[darreninthenet]

The UK used to have that with its railway projects - the old government owned British Rail had massive and extensive knowledge on large rail infrastructure projects and no need for expensive external "consultants". That all got lost when the Tories tore it apart into private companies... hopefully now they are being renationalised as their contracts expire, at some point in the future they can regain all that expertise in-house again.

[graemep]

The rail infrastructure was re-nationalised in 2002 - Network Rail is government owned.

The train operating companies are mostly privately owned but they do not build the infrastructure. Quite a few are state owned though (LNER, Thameslink, Scotrail, Northern...)

[matt-p]

OK, but network rail don't have any in-house building skills. Actually they don't even do much truly in-house maintenance/fix work - it's mostly contracted out.

Network rail are not building east-west rail, let alone HS2.

[graemep]

True, but that is why I am sceptical about benefits of re-nationalisation. The skills are not going to come back.

The default assumption these days is that everything will be contracted out. It needs a cultural change and a lot of investment to change things.

[KaiserPro]

Its much more pernicious than that.

Timetables, expansion any kind of change to rail running is approved centrally in DfT. The private operators are just that, they only run the trains to spec, on the track provided. In some cases they don't even run the stations they stop at.

What is criminal, and why the same mistakes that keep on being made, is that there little apatite or budget to retain expertise in house. This means that the DfT is reliant on consultants for most things.

THis would be fine if the people making the decisions were not people like chris grayling or grant schapps, who have no care for long term issues, only short term career success.

It costs a shit ton more, and there is less accountability. Its basically like asking claude to design the system for you. Sure it appears faster, but in the end it you'll have to redo all of it manually with no context.

The whole great british railway shit is basically just re-branding the regional franchises, and nothing more.

[mentalgear]

It's the standard privatisation playbook, also used with the NHS: first, politicians (often Conservatives) underfund and fracture a world-class public system (e.g. healthcare). Then, once it's struggling, their private-equity and investor allies swoop in to 'save the day' by privatizing it for profit as the 'only option to restore quality'.

[dspillett]

> often Conservatives

Almost always conservatives, the key exception in recent history being Tony “Tory Lite” Blair's time in office (who pretty much ignored many years of promises to undo the direction Thatcher and Major had taken NHS and university/student funding should Labour be returned to power, greatly irritating many of us who voted for them that time around). Unfortunately this is a common pattern: parties like Labour get control and realise how hard it is going to be to fight what has been set in motion so do too little or actively push on in the existing direction (just applying a little lipstick to the pig for public appearances). The current lot are trying to do better in that regard, but are failing so impressively elsewhere that they likely won't have a second term and one term is not enough to build momentum, so their replacement will just put a stop to any good that has actually been achieved. The scary thing is that their replacement (assuming Refrom don't rip themselves apart from the inside between now and the next election, which is something there is still hope of happening) might make the old Tories look extremely moderate.

[rob74]

...and then everyone acts surprised that things become more expensive.

[alistairSH]

Maybe when I was 18. I haven't been surprised by this play by conservatives in a loooonnggggg time.