The UK's Failed Experiment in Rail Privatization
Wendover Productions4 HN recommenders · 2021–2024
2.1M views · explainer · dated · Uploaded 2021-03-09
Wendover Productions explains how UK rail privatization worked and why it failed. It covers the fragmented operator and infrastructure structure and why market forces apply poorly to rail.
Recommended in privatization and rail threads as a clear, well-sourced explanation of the UK rail mess.
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6 comments from Hacker News
Here's a well-sourced rebuttal to your statement that privatization benefits revenues: [VIDEO] TL;DW revenues and passenger numbers are demonstrably lower with privatization than when nationalized. Unlike other industries, the UK's franchise privatization model is not subjected to free market forces, allowing rail companies to win contracts by underbidding only to fail to meet their targets.
I've found that these two YouTube video's do an okay job explaining the actual 'market forces' actually at play here: [LINK] [VIDEO] It takes a bit of understanding why regular market forces kind of can't apply to a system like rail transport.
the people on the Wendover YouTube channel did a video on this back in March which explained the issue really well. [VIDEO]
except they clearly don't? especially in places that need to be connected but will never be profitable. UK tried it with rail and it didn't go so well: [VIDEO]
> I believe the best way to make this work is by keeping the network itself in public hands and then having a competition of contributors to the network Even then it doesn't always work out - UK rail services have that system - the infrastructure is maintained by a public body [1], but the operators are private. UK rail is quite expensive, and mediocre in quality compared to our EU counterparts. One of the issues is that it's basically impossible to have competition on a single rail journey joining two large cities - there's aren't enough tracks to support it without making it unprofitable for operators. So rail networks bid every few years on sections of the rail network, and then have no competition for their term. Again the incentives that make the free market efficient are just not there. A nice video that summarises this mess here: [2] [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO]
It HAS NOT worked great for Sweden. Source: I live in Sweden there was a DN article recently about it. Here it is [LINK] Mirror: [LINK] (Its all too segmented, the trains, the track all different companies now nobody sees the full picture) and [LINK] Mirror: [LINK] (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. [VIDEO] Seems like it just does not work to separate rail and traffic like that.