Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

Post by 113 » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 2:47 PM UTC

tome wrote: post #85

noir_lord wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Train drivers can be paid as much as aircraft pilots. Yes and that's as it should be, a fully loaded high speed intercity train has more souls on board than most commercial aviation planes (apologies pet peeve of mine because our media keeps banging on about how "overpaid" train drivers are when in reality their pay is fair for the responsibility it's everyone else who is underpaid). A bad day at the office for me…

Hang on a minute. How do you square your claim that it's as it should be that train drivers can be paid as much as airline pilots, with your claim that everyone else is underpaid, including, presumably, airline pilots?

Post by mytailorisrich » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 2:48 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #20

spacebanana7 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK the airline and telecom privatisations were largely successful (BA, Rolls Royce, BT, etc). BP did okay too. For some reason things that happen in the air seem to privatise much better than things that happen on the ground. MG might be the exception, but it’s a bit of a weird situation in that it went from being owned by a loss making British state owned enterprise (Leyland) to being owned by a loss making C…

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…

Post by faidit » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 2:49 PM UTC

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.

Post by pm215 » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 2:50 PM UTC

graemep wrote: post #68

pm215 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by RobinL » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 2:50 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #79

FridayoLeary wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> It's not a stressful job and like you said they get paid pretty well I’m curious as to the criteria there. A train driver must, surely, be more stressed than a software engineer? They’re in charge of a moving vehicle that carries hundreds of people. And yet software engineers will still often make more than train drivers do.