I am against the state ownership of railways because:

• I am against state ownership in general
• it doesn’t work

What makes you think it doesn’t work?

• Well British Rail wasn’t exactly a rip-roaring success.  Sure privatisation wasn’t a rip-roaring success either but that had it’s own state-inspired problems.
• The works of Edwin Pratt.  In 1908 Pratt wrote a comparison between the then private British railway and its state-owned peers.  He found that the British railway was better in almost all respects.  It was more comprehensive, had faster and more frequent services and suffered less from industrial action and political manipulation.
• The examples of the Japanese railway (the busiest in the world) and the American (the biggest in the world) both of which are largely privately-owned.

Ah, but they have people-pushers on Japanese trains.

Apparently they do, though I have never seen it myself.  And last time I was there trains seemed less overcrowded than in the UK.  But what overcrowding they have had and do have is almost certainly down to fare control ie state force.  Get rid of fare control and you can get rid of the people pushers.

And Amtrak is supposed to be awful.

Yes, that’s the state-owned bit of the American railway.  Kind of makes my case.

But what about France?  It works there doesn’t it?

Depends what you mean by “works”.  Sure, the TGV and RERs are very impressive.  But rural services are less so and the debt is enormous - about £30bn last time I checked.  Remember: profits are good, losses are bad.

OK then, but what about places like the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland?

I know very little about the Netherlands.  Though my impression of train services in Germany was very good I am not sure about the financial situation.

Switzerland is an odd one.  Although (as I understand it) it makes losses, reports are almost universally good.  Why this is, I don’t know.  It could be just luck.  It could be because it is one of the few state-owned enterprises and it benefits from the free market discipline of the rest of the economy.  The point is that it is something of an exception.

Permalink • Economics • Rail • Last Updated: 30 September 2006

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