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> Although looking at the UK map makes me sad, all those abandoned lines. Germany is just as bad. Between 1994 (the begin of the privatization) and now we lost 6.200km of rail infrastructure [1] - something like 15-ish percent. My s/o and I went on a two week railroad trip through the whole of Germany. Seeing rotting or half-ass dismantled rails, former shift yards and smashed-in former other infrastructure just hurted to watch. Everything has gone downhill, there was barely any investment in upkeep of tracks and buildings, only in new construction of expensive billions-euros high speed rail... the reason is simple: DB Netz, the privatized infrastructure operator, has to pay for upkeep on their own (from usage fees) while the federal and state governments (and in some cases like the Munich S-Bahn also the counties and cities) pay for all the high-profile projects. We had so, so many industrial areas served by rail as well: in 1994, over 11.000 companies and industrial zones had their own railway attachment - today, it's barely 2.300, a reduction of 80% [2]. No wonder our highways and side roads are overcrowded with trucks. The reason for that is that unlike the US, Europe still has chain-link and buffer couplers, which means shunting yards are extremely staff-intensive to run, and shunting from and to the industrial areas is expensive as well... which means that, thanks to privatization, DB Cargo was more or less forced to shut down the industrial zone supply because the absurd losses this branch brought in could no longer be cross-subsidized by passenger rail. [1] https://www.allianz-pro-schiene.de/themen/infrastruktur/schi... [2] https://www.rnd.de/wirtschaft/gueterverkehr-auf-die-schiene-... |
In the UK it was somewhere around 25% of rail lines and 55% of stations. Complete short-sightedness.