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.
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Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
21–30 of 478 posts
Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
#22It 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.
Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
#23I 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 t…
I also go there rather frequently (much more before covid, though), and agreed, compared to the rail I'm using in the US (NYC, Boston, Amtrak), it is pretty good, but I've had some VERY bad experiences on it.
As a whole though, at least out of major cities London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Manchester, the rail system is great.
Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
#24Does 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.
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.
Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
#25How 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.
Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
#26Does 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.
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 C…
These entities are not really the same kind of thing. BA and RR were successful private companies that ran into difficulty for one reason or another and took on the UKG as an investor of last resort. BT was an offshoot of the Post Office, a service that is run by the government even in the USA. BP was government controlled for...geopolitical reasons.
Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 C…
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 i…
Yeah there’s probably a way in which railways and water are natural monopolies, so are more difficult to privatise.
Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
#28I 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 t…
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Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
#29Does 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.
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
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.
Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
#30Does 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.
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…
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.