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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

#171

Post by kingstoned »

usrbinbash wrote: post #116

All 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 BETT…

Why would public ownership deliver those benefits? Walmart is delivering cheap, quality and reliable service in retail. Soviet stores we not better than American ones.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#172

Post by afavour »

FridayoLeary wrote: post #134
afavour wrote: post #79

Earlier 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.

The reason i made a point about low stress conditions is because i do actually appreciate that driving a train is not as simple as i imagine. I might have said that they are basically truck drivers (just without 90% of the driving part) whose entire job is sitting all day sometimes pressing a button that says go and pressing a button that says stop and a 12 year old could do it. But that would be overly uncharitable…

> Are they good people? No.

?!? You're saying they're bad people because they take a salary offered to them? Is a software engineer that takes a higher salary a bad person too?

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#173

Post by robtherobber »

exasperaited wrote: post #48
Hilift wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 financi…

> The UK refuses to accept reality, which is a poverty rate 12% higher than the US, I'm sorry but any US figure you use to support this allegation is probably nonsense. US figures about joblessness and poverty are a joke, and typically in international comparisons they still use things like "access to air conditioning" as an indicator of poverty even though they are meaningless.

I was going to say just that. The whole statement is ridiculous.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#176

Post by fergie »

terminalshort wrote: post #159
fergie wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your informative, water-tight argument has convinced me.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#177

Post by terminalshort »

noir_lord wrote: post #71
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,…

> Train drivers can be paid as much as aircraft pilots. Yes and that's as it should be, a fully loaded high speed intercity train has more souls on board than most commercial aviation planes (apologies pet peeve of mine because our media keeps banging on about how "overpaid" train drivers are when in reality their pay is fair for the responsibility it's everyone else who is underpaid). A bad day at the office for me…

A train may have more people on it, but it does have the luxury of being able to just stop when there is a problem. Airplanes not so much. Copenhagen has had an automated metro system for decades now. Train drivers aren't even strictly necessary anymore.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#178

Post by jhonof »

oersted wrote: post #150
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,…

There is a middle ground that is quite common across Europe: a private company that has the government as a shareholder. I think it is reasonable for subsidies to be structured just like private investments rather than a donation. The public should reap the rewards of the money they invest in their country through taxes, just like wealthy investors do. It's a question of perspective. I've spent my life in countries w…

> There is a middle ground that is quite common across Europe: a private company that has the government as a shareholder.

Interestingly, Quebec in Canada has been loosely following this model recently and it's working great. Long video but interesting if you like infrastructure stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlHqqA0onn0&t=532s

TLDR: CDPQ invests on behalf of the Quebec Pension Plan, and has been building infra on behalf of the pension plan across Quebec (and Canada) to great success comparatively.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#179

Post by cogman10 »

amelius wrote: post #166
noir_lord wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Train drivers can be paid as much as aircraft pilots. Yes and that's as it should be, a fully loaded high speed intercity train has more souls on board than most commercial aviation planes (apologies pet peeve of mine because our media keeps banging on about how "overpaid" train drivers are when in reality their pay is fair for the responsibility it's everyone else who is underpaid). A bad day at the office for me…

But trains are inherently safer (or at least, they should be). If the train driver falls asleep and the train is about to go where it shouldn't, then safety systems should kick in and halt the train automatically. This is not possible (to the same extent) in airplanes.

This is something I have a hard time squaring away.

A train will likely always need to be manned, there are, in fact, checks that have to be made by a person and can't be made by a computer.

However, it seems like the part of actually driving the train could be nearly completely automated. The train is on a rail, about the only thing a person is needed for when the train is in motion is to push a stop button if things go wrong. Things like speed and indeed even a decent amount of visual checks could be automated based on location.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#180

Post by xboxnolifes »

pjc50 wrote: post #154
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?

Thats irrelevant to the safety statistics.
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