271–280 of 478 posts
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,…
Privatization in Europe, otoh, is going okay-ish.
A lot of people in the UK seem to think the trains in Europe are so much better, but that's not the case, at least in my experience. We took an interrail trip a couple of years ago and spent half the time sat on the floor and waiting for delayed trains. If anything, the overall experience was much worse than trains in the UK, especially if you factored in the difficulty in procuring the correct tickets.
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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?
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Graham Dennis (author of the article) absolutely does not ignore this. He regularly points out that Irish rail ridership exploded almost in lockstep with GB rail network growth despite remaining entirely publicly run. Even right at the top of this article he points out that the growth had begun long before privatisation. He goes into a lot more detail in his book.
The growth didn't happen long before privatization in the UK though. It turned around almost exactly when the privatization process started (which wasn't an immediate overnight event).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of...
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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…
It's too confusing but you can always buy an any operator ticket. On that route you have these options for anytime travel. Anytime Day Single: Any permitted - £6.70 Anytime Day Single: TPE only - £6.50 Anytime Day Single: Transport for Wales only - £5.40 Unfortunately many apps don't make this clear enough. I suspect you bought a TPE only ticket when any permitted would only be 20p more. Many apps will show you the c…
That practice should have been abolished long ago - it's totally anti-passenger.
GBR will likely solve this with removing the cheaper ticket, instead of making the cheaper ticket a generic ticket, of course :-)
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> 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…
Until the manufacturer puts DRM in your fucking train: https://www.thedrive.com/news/hackers-beat-anti-repair-softw...
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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?
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…
Companies with workers on their boards are significantly less likely to go bust than companies where only investors' opinions matter.
But of course, whenever someone else's opinion matters, investors use their wealth to try to change that. Rich people seem to prefer worse outcomes as long as they get to be in charge.
