Comment by wolvoleo
1 day ago
I don't think so as in this case Deutsche Bahnn owns both the station and the train. In the UK they've gone a bit crazy with the whole free market thing. Public transport should not be a market.
In Germany there's also the issue that the powerful car makers are always lobbying the government to budget cut public transport.
Germany does actually have station fees. And DB isn't the only operator. The RRX trains, one of which OP talked about, are operated by DB and National Express, ordered by the RRX group comprised of VRR, go.Rheinland, NWL, SPNV-Nord and NVV, running on tracks and stations by DB InfraGO.
Transport for Wales has nationalised its trains. A lot of the infrastructure is paid for by the state as well.
By the way, I can remember the state run British Rail and that was bad too. Neither nationalisation nor private operators have done well with British trains over the past fifty years.
The current UK government is re-nationalising the railways. Several operators are currently nationalised (and the train fares have dropped!), and the plan is for all of them to be, once the contracts run out.
The Welsh government has already nationalised local trains.
I'm still not sure why everywhere's devolved except England.
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