Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

rosalux.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 478 posts

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#251

Post by SoftTalker »

deafpolygon wrote: post #245

Public transportation needs to be a public cost, paid for and funded by tax payers and not for profit. When transportation is subsidized but privately owned, then you will see maintenance neglected in an effort to raise shareholder value.

Public transit in the way we are used to it also cannot be run "for profit".

There is no public transit system where fares cover all the costs, never mind generating a profit. Riders would refuse to pay a fare high enough to do this.

Airlines barely make a profit. I'm not sure about intercity rail globally but in the USA, Amtrak relies on government subsidies to operate. All the private railroads gave up passenger service decades ago because it was unprofitable in the face of new competition (i.e. cars and air).

Local bus and light rail service will never be profitable as a private enterprise. We'll see what happens once drivers can be eliminated, but I'm still doubtful. Plus the public will still want some sort of authority figure on the bus or train. It's one thing to feel safe in a Waymo where you're not sharing the vehicle with 20 strangers but a bus or subway is different. So trade driver for security/customer service person and you're not really saving on payroll.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#252

Post by martinald »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #221
martinald wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. The EU is taking Netherlands to court for not allowing private companies (not state owned) to bid on the main passenger routes: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_... De facto it is required, and you see that in Germany - many routes are not operated by DB anymore.

I don't understand how is this "forced privatisation"? There's nothing preventing a state owned rail company from operating, no? All this says is that private companies must be allowed competitive access. Am I missing something?

No nothing preventing it but you cannot just have a state operator bid for it. The contract in question is basically the entire Netherlands passenger operations, with some small exceptions.

The key problem the EU has is the size of the contract. The contract cannot be for the entire country (more or less), it needs to be split into smaller ones (eg: one contract for intercity, one contract for local services near Amsterdam, etc). Netherlands defense is that the passenger rail system cannot be split up like this as it would cause operational problems and thus should not be franchised. I'm simplifying this from memory but it's roughly correct I think.

There is no doubt in my mind were it to be split up like the EU is requiring, that de facto some of it would be privatized. It has/is happening in every European state that has complied with the EU rules.

To me that is very close to forced privatisation. The current (Labour) UK model (government owned franchises with no bidding) would 100% not be allowed.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#253

Post by nostrebored »

tome wrote: post #190
noir_lord wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are been pedantic by pointing out that the set "everyone else" excluding train drivers would still include pilots rather than reading it as intended which would conventionally and implicitly exclude pilots. It is what it is with some people.

Thanks for trying to help me understand. I'm not sure if I do yet. Can I check my understanding? Did you mean, when you said > in reality their pay is fair for the responsibility it's everyone else who is underpaid that train drivers and pilots are fairly paid, whereas everyone else is underpaid?

You don’t get it because it doesn’t make sense. People’s understanding of money is horrible.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#255

Post by martinald »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #217
martinald wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just isn't true on any measure (apart from affordability and true high speed penetration in some countries). Affordability is really driven by how much the operators are subsidized by the govt. It's hard to calculate this on a like for like basis as some subsidy goes to the track operator and some to the train operator, and in eg Germany you have a hugely complex set of subsidies and fare zones in operation from…

I'd argue that subsidizing the railway system from the taxes is inherently a better way to pay for it. In the UK, the trains are ridiculously expensive out of pocket. They are vastly more expensive than in Switzerland (a really high CoL country), which as you say is a much better run system at the same time. The total costs might be the same, but if paid out of the taxes, the cost is distributed progressively. People…

I don't disagree fwiw, but the issue with it is you have no way to limit demand.

Imagine if the season tickets were 50% cheaper overnight going into London, coming out of government funds.

You'd induce (I suspect) double the demand at rush hour, as people could move further from eg London and not be bothered about the price.

I definitely don't think the current ticketing system is right but if you moved to this model you'd have even greater overcrowding problems.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#256

Post by tialaramex »

terminalshort wrote: post #165
tialaramex wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is usually to de-skill workers and also to try to make their contractual terms worse. In one very small way I actually sympathise on the railways, let me be specific, this is a long story: The person driving the train clearly needs to learn how to drive that particular model of train, I think that's likely true basically everywhere. The UK's railway systems are however also reliant on drivers knowing the rou…

What makes knowing this route any more difficult than knowing the route you are driving on a road? Copenhagen has an automated metro system, so this doesn't seem like a particularly difficult problem.

So e.g. the UK does not have speed signalling. One yellow lamp illuminated means "Prepare to find the next signal at danger". OK, so, how fast can I go? Well, it depends, your route knowledge might tell you that the "next signal" is up a steep rise, you can go pretty fast, even if it is at danger that rise will scrub off all the speed and normal braking is enough. Or, you might know that there's a sharp bend soon and so even moderate speed is excessive because you'll de-rail on that bend.

In daylight there are speed signs but, trains accelerate and brake much more slowly than your car, so while they're a useful reminder you cannot correctly drive the train based on observing these signs. At night you may not see them at all.

Then does your route diverge? In some cases the intent to diverge is signalled, unlike speed, Flashing double yellow for example means "Prepare to find the next signal at: Prepare to find the next signal at danger" plus "Your route will diverge". However you really need to prepare some distance in advance of this information anyway in some cases, so you need to know, long before the signals and certainly long before being able to actually see it, that you will make a turn.

The UK also has unsignalled stations - places where a passenger train will ordinarily stop, and must obey signals, but there are no starting signals, so you need to remember whether you were under a cautionary signal say five minutes ago, which still applies now, even though meanwhile a dog escaped, some idiot threw yoghurt at people and then two hundred soccer fans boarded your train.

The "Driver's Reminder Appliance" is meant to help with this last part, it's basically just a button you can push, to remind you that you pushed the button and restore your mental state...

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#258

Post by AnotherGoodName »

julik wrote: post #219
tialaramex wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is usually to de-skill workers and also to try to make their contractual terms worse. In one very small way I actually sympathise on the railways, let me be specific, this is a long story: The person driving the train clearly needs to learn how to drive that particular model of train, I think that's likely true basically everywhere. The UK's railway systems are however also reliant on drivers knowing the rou…

Most European railways require a driver to have done some route familiarization for most routes, which tends to work fairly well. What does not work very well is that the UK has very patchy and antiquated train safety systems (AWS / TPWS are somewhat rudimentary and deployed - by far - not everywhere) and signaling. Even speed restrictions in the UK are placed very, very tightly and you better know them by heart beca…

It's pretty much global fwiw. I wrote route qualification software for places outside of Europe.

It should also be made clear that you don't need to get an actual qualification from a bureaucratic org. You basically just need to document the last time the driver drove the route with another qualified driver and then document that they've kept the qualification up to date. It's a documentation process and just not that onerous. Also absolutely required for any railway since trains don't stop or accelerate quickly. You need the drivers to know what's coming ahead and no amount of signage or signalling can beat knowing the route.

The only concern i have is the guard qualification. That does seem overboard but... i don't know the UK and chances are there's nuance to this. So i'd have concern with anyone reading GPs post and thinking this is the cause of UKs railway inefficiency.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#259

Post by mhh__ »

deafpolygon wrote: post #245

Public transportation needs to be a public cost, paid for and funded by tax payers and not for profit. When transportation is subsidized but privately owned, then you will see maintenance neglected in an effort to raise shareholder value.

> in an effort

OK? Capitalism works because of the evil businessmen not in spite of them.

I'm sure Gregg's could put rats in the sausage rolls if they wanted to but suspect it wouldn't do much good for their footfall

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#260

Post by usrbinbash »

drstewart wrote: post #200
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…

>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. You won't have to wait long: flying. Shocked? You shouldn't be. In the 70s, you'd have to pay thousands of dollars to fly across the country. Now you can get a flight between NYC and London for $200. Time…

> Time to retract your entire little rant.

https://techrights.org/n/2025/08/22/Enshittification_of_Airp...

You were saying?

Post reply on HN