Walter Hinteler wrote:miniTAX wrote:- It sucks up so much money that nothing is left for bus transportation which would have been much more useful to isolated villages and the elderly. So what the governement does it to forbid any private company from setting up transportation services which would kill the nationalized regional railway system ! Yes you heard well: in France, we are regulated by a 1927 law which prevents, with some rare exceptions, private bus companies to establish where they want, even if there is a real need of public service, all to protect the inefficient public sector.
I would really like to see links for that, recent, not some old ones.
(Because in that case, I have to through away my collection of actual French laws
)
I have no link but a well documented
book on the state of public transports written by the father of the Parisian high speed tube (TER): Christian Girondeau.
In France, the openning of any private bus line must be authorized by the ministry of transport, which in effect IS the SNCF (french national railways) because of a 1927 law amended by a 1934 decree, never changed ever since in order to protect the SNCF. So the opening of a bus line is not a matter of of public interest but a matter of the railways and its reactionnary unions' interests. Typical of a uncontrolable public sector monster. In most situations, trains would have no chance to exist or compete with others transportation means (roads for short distances and planes for more than 600 km travels) without heavy subsidies. Just see the Eurostar's catastrophic financial situation even if it links two most densely populated capitals of Europe. Roads or private highways on the contrary bring huges sums of money to the gov, be it through gas taxes, road tolls, car VAT and all the automobile industry taxes.
Quote:miniTAX wrote:-
So public transportation, yes, but not everywhere and not at all costs.
And you are sure, such changes after privatisation? Ever compared it to the UK (or ever read a comparison pre- and after the privatisation in the UK, to ask differently)?
British Railways was in dire straits well BEFORE its privatization. The infrastructure was crumbling and many accidents occured because of it, for example in Clapham in 1988 which caused 38 deaths and hundred of injuries. Thatcher's decision to privatize British Railways was the right thing to do to inject private money to renovate the infrastructure and reorganise the company. The much publicized Paddington accident in 1999 (37 deaths) was not a consequence of the 1995 privatizations but simply because of the decrepit infrastructure inherited from the public service. Private funds simply didn't have enough time to upgrade a really catastrophic situation.
In fact, the worst European accident record is not in GB but in Germany, for example the Eschede accident in 1998, caused by the ICE (German high speed train) with more than 100 deaths. They are simply much less publicized than the British cases because of the media biais against privatizations. In fact British Rail privatization is a sucessfull operation since it nows costs British taxpayers just 1,5 B$/year (compared to more than 10 B$/year for France) for the infrastructure, trains and stations being operated by the 25 successful private operators which now pay the finance ministry to use the railways.
