Privatisation was a mistake - it’s only gone downhill since they are able to make profit and cut costs.
We need to get essential services such as public transport back under state control or the quality will continue to deteriorate
We need to get essential services such as public transport back under state control or the quality will continue to deteriorate
Learn the lesson from the UK, who did privatisation first* and have witnessed things much worse than the current state of German trains (which are still *excellent* in comparison, and I say that as one who moved from the UK to Germany in 2018).
* or "harder", to the extent that German rail privatisation never went as far as in the UK. I understand there's a constitutional requirement here in Germany for government majority ownership of the rail system — I wish it were so in the UK
And like, if one's model for maintaining a system depends on having a sensible government in power, _regardless of which particular political party you think is least competent_ you are going to have a rail system being run incompetently at least half the time. That's also what we got with "privatisation", of course; why would we expect any different?
The main joke (there have been many smaller ones) for the last ~ decade has been the Brighton-London route, and two decades ago my trains home from Aberystwyth were getting cancelled every time a few stops before the Birmingham, with people saying that was to avoid getting counted as late.
* https://www.alamy.com/one-of-posters-from-the-conservative-p...
We should actually identify the actual technical problems and focus on spending the money to fix them.
It's really good we have Italo in Italy.
Prices are down, service quality is up.
Under nationalisation plans were afoot to close Marylebone, today Chiltern is one of the highest rated services going