Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure • Hacker News Board

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#261

Post by rsynnott » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 4:36 PM UTC

hexbin010 wrote: post #228

rsynnott wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

British trains are _terribly_ expensive, and get cancelled a lot, has been my general impression (from next door in Ireland, another country with a notoriously bad rail system, though it is at least cheapish). As someone else mentioned, London (and really urban commuter services in general) are essentially separate; the problems are _primarily_ around the regional/intercity stuff. One specific consequence of the priv…

> Earlier this year I visited Manchester. The airport to city route is operated by _two_ rail operators, on the same line. You buy a ticket for one service or other. I bought a ticket for operator A because their train was next. A few minutes later that train was cancelled, so I had to watch as a couple of operator B trains passed and wait for an operator A train. As of June 2025, there is automatic ticket acceptance…

Huh, this was in August, and there were signs warning _not_ to do that. May’ve been old signs, I suppose.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#262

Post by purple_turtle » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 4:37 PM UTC

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.

Some communist era enterprises failed (or would have failed) on open market and entirely deserved this.

Extreme absurdities included hunting whales to fulfil production quota, then dumping carcasses into sea as they were not needed for anything. Some species were hunted into extinction this way, for no benefit whatsoever.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#263

Post by mhh__ » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 4:37 PM UTC

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…

This is only "true" because anything run efficiently by the private sector is so demonstrably better than any communist-fantasy alternative that no one bothers arguing any more.

Should Tesco be run by the government? I use Tesco more than I take trains.

May be of note also that the best train in London (the Elizabeth line) is run by a tendering process

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#264

Post by usrbinbash » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 4:37 PM UTC

kingstoned wrote: post #171

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.

Let's see: Is Walmart a utility provider, or a retailer?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart

> Walmart Inc.[a] is an American multinational retail corporation

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#265

Post by croes » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 4:37 PM UTC

graemep wrote: post #233

xnorswap wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Its available in full online and concludes: > The conclusion from the analysis of the accident data is that there is no evidence for the hypothesis that railway safety, as measured by accidents, has become worse since privatisation. https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/j....

> as measured by accidents

Suspiciously specific denial. What about other metrics?

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#266

Post by bluGill » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 4:38 PM UTC

rmoriz wrote: post #206

bluGill wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Drivers cannot do much to in those cases anyway. Hit the emergency stop and wait for the mechanic. - computers can do the same thing

The better answer is do maintenance such that you don't have those failures in the first place.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#267

Post by dh2022 » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 4:38 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #149

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).

Our ports in the US, which affects the cost of endless goods, are still running with 1950's level tech because the unions are so strong (and have heavy mob ties).

What is stopping other ports in the US from adopting 2025 tech and growing to the point where existing ports have to get new tech or become obsolete?

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#268

Post by Ray20 » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 4:38 PM UTC

faidit wrote: post #95

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.

The New Economic Policy in Soviet Russia (1921) and Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening up in China (1980s) both saw privatizations and significant economic improvement. But those were corrections of rare cases of having way too much (ie, near-absolute) state control, where even stuff like private barbers had been illegal. That said, in the case of Russia of course, wider privatization in the 1990s was disastrous in m…

> in the case of Russia of course, wider privatization in the 1990s was disastrous in many ways

When you effectively hand over state property to high-ranking communists for less than five percent of its real value, that is not a privatization.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#269

Post by Retric » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 4:40 PM UTC

terminalshort wrote: post #177

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…

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.

Each have their on individual problems. An aircraft’s ability to avoid obstacles is a massive benefit over a train’s only option being to very slowly come to a complete stop.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#270

Post by LexiMax » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 4:41 PM UTC

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…

> This is the pattern behind all UK privatisation. Foreign countries and shareholders benefited hugely, while prices of essential services exploded, and service quality degraded.

No kidding.

But of course, never underestimate the motivated reasoning of an HN user. After all, somebody made money off of the privatization. That could've been you, and you like making money, right?