[darkclarity]

Our railway system was built by competing railway businesses with lots of inefficiency, it was nationalised, made painfully efficient (Beeching etc) and franchised out to businesses. This is the next stage where demand is catching up with the network and old routes are reopening.

[smcl]

There's a little more to the tale - East Coast rail being nationalised when failing and then privatised once it returned to health (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/27/privati...) and the Govt selling off its Eurostar share prior to it becoming more valuable (http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/06/eurostar-sel...). Also for some reason TfL remains in public hands - maybe because it's too important for private sector to mess up?

[billybofh]

I remember when the bus system was being privatised and watching the transport minister on the news explaining that he'd been 'inspired' by watching multiple double-decker buses crossing in front of parliament - all with no passengers and his feeling that 'something must be done'.

Yet London got left alone while the rest of the country got the full 'freedom' of the private sector. It's a tad annoying ;-)

[darkclarity]

The thing that bemuses me about TfL is a similar public run arrangement was recently encouraged and proposed for another part of England. It was blocked at the last minute. London definitely gets special treatment, even when it goes against the narrative.

[pjc50]

Attempts were made to privatise TfL, and collapsed. While googling for the history of this I found these 3 articles to read in order:

(2000) http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/rail-privat...

(2003) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2841704/TfL-makes-deal-on...

(2010) http://www.standard.co.uk/news/tfl-takes-over-tube-lines-to-...

All within the lifetime of the Labour government. Meanwhile expensive disasters continue under a conservative government: http://www.railtechnologymagazine.com/News-Robot/vulnerable-...

[gsnedders]

> Also for some reason TfL remains in public hands - maybe because it's too important for private sector to mess up?

The TfL ultimately has a lot of the same responsibilities as the DfT within Greater London; the actual operations of most TfL routes are contracted out.