The expected delayed effect of austerity politics that were so successfully exported throughout the European Union with great efficiency and cruelty.
It’s a friendly rivalry among many European countries to boast about how shitty their railway companies are.
But but America!
The fuck are you on about?
Sitting in a train right now. It started half an hour late and on top of that we have to drive a detour because of an accident on the tracks. Ah well.
I understand the whole “it has to get worse before it gets better” angle when some railway sections have to be closed for a complete overhaul, but I feel like there’s an infrastructure equivalent to refeeding syndrome.
When your body has to make do with little-to-no food, it restructures its metabolism to deal with that. When you suddenly increase your food intake again, it can’t deal with that and you die. Instead, food intake must be slowly ramped up.
When an infrastructure provider has little money for repairs, they tend to take their most urgent “cannot be postponed” repairs, rank them, and do the absolutely most urgent “cannot be postponed” ones first. When they suddenly receive more money, there is a tendency to abandon this ranking system because all of these repairs are urgent “cannot be postponed” repairs and they no longer need to be ranked… which leads to collapse because of course the primary, the backup and the other backup route are being repaired at the same time, all three are in need of urgent “cannot be postponed” repairs!
I think the management structures of infrastructure providers should take this into account when a budget increase comes their way.
Their strategy so far is to close and overhaul lines completely. I think it is somewhat fair to expect that’s cheaper and faster than overhauling one side at a time. They prioritize by traffic and urgency of overhauls. It is a solid strategy - but it comes with major disruptions of long distance travel
