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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

Note that the system was fully private for a while (Railtrack PLC), until they went bankrupt. I think it's going to be expensive whether it's public or private, for complex reasons probably related to "legacy" hardware. If it was fully deregulated then the operators would immediately shut down all the tracks within 100 miles of London to build houses on them.

I believe all European countries are required to have separate track and train operators for railways with some structure for competition in rail. It's just that most of them manage it better than the UK.

The UK telecoms industry was privatised and has ended up with BT Openreach operating most of the wires, leased out with local loop unbundling (LLU) to a variety of broadband providers. It works OK although not brilliantly.

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In Japan the railway companies (which are pseudo private in the way a lot of things are in Japan) run the railways effectively at or below cost and the profits are made on property development and leasing on the surrounding land.

In the UK the railway companies try to run profits on railway operation while the taxpayer subsidizes them and the surrounding land is owned by property developers who are making profits that are staggering.

The Conservative government is also doing stuff like donating 38 million pounds to govia thameslink in profit compensation for a strike they triggered.

It's taxpayers and passengers subsidizing property developers' and TOC profits, and the government/TOCs seems to be trying to get the TOC wage bills down so that TOCs and property developers can make even more.

No, the most sucessful train company in Europe, the swiss doesn’t. And those who have go e for separate companies have just bad experience with it. This separation is mostly ideologially driven with no proven benefits. Right wing parties will push through anything their economic text books say is smart regardless of pracrical results and experiences.

Switzerland is part of the Single Market but not part of the EU or EEA, just to complicate matters. I agree with the rest of what you're saying.

"I believe all European countries are required to have separate track and train operators for railways with some structure for competition in rail."

Not really, in some countries the railway and train operators is the same company, strongly controlled by the government and operating without big problems.

It's my understanding that the problems in the UK started when they stopped using that model.

100 times better than the states where local monopolies where allowed to remain and you get insane things like receiver plays for mobile.

And it went bankrupt at the cost of fixing some fundamental problems that contributed to at least two nasty rail accidents. The government decided it didn't want to continue to be responsible for the maintenance. Would rather feed subsidies to a company that would take the heat for issues.

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