Urologi
Red Rabbitcan I get a “Fuck privatisation of public transport” in the crowd tonight?? 🎤
Aaron Davis@harrym I feel like that's a bit of an oxymoron or something. It's public transport. Not private. If private companies want to make their own private transport, fine. But I agree. Leave public transport alone.
@Aaron_Davis unfortunately (outside buses) public transport is a natural monopoly, one can’t have a second set of tracks. so having the one system with a profit motive on a basic necessity is pretty obscene!
@harrym Sure does feel like Amtrak is a bit of a monopoly. Really wish Brightline would expand and inspire other companies to form and build more rails. Is it not possible for publicly owned and privately owned rail companies to co-exist? We made private rail work over 100 years ago, what's to say we can't make it work again?
@Aaron_Davis our material situations may be different, I’m in Australia, many houses would need to be pulled up here to make a second train line and we’re already in a housing crisis. maybe things are different where you are.
@harrym Would be pretty interesting if they could build train routes through the outback though. Especially high speed rail. Imagine being able to get from Sydney to Perth in 12 or 15 hours!
@Aaron_Davis sure, but i’d rather that be publicly owned and operated, we all know a profit motive causes massive issues to these interests.
@harrym Yeah that's true.
@harrym Actually looking at a map I meant more like Brisbane to Perth.
Strawberry Pigtails@harrym If my governments were willing to invest in public transit in the first place I might agree with you. In the meantime I’ll take whatever I can get!
@strawberrypigtails they built them, at least in Aus. I’m not aware of any country where public transport started as a private venture.
Krupo@harrym @strawberrypigtails it's funny how the private companies in Japan just get to do the short extra profitable bits where JR does it all including the more sparse bits which makes since given their public origins, per
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_railway#Japan
Edit: well CPR has a colourful history.... Government bid done by private co...
Justified Ancient of Moomin@harrym @strawberrypigtails every public transport railway in the UK until 1948 (when it was all nationalised) was a privately-run company, all descended from private ventures that built them in the first place.
@ThermiteBeGiants @strawberrypigtails interesting!! a rare win for a backwards UK I guess?
@harrym nationalised and/or publicly owned railways were a fairly recent development; they emerged in the British imperial colonies (like Victoria) because London capital was skittish about supporting private ventures that could just take the money and run. In Europe, Japan, the Americas and of course, the birthplace of public railways (the UK), it was all initially private companies building lines. Sometimes there was public subsidy, sometimes the private ventures failed and got nationalised (again, this is what happened in Victoria - private railway companies went bust and steadily got nationalised in the 1860s up until total nationalisation in 1883). But it all started with private money originally, for better or worse.
@ThermiteBeGiants I imagine the purpose of these original private train lines was the movement of goods rather than the transport of every day folks?
@harrym both! Up until the advent of the personal car (and the public bus/coach, to an extent), the railways were genuinely the only way to get around anywhere longer than a horse or bicycle trip. That's also why there were *heaps* of tramways all over cities big and small until the 1920s. Bendigo, Ballarat & Geelong all had their own tramway networks, for instance. Same with Adelaide, there were loads of lines all over pre-WW2 Adelaide.
@ThermiteBeGiants damn, how the mighty have fallen.
that’s hella interesting, thanks for the lesson :D
@harrym just one more thing: y'know package holidays/tours? Kontiki, Thomas Cook, all that garbage? UK railways invented it, in the 19th century. Whole factories of workers would take a few days off with their families to visit the seaside on chartered trains.
urbaer@harrym @strawberrypigtails I agree with your sentiment and dislike privatisation of public transport (and let's throw in a "let's buy back QANTAS)
But Melbourne's trams started off as being a private network until 1919 (I think?) when the tramways board was created
@urbaer @strawberrypigtails yeah, I didn’t realise they started off private, interesting! Def think they should have always been public haha. i’m glad I posted this, i’m learning a lot of history.
@harrym @strawberrypigtails it's surprisingly interesting, some of them were bought by the councils before they got taken over by the state and there was some finagling that had to be done to do that, details here: https://www.hawthorntramdepot.org.au/papers/ecohist/ecohist2.htm
union whore@harrym every body just have a good time
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦@harrym fuck privatisation of public transport all the way! 💯
Michael Reeder LCPC
Trus@harrym FUCK THE PRIVATISATION OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT
it almost always (according to my knowledge) leads to the lowest quality of public transportation possible, riddiculously high ticket prices, development of regional transportation monopolies and overall, transport exclusion of poorer regions.
Maggie Maybe@maggiemaybe I could imagine the US privatising anything and everything because that’s their thing.
Esme Ciredutemps
zephyr 
@harrym there's one reason it's called fucking **public transport**
@zeppy5d one would think it was because it was public… but alas
Badger AF (he/him) DEMOCRACY@harrym “Fuck privatisation of public transport”
Am I doing it right?
@Badger_AF spot on 💪
Ursidinoj/The Bjornsdottirs@harrym Pacific Western shouldn't have a business model