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Comment by tompagenet2 | Hacker News Reader

As always this is grossly oversimplifying. As well as the misleading safety stats, as graemep has noted, it ignores that journeys just absolutely exploded under privatisation [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail]

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Graham Dennis (author of the article) absolutely does not ignore this. He regularly points out that Irish rail ridership exploded almost in lockstep with GB rail network growth despite remaining entirely publicly run. Even right at the top of this article he points out that the growth had begun long before privatisation. He goes into a lot more detail in his book.

The growth didn't happen long before privatization in the UK though. It turned around almost exactly when the privatization process started (which wasn't an immediate overnight event).

I'd argue that the upswing had started in the 1980s and took a hit along with the economy between black monday (87) and ERM2 crash/black wednesday (92)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of...

The privatization took years however, it wasn't an overnight thing. A lot of the process was just writing down and professionalising a lot of aspects that were previously ad-hoc, so the benefits started before the precise date drawn on the graph. The law was passed in 1993 but preparations began before that, it was clear this was going to happen even in 1991.

Possible complicating factor is that at about the same time Irish Rail started experimenting with radical new concepts like having trains that were not from the early 1960s, and having more than one commuter line in the entire country. So possibly hard to read too much into it; there’s an argument that Irish journeys just went up because the system was becoming rapidly less terrible.

(I remember being amazed as a kid in the 90s on encountering a mainline train that had automatic doors. Irish Rail was pretty behind the times for a long time.)

That certainly happened, but at the same time the ticket prices have consistently gone up above inflation, so what we're missing is the causal link - why did journeys go up so much? Was it in fact other transport policy to get commuters out of cars?

Thats irrelevant to the safety statistics.

Ticket prices going up is actually good for mass adoption. If they are too low, you will see people riding the train who are only using the train because they are too poor to afford a car. That makes middle class people want to avoid the train.

Also higher revenue often means better service, which for most people is more important than the price.

I don’t think these points are accurate at all for people in the UK. There isn’t really a class divide, you ride trains in particular because it’s theoretically the most time efficient way to travel within metro areas and potentially across the country. Increased prices have not resulted in better service, and it’s purely a method to price gouge those who have no feasible travel alternatives.

Having used the UK rail service both public and private the "better service" is optimistic. The too poor to afford a car is more associated with buses. You need to be rather fortunate to be poor and able to use the train to get to work. Maybe in London using the tube but working office hours it will be cheaper to buy a car or move. I would suggest the main driver in the leap in passenger numbers isnt the far superior private sector offering but instead the massive leap in house prices forcing people to move out of London.

The worst UK accidents happened immediately after the initial push to privatize which resulted (in part) in the hybrid situation that exists today.

You mean the Harrow, Lewisham and Hither Green accidents in the late 50s and 1960s under British Rail?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_accidents_in_the_...

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