I'd been reading about the mess of privatized rail in the UK for a while, but what really shocked me when I was traveling around Manchester were all the diesel trains. In Germany nearly everything is electric, especially in and around cities.
As other posters have mentioned it is not that clear. Lots of people are using the problems with one rail franchise ('Southern' which is key when our media is so London centric) to justify their ideological opposition to private ownership. For me rail pre-privatisation was terrible. By the end of WW2 the railways were worn out and the the response was to close half of the network! Outside of London Underground, trains were in massive decline. this has been largely reversed. Virgin trains for example are by far the best on the network due to their significant investment in the best rolling stock and pushing for improved tracks. However there are massive problems in the way the franchises are awarded and where profits and subsidies go, but these are not problems of ownership. The government controls the infrastructure and awards the franchises....and regulates the ticket prices (which are a joke not least in their variability). However, now there is a huge increase in passenger numbers on UK rail. This is a success story. Yes bad operators should lose their franchise, but lets not punish the operators who are dong well!
New trains are about the only thing operators can spend money on -- that's where the high ticket prices in the UK go.
I'd rather have older trains, and pay less.
In and around London, trains suffered from the same lack of investment. It was Livingstone bringing in the takeover and upgrade of the orbital lines ("London Overground"), and the overwhelming success they've been since they've been run by the government, that has prompted the whole debate about renationalisation. Londoners on other lines want the same.
The problem with older trains (or indeed older lots of types of infrastructure) and paying less is that what tends to be happening with that combination is that maintenance is being unsustainably deferred. You can't easily hide the cost of a new train but you often can hide deferred maintenance for long enough for it to be someone else's problem.
>For me rail pre-privatisation was terrible. By the end of WW2 the railways were worn out and the the response was to close half of the network!
Did you really just try to blame WW2's effect on the rail network on nationalization?
>However, now there is a huge increase in passenger numbers on UK rail. This is a success story.
The housing crisis caused people to move further out and commute leading to a huge increase in passenger numbers. The housing crisis is not something I'd characterize as a "success" - unless you happened to own inner city property, in which case, congratulations on your unearned payday.
>Did you really just try to blame WW2's effect on the rail network on nationalization?
No. I think you are stretching that a bit. The response too the post war disrepair by the nationalized BR was to close the network rather than make investment needed to put it right. Britain is criss-crossed by closed railway lines. The attitude of 'lets close stuff until we can afford the upkeep' was not reversed until privatisation.
>The housing crisis....
The housing crisis may be part of the issue. Another part is London centric planning. Why do so many of the workforce have to travel to the centre of London to sit at a computer screen and answer the phone? I recently had to pay £200 to catch a train to London to meet an ERP consultancy who had moved into The Shard for prestige...but practically they could have been anywhere with decent internet...The same point to the poster who mentioned London Overground. Yes loads of money is thrown at London transport, and because of that public ownership has been successful, I just can't see it happening the same way in the midlands. You mention Livingstone, didn't his transport czar try and sell private bonds in London underground? It was blocked by Blair/Brown if you remember. Again this was ideological rather than practical.
Up here, a couple of hours out of London, the trains are much, much better since privatisation. I have no ideological view on either method of ownership, just my experience of riding on them. Yes the government keeps making a hash of awarding franchises. But if they can't award a franchise properly, how can you ask them to actually run it.
Now perhaps we can agree on one thing, can we cancel HS2 and get Hyperloop instead?
The biggest cause, historically, is the fact the railways were privatised when much of the rest of Europe was electrifying in the inter-war period and receiving little state money, and at the same time were struggling to make any money (a large part of that was the fact they had an obligation as a common carrier to accept any and all freight for a fixed price, from when they were the only way to quickly transport goods long-distances over land).
By the time they were nationalised in the 1950s the railways were still in heavy decline and more or less up until the early 2000s all the planning was about a managed decline of the railways, hence the lack of investment, justified by the falling passenger and freight numbers year-on-year.
