If how the railways run is a guide to the state of a nation, then it tells you something that Britain is in the middle of its biggest railway strike since 1994. Not coincidentally, that was the year the national rail network was privatized by the Conservative government of Prime Minister John Major.
A labor dispute has been simmering for nearly a year on the routes managed by Southern, a train operator that, as the name suggests, runs crucial commuter services between London and the South Coast. In December, the crisis escalated when around 1,000 train drivers joined in strike action against Southern's parent company, Govia Thameslink Railway, whose network also includes the Gatwick Express airport line.
In one day, about 300,000 passengers had their journeys delayed and disrupted. The strike action has been repeated every month since, including a networkwide stoppage expected this week. Together, the long-running battle between rail unions and the company is estimated to have cost Britain's economy ￡300 million (about $375 million), and has even hit house prices in the region.
The details, of course, are local, and may even seem parochial. The dispute centers on Govia's plan to remove guards from trains. The unions believe this would threaten not just jobs but also the safety of passengers. The industrial upheaval on a rail artery critical to one of the world's largest economies tells a story that transcend borders, however：of the perils of introducing market ideology into key public services, a project driven not by the needs of passengers but by uncompromising dogma.
On the eve of the great sell-off of the 1990s, Mr. Major pledged that rail privatization would bring a “better, cheaper and more effective service for the commuter.” To repeat that promise to Govia's beleaguered passengers today would at best provoke mirthless laughter. On Southern, passenger satisfaction slumped to 21 percent this year；nearly half of those surveyed reported delays in their last journey.
How did we get there? Not on a Southern train, obviously：The company has become a byword for over-crowding, delays and understaffing.
By introducing competition, privatization was supposed to make rail travel more affordable. According to research by Action for Rail, a group that is critical of privatization, Britain's rail commuters spend up to six times more on rail travel than their European counterparts have to. Same-day return tickets on airplanes from British cities to European ones can be significantly cheaper than same-day train travel between British cities. While British workers are suffering the most protracted wage squeeze since the Napoleonic wars, rail fares in recent years have gone up at twice the rate of wage increases.
But more Britons than ever are using the rail network, crow the champions of privatization. That isn't because of the success of the sell-off, though, but is because of change in the economy：More and more people are finding that they have to commute greater distances for work, for example. Where the networks themselves have improved, it's the state - not any private company - that has underwritten or financed modernization. Where the train operators have been left to their own devices, choosing whether or not to invest in new rolling stock, the result is clear：On some rush-hour train services into London, a third of passengers are forced to stand.
The privatizatizers claimed that competition would lift standards of service, put the needs of the consumer first, reduce the burden on the taxpayer, rid the system of inefficiencies and drive down prices. On all scores, the privatization of Britain's railways is an embarrassment. Look no further than the current dispute on Southern to see how dysfunctional the privatized system is.
