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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

#61

Post by bluehatbrit »

wtcactus wrote: post #3

I hear these stories about UK private rail system being terrible for more than a decade now. But, truth is, I go there frequently and the times I had to use it it was quite fine. Lots of trains and they arrived on time (and they were fairly clean). It was much, much better - by any account of imagination - than the public railway we have here in Portugal. And I’m guessing they cost the taxpayers a lot less too (but t…

I live in a city in the UK and use the train to commute daily. Return travel on a peak train costs me £8.40 (arriving at work before 9am), and £6.50 if I go in after peak (arriving at work after 9am).

Every year without fail this goes up by a noticable amount, but the service is still unreliable. Looking back at my travel history, the train has either been late to arrive or late to get to my destination around 30% of the time. That delays can vary a lot as well between about 10mins (this morning for example) to 30 minutes on average.

But that's the average picture, the winters get so much worse for my route. There's a tunnel just before our station which frequently has water pouring through when it rains heavily which means no trains can run until it stops. Several times I've left my house with all the trains listed as running on-time and arrived at the station to be told by the (very nice) guard that he doesn't expect there to be any trains through until mid day.

They also get very crowded, at least on my route. They're meant to send a 3 carriage train but will frequently end up with only 2 carriages because they had a problem with one of them. This usually delays people boarding which means the resulting journey is around £8.40 for no seat and a 10-15 minute delay.

The UK rail sure isn't the worst in the world by any stretch. When a journey goes well it's seemless and I'm a big fan. But a lot of the time it feels like you're being bent over, especially when after several weeks of reduced services due to strikes you're suddenly met with a price hike of 5% with no improvement in the services reliability. All of that is just when you're talking about commuting as well. Any time I'm forced to head to London it's a miserable emptying of my wallet.

All of this is just my daily experience, but I'm so sick of this failed experiment. Each year it costs more, the service is just as unreliable, and the profits all leave the UK.

Maybe my expectations aren't reasonable, but it's something I'm effectively forced to use daily because of house prices.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#62

Post by fhennig »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #27
microtonal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason things that happen in the air seem to privatise much better than things that happen on the ground. I know that there are some nuances to this, but this makes sense right? If you think you can compete on say London-Amsterdam, your airline can in principle decide to compete there (yes, they need slots, etc.). If you want to compete with rail between Amsterdam and Berlin, you are either going to pay an i…

Yeah there’s probably a way in which railways and water are natural monopolies, so are more difficult to privatise.

Yes, it's the tracks. Planes don't need tracks.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#63

Post by enaaem »

sschueller wrote: post #24
wood_spirit wrote: post #2

Does Britain have any privatisation success stories? Or any public-private partnership (PPP) success stories? Does any country have any success stories? I can’t think of any.

You can't privatize what can't make money in itself. By that I mean, rail is beneficial to the entire economy of a country. This profit is not something a rail company can benefit from but a country can. Serving low traffic areas are a loss business but vital for a country to grow. Same for fiber infrastructure, running fiber into a desolate town may not be profitable but giving the chance for some kid in that town t…

In the Japanese model the rail company also owns land around the station, so they capture more of the value of rail transport. Rail in the UK does not capture all the value it delivers, so subsidies would be a pragmatic solution.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#64

Post by mentalgear »

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…

Fun fact: DB (Germany public-private national rail company) has become one of the UK's biggest train service providers - even the Queen's train was under their service.

DB (Schenker) buys stakes in transportation all over the world - with German tax payer money: A fact that many Germans do not like given the very poor train service in their own country.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#65

Post by istultus »

niek_pas wrote: post #46
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

Politically colored ≠ biased

Bias - an inclination of temperament or outlook [1]

Politically colored = an inclination of outlook

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bias

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#66

Post by tialaramex »

pm215 wrote: post #42
wtcactus wrote: post #3

I hear these stories about UK private rail system being terrible for more than a decade now. But, truth is, I go there frequently and the times I had to use it it was quite fine. Lots of trains and they arrived on time (and they were fairly clean). It was much, much better - by any account of imagination - than the public railway we have here in Portugal. And I’m guessing they cost the taxpayers a lot less too (but t…

I think there's a couple of things about typical foreign experiences of UK public transport to note (some of this may not apply to you in particular, of course): (1) Most tourists visit largely London and its near surroundings. Public transport in (and to) London is generally much better than other parts of the country. (2) A lot of the downsides don't manifest if you're a relatively infrequent user and you're largel…

London is particularly notable because it escaped forced privatisation of e.g. bus services. In London all the buses are red and work the same. You do not care whether your bus is a "Big Corp" bus or a "Tiny New Outfit" bus, they're both red, they both take Oyster, or credit cards or whatever, they're the same, the bus service is controlled by Transpot for London which responds to an elected Mayor. In most UK cities by contrast there are multiple, privately owned bus companies. The local government can try to persuade them to run services it wants but they don't have to, and indeed if the local government won't do what they want they can just fold up the service and go home, too bad, the government have to contract with a for-profit business and if nobody wants to do it then too bad no buses.

Until relatively recently (things have improved in Scotland especially and now increasingly in English cities) it would have been illegal to do what London does anywhere else. My city really wanted a single card that works on a bus or a train anywhere in the city, they couldn't persuade anybody involved to actually do that and the cards went away without ever being actually useful.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#67

Post by hardlianotion »

It's really an open question - UK's railways were in a poor state & lacking investment when they were handed over. Rail journeys and infrastructure investment did increase in the intervening period.

It's not at all clear that railways will have consistent, adequate funding in the public realm, not least because the government is leery of capital expenditure and is always interested in ways to make debt levels look smaller.

Re: Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

#68

Post by graemep »

pm215 wrote: post #42
wtcactus wrote: post #3

I hear these stories about UK private rail system being terrible for more than a decade now. But, truth is, I go there frequently and the times I had to use it it was quite fine. Lots of trains and they arrived on time (and they were fairly clean). It was much, much better - by any account of imagination - than the public railway we have here in Portugal. And I’m guessing they cost the taxpayers a lot less too (but t…

I think there's a couple of things about typical foreign experiences of UK public transport to note (some of this may not apply to you in particular, of course): (1) Most tourists visit largely London and its near surroundings. Public transport in (and to) London is generally much better than other parts of the country. (2) A lot of the downsides don't manifest if you're a relatively infrequent user and you're largel…

The government funding is interesting. It excludes HS2 for one thing.

The funding for oeprating companies varies a lot, according to the chart on page 6, 3p per passenger kilometer for Thames link, 30p for Scotrail, -1.1p for west coast.

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