>>22842522>>22842537>why are Britain's railways bad?They were the best in the world once upon a time, and for a very long time.
Then the Beeching cuts happened.
Now, to be fair to Beeching, he recommended cuts were inevitable because rail was running at a loss.
But he also recommended that you shouldn't make massive cuts without investing massively in roads and bus services.
But the cuts were made without the other investments and people's frustrations were made worse by strikes in the 1970s.
Then Thatcher decides to commit to the second-largest privatisation project in European history (second only to 1930s Germany) and also go all in on the American dream of being able to drive wherever you want.
So massive investments in highways, except we're not as big as America, so that's lots of land being used for cars to sit in traffic (instead of housing) + pollute the air, and 'who cares about rail (or council houses)?' bc let the private sector and markets worry about it.
Then you have several rail disasters because that's what happens when you introduc the profit motive, so now taxpayers subsidise the railways, subsidise railway losses, and because the private train companies are owned by foreign countries, the profit of every expensive train ticket you buy in the UK goes to improve national rail services in Europe/Asia.
