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

371–380 of 478 posts

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#371

Post by CGMthrowaway »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #328
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #295

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. 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 ...

Obama used loan guarantees and grants, not equity stakes.

  Solyndra $500M loan guarantee (defaulted 2011)
  Tesla $500M loan (repaid early 2013 with interest)
  First Solar $3B loan guarantees (currently being serviced)
  SunPower $1.2B loan guarantee (bankrupt 2024 but loan repaid)
  ARRA (2009) $25.6B grants disbursed
No equity positions taken. Trump's policy is direct equity stakes as condition for industrial subsidies/tariff relief. It's statist, but I wouldn't call it communist.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#372

Post by oersted »

roguecoder wrote: post #280
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…

That's interesting: it reminds me of the results we're seeing from workplace democracy in Germany. 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.

Yes of course but there are downsides to this too. Workers will certainly prioritize survival and stability, but sometimes at the expense of innovation, efficiency and growth. They do not really have an incentive for the company to do better, but they definitely don’t want to lose their jobs or make them much more difficult.

For most established companies it is really not much of a challenge to prevent it from going bust if that is your priority, but it requires sacrifices, mostly opportunity costs.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#373

Post by Reason077 »

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,…

> “It is not efficiently run (see HS2!).”

Sure, but HS2 has little to do with Network Rail, the government entity that owns and operates most of the UK’s existing rail infrastructure.

There’s a whole other inefficient bureaucracy (HS2 Ltd) behind HS2!

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#374

Post by hn_acc1 »

iso1631 wrote: post #318
Ar-Curunir wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the desire for power is as important as the desire for capital.

If you have $100m your life isn't going to measurably change if you increase your wealth to $1b or $10b At that point you start trying to accumulate power instead of money, and of course money is a by-product for power.

I think proxy is probably a better word than by-product "for" power. Or did you mean by-product OF power?

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#375

Post by SoftTalker »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #358
SoftTalker wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

This all hinges on people utterly ignoring the expense of maintaining the road system. If you factor in the spending on highways and road systems that can support high speed private vehicles at no direct cost to the end user, other forms of transport get incredibly competitive. Highway spending alone accounts for a quarter of a trillion per year. That doesn't account for spending at lower levels of government for str…

I'm saying that even with the current approach to taxpayer-funded roads, operating a local bus service cannot be done at a profit to the operator if they rely on fares alone. All public transit systems require substantial funding beyond what they receive in fares. And rail lines cost even more than roads do.

Privatizing such services and maintaining affordable fares is a complete non-starter. It cannot be done.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#376

Post by qcnguy »

n4r9 wrote: post #240
qcnguy wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Unwittingly a brilliant demonstration of how short-term capitalistic behaviour hamstrings society. Japan, Korea and Hong Kong are way ahead of the UK and much of Europe precisely because of the lack of insight and vision reflected in your post.

Ahead in what sense? More successful internet startups or tech economy? I don't think so, but that's how such buildouts were pitched as justified.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#377

Post by qcnguy »

mrguyorama wrote: post #334
qcnguy wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The 90s were dominated by modems and around the turn of the millennium DSL connections. Fiber internet (to the home) didn't start until much later. The backbone was getting fiber deployed before then, but there was never some kind of unusual bandwidth crunch in the UK. The private sector managed the rollout just fine.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#378

Post by qcnguy »

dcel wrote: post #276
qcnguy wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I'd argue that the upswing had started in the 1980s and took a hit along with the economy between black monday (87) and ERM2 crash/black wednesday (92) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of...

The privatization took years however, it wasn't an overnight thing. A lot of the process was just writing down and professionalising a lot of aspects that were previously ad-hoc, so the benefits started before the precise date drawn on the graph. The law was passed in 1993 but preparations began before that, it was clear this was going to happen even in 1991.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#379

Post by cogman10 »

bluGill wrote: post #335
Sharlin wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yeah, you need a pretty high population density before you get to the point where rail makes sense. That said, having rail connecting major metros does make sense generally, especially with how often people travel.

In the UK, I had to take a train from Preston England to London (2004ish). It was absolutely packed. A good reason for that is the ticket price was about 60 gbp and the trip took 3 hours (IIRC).

That's where I think the US should both invest and subsidize. There's a lot of air travel that could be replaced with rail travel if the US rail wasn't so terribly ran. It usually costs more than an airline ticket (which is crazy) and often takes a lot longer due to delays waiting on commercial trains. A lot of that can be fixed by regulating commercial rail shipping (for example, limiting train length). But also building new dedicated highspeed lines between major metros. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to make a trip from Seattle to Florida in under 48h by rail and for less than $500.

A train should be cheaper and faster than a car. It should be cheaper than a plane.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#380

Post by Reason077 »

littlestymaar wrote: post #351
dash2 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The British rail privatization was so successful in increasing passenger numbers it also increased the number of passengers taking the train in France (despite French rail still being state-controlled). Or maybe, just maybe, there's another underlying casual relationship that explains why train use increased a ton in the 90s and 00s in both countries (and other European countries too, by the way, AFAIK passengers cou…

Much of the French high speed rail network (LGV Atlantique, LGV Rhône-Alpes, LGV Nord, LGV Méditerranée, LGV Est, etc) was inaugurated in the 1990s and 2000s.

This alone would have been responsible for a big increase in French rail traffic.

UK rail infrastructure certainly received improvements during this era too, but besides HS1 it was mostly just renewing and upgrading existing tracks. Nothing like the thousands of km of new high speed rail that was built in France!

Post reply on HN