I just read this article in The Morning by Ann De Bloeck about the opening up the Belgian railways to more competition in 2033. She paints a pretty optimistic picture, with cheaper tickets, onboard Wi-Fi and better customer service, while also briefly mentioning some risks. Reading it made me think of how similar reforms played out in Norway, where I’m from, and I thought that perspective might be interesting here.
We used to have one national railway company, NSB, which handled everything: passenger trains, cargo, infrastructure, signaling, the whole system. Then liberalisation came along, and things were gradually split up. Cargo became a separate company, infrastructure and signaling were separated out, and different parts ended up with different owners. In the end, not much was left of the original structure except the passenger services.
Norway doesn’t have a huge railway network to begin with. There are about eight main lines and a few local ones around the bigger cities. Most of the lines were never really profitable because it’s a large, sparsely populated country. That wasn’t seen as a problem before, since the state covered the losses in order to maintain the service. The goal was connectivity, not profit.
After liberalisation, the remaining passenger lines were put out to tender. Different companies could bid to operate them. But trains aren’t like buses or taxis; they depend on a complex system of infrastructure, rolling stock and long-term planning. Timetables are worked out far in advance, and everything has to fit together. When you split that system across multiple actors, things become chaotic.
I actually moved to Belgium just as these changes were taking place back home, so I went more or less straight from NSB to NMBS. NMBS isn’t perfect, but it works and is generally reliable. Meanwhile, in Norway, there have been some noticeable issues. Last winter the Norwegian news announced that SJ (Swedish Railways), the operator of the Nordland Line between Trondheim and Bodø, had an acute shortage on locomotives. They were renting NSB old (1980s) rolling stock from Norske Tog AS, but no one was buying new trains. It’s bad when you’re out of trains, it’s worse when have to ship a museum train over, just to keep it running.
In the south, where the more profitable routes are, the problems are less about trains and more about infrastructure. Because the system is split up, the companies that own the tracks aren’t the same as those running the trains or managing the signaling. Signaling often doesn’t work or is faulty, which again leads to delays and disruptions, especially around Oslo, where passengers are often told to expect longer travel times.
A lot of people back home are starting to feel nostalgic for the old days. Not because everything was perfect, but because it was reliable. There’s always a train, we used to say. Departures were more frequent, there were cheaper long-distance tickets, and fewer companies to take account for.
I’m not saying competition can’t bring improvements, but the railways are not open markets. They rely so heavily on coordination and infrastructure, that splitting everything up and selling for profit can create new problems instead of solving old ones.
I’m curious how people here feel about it. Would you be in favor of more competition on the Belgian railways, or do you think the current system has its advantages?
Belgian rail liberalisation — a Norwegian perspective
byu/Aggressive-Tomato-27 inbelgium
Posted by Aggressive-Tomato-27
23 Comments
I think it’s a way to find money for the current government, on the back of future generations. As were most liberalizations of state owned infrastructure in the past.
Then they can say ‘we did so well with the budget’ and start complaining about the others who are ruining trains and housing.
I mean I’m pretty confident public transport in general – as most public services – has been deliberately sabotaged from above for decades now. All so it can eventually be privatized and join the ever growing katamari ball of enshittification that’s consuming our lives. Which not entirely coincidentally coincides with the katamari ball of wealth being concentrated in fewer hands. Okay, okay sure. Not all of it is for that purpose. I mean I’m pretty sure when the completely overstressed tram lines in Borgerhout were downgraded even more it was at least 30% just good old N-VA racism. Anyways I can’t wait for privatizing to “improve” my train traveling experience like it has in the UK for instance, where at some point people were taking charter flights to Berlin and back to the UK because it turned out to be cheaper than a train ticket.
yes lets make very expensive trains like in the UK fuck the poors /s
Just look at how well that worked for the UK.
It’s the classic accounting trick of belgian authorities: they sell something for cheaper than its value to one of their businessman friend so they have a good balance sheet at the end of the year, then they end up renting the shit they sold for the rest of our lives and the benefits are lost within a couple of years.
It’s called the Reynders tour de force
One of the worst decisions of the EU.
the main issue is breaking the power of public sector unions and putting public sector pension conditions on the same level as everyone else. whether the service is provided public or private is really an edge issue in this as you say monopolistic market, germany and britain provide counterexamples to both
I think it’s an absolute disgrace that N-VA has been trying to privatize public transportation. Imo trains and buses are a public service, not something that should de-facto make a profit like a regular company would. Privatization has only downsides for us plebs. I see that it’s a way for the government to cut spending, while at the same time making some investor / rich friends happy.
But it’s cutting spending, in a place which has a much larger impact on other societal factors than just a simple cost cut. I mean it’s literally a means of transportation to their workplace for so many. It’s a means of cutting down on traffic too, and a means of ecological transport.
This is just the Belgian way, we are always behind, so the neoliberal concept of liberating *public* transport (it’s in the name that it is public, why the dogma to make it private?) we didn’t try out ourselves.
You’d think we learn from the mistakes others make, but we think we can make the mistakes better ourselves…
there are several ways to privatise a railroad.
A good way (switzerland) and a bad way (UK).
Knowing Belgian politics how do you think things will go?
relevant:
[https://fullfact.org/economy/how-much-does-government-subsidise-railways/](https://fullfact.org/economy/how-much-does-government-subsidise-railways/)
since privatisation government subsidies for the railroad **tripled** in England, and fares increased by 20%. this is taking into account inflation (so its on top of that). Anyone claiming it will be “cheaper” for either the government or the user is just blatantly lying. Selling of NMBS assets will just generate a short term profit, after which the tax-payer will have to fork over the money for all eternity. (and several NVA politicians are set for life, which is all that matters to them).
We also have one of the densest railways in the world, which makes it extremely hard to privatize (since private companies usually only want what is profitable, and we have alot of unprofitable smaller lines).
Its generally a very bad idea to compare Norwegian and Belgian railways.
In Norway there is aprox. 10 meter track/square km , in Belgium aprox. 120 meter track/square km.
The day SNCB/NMBS is no more, I’m no longer belgian. It’s already expensive as hell, for some overused routes like Liège-Bruxelles. Thanks to the blue basterds, running the country like engineers but with none of the brains or the background behind them. Yes, let’s buy some more useless F-35, it sure will benefit the people.
just look at the state of the dutch railways; they have been privatised, but because they effectively have the monopoly, they now have to make profit and do the maintenance on the infrastructure without the government fincanicial support, resulting in tickets that are way more expensive: €50 for a round trip from Weert to Utrecht is diabolical.
Safe to say privatization is not a good idea for the NMBS
I don’t think many people want privatization or think privatization of public transport is a good idea. But for most people it’s not a top 5 issue.
As long as left leaning political parties keep digging their heads in the sand on core issues (immigration, balancing the budget WITHOUT raising more taxes on the middle class, etc…) they will not convince the general public to vote for them on less important topics like these.
Like I would love for public transport to stay in the hands of the government, but if I have to vote in a PVDA/PTB/groen/ecolo/vooruit/PS government for that to happen I’d rather just buy an electric car.
I agree with you. Public transport in my opinion should be a service by the government to its people, and not managed by privatized companies. Worse examples are visible in the UK and in the Netherlands at this moment, where prices are higher or even unaffordable. In Belgium, prices are still comparably low for public transport and even in that case, they are already high compared to alternative transport methods (car being the main one)
I believe this should be a combined story. Private players should be allowed to add services within the framework, but decent minimum of service and a basic level of route infrastructure should be guaranteed by the government at affordable rates. Rates should be capped at certain levels and there should be quota on executing a sufficient number of legs so this remains a service to the people. It should not go at the expense of routes and connectivity given away to private companies who can later cancel them at a whim or continuously elevate rates for corporate gains.
The cancellation of routes is something we are already seeing happening lately with our bus companies, who are being held more accountable by the government as if they were to be self sustainable companies. Of course this is somewhat understandable if they consider demand and supply, but connectivity should be an equally relevant factor and operations at a loss are sometimes unavoidable in those circumstances.
Privatization of a public good is a guaranteed path to enshittification.
There isn’t a single example of privatization of public transport that has lead to better outcomes for consumers
If you want public transport that covers as much as possible, it needs to be state operated. And yes, it will keep being a moneysink and have troubles inherent to state owned businesses. And while it will not be as efficiënt as of it were privately owned, it doesn’t need to be. It’s a public service, not a moneymaking company.
The same goes for elderly homes btw.
And I am a vehement liberal who thinks the state should do as little as possible, these however, are exceptions.
It’s difficult to tell anything about how liberalization of the railway companies will play out in Belgium if our government doesn’t really have a plan for how our railways should work in a liberalized context, except for that the nmbs/sncb should die. Our current government seem to think public transport is a necessary evil that only poor people without a company car have to use and which costs the tax payer way too much money, and free market can fix everything, but they don’t have any idea about how it should do that and they’re not having any discussions about it either. If it’s not well regulated things will become pretty bad (pricing and service), but I think that’s what N-VA really wants.
> onboard Wi-Fi
Why would they assume competitors would add it?
Trains are inherently monopolistic. You cant really have 2 trains on the same tracks. You also do not want a multitude of tracks just for competing companies to run side by side.
The benefit of competition is absent so the potential benefits of privatisation is unclear to me, besides some money in some pockets
The good thing about the privatisation here in Belgium is that the rail operator will stay nationalised, so infrastructure problems shouldn’t be an issue. The bad news is indeed reliability for the travellers. We’ll probably move to a system where companies will bid the government for certain time slots (for example: 7:27 direct route Ghent to Brussels) and the highest bidder gets to run a train on that slot. Obviously for a very profitable train like the example given, lots of people will bid and the price goes up, and so will your ticket price. Then there’s the non profitable lines. Some of them will be profitable during rush hour and have plenty of service then, but during the day or late night trains will be less frequent or won’t even run at all since there is no point for companies to run a train that carries 30 travellers.Bought a ticket for a train that got cancelled? Tough luck, new ticket it is. Missed your daily train because of traffic to the station? Tough luck, new ticket. The only upside is that the government has to spend less on the NMBS and everyone’s taxes will go down a couple euro’s, but take a train a couple times a year and you’ll be paying more
Were a small and complex market, with a complex ruleset. Every privatization and liberalisation here has led to higher prices for a lower service.
I don’t think many people are actually in favor of privatising (competition) the NMBS. Everyone knows they are having to cuts in their budget to make the service worse on purpose and to make it shittier to work for, so that eventually it’s gonna be so bad that people will be asking to privatise the NMBS. So that when after the privatisation, the service improves, the NVA (political party) can say: See? This is better right?
I think history has shown that full ‘liberalization’ of critical infrastructure does much more evil than good.
I can offer a slightly changed perspective from Romania.
We had a partial liberalization. By that I mean: infrastructure is owned by CFR (National provider, mostly government owned). Freight transport and passenger transport are split between private actors and CFR.
Now, was it effective? Depends on who you ask. For me, who lived on perhaps the most traveled route in the country (which is like only 200km), the prices with private operators are actually lower than with CFR. HOWEVER, private operators do not operate all day long. They typically do only ‘rush hour’ traffic for commuters or leisure traveler. And they hardly operate large trains. I think a private operator who sells tickets for 10% compared to CFR (AstraTrans for Romanians, or Softrans), operates a small train with only 100-150 seats. Meanwhile, a comparable train from CFR serves 2-300 seats at the minimum. For this specific use case, the lower capacity of the private operator is actually an advantage, because, with high demand, they are always sure to fill in their trains.
Another great win for private operators, and the reason I prefer them, is that they facilitate payment. They were the first to introduce on-line payment systems in the country that actually served a purpose. (I think CFR had one as well, but you had to make a booking 1 DAY IN ADVANCE, in the condition that tickets were for a very specific time, which you might or might not exploit). The second revolution was that, for private operators, you could buy tickets as you are already on the train, for the same price as a ticket office (CFR charges almost double the price for this). I cannot overstate how amazing this is for a commuter.
Now, do I consider privatization to be an amazing thing for this reason? Not really. The facilitation of payment by the private companies could have easily been implemented by the national operator, if not for crippling corruption and corporate inertia. The reduction in price is only because the private operators typically operate only the most profitable routes and time slots, while CFR, as you have said, is more about connecting all areas of the country. Furthermore, private operators only pay a small renting free for the infrastructure, but CFR has to maintain all of it. And maintaining an infrastructure that has been built more than 40 years ago is no easy feat. Especially when you consider the legal idiocracy and bureaucracy that is plaguing us. For example, there was a section in the country where a bridge was passing over the railway. The bridge is almost collapsing (if it had not collapsed already). However, they cannot rebuild the bridge without railway stopping traffic. And railway does not want to stop traffic. There is a similar case, but in reverse, with a railway bridge and a road passing under it, which is also a huge dispute. I do not even want to imagine what the legal shitshow would look like if all of those were private entities clasping at their profits