Does anyone know which industrialized nations have government ownership of railroad infrastructure? This would include nations that own the entire railroad.
It is my understanding that England’s rail system was mostly privately built, nationalized sometime after WWII, and then privatized about ten years ago. Can anyone elaborate on the reasons behind the privatization?
The Government felt that BR was a drain on the treasury, and that privatisation would cure the problem. It hasn’t worked out that way.
The British Rail Infrastructure is now quasi-privatised. It was first privatised as Railtrack, when that went bust, it was reorganized as what could be characterised as a semi-private company Network Rail.
All the other countries in Europe except Estonia are publicly owned, and Estonia will be again soon.
I was told this story by someone who worked for the USRA during the time when big government bucks were going into fixing the northeast railroad mess. He was in DC speaking to a group that included many DOT and Congressional staffers and was talking about what the USRA was doing. At the time there were many who thought that instead of dumping big bucks into the hands of private businesses, the government should just take over the railroads, lock, stock and barrel.
Noting the rather deplorable conditions of the streets used to get to the meeting, he made the point that government was responsible for street maintenance and wondered if they would want the government doing the same “quality” work on rail maintenance.
State Railway of Thailand is a State Enterprise since WWII. Now, the government want to privatise but the employee’s union protested.
Here in the Netherlands it went as follows (big brush applied):
First railroad was the Hollandse IJzeren Spoorwegmaatschappij (Holland Iron Railway Company, HIJSM, the Iron part was later dropped: HSM), in 1837 later the Nederlandse Rijnspoorwegmaatschappij (Dutch Rhenish Railway is the Englis name I think, NRS) was founded. Both were private companies. Around 1860 contruction came to a standstill because Dutch investors were more interested in investing in North American railroads (and frequently getting swindled out of there investment…) than in our own country. So, after much debate in parliament, the state build a considerable number of lines in the nort, east and south of the country and handed them over (leased) to a private company for operating the trains. This company, fully Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van Staatsspoorwegen (MES), short Staatsspoorwegen (SS) or State Railways was a private company despite its name. NRS was disbanded and most lines went to SS.
Later Nederlandse Centraalspoorwegmaatschappij (NCS, Netherlands Central Railway) and Noord-Brabant Duitsche Spoorwegmaatschappij (NBDS, North Brabant German Railway) were formed and around WW1 were taken over by the SS. During WW1 coal was scarce so HSM and SS started a cooperation under the name Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS). By the centennial of railways in the Netherlands both companies were almost completely owned by the government. I think it was 1939 that the last stock was bought by the government. From then till now NS has been a stock company whose stock happens to be completely owned by the government. Railroaders therefore were never government employees unlike France or Germany.
Due to European Union policy to increase freight traffic on the railways (and decrease it on the motorways) since the middle 90’s there has been a separation of infrastructure and operating company. The infrastructure is owned by a company called Prorail (via via owned by the government) and NS now only o
As a rule of thumb, once you got past most railroads in the United States plus the Canadian Pacific, almost all railroads in the rest of the world were nationalized and government owned. There may have been a handful of exceptions here and there.
Here in the US, we have no real government owned railroads on the federal level (military facilities excepted), but we do have quite a number of state owned, county owned, and port owned railroads. This portents an upward trend for some threatened branchlines and shortlines. The State of Washington has bought some lines from WATCO, and is negotiating for the rest. The general terms of the deal are that the ROW is owned by the state, but WATCO retains operating rights. The state either directly pays for maintenance, or they reimburse WATCO. If WATCO reneges on some aspect of the deal in terms of rates and service, the state can pull their operating franchise and bid it out to some other shortline operator. Shades of open access…
South Dakota messed up big time in allowing BNSF to repurchase the ex-Milwaukee lines from the State. If the DM&E project falls through, SD is in the same boat as ND and MT - BNSF’s b***hes.
[(-D]That’s funny! When the Milwaukee Road was going down, the state of S.D. was begging someone to takr over their lines. Buying them, and getting the BN to operate over them was the only deal the state could work out. Read up on some of the history of this, you might be amazed to find out that some of your theories don’t always hold true. Also, look at a map of S.D. If the DM&E project does go through, I don’t see it effecting much in the way of non-coal rail shipments in the state.
Any nations where government entities maintain the railroad infrastructure, such as tracks and crossing signals, while the railroads that operate on thoose tracks are private? If that kind arrangement existed in the US, which would probably be through the State DOTs, it would be derided as corporate welfare and railroads would be scapegoating the public maintainers of the tracks if derailments occur, like some do with Amtrak. If think some states already do this sort of thing for fledgling shortlines to keep tracks that have been abandoned by the class I’s in use.
Ah, govt ownership of the RRs. The efficiency of the Post Office, the cost effectivness of the Pentagon and the friendly service of the IRS. I can harfly wait.
While it seems to be all the fad nowadays to bash government ownership of just about anything, that is not what this thread happens to be about. I am seeking information about government ownership of railroad infrastructure in industrialized nations. What works/doesn’t work in other countries has very little bearing on what would work in the good ole U.S of A.
More than you ever wanted to know about the railways of the world. Including ownership.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0710625669/ref=dp_olp_2/104-7964242-5455934
See my post above. With this addition: Prorail owns and dispatches the tracks and grants access. It is responsible for the maintenance of the tracks as well as increasing capacity through new construction etc.
Actual regular maintenance has been contracted out and is provided by three private companies, Volker Rail, BAM NBM Rail and Strukton Railinfra (actually a subsidiary of the passenger road NS). They also got most of the maintenance vehicles / work trains of the old NS.
I regularly see complete maintenance trains from Germany, in fact one such German company has a Dutch subsidiary, Spitzke Spoorbouw. Rail grinding trains are rented from France.
There is increasing competition between rail infrastructure contractors in Europe. Strukton for instance is involved in building a new line in Sweden.
greetings,
Marc Immeker
[}:)]and dont forget that would give Congress the chance of micro-mis-managing the rail network, also!
Dont forget that large chunks of what is wrong with the above-mentioned agencies are actually mandated by rules passed by congress.
Oh, when referencing goverment owned railroads, dont forget City Government. In Oregon, the City of Prineville was unhappy when the spur from Redmond to Prinevill was to be shut down. So they bought it. Recently, I read where an outfit in Redmond couldnt get a delivery from the UP actually to their warehouse in Redmond, so they had it Railed to Prineville, and trucked it down to Redmond.
Just more evidence that some of the bigger roads are getting so busy they dont have to accomidate the smaller shippers.
My understanding is that at the time of the SD purchase of the Aberdeen-Miles City section of the Milwaukee, they were holding out hope that the consortium that eventually created MRL would be able to buy the Montana and Idaho portions of the Milwaukee. When that fell through, the new SD purchase had no western connection outside of BN, so naturally operation of the line fell to BN. Where SD screwed up was in the lease contract, which allowed BN to force an eventual sale of the line to BN after a certain number of years of lease service. Perhaps Murphy has already forgotten the big controversy over the Core Lines, where SD wanted to retain an active role in overseeing the lines.
Datafever,
IIRC the Norfolk Southern line south from Cincinnati is state-owned, and is very profitable for the state (although the word ‘profitable’ probably is outlawed). That would be an example of a major line in the USA/industrialized nation that is government-owned.
Marc,
Do you know roughly how many rail route-miles there are in The Netherlands?
Check your time line. I think you’ll find that the state purchase of the tracks, and MRL connection(?) idea are off by about a decade. The “big controversy” was a political power struggle, nothing more. The state never wanted to be in the railroad ownership business. There was a battle over buying the lines, and a battle over selling the lines,even though the plan all along had
When the government privatized the railroads in Mexico in the 90’s, they retained ownership of the infrastructure. The railroads (FXE, FSRR, KCSdeM, FCCM) took ownership of the locomotioves and rolling stock. They have a concession to operate over their portion of the trackage, and a responsibility to maintain/improve the trackage.
Regards
Ed
I believe that a similar situation exists in part in Brazil. MRS, ALL, FCA and others operate concessions over state-owned trackage but the CVRD railroads (EF Carajas and EF Vitoria a Minas) own and operate their own trackage.
The Ontario Northland in Northern Ontario is owned by the Ontario government, GO Transit is owned by the Ontario government and VIA Rail is owned by the Canadian government.