That statistic always gets used but it hides a lot of other macro trends and context. In North Irland you will see a grath that look the same without privatization.
Also lots of things that came together by privatization had been developed at BritishRail.
And anyway, it was only really private in the slights way. After just a few years networkrail had to be created. This was hugely costly and the infrastructure during the private time degraded.
After that the government had even more diect control over routes and timetables then they had under BritishRail.
Having the services themselves being run by private companies isnt all that interesting. The can only really innovate on underpaying employes and some user experiance.
And to get this part to be private, you have to have a whole army of lawyer on both sides. And then again between the service companies and the train rental companies.
The user experiance gain is completly negated by having a system that is so much harder to use in general. Every company with their own branding. Changing all the time when provider change.
Harder to do proper ticket integration and so on and so on.
Not to mention that during that period almost no new fleets were ordered so the majority of UK train manufacturing is gone. And the one that still there makes subpar trains that don't compte with the trains from France, Germany and Switzerland.
In summation, I would say privatisation didnt really save the UK much money, arguebly it cost them money.
And now privatisation is done anyway because all the franchises are simply controlled by the government anyway.
Allowing BritishRail to continue to develop into something like the Swiss SBB would have been much better for Britain.
Comming from Switzerland travling by train in Britain felt like time travling to an earlier age. There is some fancy knew stuff on the most important routes. But travling the country side in 40 year old trains and stopping at stations that look like nature was in the process of consuming them.
In Switzerland is expensive, but you get something for money. In England its expensive and so much worse in so many dimensions.
Also lots of things that came together by privatization had been developed at BritishRail.
And anyway, it was only really private in the slights way. After just a few years networkrail had to be created. This was hugely costly and the infrastructure during the private time degraded.
After that the government had even more diect control over routes and timetables then they had under BritishRail.
Having the services themselves being run by private companies isnt all that interesting. The can only really innovate on underpaying employes and some user experiance.
And to get this part to be private, you have to have a whole army of lawyer on both sides. And then again between the service companies and the train rental companies.
The user experiance gain is completly negated by having a system that is so much harder to use in general. Every company with their own branding. Changing all the time when provider change.
Harder to do proper ticket integration and so on and so on.
Not to mention that during that period almost no new fleets were ordered so the majority of UK train manufacturing is gone. And the one that still there makes subpar trains that don't compte with the trains from France, Germany and Switzerland.
In summation, I would say privatisation didnt really save the UK much money, arguebly it cost them money.
And now privatisation is done anyway because all the franchises are simply controlled by the government anyway.
Allowing BritishRail to continue to develop into something like the Swiss SBB would have been much better for Britain.
Comming from Switzerland travling by train in Britain felt like time travling to an earlier age. There is some fancy knew stuff on the most important routes. But travling the country side in 40 year old trains and stopping at stations that look like nature was in the process of consuming them.
In Switzerland is expensive, but you get something for money. In England its expensive and so much worse in so many dimensions.