Subject:
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British railway industry (was Re: UK devolved government (was Harry Potter but who remembers that?)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 10 Sep 2001 08:41:46 GMT
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Viewed:
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1157 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Lindsay Frederick Braun writes:
>
> >
> > Everyone's said that. Virtually every commentator I have seen,
>
> You need to read a bit more widely, perhaps. And does the fact that
> "everyone says so" make something actually "so" ??
>
> > British or not, has stated that privatization of systems crucial
> > to the functioning of the state--in effect, the reversal of the
> > Attlee centralization and beyond--will spell disaster in terms
> > of reliability if not finance (although the evidence for both is
> > pretty good). One only need look at Railtrack's dismal record
> > of maintenance and response; it took *how* many days to get things
> > up and running after last fall's weather fiasco?
>
> In what way is Railtrack an example of privatization?
Well that's what it the Government called it at the time! A state owned
business was split up and the parts were either sold, floated or transferred
under franchises. Of course you are right that Railtrack is a monopoly but
it's still 'private'.
It seems that the Treasury were (and are) so in love with the idea of
markets that they decided they were a good thing no matter what and set out
to 'design' one for the rail industry. I believe that markets must evolve
and to design one is asking for failure. This point, that it is competition
that creates incentive and not just 'profit motive' was central to Bob
Kiley's first report on Underground PPP. There is no competition in the
scheme at all. It is worse than the current system where private companies
do the work on small short-term contracts which they must compete for. (I
think people must think that LUL does all its own engineering, it doesn't.)
>
> There's still one company controlling *all* the track that is just as
> hobbled as ever, if not more so than BR was, it just supposedly has private
> owners... I dunno about you, but I'd much rather own shares in the operating
> companies, which do compete against each other after a fashion,
after a fashion is right. They are regional monopolies on fixed term
franchises and their main market (commuters) is price-controlled in a way
that BR never was!
> than in the
> big ugly monopoly that owns all the track and has no incentive to do
> anything well.
>
> Take a look at the cockamamie incentives in place. The original operating
> companies
(What do you mean by original? Big Four or the very first railway companies
from the early C19th? :) Remember that during this century most of the
railway was subsidised despite being nominally private and the mergers to
create the big four were instigated by the government.)
> AND their track should have been restored in some semblance so
> that there are competitive lines, with the operating companies owning the
> infrastructure. Just like Conrail was carved back up into essentially its
> two major constituents by NS and CSX.
That would be better (much debate in the industry is about how to restore
the links at the wheel-rail interface so that safety can be better managed)
but not much, because the competition is not real, the lines are not close
enough to each other to properly compete (unless you count people moving
house to get a better train service which I doubt happens very much).
Rail's competitor is Road and that's how I think the industry should be, the
infrastructure should be government owned and run with the services
franchised with greater competition so the regulation could be of the
competition and not the price.
>
> > Britrail always
> > had enough people to do the job quickly, rather than compete with
> > other, richer firms for limited private-sector resources.
>
> At what cost?
If you mean how much did BR cost the Government, lots, and BR did not behave
like its job was to attract customers, partly because when you have too many
passengers reliability drops and complaints go up but mainly because they
knew the cash was there. I don't advocate going back to that unless a way
can be found to correctly incentivise public sector companies (which I doubt).
I believe in competition except where there has to be only one set of
infrastructure to avoid environmental or other problems. Roads, Railways
and Electricity, Gas and cable telecommunications transmission (not
generation or supply) are examples of this. I am constantly astonished that
this is not only not self-evident but not even remotely recognized by so
many others.
Psi
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