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

331–340 of 478 posts

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#331

Post by petcat »

hexator wrote: post #249

The only rail privatization success story, that being the rail system in Japan, for some reason is not replicated much elsewhere. You make money on development, not running trains. You will never make money on public transportation, nor should you—it's a public service.

> You will never make money on public transportation, nor should you—it's a public service.

My understanding is that in the US Amtak runs a net-positive operating income in the Northeast Corridor (Boston-NYC-Philly-DC) but it all goes toward subsidizing unprofitable routes throughout the rest of the country. To the tune of the entire system running a $2 billion loss every year.

So in theory you could get some private rail to run trains up and down the northeast seaboard, upstate NY, Long Island, and possibly come out with a net profit.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#332

Post by dash2 »

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'm in the UK and services seem worse to me. I also remember pre-privatization British Rail. It was unbelievably awful.

The basic fact about rail privatization is captured in this chart. All else is commentary:

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

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#333

Post by lysace »

htk wrote: post #193
abracos wrote: post #34

For context: The website is called Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung. Rosa Luxemburg was a Polish and naturalised-German Marxist theorist and revolutionary. A very biased source

Absolutely, I flagged this post for this very reason. Far left or right websites are no place to get a reliable account of things.

It's so insane that communism always gets a pass. I feel for the victims of that insane ideology.

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

> Estimates of individuals killed range from a low of 10–20 million to as high as 148 million.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#334

Post by mrguyorama »

qcnguy wrote: post #231
nyreed wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BT was deep into preparations for a nationwide fiber rollout at the time of privatisation in the early 80s. The project was cancelled, the fledgling factories equipment and expertise were instead exported to South Korea, enabling their widespread fiber penetrance. That delayed fiber rollout in the UK by decades. Was that a success? Could be they were too early to justify the cost? But without someone pushing ahead, w…

It was that kind of delusional decision making that justified the privatization in the first place. Rolling out fiber nationwide in a world where the web had only just been invented and everywhere else in the world was connected via modems would have been catastrophically expensive and supplied bandwidth nobody would have been able to use. The idea the internet could have skipped straight from 33kbaud to fiber speeds…

The private market made the exact same choice in the 90s, but instead of just being something that cost maybe more tax money than it should, it was hyped up and full of lies and marketing and bullshit and burned tons of cash for really stupid projects and caused a serious recession.

So..... not really a point for privatization here.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#335

Post by bluGill »

Sharlin wrote: post #291
bluGill wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a grade separated system - which you really want anyway - there is nothing that could get in the way. I'm against trams because a bus can do the same thing - and if you maintain the roads to track standards they are just as comfortable.

> If you have a grade separated syste Yeah, that's not realistic in 99% of the cases. > I'm against trams because a bus can do the same thing - and if you maintain the roads to track standards they are just as comfortable. But buses can't do the same thing. The thing about LRT is capacity per driver . Even the fanciest, most expensive buses can take maybe half the passengers a standard 30-40m tram can. It's not even…

In almost all cases you don't have enough passanges to fill a large bus though. And in most of the cases where you do you should be paying 3 drivers to get three buses because that increased service is highly valued by riders. Long before you reach the end of that a grade separeted metro that can go faster that a bus or tram should be built thus getting mose people off the but. Only a few places in the world are left after the above where you need more than a bus can do at grade level (which implies a lot of short trips), but if you are in one I'll grant a tram is needed.

the 'rail factor' is claimed often - but I've never seen it put to a fair test. When you give the train better service of course people choose to use it.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#336

Post by buellerbueller »

dash2 wrote: post #332
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm in the UK and services seem worse to me. I also remember pre-privatization British Rail. It was unbelievably awful. The basic fact about rail privatization is captured in this chart. All else is commentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of...

My commentary is this: It looks like around 1982, the trend reversed, well before the privatization. My takeaway is that whatever the government had done under nationalization was successful at addressing the concerns that existed and contributed to a downward trend that began before nationalization.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#337

Post by dh2022 »

renewiltord wrote: post #319
thaumasiotes wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You try it, you get a visit. Same way it's always been. In that case, there's no obstacle. This is exactly what happened with containerization, and guess what? The ports that did containerize, including some ports constructed from scratch specifically because existing unionized ports blocked containerization, replaced the ports that didn't.

My understanding is that the mob extracted large payments in order for containerization to be permitted. Some half of the time they just live on container royalties which are exactly the mechanism the mob used for extraction. So sure, there's no big deal, just pay the mob. People do argue for that.

Any evidence mob lives off container royalties? And what are container royalties to begin with???? (I had no idea when I borrowed a container for moving I was paying royalties.)

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#338

Post by constantcrying »

Germany failed to privatize its Railways (it is still 100% owned by the state and directly financed through taxes) and it has an abysmal, totally dysfunctional railway system.

This is an article by a communist rag and NGO, which is also paid for by the German tax payer. Why would anyone care what they have to say?

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#339

Post by dghlsakjg »

dash2 wrote: post #332
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm in the UK and services seem worse to me. I also remember pre-privatization British Rail. It was unbelievably awful. The basic fact about rail privatization is captured in this chart. All else is commentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of...

That chart doesn't normalize for population, service levels, social changes or any number of other extremely important variables.

Any facts taken from that chart need to be extremely caveated.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#340

Post by jhonof »

BJones12 wrote: post #283
jhonof wrote: post #178

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. Interestingly, Quebec in Canada has been loosely following this model recently and it's working great. Long video but interesting if you like infrastructure stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlHqqA0onn0&t=532s TLDR: CDPQ invests on behalf of the Quebec Pension Plan, and has been building inf…

Those infrastructure "investments" will almost certainly not generate the same return for pensioners as putting the money in an index fund.

Sure but pensioners care about consistency vs. gross returns. You really don't want your pension to lose a ton of value in a downturn because people are constantly drawing from it, it's a risk off investment. Bonds are also poor investments compared to an index fund from a gross return perspective, but that's not why people/funds buy them, they buy them to lower risk.
Post reply on HN