cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/50412880
Opening up national markets has worked wonders for European railways
Italians may help Germany get its trains to run on time
https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/08/06/italians-may-help-germany-get-its-trains-to-run-on-time
20 Comments
cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone · 21 pts · 1d
pretty sure there's a whole bunch of history books that show italians helping germans with trains is a bad idea.
UpperBroccoli@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 19 pts · 1d
Oh right, opening our train network to competition even more is going to fix our broken rail network that suffers from decades of neglect? The very neglect the unions have critized again and again and again?
Right, that sounds totally plausible.
DandomRude@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1d
Yes, this is the result of neo-capitalist policies; Deutsche Bahn has been partially privatized, which—as is always the case with this logic—means that profits flow into the pockets of billionaires while losses are borne by the general public. That is why, for example, Germany’s internet infrastructure is at the level of a Third World country, even though Telekom generates enormous revenue.
It’s the result of U.S.-style exploitative capitalism, from which we cannot break free because—just as in the U.S.—it has corrupted all the levers of power—but hey, that’s why Germany has so many billionaires compared to other countries.
Edit: That, by the way, is also why the AfD is so strong in Germany. It’s a carbon copy of MAGA and owes its popularity to the same billionaires. This party is anything but an “alternative,” as its name might lead misinformed people to believe: It embodies everything Trump stands for—corruption and unscrupulousness—and that’s putting it quite mildly.
Educate yourselves, read their party platform, and let people know what it stands for. If you don’t want an oligarchy, that’s your civic duty!
Damage@feddit.it · 1 pts · 10h
Here in Italy internet infrastructure and supply is 100% privatised and I have 2.5gpbs internet at home. I hate privatisation as much as the next lemmy user but that doesn't seem to be the crux of the problem
Aatube@piefed.social · 1 pts · 1d
wtf is that t-mobile
kugel7c@feddit.org · 2 pts · 7h
It was at one point the phone company arm of deutsche post (the German post office) of which both Telekom and DHL were spun out to be privatised. Both kind of natural monoplies turned private companies which were able to fund large expansions into foreign markets essentially on the backs of German taxpayers and later users of their respective services in their home market.
Holy am I glad that I live in a place where there is a non Telekom ISP well established. Telekom in Germany is a service and troubleshooting hell like you wouldn't belive if you haven't had the pleasure of dealing with them.
DandomRude@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Yes
cinoreus@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d
Privatisation always feels like a solution to shitty government services till some ultra rich company comes in, provides good service while burning cash, capturing the entire market forming a monopoly or duopoly, then raising the prices while making service shittier, and the government will say they can't do anything now because shutting them down would mean paralyzing the entire railway of the country.
If this feels oddly specific, it's because I've seen this happen with my own eyes, just not in the railway.
echodot@feddit.uk · 4 pts · 1d
We're just getting to the end of this process with our rail infrastructure in the UK. The companies have spent absolutely no money on maintenance, and now everything's broken, and the only way to fix it is to buy everything back into public ownership, then spend a bunch of taxpayer money.
Trying to run infrastructure projects for profit is a stupid idea. The "profit" is a more dynamic economy facilitated by better transport links. It ain't going to be in the form of cash.
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club · 1 pts · 10h
The UK's privitizaton model was crap because it mandated service and only allowed operators to compete on price paid to the UK government, ensuring that all operators were lowest bid and trying to spend the least money on running trains.
Divorcing running trains from maintaining track seems to work better on price since railroads owners are more incentivized to have more trains run on their tracks to gain revenue. However, this system seems to only be tested on rail systems with competent rail operators, which DB is not.
I do think that divorcing owning the tracks and owning the trains is something that should be forced on American rail companies.
Skullgrid@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1d
It's the economist.
Why did they not check how well privatization worked out in the UK's rail, where one of the Labour policies had been to re-nationalise the railways since the current privatised model sucks so fucking bad?
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de · 8 pts · 23h
By the way, it's not really the trains. We have other companies run many lines, especially with the commuter trains. It's the rest of the infrastructure. The tracks, switches, signals, railway control centers... Those break all the time because they've been stingy with the upkeep for decades. In effect causing the delays. So, if you run third-party trains over the same tracks, they'll also get delayed or cancelled, exactly as the DB ones do.
fireweed@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
So much for that old joke about what countries oversee what aspects of society in heaven vs hell...
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
The twist is we are in hell
echodot@feddit.uk · 4 pts · 1d
Apparently German trains are so bad that they're not allowed on the French network because they screwed the timetable.
That's got to be embarrassing for the Germans, how can you be bested by the French?
VibeSurgeon@piefed.social · 4 pts · 22h
I believe it was the Swiss that barred them from entry, not the French, unless it's both.
emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1d
Chronic underfunding
VibeSurgeon@piefed.social · 4 pts · 22h
Has opening up rail markets really been a boon for on-time performance for rail in Europe? I thought it mainly improved the situation for ticket pricing, while on-time performance is mostly an infrastructure issue.
assembly@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
Has anyone in Germany been on the Italian trains? I’ve done it a few times and the trains that weren’t broken were pretty dilapidated. Like the bathroom was a hole cut in the floor of the train car. That’s for the trains that weren’t broken.
idiomaddict@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
This week, I spent 3.5 hours traveling 35 km. It was round trip, because the trains stopped traveling in my original direction and I had to go home. Three weeks ago, I spent six hours traveling less than 80 km.
I could literally bicycle faster. I’d be okay with a hole in the floor as long as they mounted a seat on it for handicapped riders.