It's not only the people riding the trains, those who work on the railroads are also fed up with the privatisation. Nobody likes the results except the people profiting from it and politicians whose religion dictate that it should be like that.
Train worker union members (who work with it every day and have seen the results) are doing a campaign.
https://www.mittskifte.org/petitions/tagen-ska-fram
@owl quite interestingly, in the finnish discourse about if trains should be privatized the spirit was often that british privatization was a failure but swedish one a success.
anyway, britain has now reintroduced a lot of public control over trains, and it's clear that sweden should do the same.
and finland should not even think about privatizing any more.
@Stoori
> swedish one a success.
I need one of those mad-laugh-cry emoji.
@owl i find it interesting that not even in japan, possibly the most railroadest of all countries, are private train operations profitable outside the main metropolitan areas.
that should be taken as a clear hint to not privatize trains.
@Stoori don't you think that trains tend to be more efficient then cars when considering all costs.
japan may be comparably train-friendly, but i think they still have tax-funded motorways and stuff…?
i would think that, without distortion of prices and externalization of costs, going by train would generally be cheaper than by car, so it would be cars that would usually be unprofitable except in special cases. no?
(in some areas train may also be outperformed by bikes, of course)
@sofia @owl well, yeah, probably if all transport infrastructure was unsubsidized private property, trains would be cheaper.
but there's the point that unsubsidized private transport infrastructure is always suboptimal in comparison to public transport infrastructure.
but you're right, subsidies should be included in comparisons.
@Stoori personally i like the idea of free (as in no price for access) public (as in publicly accessible) transport, for the convenience if not the nice egalitarianism. but that's really a call for the local communities to make, and it might make more sense in some places than others.
i also don't think they need to be state-owned in order to be free to access. i prefer coops, of course, but even joint-stock companies could probably offer it 🤷.
@Stoori i don't think state-owned infrastructure is a commons. the rail infrastructure itself perhaps could be, but the trains itself? best luck to the anarcho-communists who might attempt it, i think they have to try it on their own before i move in to them 😅.
anyway, i think cooperatizing would also be a good move towards communistic models. but that might not be what you mean by commons anyway 😅.
@Stoori "but there's the point that unsubsidized private transport infrastructure is always suboptimal in comparison to public transport infrastructure."
you mean "public" here as in state-owned, right? but what in what way are there more optimal? is it because you think they'll be cheaper? if so, what determines the optimal price?
@owl