Comment by heraldgeezer
1 year ago
It HAS NOT worked great for Sweden.
Source: I live in Sweden there was a DN article recently about it. Here it is
Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20240721074607/https://www.dn.se...
(Its all too segmented, the trains, the track all different companies now nobody sees the full picture)
Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20240726054426/https://www.dn.se...
(The land is not enough to fix trains and the land next to it was reserved but somehow sold to build a sports arena because the train land section became a company that had to post good numbers)
I hear UK is not too happy about their rail too. https://youtu.be/DlTq8DbRs4k?si=yNWcAUZ69nN1B29O
Seems like it just does not work to separate rail and traffic like that.
100%. That was a whole series of articles in DN about how the Swedish railways have been run into the ground.
Separating maintenance from operations is a terrible idea and has never worked well on any railway that I'm aware of.
Came here to say this.
Alos, one important thing that happened in Sweden was that the part that was not privatised was also ran like a for profit company.
The railway infrastructure "CEO" basically stopped a lot of repair work and long term projects and was able to show some very good numbers to the goverment, which they very much liked. 10-15 years later things started falling apart, by which time she was long gone.
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and follows all the Wall Street bad practices... So much for obstinately calling it "not-privatized", when by all practical matters it is.