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Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

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Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#31

Post by spacebanana7 »

dboreham wrote: post #26
spacebanana7 wrote: post #9

Earlier 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…

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.

BA was originally stated as a state owned airline, but I agree about RR.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#32

Post by arethuza »

joshuaissac wrote: post #6
wood_spirit wrote: post #2

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.

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?

I would say BT got worse immediately after privatisation and now have got better - largely I suspect due to competition.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#33

Post by dickiedyce »

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.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#35

Post by hshdhdhj4444 »

sschueller wrote: post #24
wood_spirit wrote: post #2

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.

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 t…

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.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#36

Post by nyreed »

joshuaissac wrote: post #6
wood_spirit wrote: post #2

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.

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?

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?

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#37

Post by Hilift »

wood_spirit wrote: post #2

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.

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!

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#38

Post by _jab »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #5
wood_spirit wrote: post #2

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.

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

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.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#39

Post by graemep »

phobotics wrote: post #17
wtcactus wrote: post #3

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 t…

I think a lot of people in the UK would agree with this. It's not perfect but the rail system on the whole is pretty great for getting around the country. There's some annoying things like having to go to a hub to go back the way you came sometimes. But without a sprawling expensive network that's somewhat unavoidable. And obviously some lines are worse than others re delays and cancellations. Most complaints in the…

I prefer rail but public transport is very limited where I live, in Cheshire, and it is very expensive. It is fast for long distances, but it is a lot more expensive than driving, especially if you have more than one person in the car.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#40

Post by dickiedyce »

wood_spirit wrote: post #2

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.

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.
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