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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

#201

Post by hexbin010 »

teekert wrote: post #160

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?

Maastricht-Amsterdam, a 2.5 hour journey, day return, with NS Flex Dal Voordeel (ie off peak) is 37.44 EUR.

That to me is insanely cheap. Surely fuel would be like 45 EUR, not to mention the cost of parking in Amsterdam?

Maybe it's just because a similar journeys in the UK (Manchester to London) would be about 130 EUR.

(Assuming I've understood correctly - you pay about 6 EUR a month for Flex Dal Voordeel and get a 40% discount right?)

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#202

Post by elAhmo »

teekert wrote: post #160

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?

How would you quantify the money lost by roads?

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#203

Post by terminalshort »

toyg wrote: post #197
terminalshort wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I know because I have seen it Companies may or may not handle strikes properly. If it were that easy, industrial interests (and their emissaries, like Reagan and Thatcher) would not have spent more than a century trying to break unions.

You missed the context. I am agreeing with you. This is the argument I'm responding to:

> train drivers became rarer due to shareholder reluctance to train and recruit them

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#204

Post by trelane »

mentalgear wrote: post #64
dickiedyce wrote: post #33

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, Laurencek…

Fun fact: DB (Germany public-private national rail company) has become one of the UK's biggest train service providers - even the Queen's train was under their service. DB (Schenker) buys stakes in transportation all over the world - with German tax payer money: A fact that many Germans do not like given the very poor train service in their own country.

> the very poor train service in [Germany]

Amtrak has entered the chat.

(It was originally scheduled to enter the chat at 2:42 AM, but was delayed until 6:01 AM.)

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#205

Post by Symbiote »

wtcactus wrote: post #148
Symbiote wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Hum, there are a lot of trains from London to Manchester today for between 42-47£. Those do take 3h45m. But there are also trains for £80 that take 2h11m. https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/journey-planner/?type=single&...

Yes. I didn't see the slow trains, it looks like they were hidden from my search.

(Also bear in mind the median income after tax is 50% higher in Denmark.)

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#206

Post by rmoriz »

bluGill wrote: post #188
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…

Train drivers are mostly obsolete. More than 20 years ago full self driving trains became a reality in several areas. Since a train cannot stop if something is on the tracks anyway, we can ignore safety issues. The computer tells the track to switch, and then the train to go when the track is clear. When it is time to stop the computer stops, and the doors are exactly in the right place to align with the doors on the…

What happens if signalling or mechanical failures occur and manual intervention is required? I will collapse the network, that’s why you see conductor-less operation only in separated environments, like subways (Nürnberg) or DLR (London)

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#209

Post by xnorswap »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #183
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,…

This is incorrect. The biggest accidents - Potters Bar, Hatfield, Southall - happened in the years immediately after privatisation, before passenger numbers had grown much. The problem was more that - in typical privatised fashion - the industry was treated as a cash grab, and property speculation and other side quests got more management attention than running a safe railway. That first incarnation was so bad it was…

I remember reading an article in the journnal of the RSS about whether it was actually less safe or whether it was just statistical clustering.

I don't however remember the conclusion!

I've tracked down the article to https://academic.oup.com/jrssig/article-abstract/4/1/15/7029... but I don't have access.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#210

Post by graemep »

pm215 wrote: post #97
graemep wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government funding is interesting. It excludes HS2 for one thing. The funding for oeprating companies varies a lot, according to the chart on page 6, 3p per passenger kilometer for Thames link, 30p for Scotrail, -1.1p for west coast.

Mmm, presumably big infrastructure projects like HS2 don't count as "operational" expenses. (Personally I put the huge costs of HS2 down to our complete inability to build anything in a reasonable timeframe and budget, rather than to privatisation in particular. The usual ludicrously long and extended consultation/legal objection/appeal process plus political meddling in the specification plus other stuff all factor…

Yes, and a lot of money has been going into infrastructure, but its dominated by HS2.

Yes, its not anything like a uniquely British problem, its widespread. Bigger projects are a lot more difficult to run, and governments are drawn to big projects.

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