will seem very similar. Where I think privatisation went wrong (the core concept of having private operators bid on franchises is ~right imo) is the state lost a lot of 'management' knowledge that was in British Rail. This has really killed us because we don't know how to build complex civil engineering projects anymore, and _the management_ of them gets outsourced to large contractors like Arup at eye watering costs. They also have a terrible conflict of interest as if they manage it well, they often get paid much less than managing a slow moving disaster of a project. I think this needs to be solved first, not getting the state to operate train fleets.
• hardlianotion 11mo ago
  It's really an open question - UK's railways were in a poor state & lacking investment when they were handed over. Rail journeys and infrastructure investment did increase in the intervening period. It's not at all clear that railways will have consistent, adequate funding in the public realm, not least because the government is leery of capital expenditure and is always interested in ways to make debt levels look smaller.
• Wildgoose 11mo ago
  I remember that the UK was forced to privatise Rail in the way that it did because of EU competition rules. I was commuting by Rail at the time and the manner in which it was privatised was considered to be barmy by both myself and fellow passengers.
  • owisd 11mo ago
    This is just another “bendy bananas”-tier myth. The UK was never forced to privatise because of EU competition rules, see, for example, France, an EU member state that retained publicly owned railways during the same period. There are EU competition rules that require separating operations from infrastructure, but it is and always has been fine to do this as separate divisions under the same publicly owned umbrella.
    • martinald 11mo ago
      Not true. The EU is taking Netherlands to court for not allowing private companies (not state owned) to bid on the main passenger routes: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_1648 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_... De facto it is required, and you see that in Germany - many routes are not operated by DB anymore.
      • short_sells_poo 11mo ago
        I don't understand how is this "forced privatisation"? There's nothing preventing a state owned rail company from operating, no? All this says is that private companies must be allowed competitive access. Am I missing something?
        • martinald 11mo ago
          No nothing preventing it but you cannot just have a state operator bid for it. The contract in question is basically the entire Netherlands passenger operations, with some small exceptions. The key problem the EU has is the size of the contract. The contract cannot be for the entire country (more or less), it needs to be split into smaller ones (eg: one contract for intercity, one contract for local services near Amsterdam, etc). Netherlands defense is that the passenger rail system cannot be split up like this as it would cause operational problems and thus should not be franchised. I'm simplifying this from memory but it's roughly correct I think. There is no doubt in my mind were it to be split up like the EU is requiring, that de facto some of it would be privatized. It has/is happening in every European state that has complied with the EU rules. To me that is very close to forced privatisation. The current (Labour) UK model (government owned franchises with no bidding) would 100% not be allowed.
• epolanski 11mo ago
  Privatization in Europe, otoh, is going okay-ish.
  • junga 11mo ago
    Seriously can't tell if sarcastic or not.
    • epolanski 11mo ago
      It's not. Spain, France and Italy have private operators and they are doing fine.
• shevy-java 11mo ago
  Depends - some got wealthier. :) Although, even with this in mind, it seems as if the UK really has a notoriously bad railway system. Most countries in the EU of a comparable size have a better railway system as such, even though they also have their own problems. One of the best in Europe is in Switzerland - the swiss really are clever. And also not in the EU.
  • martinald 11mo ago
    This just isn't true on any measure (apart from affordability and true high speed penetration in some countries). Affordability is really driven by how much the operators are subsidized by the govt. It's hard to calculate this on a like for like basis as some subsidy goes to the track operator and some to the train operator, and in eg Germany you have a hugely complex set of subsidies and fare zones in operation from various levels of government. I don't expect the other European systems to be any cheaper - it's just hidden in the tax system instead. Where the UK shines imo is two things. 1 is the frequency of many services. It's rare to have less than 2 trains per hour on an intercity route, and often far more. This compares to France (outside TGV) which is atrocious. Non regular timetable with often 2-3 hour gaps on trains. Spain (even on the high speed lines) is even worse. Some _high speed lines_ can't even manage an hourly service. This has got far better recently on high speed lines with private competition, but outside of that the timetabling is terrible. The other is some of the ticketing options. Firstly, there is a no questions asked delay repay feature which means you get a substantial portion of the ticket refunded if there is any delay for any reason, starting at a 15minute delay. Obviously no delays are better than a refunded one, but I've had some atrocious delays in mainland europe and no option to apply for a refund. The other is no composlary reservations (though I'm not sure how long this will last). If you have a valid ticket, you can get on. In many EU countries if a train is out of seats you don't even have the option to buy a ticket and stand. Combine this with poor timetables on many routes and it can cause huge problems if you are travelling at short notice. Netherlands and Switzerland good for sure - better than the UK I would say. But Germany/France/Italy/Spain have a lot of issues.
    • short_sells_poo 11mo ago
• ponco 11mo ago
  The privatisation of the commons will endure as our generations' greatest folly. I look at the Australian NBN as a great example of a project that is not economical for a private business to entertain - it requires "The Government" to build. How do we reason with this in the capitalist system?
  • hexbin010 11mo ago
    > The privatisation of the commons will endure as our generations' greatest folly Things really went downhill after 1773 (first Inclosure Act)
• endoblast 11mo ago
  I miss being able to spontaneously buy a ticket and travel off to see a friend in another town or city. I did quite a lot as a young man with the help of my 'young person's railcard'. The cost would be prohibitive nowadays because only tickets bought well in advance are cheap.
• tippa123 11mo ago
  [dead]
• tompagenet2 11mo ago
  As always this is grossly oversimplifying. As well as the misleading safety stats, as graemep has noted, it ignores that journeys just absolutely exploded under privatisation [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail]
  • pjc50 11mo ago
    That certainly happened, but at the same time the ticket prices have consistently gone up above inflation, so what we're missing is the causal link - why did journeys go up so much? Was it in fact other transport policy to get commuters out of cars?
    • xboxnolifes 11mo ago
      Thats irrelevant to the safety statistics.
    • welshwelsh 11mo ago
      Ticket prices going up is actually good for mass adoption. If they are too low, you will see people riding the train who are only using the train because they are too poor to afford a car. That makes middle class people want to avoid the train. Also higher revenue often means better service, which for most people is more important than the price.
      • lavezzi 11mo ago
        I don’t think these points are accurate at all for people in the UK. There isn’t really a class divide, you ride trains in particular because it’s theoretically the most time efficient way to travel within metro areas and potentially across the country. Increased prices have not resulted in better service, and it’s purely a method to price gouge those who have no feasible travel alternatives.
      • carstout 11mo ago
        Having used the UK rail service both public and private the "better service" is optimistic. The too poor to afford a car is more associated with buses. You need to be rather fortunate to be poor and able to use the train to get to work. Maybe in London using the tube but working office hours it will be cheaper to buy a car or move. I would suggest the main driver in the leap in passenger numbers isnt the far superior private sector offering but instead the massive leap in house prices forcing people to move out of London.
• KaiserPro 11mo ago
  The problem with this assement is that it misunderstands the role of the private sector. Yes, those crashes happened, and they were disasters, but they were only partially down to rail track being privatised. They were a result of systemic under investment both pre and post privatisation. THe _other_ key thing that needs to be remembered is that rail is highly regulated. To the point that both price, timetables profit and pay are controlled by the deparment of transport. The bigger issue is that actually the department of transport doesn't have the specialists needed to run the railways, they are hired in as consultants. If you compare that to TFL, which operates both private (DLR and some of the overground) and public (most of the tubes, not sure about elizabeth line) and buseses (which are entirely private) The railways are in the state they are because of poor governance from central government. and poor investment, also from government. IF they had been publicly owned, we'd be in the same state, because the UK government is not currently able to run services effectively. Unless and until the political classes are willing to pay civl servants competitive rates of pay and trust data, then we will continue to be in a mess. Yes, privatization is bad, but the lack of effective governance is the hidden crisis here.
  • VBprogrammer 11mo ago
    I'm just not convinced that privatisation of natural monopolies is ever sensible. Especially when failure isn't option, you can't just stop the trains running because some operator spent all of their budget on executive bonuses. It's privatised profits and public liability.
    • skippyboxedhero 11mo ago
      You can see that it is highly effective even within the UK. Ofgem publish components of the energy price, of the average annual cost of £1300 I recall that profit was £40. Government subsidies are now £200-300 and are growing (I believe I read a story the other day that said that if the wholesale cost of energy fell to zero over the next few years, the cost of energy would not fall...that is how expensive the government's corporate subsidies to high-cost suppliers is...for some reason, no-one talks about this). If you compare to the 70s when the government was throwing cash at these industries (largely because of the political incentives), it is unbelievable how low costs are. The problem is that the political intervention has been very bad, the public liability comes from bad regulation (which was just as true in the 70s). For example, in energy the regulator has encouraged operators, like Tomato Energy the most recent failure, who are very clearly not operating in a financially sustainable way. If you look at who works for regulators (and look at what they get up to outside of regulation, in other parts of government), I am not sure how you can conclude that it could ever be any other way. We are paying for people who are largely unemployable outside of government to attempt to govern companies that are responsible for powering the whole of the country. Why does anyone think is wise? Another example mentioned in the OP is retaining much in public ownership and then privatizing ROSCOs...it isn't just this is a bad idea, it is so clearly a bad idea that it is unclear who could have thought this is a bad idea. Again, this happened because of very ineffective regulation/political leadership. Finally, what profits? One of the issues with most regulated industries is that the profits are very low because of the politics (for some reason, people think that public ownership will fix this...rather than make it much worse...we don't need to imagine, the UK has tried this several times, it has failed every time but the politics mean that there is no option but to keep trying it). The result has led companies to do things that are not wise because, otherwise, investors will pull capital. If you read any article about this is any paper in the UK, you would assume that the profits on offer in these industries are wild...they are not, share prices are collapsing, the reason why the government is taking over rail operating companies is because they are going bust, there is massive demand destruction in almost all of these areas because prices are sky-high, profits are non-existent, demand is being destroyed, and no-one wants to deal with the lack of supply because it would require admitting that the world isn't divided into Monopoly Man and a Victorian urchin. There are countries that have made it work but the UK will never be one of them because of the political environment (significantly more raucous than the European style of managed democracy).
• usrbinbash 11mo ago
  All privatizations of public infrastructur and services are failures, simply due to the discrepancy between the interests: The public wants: Cheap, reliable, quality services. A corporation wants: Maximized Revenue. The two inevitably clash. No matter what business, no matter what country. Don't believe me? Go and find a single instance of a service that used to be provided completely by the government, that got BETTER FOR USERS (that is: The Public, not investors) after being privatized. I'll wait. Public utilitis HAVE TO be run by the public, meaning the government. In pretty much every instance where this isn't the case, the provided service is more expensive, and/or less effective for the people. And that's why I am sick and tired of the old trope "bUt pRivAtE sEcToR mOrE effIciEnt!" Sure. That would be the same private sector that caused almost every non-war related major economic crisis, is it not? I think the "efficiency argument" is already a moot point.
  • kingstoned 11mo ago
    Why would public ownership deliver those benefits? Walmart is delivering cheap, quality and reliable service in retail. Soviet stores we not better than American ones.
    • usrbinbash 11mo ago
      Let's see: Is Walmart a utility provider, or a retailer? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart > Walmart Inc.[a] is an American multinational retail corporation
  • drstewart 11mo ago
    >Don't believe me? Go and find a single instance of a service that used to be provided completely by the government, that got BETTER FOR USERS (that is: The Public, not investors) after being privatized. I'll wait. You won't have to wait long: flying. Shocked? You shouldn't be. In the 70s, you'd have to pay thousands of dollars to fly across the country. Now you can get a flight between NYC and London for $200. Time to retract your entire little rant.
    • 11mo ago
• jwblackwell 11mo ago
  A lot of people in the UK seem to think the trains in Europe are so much better, but that's not the case, at least in my experience. We took an interrail trip a couple of years ago and spent half the time sat on the floor and waiting for delayed trains. If anything, the overall experience was much worse than trains in the UK, especially if you factored in the difficulty in procuring the correct tickets.
  • andriamanitra 11mo ago
    Talking about "trains in Europe" as one thing doesn't really capture the complexity of the system – it varies a lot between different countries and operators. For example Swiss trains (SBB) are extremely reliable but Deutsche Bahn is famously unreliable.
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
• fmajid 11mo ago
  As opposed to the privatization of water utilities, which was such a resounding success?
  • akpa1 11mo ago
    Both can be a laughable failure at once!
• jmyeet 11mo ago
  Two legacies from the 1980s and 1990s that haunt us to this day are: 1. The idea of trickle down economics; and 2. That public-private partnerships ("PPPs" were a stalwart of Thatcher and Blair) do anything other than simply transfer wealth from the public sector to the private sector. Put another way, PPPs socialize the risk and privatize the profits. For anyone who pays attention and can think critically, this is the least suprising thing that can possibly happen and was evident decades ago. For the railways in particular, railroads (technically, train operating companies or TOCs) in the UK have zero incentive to invest in rolling stock, track, signalling systems or stations because they own none of it. So all they do is engage in cutting costs and gaming politics to raise prices to increase profits. That's all that happens. You can say that British Rail needed reform and funding but PPPs were simply not the answer.
• teekert 11mo ago
  Our Dutch one is too (privatized in 1995, it's one of our biggest employers as well), we have a nice railway system but the car is generally cheaper, even when using it alone. It's always about how much money the railway system is loosing, but I don't see anybody crying about the money our roads are loosing. Isn't it all just transport infrastructure?
  • hexbin010 11mo ago
    Maastricht-Amsterdam, a 2.5 hour journey, day return, with NS Flex Dal Voordeel (ie off peak) is 37.44 EUR. That to me is insanely cheap. Surely fuel would be like 45 EUR, not to mention the cost of parking in Amsterdam? Maybe it's just because a similar journeys in the UK (Manchester to London) would be about 130 EUR. (Assuming I've understood correctly - you pay about 6 EUR a month for Flex Dal Voordeel and get a 40% discount right?)
    • teekert 11mo ago
      Yeah that's in off-hours, where you get 40% off. So that means it's much more expensive when you need to get to the office during office hours. And your office is not next to the station. Certainly there are times when it is worth it, and for example 's Hertogenbosch - Amsterdam has a train every 10 min. That is hard to beat. But NS is under a lot of pressure and will get more and more expensive and less attractive as a result.
  • elAhmo 11mo ago
    How would you quantify the money lost by roads?
    • teekert 11mo ago
      Same as for railroads.
      • elAhmo 11mo ago
        Not even close. You can walk on a road, take a cycle, take a car. You effectively need no maintenance for the most part of it, or someone running something on it. 1 car, 1000 cars, there is no difference in 'running the road'. On the railroad it is vastly more complex, with schedules, personnel that takes to run it, how many people end up using it. If one person rides in a train, it is a disaster and you literally lose money on it. If 1000s ride on it, you might be making money. With roads that factor is almost non-existent, given that both take initial investment to build.
• etothepii 11mo ago
  > so that decisions about the railways we use are made closer to us I believe this is a mistranslation of "so that decisions about the railways we use are made by me" or more precisely "so that decisions about the railways we use are made by the sort of people that like attending committee meetings and working their way up the inside of political parties" The privatisation was very likely botched, however, it was not as if it was done in a secret - the "fire sale" only happened at "rock bottom prices" with hindsight. The nationalisation itself was fairly botched and it is hardly as if the decimation of Britain's railways implemented following the Breeching Report (completed on a nationalised rail system) was particularly effective.
• yanhangyhy 11mo ago
  so.. whats the future for the infamouss HS2 project?
• ixtli 11mo ago
  If only someone could have predicted this.
• MrBuddyCasino 11mo ago
  When I'm looking for politically unbiased news, I make sure to visit the fine internet presence of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• mhh__ 11mo ago
  > abject failure Other than a huge explosion in the number of people using trains? literally Chernobyl-on-wheels
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
• deafpolygon 11mo ago
  Public transportation needs to be a public cost, paid for and funded by tax payers and not for profit. When transportation is subsidized but privately owned, then you will see maintenance neglected in an effort to raise shareholder value.
  • SoftTalker 11mo ago
    Public transit in the way we are used to it also cannot be run "for profit". There is no public transit system where fares cover all the costs, never mind generating a profit. Riders would refuse to pay a fare high enough to do this. Airlines barely make a profit. I'm not sure about intercity rail globally but in the USA, Amtrak relies on government subsidies to operate. All the private railroads gave up passenger service decades ago because it was unprofitable in the face of new competition (i.e. cars and air). Local bus and light rail service will never be profitable as a private enterprise. We'll see what happens once drivers can be eliminated, but I'm still doubtful. Plus the public will still want some sort of authority figure on the bus or train. It's one thing to feel safe in a Waymo where you're not sharing the vehicle with 20 strangers but a bus or subway is different. So trade driver for security/customer service person and you're not really saving on payroll.
    • dghlsakjg 11mo ago
      This all hinges on people utterly ignoring the expense of maintaining the road system. If you factor in the spending on highways and road systems that can support high speed private vehicles at no direct cost to the end user, other forms of transport get incredibly competitive. Highway spending alone accounts for a quarter of a trillion per year. That doesn't account for spending at lower levels of government for streets and other car infrastructure. >Plus the public will still want some sort of authority figure on the bus or train. There are plenty of driverless transit systems. It is a very solved problem.
      • SoftTalker 11mo ago
        I'm saying that even with the current approach to taxpayer-funded roads, operating a local bus service cannot be done at a profit to the operator if they rely on fares alone. All public transit systems require substantial funding beyond what they receive in fares. And rail lines cost even more than roads do. Privatizing such services and maintaining affordable fares is a complete non-starter. It cannot be done.
• hexator 11mo ago
  The only rail privatization success story, that being the rail system in Japan, for some reason is not replicated much elsewhere. You make money on development, not running trains. You will never make money on public transportation, nor should you—it's a public service.
  • avelis 11mo ago
    Agreed. Transportation is a public service and economic engine. Subsidizing travel to help supply travel to demand is the easiest and likely most affordable thing we can do to ensure economic volume.
  • petcat 11mo ago
    > You will never make money on public transportation, nor should you—it's a public service. My understanding is that in the US Amtak runs a net-positive operating income in the Northeast Corridor (Boston-NYC-Philly-DC) but it all goes toward subsidizing unprofitable routes throughout the rest of the country. To the tune of the entire system running a $2 billion loss every year. So in theory you could get some private rail to run trains up and down the northeast seaboard, upstate NY, Long Island, and possibly come out with a net profit.
  • baklazan 11mo ago
    It's not the only one. Czech private rail companies are also a huge success.
• piqufoh 11mo ago
  Apparently if a light-bulb blows at a station, two different contractors need to be called - one company has a contract for replacing consumables while another has a contract for repairing faults. https://youtu.be/bNEEJX0VM6k?si=1hGCnYx826ffGOPj https://youtu.be/bNEEJX0VM6k?si=1hGCnYx826ffGOPj
• ml-anon 11mo ago
  Couple of decades late with this news…
• christkv 11mo ago
  Me and a friend decided to dig into who makes the money here and in the end the big earners are the private equity companies that own the rolling stock and leases it out to the rail companies. The actual rail companies have slim margins. The leasing companies had much bigger profit margins.
• iso1631 11mo ago
  In the 1980s the nationalised railway was considering closing London Marylebone. Today The number of passengers on the railway is far ahead of the number in the 80s and 90s. There is a persistent belief in the UK that privitisation of the railway was bad, yet it led to great things -- the constant Chiltern line investment, massive competition on the west coast mainline (you can walk up to the station and get a train from Manchester to London for £50 return taking about 3h30 -- it cost more than that and took the same time 30 years ago), Marylebone serving 16 million passengers a year pre-covid There's been bad things too -- companies have failed and the government has chosen to bail the shareholders out rather than letting them fail and simply taking over, standard privatise the profits socialise the losses. Cross Country routes are screwed as it's a series of local services masquerading as a long distance one. Nationalisation doesn't help there. But when we compare with German and French systems we see just how good the UK system is, despite the insanely cheap commuting (15, even 10p/mile) being subsidised by occasional long distance travellers.
  • aembleton 11mo ago
    > you can walk up to the station and get a train from Manchester to London for £50 return taking about 3h30 To get that price, I've always had to change at Crewe, or buy well in advance. Otherwise, it's £114 return.
    • iso1631 11mo ago
      Sure, change at Crewe. Back in BR days it cost £45.50 off peak (over £100 today inflation wise) and took about 3 hours, but sure you didn't have to change.
• rurban 11mo ago
  The German even more. When it was already clear that the British privatization completely failed. And we saw what the others did in the meantime. Swiss, Austrian, China, all huge success stories. Without privatization
• anikom15 11mo ago
  The only issue I have with British rail is the expense. Otherwise, seems rather well done. Much better overall experience than I had with DB at least.
• constantcrying 11mo ago
  Germany failed to privatize its Railways (it is still 100% owned by the state and directly financed through taxes) and it has an abysmal, totally dysfunctional railway system. This is an article by a communist rag and NGO, which is also paid for by the German tax payer. Why would anyone care what they have to say?
• matt-p 11mo ago
  It's interesting; the current state of the railways is clearly a complete joke but 10-15 years ago, my perception at least, was that it was basically a OK and working system. The stats are only a bit worse now than they were then, I wonder why the massive perception gap. 2014 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proportion-of-trains-running-on-time https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proportion-of-tra... Now https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/performance/passenger-rail-performance/ https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/performance/passeng...
• dave333 11mo ago
  Privatisation was awful from the traveller's point of view having to figure out which company to deal with. It would have been much better to micro-privatise each train - selling off the dining car franchise to a commercial operator or allowing a commercial company to add a coach to a train for a given fee.
• aussiegreenie 11mo ago
  Privatisation of everything is an abject failure.
• Nimitz14 11mo ago
  This is clearly a partisan website (see its name). Read with a large grain of salt.
• aubanel 11mo ago
  Other sources indicate that privatization was a huge success! The number of passengers dropped after nationalizations, and exploded after privatisation (despite taxpayer money investment logically dropping) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GBR_rail_passengers_by_year.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GBR_rail_passengers_...
  • iggldiggl 11mo ago
    > despite taxpayer money investment logically dropping Did it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GB_Rail_Subsidy,_1985-2019.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GB_Rail_Subsidy,_1985-201... paints a slightly more complex picture.
• amai 11mo ago
  Don‘t privatize infrastructure monopolies. There is simply not enough consumer choice and therefor not enough competition in the market, so companies would be punished for failures or rewarded for improvements and optimizations. Ultimatively capitalism is an optimization algorithm, but in can only work well, if objective functions are clear.