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Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by OJFord on Thursday May 20, 2021 @04:44AM (#27218869)
It becomes a campaign issue (or does if it is an issue), which is what I mean is 'strictly better'. Not great, probably, but not worse in any other way that I can think of, and that is a positive (to whatever extent).
Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by Guthur on Thursday May 20, 2021 @07:51AM (#27219954)
And what happens when party A fucks up and you vote in party B who also fuck it up your are officially out of options.

The tender approach for time limited monopoly was just terrible though and had no good incentives at all, and so I'm not really sure a government monopoly will be much worse.

Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by oblio on Thursday May 20, 2021 @07:57AM (#27220001)
In decent voting systems, you vote in party C.
Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by squiggleblaz on Thursday May 20, 2021 @09:28AM (#27220836)
I don't think there's any voting system that genuinely gives you three choices to lead government at every election. Even in proportional systems, you might be able to select someone who more closely represents your interests and can advocate them in parliament, but the government is probably going to be led by one of the same two parties over time. If party A and party B are both ideologically inclined to fuck up rail, getting party C elected as a junior partner probably won't change that.

And if you're just hoping to replace party A entirely with party C, FPTP is one of the better systems as long as you're not in a country where election laws are set up to ensure that the Democrats and the Republicans are going to win almost every election. But that's a question of candidacy laws and incumbent rights; changing the voting system in the US won't suddenly cause other parties to get elected.

Anyway, the fact that party A fucked it up and party B is fucking it up doesn't mean party A lacks incentives to improve it tomorrow. Perhaps they fucked it up because their leader was incompetent, and now that there's been a change in leadership they will be motivated to improve.

Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by buzer on Thursday May 20, 2021 @10:10AM (#27221297)
> but the government is probably going to be led by one of the same two parties over time.

Finland has generally had 3 major parties ducking it out usually around 15-25% for each. 1995 was last time single party got over 30% of seats. Depends a bit on time which exact ones they were.

English wikipedia doesn't have the historic list, but Finnish does https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduskunta#Kansanedustajat_puol... Divide by 2 to get the % (there are 200 members)

Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by toyg on Thursday May 20, 2021 @10:45AM (#27221765)
Population size is a big problem. The more you scale up a democratic system, the more it becomes difficult to bootstrap and maintain a coherent political movement that can have a realistic chance to win an election, in what is probably a logarithmic scale. So the bigger the country, the more entrenched the options will be, which eventually boils down to two sides when you approach certain thresholds (one for the current government, and one against it).
Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by oblio on Thursday May 20, 2021 @11:09AM (#27222139)
France has had a million parties. Romania, too. Italy, same. If there's a will, there's a way. Most of the time there's no will.
Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by bluGill on Thursday May 20, 2021 @09:13AM (#27220664)
If there was only one issue to vote on. However party C will have some other negative that I hate that party A is best on and party B is okay.

The only system that doesn't have voting negatives to me is one with a population of less than 10 where I'm sole dictator. Any population more than that and someone will get mad at me and kill me. Republics with some form of voting are the best option I know of for large populations of people who aren't "mind numbed robots" with no ideas of their own, and there is room to tweak the voting system. However they are still terrible for getting good results.

Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by JI00912 on Thursday May 20, 2021 @05:59AM (#27219290)
Indeed the government has incentives to spend time, money and energy on campaigning. Unfortunately running things is a different matter.
Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by nicoburns on Thursday May 20, 2021 @07:02AM (#27219630)
Ultimately both governments and private entities can run things efficiently. And both governments and private entities can run things badly. The UK government has an excellent recent record of running rail franchises when it has had to step in and bail out franchises (it ran it profitably, and with excellent customer feedback on service), so it's a good bet that it'll do better than the existing providers for the time being.
Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by ed_elliott_asc on Thursday May 20, 2021 @07:28AM (#27219761)
It is the same people who worked for the franchises working under government control - it is the senior management who go but the actual doers are the same.
Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by croon on Thursday May 20, 2021 @08:05AM (#27220068)
Incentives on one is to maximize profits, which in a monopoly means just extracting more money and spending less.

Incentives on the other is electability (or ideology, perhaps rare), which at least has the possibility of meaning doing a good job.

Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by fmajid on Thursday May 20, 2021 @06:12AM (#27219355)
Look how much hay Mussolini made from running the trains on time (which wasn't even the case, they just padded the schedule).
Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by mschuster91 on Thursday May 20, 2021 @06:46AM (#27219534)
> which wasn't even the case, they just padded the schedule

Well, if I'm a company using rail for freight or a worker depending on the rail to get to work, it already is a massive improvement if I can at least rely on the train being where it should be at the announced time. Improving the schedule for faster travel or shorter intervals is another thing, but predictability alone makes my life easier.

Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by bluGill on Thursday May 20, 2021 @09:27AM (#27220825)
Both are important, but for different things. If the trip time is too long nobody will take the train. If the train isn't predictable nobody will take the train. You get a bit of leeway in different situations though. The longer the trip the less either matters because what else can you do? If you are only going a few meters it needs to be here now (whenever now is - on time in 1 minute is too late!), and it only needs to be faster than walking that distance. In between you get some ability to do things.

In the Swiss case on time is critical because they want people to depend on their next train being there when they get there. They assume most people will get off one train and get on another (or a bus) so they all meet in the same place at the same time. Early does nothing for anyone unless the bus/train they are meeting is early and leaves early. This is one good way to run a system. The other is run so many trains/buses that whenever you arrive there is another waiting for you that will leave as soon as you can get on. This second way to run a system is much faster and better for everyone - but the costs are significantly higher though and so nobody can afford to run a large system that way. (large cities often can run this way and should where they can). Note that system is the key word here. If you only have one train the considerations are different.

Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by Digit-Al on Thursday May 20, 2021 @12:13PM (#27223050)
Too right. It's always frustrating if your train is 2-3 minutes late and just as you step off the train you see your connecting train leaving its platform and know you now have a 20 minute wait for the next one. The could definitely do with a bit more padding for those situations.

Thankfully I don't have to take the train very often - especially these days lol

Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by bregma on Thursday May 20, 2021 @07:14AM (#27219684)
What really happened is the trains continued to run the same way they always had, but the Ministry of Propaganda said they were running on time and people believed them. It sounds cynical, but that's only because it worked.

Perhaps also because it's still working.

Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by disabled on Thursday May 20, 2021 @06:58AM (#27219594)
LOL Switzerland (i.e. extremely punctual society) actually does this with their rail system. There is a time buffer in the rail schedule for each of the stops. If a train is running late, and is /expected/ to be late, according to the estimated time of arrival, the train adjusts its speed, going faster, to arrive at the originally planned scheduled time. Failures on the rail system are of course rare.
Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by ceejayoz on Thursday May 20, 2021 @07:22AM (#27219731)
If they're way late, they'll skip stops too, so they don't ruin the schedule for the whole network for the day.

A few people in one town having to wait an extra 20 minutes ensures hundreds of thousands have a predictably on-time system.

Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by secretsatan on Thursday May 20, 2021 @07:32AM (#27219789)
Late at night, if one of the regional trains is late to a local hub, the local trains wait for it to arrive so you're not stuck getting home.

In general though, I'm so used to the trains being on time, I start tutting if it's even a minute late

Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by ceejayoz on Thursday May 20, 2021 @07:58AM (#27220013)
Yeah, my last visit to Switzerland they announced one of the trains would be three minutes late and apologized for the inconvenience.

Meanwhile, I've arrived in NYC fourteen hours late on Amtrak.

Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by KptMarchewa on Thursday May 20, 2021 @09:54AM (#27221123)
I think all rail systems have some small buffers build in.

On the polish site which tracks punctuality of trains, you can often see train delayed for some time, which decreases delay by every stop, eventually ending with smaller delay or on time.

http://infopasazer.intercity.pl

Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control by oblio on Thursday May 20, 2021 @07:59AM (#27220018)
That's just good planning.