Comment by tim333
1 day ago
In the UK the railways used to be kind of bad in the nationalised British Rail days. People moan about the current privatised rail but it mostly works.
1 day ago
In the UK the railways used to be kind of bad in the nationalised British Rail days. People moan about the current privatised rail but it mostly works.
It is also extraordinarily expensive, and since the cuts in the 1960s you have a fraction of the railway lines. It is absolutely terrible.
Who knows if it was better in the nationalised days, but it sure needs some unification and central governance without a profit motive today.
> Who knows if it was better in the nationalised days
I do. I was there. It wasn't.
Also if you look at the usage numbers they dropped off in the nationalised days and picked back up after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport_in_G...
I was around but not a heavy rail user in the nationalised days though the stories back then were quite reminiscent of the current DB stories.
Swiss trains are run by a national company and they’re great.
Yeah, I don't think you can simply say public ownership vs private is necessarily better or worse. Overall competence and values seem more important.