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Comment by ucaetano | Hacker News Reader

> It all depends, some industries are just not working privately, the privatization of electricity in France was also a failure for example. The privatization of the post system was also a failure but it matters less since the postal system is less important nowadays.

That doesn't have anything to do with protectionism. Are you confusing protectionism with state-owned companies?

> For the trains, the core issue here is that the network has a value has a whole

I'm talking about train sets, not rail networks.

Rail networks in the EU are becoming open as well (which is the point of the article, in case you didn't read it), so SNCF is having, due to competition, to buy more efficient train sets to be able to compete with potential new entrants.

Which is good for society.

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> That doesn't have anything to do with protectionism. Are you confusing protectionism with state-owned companies?

No I don't, I'm going to explain how the public train service works, it works by subsidising the unprofitable parts with the profitable parts. Which private train company would like to take an unprofitable train line? If you can find one, good luck.

> Rail networks in the EU are becoming open as well (which is the point of the article, in case you didn't read it), so SNCF is having, due to competition, to buy more efficient train sets to be able to compete with potential new entrants.

Since then the SNCF closed a lot of local train stations, reducing the attractivity of the train in France and threatening the train system as a whole, the same policies are producing the same consequences, I wish people would learn from the mistakes of the past one day.

SNCF has been closing local/rural train stations? The exact same thing has been happening in Germany for decades.

It's just bad federal policy, both in terms of allocation of funds for transportation as well as in terms of how they lead these publically owned train operators. And it's even possible to argue it's fine (I don't think it is), which is why it happened in the first place. Also: cars.

France, if anything, has always been even more enamored with fast trains to the detriment of anything else - iirc the TGV has a much more exclusive network than the ICE. That's money not spent on rural networks.

Anyway, I think the EU has very little to do with it. I've been following the debate for a long time and it's basically never come up.

Yep, France's TGV serves the same purpose as the original railroads in France: exerting control from Paris over the provinces. It is a centralization mechanism built for the Parisian elites.

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