Ringel05
Diamond Member
- Aug 5, 2009
- 63,134
- 20,658
Here in the US it's the government keeping an outmoded form of transportation alive. Riding the rail here is a luxury not a necessity. As for your "green economy" pipe dream, good luck with that tovaritch.Railways in general do not make money and ours tend to make their profits from milking government subsidies. Public ownership of railways is a lot better than our current set up. Compare the networks in Switzerland,Portugal and France which are better run and cheaper to use.Wrong as usual. This is about a business, subsidized or not being adversely affected but the economic ramifications of a pandemic where more and more people are staying home and not using the business. Doesn't matter where the money is coming from it's still going to suffer from lack of ridership yet in your scenario the burden of bailing out the business falls even heavier on the taxpayer. Kinda like our Amtrak, heavily subsidized but still not making any money, pandemic or not.Its about private rail companies collapsing despite huge government subsidies. Why would we subsidise companies when we have to step in and pick up the pieces anyway ?Government suspends rail franchise system after passengers plummet
Rail passenger numbers have collapsed in the wake of coronaviruswww.investorschronicle.co.uk
The UK government has suspended rail franchise agreements for six months and agreed to assume all revenue and cost risk posed to operators, after railways experienced a 70 per cent drop in passenger numbers following the advent of coronavirus.
They called Corbyn a commie for proposing this during the election and now here we are. This is initially for 6 months but they will likely find that corporations will be reluctant to return to this industry when things get back to normal.
The railways are an essential service and the private companies have always been backed by government money. Time to rip up the facade and run the network for the benefit of the country.
Americans, this is why Leftists are all over Twitter today, panicking and hyperventilating about "the virus". It's not about the virus at all. They saw their chance to nationalize everything and, at Trump's signal yesterday, they see their chance melting away.
Don't be fooled. Let the UK go their way; they're sunk and have been for a long time.
We are not them.
THANK GOD
UK rail service is pretty much the worst in Europe. Hopefully it will improve because of this.
We need public ownership of the network as rail will be an integral part of a green economy.