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Comment by KptMarchewa | Hacker News Reader

>This case is investigated by Central Anti-Corruption Bureau in Poland but I doubt it'll do much harm to Newag. The Office of Rail Transport of Poland that would spam rail company with complaints and orders for a small mistake in train schedule washed it's hands from intervening in this case and train purchases have highly regulated tender process and very little wiggle room for rail companies.

It's clearly a crime of sabotage under Art. 254a kk. Tender process does not matter in this case. We just need a competent prosecutor.

https://sip.lex.pl/akty-prawne/dzu-dziennik-ustaw/kodeks-kar...

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Being a 40+ year old Pole I am yet to see a single case of corruption in public sector be prosecuted.

Maciej Zalewski (a co-creator of Kaczyński's first party - Porozumienie Centrum) remains the only high-level politician I know of in Poland that was sentenced for corruption and actually went to jail.

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maciej_Zalewski_(filolog)

He warned Bagsik and co. (who stole millions of public money through the famous Art-B company and escaped to Israel) that the police wants to imprison them - so they managed to escape. Bagsik later confirmed that they shared some of that money with Porozumienie Centrum's business named Telegraf. Somehow only the less important guy (Zalewski) went to jail, but Kaczyński brothers weren't prosecuted.

But there's a lot of low level corruption that is exposed, it's just usually ignored by country-wide media, because that corruption is local. For one example: https://samorzad.pap.pl/kategoria/prawo/prawomocny-wyrok-byl...

> but Kaczyński brothers weren't prosecuted.

Is there any indicator they should have been in this case?

Their company "Telegraf" got cheap credit from Bagsik just before.

I haven't seen any evidence of corruption here - just pure malice and monopolistic behavior.

There is corruption everywhere (though obviously not uniformly distributed). It requires active, dynamic efforts to counteract. If you don't see some evidence of successful prosecution, that itself is informative.

The corruption would be if this is not punished. By for example Newag getting a massive fine.

It's a criminal case. Money is not enough.

It might be different if you manage to get your competitor fined 500k

500k is fraction of train cost. Eventual fine, to work properly, would need to be in hundreds of millions.

I think the 500k was a reference to the fine the third-party service company (SPS Mieczkowski) had to pay due to the failure that it now turns out was intentionally caused by Newag.

I think that there are two separate issues here:

1. train manufacturer bricking trains - malice and monopolism as you say

2. prosecutors failing to bring court cases and convictions for train manufacturers - incompetence or more likely corruption.

Having read only that kk article, I'm not certain if trains are considered parts of the infrastructure?

It works for train vandalism - why wouldn't it work on industrial scale?

For example, someone stole active train parts: https://orzeczenia.gdansk-poludnie.sr.gov.pl/content/$N/1510...

I don't know, that's why I asked--for me "infrastructure" sounds like the immovable parts. Similarly to road infrastructure, which doesn't include cars. But it's just my armchair impression, I have no idea how the law works in this context.

I quickly scanned the sentence you linked to, and art. 254a seems to be applied only to the theft of wires from tracks? Or am I missing something?

I've tried googling "infrastruktura kolejowa", and it seems that Ustawa o transporcie kolejowym defines it in art. 4.1, referencing Appendix 1. And that Appendix only lists immovable stuff. But again, I'm not a lawyer and I'm aware that definitions from one act often don't apply to a different act, in different branch of law.

In the usage I'm familiar with (in the US), the entire rail network is considered "transportation infrastructure", from a national perspective.

But from the perspective of just the rail network, the track and other infrastructure is considered separate from the rolling stock.

I wonder: If the rolling stock becomes immobilized, does it now count as immovable stuff?

Ah, that's a very good distinction between the national perspective and the rail perspective!

> I wonder: If the rolling stock becomes immobilized, does it now count as immovable stuff?

Assuming it's a philosophical question, and not a legal one, how about: - A runner that's currently running is obviously a runner - A runner that finished running for today is still a runner - A runner with serious knee problems is a former runner ?

Also practical question: how much of the rolling stock has to become immobilized before the immovable parts of the infrastructure become useless? At which point you can start throwing the book at whoever's responsible?

Locking up (or causing possibility of doing so) a non-siding line sounds like Denial-of-Service on rail line.

We routinely call servers and such 'infrastructure' when they are in fact much easier to move (if not by themselves) than your average rail road car or locomotive. A kid could do it, all by themselves.

Yes, I agree, but AFAICT we have two questions in this subthread:

- about common usage of the word - and here it _seems to me_ it's context- and domain-specific, because for instance we don't call cars a road infrastructure

- whether Polish penal code treats trains as rail infrastructure - and here I don't know, but I found a railway transport bill that lists what's considered infrastructure, and trains are not there

In NL I know for a fact the locs wouldn't be infrastructure, the term used is 'rolling stock' and they are usually owned by different companies from the infra.

If that were true, Amtrak wouldn't be leasing railways as it's nationally run. Railroad companies like Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, CSX, own their rails. They own their rolling stock. They own their locomotives. They lend you, the business person, a rolling stock to load and ship to where you need it to go. There it will be unloaded and sold/shipped by truck to final destination.

Rail companies own the right-of-way AND the rails. They control what runs on their rails, who runs on their rails, when they run, etc.

It's quite something to think that 97% of the rail tracks in the USA are privately owned.

https://public.railinc.com/about-railinc/blog/who-owns-railr...

What’s really interesting to me is how much of that 97% was built using public funds.

and sadly, if it was owned by the public, it would have cost 197% to obtain the same effect in society. Doesnt mean its okay though

Also sadly, some US commenters cannot (or don't want to) look over their fence to see how stuff can work in other countries. Of course this can still mean stuff can't work, but I'm positive many perspectives can get changed.

Yeah, it was a much more symbiotic relationship until the 1970s. During WW2, the rail companies would ship war goods and troops to and from, part of the deal to get those public funds for rail expansion. In the 1970s the rail companies were struggling due to interstate trucking and so they were deregulated in 1980 and privatized (reasoning: only the free market will determine if they should fall). The privatization of the US rail system then made it easier for companies such as Conrail at the time, to raise their rates and increase profits. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staggers_Rail_Act

Reminds me of the recent Supreme Court case about whether a train is "in use" while parked at a railyard:

https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/03/justices-search-for-the-l...

Thanks for the link! It's fascinating for a laymen like me how they considered all those different angles.

And also:

> For Breyer, however, the prospect of a “tractive power” test

> confirmed that the concept of “use” is so inherently context-dependent

> that the court would be better off taking the “common law approach”

> of resolving just this particular case,

> rather than attempting to determine the word’s meaning for all time.

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