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Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

rosalux.de

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Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#401

Post by bluGill »

cogman10 wrote: post #379
bluGill wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whe…

Long distance rail doesn't make sense without local transport. If I have to rent a car when I get there I can justify a much longer drive - and because cars are door to door the drive isn't that much longer. Flying goes far enough that driving doesn't make sense.

i use amtrak once in a while, but I hate driving and still can only justify it because my body can't sit in a car that long without pain

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#403

Post by nandomrumber »

cycomanic wrote: post #381
nandomrumber wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are these mythical countries you proclaim to have well managed public services and utilities?

Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Singapore... People like to complain about public systems as if problems wouldn't exist in privately owned ones.

One of those is a city state, and two of them have a population comparable to Sydney, one comparable to New York.

In other conversations it’s widely argued that those four probably don’t map very well to the larger, more diverse in every way, Western Democracies.

That leaves Germany, which has its problems.

If Germany hadn’t shut down their nuclear power plants they could have had 94% low emissions electricity by now, rather than 64% and much more costly.

The German economy is so well managed they’ve introduced rent-control in some cities.

Absolute paragon of a Western Democracy!

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#404

Post by linkregister »

pipes wrote: post #357
roguecoder wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a pretty broad statement about rich people. How do you define rich?

Laughable that this is interpreted as a slur against r*ch people. It is a banal observation that power corrupts. Societies with constructs to check power experience better overall and individual prosperity in general.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#405

Post by insane_dreamer »

KaiserPro wrote: post #387
insane_dreamer wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> by adding profit-seeking apart from in this instance, the amount of profit was dictated by the government as part of the franchise.

Not the ROSCOs at least, which is a big part of the problem.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#407

Post by baklazan »

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.

It's not the only one. Czech private rail companies are also a huge success.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#408

Post by teekert »

elAhmo wrote: post #202
teekert wrote: post #160

Our Dutch one is too (privatized in 1995, it's one of our biggest employers as well), we have a nice railway system but the car is generally cheaper, even when using it alone. It's always about how much money the railway system is loosing, but I don't see anybody crying about the money our roads are loosing. Isn't it all just transport infrastructure?

How would you quantify the money lost by roads?

Same as for railroads.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#409

Post by baklazan »

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…

RegioJet is a much better and cheaper service than the state-operated rail service.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#410

Post by n4r9 »

qcnguy wrote: post #376
n4r9 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ahead in internet speed...
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