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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Who? In most of Asia trains are privatized. In Europe, the passenger rail companies are in various stages of privatization. Rail in the UK is more or less privatised. Deutche Bahn, SNCF, Trenitalia, DSB, etc., are private companies. The government is involved in the sense they are the largest or sole shareholder, but they are run as for-profit corporations. For example, they compete in other countries. Many, such as SNCF, are on the path to further privatization: https://www.railway-technology.com/features/french-rail-refo.... Amtrak, though legally an independent corporation, is in practice operated like a government agency.

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Nearly all the privatized rail systems share the characteristic that the government (in some fashion) still owns the underlying trackage/right-of-way.

This is not a bad model: the public retains the land and tracks, and provides them for private enterprises to run trains on, subject to some sort of coordination so you don't have wrecks.

That's similar to how many airports work, how the Interstate Highway System works, etc.

However, for historical reasons it's not how the US system operates, and it would be very difficult for the government -- absent a lot of spending that I doubt the public has the appetite for -- to acquire the land and rights-of-way.

On routes where Amtrak actually controls the underlying trackage, it operates quite well. Where everything goes to shit is when Amtrak operates on others' track.

If we really wanted a good passenger-rail system, what we would need to do is build dedicated passenger rail lines, totally separate from freight rail. The two types of trains are so different today that it doesn't make sense to run them together. High speed passenger trains do best on banked track, and not having freight trains around for them to run into allows you to use lighter rolling stock. Acela trains have been described as "rolling bank vaults" because of the collision protection they have to have -- simply because they're liable to collide head-on with a fully loaded freight train. There's no good way around it, except to stop mixing the two up.

> On routes where Amtrak actually controls the underlying trackage, it operates quite well. Where everything goes to shit is when Amtrak operates on others' track.

No it doesn’t. Amtrak owns the lines between Baltimore and DC. I used to commute it every day for two years and it was awful. Amtrak struggles to adequately maintain the northeast corridor, because as a result of government-imposed mandates, its operating profits from there go to subsidizing service on lines nobody uses. Similarly, Amtrak is just shitty at logistics and operations—planning around track work, giving updates about delays, keeping trains in working order, etc. Again, they have no mandate to turn a profit (unlike government owned rail lines in Europe) so they run like the DMV, rather than a rail carrier.

Quasi-public to be accurate.

That said, Amtrak came into existence because most of the private rail companies had failed or were failing. Had the federal government not stepped in, we'd arguably have no long distance passenger rail service outside the Northeast Corridor (where Amtrak basically makes the money that it then loses on pretty much every other route in the country).

UK network is run by https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Rail and the train operators are on government franchise. More importantly though it's pretty much universally recognised in London that TfL (the tube and overground) is much better and more reliable than the rail companies, and TfL is a government body directly.

In the UK, a government entity owns the rails. But the actual operation of train service is contracted to fully private companies.

Deutsche Bahn is a "private company", but with 100% of stocks owned by the state. That’s in all relevant metrics state-run.

The German government is the shareholder and appoints the board, but Deutsche Bahn is otherwise operated as a private company. For example, it operates at a profit, its CEO is compensated comparably to other corporate executives, and it competes with other rail operators both inside Germany (it has subsidiaries that compete to operate regional train service), and internationally. Amtrak is operated, for all intents and purposes, like a government agency. It operates at a loss, its CEO is compensated like a government officer (no incentive to cut costs to boost bonuses), Congress exerts significant political input into operational decisions, it does not compete with anyone inside or outside the U.S.

Competition is a bit of a red herring - it's not as if anybody is stopping anybody from starting their own train service in America tomorrow. The reason Amtrak is run like a government agency is because if they didn't offer routes at a loss, nobody would run those routes at all.

Germany also has many fewer freight trains than the US. Their rail network is optimized for passenger use, and it works well.

The US rail network is optimized for freight hauling (and it's largely owned by freight railroads and maintained at private expense, and those railroads turn a consistent profit). It also works well -- for its intended purpose.

If you want to move 3000 miles at 45 MPH remarkably cheaply, and you happen to be (or live in) a cargo container, the US rail network is built just for you!

DSB is NOT a for profit company in the normal sense. They rely on huge public subsidies to survive.

Amtrak isn't a government agency though. It's a public-private partnership AFAIK

Amtrak is a corporation owned by the U.S. government. That structure is typical for rail operators. What's different is that Amtrak is operated like part of the government, while European rail operators are actually operated like private companies. For example, the CEO of Deutsche Bahn is paid like a private CEO, while the CEO of Amtrak is paid like a senior government officer (and right now, actually, not being paid at all).

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