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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

#11

Post by drcongo »

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…

(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.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#12

Post by immibis »

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.

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.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#13

Post by paganel »

InTheArena wrote: post #8
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.

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.

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.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#14

Post by gwbas1c »

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.

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.)

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#15

Post by edent »

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 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.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#16

Post by jhonof »

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.

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.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#17

Post by phobotics »

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 UK are about cost of tickets. They are very valid complaints imo, the cost of getting a train in this country can be absurd. There would be a really positive attitude towards train travel in the UK and our rail system if it wasn't trying to bankrupt you every time you use it.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#18

Post by wtcactus »

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.

Depends. According to BBC & Friends, or according to reality?

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#20

Post by microtonal »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #9
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.

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 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.

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