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Comment by lostlogin | Hacker News Reader

I don’t understand this comment - could you explain why?

Do other countries benefit from UK railways?

Majority (particularly by ticket sales) of uk train operators (TOCs) are foreign owned[1] and operators are "TBTF" and subsidised by the government, in 2023 this was over 4 Billion pounds, meanwhile each TOC is paying out millions in dividends to share holders[2].

1 - https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-reveals-that-75-of-uk-rail-n... 2 - https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rail-factsheet-2023...

That said the current government have introduced legislation to bring these TOCs into public ownership as franchises expire [0]. Rolling stock and freight will remain privately owned so it isn’t quite a return to the days of British Rail, but the privatisation experiment is coming to a close.

[0] https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3732

Privatization of UK rail services meant that they were given out on government tenders to "private" companies, and a few of these companies that won the tenders are owned by foreign govts. Netherlands is one I believe, maybe France too.

Some examples:

- c2c and Avanti West Coast: partially and fully owned by Trenitalia which is wholly owned by the Italian government

- London Overground, Chilltern Railways, CrossCountry, Grand Central: Owned by Deutche Bahn until June 2024 which is wholly owned by the German government

- Elizabeth line: Wholly owned by MTR transport which is wholly owned by Hong Kong government

I'm sure there are a lot more I missed. It doesn't just appy to foreign governments either. The UK government subsidized all TOCs with taxpayer money, many of which turned around and gave out dividents to shareholds (foreign government or not).

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