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Originally Posted by Chris
State investment has increased since privatisation because prior to that, there had been 50-odd years of chronic underinvestment and certain parts of the network were becoming dangerous. Signing contracts with 3rd parties to run services creates obligations around the quality of the infrastructure. Companies like Virgin and First don't appreciate the reputational damage caused by faulty tracks and signals killing their customers.
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Then nationalise with further investment. All real investment has to be done by the Government anyway so why create a system where companies need to skim a profit as well?
The fact that the Government underfunded it for decades and then used that as evidence it doesn't work is perverse. If the only real value in having the third parties involved is because they'll complain about track quality then that isn't the greatest argument besides the track isn't privatised as well is because we had to reclaim it when Railtrack went down the pan.
When he had to reclaim the East Coast Main Line it turned out to run better than it had before and even return a profit.
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Once upon a time, Britain was rare in having a railway at all. Being prepared to do things differently to our competitors used to be considered one of our great strengths.
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Things are only worth doing differently if there is a logical purpose for it. The logic behind the privatisation of the rail network seems to be that privatisation is good.