• Well There's Your Problem: The Privatization of British Rail

  • General discussion of passenger rail systems not otherwise covered in the specific forums in this category, including high speed rail.
General discussion of passenger rail systems not otherwise covered in the specific forums in this category, including high speed rail.

Moderators: mtuandrew, gprimr1

  by STrRedWolf
 


Basically a 3 hour documentary on the disaster that was the privatization of British Rail, with slides!
  by NH2060
 
Here’s how bad just the *idea* of British Rail privatization was:

Margaret Thatcher, yes, MARGARET FREAKING THATCHER -the conservative right wing queen of privatization in the 1980s when just about every government owned company was siphoned off to the private sector- of all people told John Major before he took over as Prime Minister in 1990 “whatever you do, don’t touch the railways”. In fact if I’m not mistaken British Rail was doing quite well financially or at the very least was moving in the right direction in terms of its finances. But the geniuses at 10 Downing Street went ahead and ruined a good thing all the same.


And as an aside: the brief period of time in 2007/2008 (?) when the InterCity East Coast franchise post-GNER was taken over directly by the government and branded “National Express East Coast” has apparently been looked back on as a good time overall for rail service along the London-Newcastle-Edinburgh corridor. As I recall the success of NXEC led to more calls for nationalization.
  by Tadman
 
Yes, privatisation has been terrible. As you can see in this ridership graph, it was so bad that ridership went down almost every year under BR ownership and doubled under private ownership.

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There are some serious flaws in the system, but having different companies compete for contracts and profits inspires innovations such as new equipment, services, and on-board features that BR was just not willing to pursue, because why? They had no need.

Arguable the biggest success of BR, the HST 125, was seen as a temporary offering at the time that would be replaced by the APT that was just never to be.
  by RandallW
 
in 2019, British railways were subsidized by taxpayers at ~9x what Amtrak was subsidized at that same year. I suppose that kind of subsidy can buy a lot of private "innovation".

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It is important to note that substantial equipment replacement was only because many contracts mandated that the private operators replace equipment, or that specific end dates for the use of certain equipment were mandated, not because private operators choose to do so on cost merits alone.

From A speech by Andrew Haines, Transition Team Lead
Sadly, from a taxpayers perspective, increasing passenger numbers were not sufficient to equate to a net cost reduction in the sector. The cost of providing the capacity, rising customer expectations on service quality and an aging asset base has meant a somewhat surprising profile.

For government, the level of subsidy they have had to provide has increased greatly. In the first ten years following privatisation, we saw total government support of on average £2.39 billion a year. By the end of 2018/19 it was £9.18 billion.

And the profile of operating subsidy to train operators flipped in the last decade from a net premium of circa £500m to a deficit of the same value by 2019.
  by jonnhrr
 
Tadman wrote: Fri Nov 08, 2024 2:00 pm Yes, privatisation has been terrible. As you can see in this ridership graph, it was so bad that ridership went down almost every year under BR ownership and doubled under private ownership.

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There are many other factors that come into play here - the Beeching cuts, the rise in private car ownership and the expansion of the motorway network which all occurred during the BR period.

No doubt one advantage of privatization was the model of rolling stock leasing and emphasis on new equipment which may have encouraged ridership in contrast to the BR model of "making do" with older rolling stock.