In the UK the railways used to be kind of bad in the nationalised British Rail d...

vintagedave · 2025-12-29T16:40:32 1767026432

It is also extraordinarily expensive, and since the cuts in the 1960s you have a fraction of the railway lines. It is absolutely terrible.

Who knows if it was better in the nationalised days, but it sure needs some unification and central governance without a profit motive today.

dash2 · 2025-12-29T17:43:14 1767030194

> Who knows if it was better in the nationalised days

I do. I was there. It wasn't.

tim333 · 2025-12-29T18:32:35 1767033155

Also if you look at the usage numbers they dropped off in the nationalised days and picked back up after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport_in_G...

I was around but not a heavy rail user in the nationalised days though the stories back then were quite reminiscent of the current DB stories.

gregorygoc · 2025-12-29T21:44:15 1767044655

Swiss trains are run by a national company and they’re great.

tim333 · 2025-12-30T12:00:40 1767096040

Yeah, I don't think you can simply say public ownership vs private is necessarily better or worse. Overall competence and values seem more important.