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Comment by vidarh | Hacker News Reader

There's another humorous aspect about the British rail system: It really is mostly state owned and operated.

Just not (mostly) the British government (though the UK government also regularly has to step in to take over for failing operating companies...)

E.g. the Dutch, German, Italian, French, Quebec (via Keolis; a joint venture between French owned SNCF and a Quebec pension fund), Hong Kong governments all have significant ownership in UK rail franchises. Only a handful of franchises are run by purely privately owned operating companies.

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It also runs with a third to a quarter of the relative subsidy compared to France and Germany, so maybe the UK is getting the better end of the bargain!

Also, these are only the train operating companies, the rail and infrastructure itself is owned by Network Rail, which is state owned (and by the UK, not France!)

Having used the rail systems elsewhere, I'd happily see an increase of subsidies far more extensive than that if it got us a rail system more fit for purpose.

Alas, no government since privatisation has wanted to increase subsidy, hence the continual above-inflation fare rises (though admittedly smaller than under BR!).

If by “the UK” you’re including the citizenry who use the rail network, then we are quite clearly not getting any kind of bargain whatsoever.

Not really, the TGV network makes a profit and the fares are about half the price of our shit trains. Also their most expensive line has about 50 bridges and tunnels through much more rugged landscape than the midlands and cost 5 times less per km than HS2.

Differences in geography, making it harder to effectively lay down HS tracks? Further complicated by old rights of way, surrounded by built up environment, especially in the cities?

It's not like the French TGV/Thalys or the German ICE would run HS right into and out of the cities either.

Maybe in China and Japan, but hey, they are different.

It's purely semantics, but I think in this case it would be the "Quebecois" government. A side note, does anybody know what the name for that form of a country/culture/language is? ex: French for France or Italian for Italy.

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