Never going to get to (the south of) France
In the run up to the fall of the Soviet Union, the West was imploding. Economies were in a rut, and one perceived escape latch was the privatisation of public infrastructure. Easy money in the short run, at the cost of selling a liveable future. We are now reaping the fruits of that nearsightedness, with capitalist exploitation extending its tentacles to ever more horrid achievements.
Granted, public services, in general, suffer from the same problem as organisations working in international development; their customers are not those who stand to benefit from the work they do. And, so, it’s difficult to provide a consistently high quality service through this lopsided balance of interests.
Some things do change, of course. Some competition can be very helpful in facilitating incentive. If consumers are truly able to vote with their wallet, it’s more likely that the product offering the best value for money wins. Though commercial propaganda, advertising, and now the algorithms of big tech, do an ever better job at fooling the public, and, plainly, fucking up the public.
But, also, democracy can now be much more direct than it has ever been, and streamlining services, also public services, could never have been as efficient as it can be, in theory, today.
One example of failed optimisation through commercialisation is the inefficiency of Europe’s rail network. Transportation companies have been privatised, private companies have been allowed to compete, there is little interoperability between companies in different countries, sometimes also not within countries, except, to some extent, when a single company services multiple countries.
It’s then also embarrassing that companies like RyanAir, Wizzair, and EasyJet, can leave rail travel miles and miles behind in terms of efficiency and, worse, cost. But, commercial optimisation, combined with grants, bonuses, and discounts, related to unlocking remote areas for tourism, has allowed companies like the above to leapfrog the abilities of legacy infrastructures and their operators.
There has been multi-decade talks on collaboration between national transport companies. Every once in a while, some European night train is revived, and, very recently, on a European level, some progress has been made on planning to make it easier to purchase Europe-wide train tickets through a single customer-facing portal.
Perhaps this will happen, perhaps it won’t. But, it will still not likely be able to compete on price with what the likes of RyanAir can offer, even between cross-border destinations that should be easily reachable by train.
On this trip into Europe, I flew in to Lisbon, then took two flights to get to Sardinia, at a total of some 60 euros, followed by a flight to Vienna, at 35 euros, after which I flew to Eindhoven, for something like 50 euros.
Then, I took a train from Delft, near Rotterdam, to Poitiers, the last major town before Bordeaux, in France. The ticketing system for trains currently is a mess, as different companies operate on different legs of the journey, also meaning that pricing can vary wildly, from as low as something like 90 euros for the whole journey, to over 200 euros, not even considering first class. And all of these much costlier than the flights I had been taking over much longer distances.
But, then, on the day of my travel, one connection, from Antwerp, was cancelled, and all I was told was to ‘please use alternative transport’, Yet, I was not given any options, nor even told how to identify alternatives.
At the Delft train station, I was told to go to Rotterdam and ask. In Rotterdam, they gave me an alternative route, now going through Brussels. In Brussels, they then told me I would not be allowed to board the next train, with the consequence that my window to first get to Paris, and then to Poitiers, was getting smaller and smaller. And it was, apparently, my problem to solve. (Though, when, say, Ryanair fucks up, they also tend to not care much about those affected.)
I eventually made it to Poitiers, but only barely; the Paris transfer requires moving between different train stations. I was literally running to make my connecting train and was the last one to jump on board, as the conductor was closing the doors.
Modern efficiencies can easily eradicate the challenges of interoperability. Sure, there needs to be some regulatory will, but literally everyone stands to benefit from this, and on several levels. Just consider the potential cost and environmental savings if larger portions of the population leave personal transport for public transport. Any financial costs are easily justified through the long term gains, both on a national and European level.
But, who is really advocating for this?