Rail privatisation does not make the case for state railways
From CroziervisionWiki
I am in favour of freedom, not necessarily privatisation. I am only in favour of private ownership where it means more freedom and less force.
British rail privatisation did not mean more freedom. It led to more freedom in some areas but in others (bizarrely) less.
British rail privatisation was, on balance, a failure. It was a failure because it didn’t increase the industry’s freedom.
Japanese rail privatisation, on the other hand, has been a success.
In Japan there has always been a private sector. But there was also, from 1906, a state sector. In the 1960s and 1970s the state sector, known as Japan National Railway (JNR), was making huge losses, partly as a consequence of the huge investment in their bullet trains, or shinkansen. But also partly as a result of inefficiency.
In 1987, JNR was split up into 6 regional railways, known as the JRs. There was no vertical fragmentation or franchising and safety was mainly left to the companies. The debt was spun off into an entirely separate fund (see Wikipedia article).
Since then the Japanese rail network has gone from strength to strength. They have introduced new trains (lots of them in fact), increased speeds, built new stations, improved punctuality, introduced new safety systems (often much in advance of anything in Europe) and are no longer a drain on the treasury. All this was achieved despite the bursting of Japan's Bubble economy.
Finally, British Rail was hardly a rip-roaring success.
Questions
You say that rail privatisation did not increase the industry's freedom. How do you know? It would be terribly nice if one could measure freedom, perhaps in millifreedoms. But one can't. What I would say is that as long as it was in the state sector British Rail could at least manage both sides of the business. It could plan long(ish) term (though not anything like as well as a truly private railway) - better than under franchising and the state was less keen on hammering it with health and safety and other directives. It also had more freedom to set fares, though not a great deal.
But what about Amagasaki? Amagasaki, near Osaka was where a commuter train took a bend too fast and crashed (see Wikipedia article). It seems it had a lot to do with some very poor management techniques.
I think it should be remembered that train crashes happen under any system. The Japanese system is still the safest in the world in terms of deaths per distance travelled.
But isn't it the case that the Japanese government is still financing the building of new Shinkansen routes? Yes, it is and perhaps it shouldn't be. If they were so worthwhile the companies would be building them themselves.
Ah, but surely you need these new routes because they are less damaging to the environment than cars and aircraft? Well, I'm not keen on that word "environment" as it is dreadfully vague. But let's take the case of climate change and let's also assume that the climate change lobby is right. Surely, then the answer is to tax the pollution? At least, that way you avoid the horse trading and the inefficiency that goes with the state building railways. It should also be pointed out that as a result of the work of the disabled and safety lobbies trains have lost their climate change advantage.
But what about French railways, they seem pretty good? "Seem" being the operative word. But also very expensive for the French taxpayer.
But Japanese trains are famous for being overcrowded
- It is certainly true that in many cases they are desperately overcrowded
- The worst overcrowding tends to take place on the ex-government lines
- Overcrowding is the fault of the government
