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Germany’s Hamburg-Koln-Express a hit
Can one ride these trains with a Eurailpass?
One of two things will happen. Private capital will turn a profit and the government will tax the daylights out of the investors. Or, private capital will run up red ink and go begging to government for a bailout. Either way, the private investors lose, because socialist governments can’t allow profits to be gained by capitalists.
(in reply to J. Guse) May I point to the fact that German government is a Conservative-Liberal coalition?
While I’m happy for the apparent early success of this venture, the demand for it seems to stem, at least in part, from low fares, maybe priced below market. Now that HKX will be “raising the average ticket prices slightly in the next few months,” let’s see if demand stays as high. That will be the real test.
These operators SHOULD be taxed to support all the local and branch line service in Europe that feeds the main lines. If not, the risk is that private operators will peel off all the high profit traffic and the state systems won’t have the resources to keep the local services running.
Dear Jeffrey,
there are quite a lot of privately owned freight rail operators who haul (usually unit trains) with their own or leased motive power and railcars over government (Deutsche Bahn) owned tracks. Their market share is ever increasing, so I guess they are profitable. Why else should they grow their business?
They get taxed with the same rates as any other company which makes a profit. Even if there may be a social-democrat / green goverment in Germany one day, they usually refrain from taxing businesses too high. So if private railroad companis make a profit they have to pay 27% of taxes. If they lose money they may stay in the business or leave it. They government has not interfered until now.
The government set the legal framework for privately owned rail operators some fifteen years ago.
Nowadays there are plenty of privately owned regional passenger railways operating in Germany competing with Deutsche Bahn. As far as I can tell the capitalist free market system seems to work in an environment like rail traffic where you usually have a natural monopoly quite well here in Germany.
German rail infrastructure is amazing. With great infrastructure there are always opportunities for great ideas to flourish. Maybe the powers at be in the US could look at this example and see the opportunities that our economy could have if our infrastructure was at 21st Century standards.
Congratulations to HenryPosner III for yet another gamble-turned-success. I hope the ridership continues to build, and that the ticket price can be increased as the demand grows for this private service. This is good news. We need more railroad men like Henry Posner, and more investment companies like RDC.
Congratulations to HenryPosner III for yet another gamble-turned-success. I hope the ridership continues to build, and that the ticket price can be increased as the demand grows for this private service. This is good news. We need more railroad men like Henry Posner, and more investment companies like RDC.
Congratulations to HenryPosner III for yet another gamble-turned-success. I hope the ridership continues to build, and that the ticket price can be increased as the demand grows for this private service. This is good news. We need more railroad men like Henry Posner, and more investment companies like RDC.
I’m glad to hear my prediction of failure was wrong. My concerns over using nearly antique “Rheingold” equipment has caused no problems with service reliability. I hope their maintenance practices allow their trains to continue to operate ontime. Deutsche Bahn needs formidable competition to keep up its service standards and keep down its fares. For example, it costs about 2 euros worth of gasoline for me to drive a Ford Focus from my house to downtown Kaiserslautern; however, that same trip on the train costs just under 10 Euros. Why would anybody take the train when it costs 1/5 as much to drive? Even when you factor in the cost of the car, insurance, and so forth, it’s still cheaper to drive.