British Rail Woes Due to Bureocracy, Not Privatization

[Bono]

http://www.adamsmith.org/images/uploads/publications/railway.pdf

[opebo]

What garbage, of course the opposite is the case.

[afleitch]

Privatisation has been a success for Brtish railways to be honest. I will admit it was not privatised in the correct way, seperating thr track from the operator companies and fragmenting InterCity etc but 11 years on things run alot better. New trains, more frequent services and station improvements. In Glasgow we had trains pushing 40 years old until privatisation (which occured in Scotland in 1997) 1 and hour if we were lucky. Now the trains are less that 5 years old and there is one every 15 minutes, Now thats progress.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

"Adam Smith" institute are a bunch of hacks; true BR wasn't very good and could have done with some serious reform but it was a hell of a lot better than what replaced it; the private train companies are bad enough (to be fair some aren't that bad from what I hear, but Virgin and Arriva are both dire) but the scandal was the privatisation of the actual railways... no amount of free-market rhetoric* can disguise the fact that Railtrack was a complete and utter disaster; the only reason for any improvement in services anywhere was due to the sheer amount of taxpayers money being poured into a private company. It was always going to collapse at some point...

*Not that a private monopoly can really be described as "free market" anyway...

[freek]

but Virgin and Arriva are both dire

Arriva also runs the bus service in the North of the Netherlands. And they do that probably just as bad as they run trains in England.

[Bono]

but Virgin and Arriva are both dire

Arriva also runs the bus service in the North of the Netherlands. And they do that probably just as bad as they run trains in England.

They also have bus companies in the North of Portugal and the Soutehrn Bank of the Tagus.
I don't live in their area of influence, but from what i see in the South Bank, it sucks. Very irregular services to some areas, but of course I'm not sure of what the demand is. Just going by timetables.

[Peter]

Why don't I hear the name "Connex" here?

Fortunately, they were so bad that they had their franchise taken away.

[Jens]

Why don't I hear the name "Connex" here?

Fortunately, they were so bad that they had their franchise taken away.

splendid, Connex and Arriva are the main bus operators in Copenhagen (and they are more expensive that Aarhus Sporveje, the municipal bus company in Århus, the 2nd largest city in DK) and Arriva runs a section of the rainways in Jutland and contract they got in a fairly dodgy way. DSB, the public railroad company offered a mush cheaper contract but the goverment insisted on Arriva, despite lots of warnings from Netherlands and UK. After complete caos the first 6 months, they are doing a ok job now, but I'll bet on that they arn't making any money from that contract...

[Democratic Hawk]

I don't pay any atention to the classical and neo-liberal spin that inevitably comes from the Adam Smith Institute, thank you

Dave

[Michael Z]

Why don't I hear the name "Connex" here?

That is a name I wish to keep buried in the deepest recesses of my subconscious, thankyouverymuch. They made my commuting life an absolute misery, back in the days when I was still commuting to Chislehurst.

Regardless of whether privatisation of British rail servcies was beneficial to the public or not (and in my view it wasn't, at least in London), I generally believe that privatisation of public services is somewhat undemocratic. If you take control over institutions such as the transport system, health, education, etc. out of the hands of people who can be held accountable to the public and into the hands of unelected officials, not to mention profit-driven companies, then what's the point of having a democracy in the first place? The "free market" is autocracy by the back door, simple as that.

[Serenity Now]

I don't pay any atention to the classical and neo-liberal spin that inevitably comes from the Adam Smith Institute, thank you

Dave

Seconded

[Peter]

I know the mods in their wisdom deleted Mordac's post, but I simply can't let this one slide.

Why did you request the deletion of a post that you felt the need to reply to?

This makes no sense to me.