Private Operation of a few trains in India

[jis]

The newly elected government in India is following through on the election promise to privatize the operation of a few select passenger trains. The first chosen train is a premium service between the national capital New Delhi and the capital of the state of Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow.

https://www.livemint.com/news/india...e-run-by-private-operators-1562591525201.html

Should be interesting to see how this goes.

Similar attempts in the US have failed spectacularly. They could not find any operators. But the legal setup in the US as it stands is more or less unusable for such, so the attempts were arguably designed to fail in each case.

The IRCTC mechanism in India appears to be a more viable approach, but the proof of the pudding is in eating it. One can expect protests from rail unions and the rail establishment to some extent, and success is not guaranteed at all. But the proposed governance structure appears to be a more viable one than the fantasy that the US proposals were based on. The fact that the infrastructure is publicly owned and pricing of the usage of the infrastructure is publicly determined fundamentally makes it a more plausible approach than the goofy legal setup of the rail infrastructure in private hands in the US.

 

[caravanman]

Given the massive ongoing public investment in the railways in India, I could see this possibility coming... I am not a fan of selling off public assets to benefit a few, so you can add my voice to those of the rail unions, etc!
I assume clearing the busy rails for the passage of "private trains" will add more to delays for the lesser trains...

Ed.

 

[jis]

In the Indian model of private operations virtually no assets are being sold. Think of it more like the way private food service is provided on trains, extended to provide all OBS. That is what it amounts to. The rolling stock remains asset of IR, that is let out on lease. The operations are still IR, the exact cross contracting being worked out. Like all other railroads in the world, they want to dump the cost of passenger services on someone else if they can.

The immediate model is more akin to how the luxury tourist trains are operated. Like them, this whole scheme is going to be run by IRCTC.

Private or not, in India demand so outstrips supply that irrespective of who operates a train, trains will continue to get added, and in parallel infrastructure will continue getting augmented to add capacity. Triple and Quadruple tracking and electrification is an ongoing huge project.

 

[caravanman]

Indeed, I have seen the rail expansion project with my own eyes, quite astonishing.
My problem with whatever element or model of "private" involvement there is, that private element will need to take a profit. That profit will be at a cost to somebody or other...