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]
Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
111–120 of 478 posts
Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's not a stressful job and like you said they get paid pretty well I’m curious as to the criteria there. A train driver must, surely, be more stressed than a software engineer? They’re in charge of a moving vehicle that carries hundreds of people. And yet software engineers will still often make more than train drivers do.
Salaries don't tend to be strongly correlated with bad working conditions or stress. In most industries (like software development) it's just supply and demand, and I imagine there are more people willing and able to work for £65k as a train driver than as a software developer. It's a bit different for train drivers because of the strong unions; my guess is that explains their high salaries more than lack of supply.…
Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking. Saying "it's low stress therefore shouldn't attract a high salary" doesn't add up to me.
I don't necessarily know what the right salary is but it's shift work (and you don't get to choose your hours), you're in charge of a lot of people's safety, there's a non zero chance you'll watch someone die in front of you (if they jump on the tracks). It's... not nothing. And if we're looking at how much economic benefit a given job provides a country a train driver is surely a large multiplier.
Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
#113It 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,…
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Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
#115The 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.
Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
#116All 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.
Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
#117Does 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…
Railway privatization is resolved in East Asia where they are also major real estate developers that plop luxury malls and apartments ontop stations. See the HK MTR as an example, which is far better than the average European subsidized metros.
The real problem, as always is NIMBYism and the western aversion to luxury malls and mass consumerism, which ends of in a self-reinforcing cycle of increasingly miserable public sphere as nobody wants to engage with it or make it better.
Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
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.
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.
Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
#119I 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…
the service is often plagued by strikes, but the real problem is the cost. In what universe does it make sense for the train to be more expensive than a single person driving?
Rail travel is one of the few things that's cheaper now I live in Denmark compared to the UK.
A ticket for the next direct train (16:42, peak time) from Copenhagen to Århus is 449kr, £53. That's 300km in 3 hours.
London to Manchester is the same distance, 2¼ hours, and £193.
Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hang on a minute. How do you square your claim that it's as it should be that train drivers can be paid as much as airline pilots, with your claim that everyone else is underpaid, including, presumably, airline pilots?
> Hang on a minute. How do you square your claim that it's as it should be that train drivers can be paid as much as airline pilots, with your claim that everyone else is underpaid, including, presumably, airline pilots What is inconsistent about those two things? You can simultaneously believe that train drivers and airline pilots deserve to be paid more.
> You can simultaneously believe that train drivers and airline pilots deserve to be paid more.
But that's not what noir_lord thinks. He/she specifically said
> their pay is fair for the responsibility it's everyone else who is underpaid [my emphasis]
which implies that train drivers are currently paid the correct amount.