In the 1980s the nationalised railway was considering closing London Marylebone.
Today
The number of passengers on the railway is far ahead of the number in the 80s and 90s.
There is a persistent belief in the UK that privitisation of the railway was bad, yet it led to great things -- the constant Chiltern line investment, massive competition on the west coast mainline (you can walk up to the station and get a train from Manchester to London for £50 return taking about 3h30 -- it cost more than that and took the same time 30 years ago), Marylebone serving 16 million passengers a year pre-covid
There's been bad things too -- companies have failed and the government has chosen to bail the shareholders out rather than letting them fail and simply taking over, standard privatise the profits socialise the losses. Cross Country routes are screwed as it's a series of local services masquerading as a long distance one. Nationalisation doesn't help there.
But when we compare with German and French systems we see just how good the UK system is, despite the insanely cheap commuting (15, even 10p/mile) being subsidised by occasional long distance travellers.
Today
The number of passengers on the railway is far ahead of the number in the 80s and 90s.
There is a persistent belief in the UK that privitisation of the railway was bad, yet it led to great things -- the constant Chiltern line investment, massive competition on the west coast mainline (you can walk up to the station and get a train from Manchester to London for £50 return taking about 3h30 -- it cost more than that and took the same time 30 years ago), Marylebone serving 16 million passengers a year pre-covid
There's been bad things too -- companies have failed and the government has chosen to bail the shareholders out rather than letting them fail and simply taking over, standard privatise the profits socialise the losses. Cross Country routes are screwed as it's a series of local services masquerading as a long distance one. Nationalisation doesn't help there.
But when we compare with German and French systems we see just how good the UK system is, despite the insanely cheap commuting (15, even 10p/mile) being subsidised by occasional long distance travellers.