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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

#321

Post by insane_dreamer »

RobinL wrote: post #89
fergie wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are expensive, but that is partly because rail workers are well paid This is in fact an interesting by-product of privatisation: train drivers became rarer due to shareholder reluctance to train and recruit them. They consequently became more expensive. A somewhat fun side effect of the free market, especially given the prevailing assumption that moving public sector employees into the private sector would dri…

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).

If that's the case, then it would be the case whether the railways are privatized or not (making the case for nationalization vs privatization).

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#322

Post by graemep »

paol wrote: post #288
jdietrich wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly a third of Train Operating Companies are now under state ownership; LNER has been state-owned since 2018 and Northern since 2020. I don't know about LNER, but punctuality and reliability on Northern has significantly worsened since nationalisation. Last year, we had the absurd spectacle of the Department for Transport notifying the Department for Transport that the Department for Transport had breached their c…

Truly, the writers of Yes Minister were documentarians. That line could have been straight out of the show.

The books actually have footnotes about the real incidents on which various aspects of the plots were based.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#323

Post by insane_dreamer »

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…

It's a mystery to me how Germany, known for its high efficiency in many industries, cannot get the trains to run on time. It's almost as bad as Italy.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#324

Post by insane_dreamer »

KaiserPro wrote: post #115

The problem with this assement is that it misunderstands the role of the private sector. Yes, those crashes happened, and they were disasters, but they were only partially down to rail track being privatised. They were a result of systemic under investment both pre and post privatisation. THe _other_ key thing that needs to be remembered is that rail is highly regulated. To the point that both price, timetables profi…

> lack of effective governance is the hidden crisis here

but privatization makes that worse, by adding profit-seeking (which tends to minimize investments) to the lack of effective governance

the solution is improving governance and public investments, not privatization

(not to mention the problem with infrastructure paid for by the public over decades being sold off on the cheap to private companies who can reap the benefits thereof)

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#325

Post by YmiYugy »

stonemetal12 wrote: post #289
tialaramex wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Did the time it takes trains to accelerate and brake change recently? The time it takes to accelerate and brake should have been considered when placing the signs in the first place.

I imagine it's different for different types of trains. Freight trains probably stop a lot slower than small passenger trains.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#326

Post by rsynnott »

dcel wrote: post #212
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 ]

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.

Possible complicating factor is that at about the same time Irish Rail started experimenting with radical new concepts like having trains that were not from the early 1960s, and having more than one commuter line in the entire country. So possibly hard to read too much into it; there’s an argument that Irish journeys just went up because the system was becoming rapidly less terrible.

(I remember being amazed as a kid in the 90s on encountering a mainline train that had automatic doors. Irish Rail was pretty behind the times for a long time.)

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#328

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #295
oersted wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Becoming more common in the US too, because of Trump's policy of US re-industrialization and national security. Intel Corp (10% equity), MP Materials (15%), Lithium Americas(5%), Trilogy Metals (17.5%), US Steel (golden share), Vulcan Elements, ReElement Technologies

But when the Obama administration tried to do this for renewables, it was called "communism" by the conservative right wing in the USA ...

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#330

Post by martinald »

hexbin010 wrote: post #277
martinald wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Many operators do an "operator-specific, 10/20p cheaper" ticket because it means they receive 100% of the revenue, rather than just a portion of it. That's exactly what TPE are doing in this instance. 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 :-)

Let's see. I don't know how far they will go with this - are they going to have LNWR the same price as "Avanti" for example, despite one being twice as fast?
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