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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

#151

Post by tjpnz »

simgt wrote: post #129
tjpnz wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#152

Post by blibble »

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.

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

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#153

Post by pjc50 »

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…

The key is competition. BP compete on the global oil market. BA compete freely with other air companies. RR with other turbine manufacturers (not many of those globally!).

The semi-successful ones are the "shell company" ones: telecoms, power, and railways. The user gets a choice of who to get customer service on, which feels nicer than a government bureaucracy, but the infrastructure is a natural monopoly so the actual hardware delivering the service is mostly the same.

Electricity markets work pretty well as a market and has miraculously managed a lot of carbon transition, but is now horrendously expensive (like trains) in a way that's becoming politically important. The public are going to demand that something be done. AI power use is not helping here.

The less successful ones are the actual big capital asset ownership ones: RailTrack PLC, OpenReach, water companies, the nuclear industry.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#154

Post by pjc50 »

tompagenet2 wrote: post #111

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 ]

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?

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#155

Post by indoordin0saur »

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.

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.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#156

Post by verall »

gcanyon wrote: post #82
komali2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 permanen…

> As for trains, during rush hour trains can be so full you might be squashed against the door unable to move I don't know why this never occurred to me before, but: is there a reason they can't run more trains or higher-passenger-capacity trains? The demand is obviously there, so the question is: do they like it super-crowded?

I believe it's run absolutely maxed out during rush hour, like 12+ cars per train with 2-3 minute headway

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#157

Post by pm215 »

Symbiote wrote: post #119
haritha-j wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

This is partly because of the UK's ticketing system, which (like airline prices) heavily discounts for people who can book ahead and travel at off-peak hours. If you're able to do that, then for instance, right now you can get a ticket from Euston to Manchester on Weds 10th December mid-morning for 35 quid. If you're really price sensitive you can get there for just 14 quid (you have to change at Crewe and take an extra hour and a half of journey time).

The downside of this pricing system is (a) everybody complains about its complexity (b) if you really do need to travel at peak time or at very short notice you're going to pay a lot (c) it's really easy to make it look like it's a terrible rip-off by quoting the anytime walkup fare for an intercity journey :-)

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#158

Post by johnjames87 »

graemep wrote: post #22

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,…

Great reply

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#159

Post by terminalshort »

fergie wrote: post #135
RobinL wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Yes. This was literally a case study for my Sociology degree in the '90s. (I would also mindfully say that there is a lot of subtle political propaganda in the UK around this issue- the powers that be want the public to blame train drivers for the failures of privatisation)

That doesn't convince me. Companies commonly handle situations like this just fine. I know because I have seen it. I think you are the one who fell for the propaganda here.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#160

Post by teekert »

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?
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