I wonder if it's not safety but money. In the UK, train operators pay station operators a fixed fee to stop. As a result trains can't just stop somewhere randomly (except I hope in an emergency) even if that would benefit many people. All this is, needless to say, very stupid.

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zipy124 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They actually do. I was on a train a month ago from Sheffield to London and a passenger was on the wrong train and they scheduled an extra stop to get them on the right train. Kind of restored my faith in humanity a bit tbh.

	▲	qingcharles 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They did this for me once on an Intercity or whatever they call them these days. I fell asleep and woke up to my Mum waving at me from the station platform in Lancaster or somewhere wondering why I had not gotten off the train as it pulled out of the station. The conductor was kind enough to stop the train at some random cattle grid barely-even-a-platform in the middle of nowhere and radioed the train coming the other direction to pick me up. Bless.

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wolvoleo 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think so as in this case Deutsche Bahnn owns both the station and the train. In the UK they've gone a bit crazy with the whole free market thing. Public transport should not be a market.

In Germany there's also the issue that the powerful car makers are always lobbying the government to budget cut public transport.

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kuschku 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Germany does actually have station fees. And DB isn't the only operator. The RRX trains, one of which OP talked about, are operated by DB and National Express, ordered by the RRX group comprised of VRR, go.Rheinland, NWL, SPNV-Nord and NVV, running on tracks and stations by DB InfraGO.

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nephihaha 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Transport for Wales has nationalised its trains. A lot of the infrastructure is paid for by the state as well.

By the way, I can remember the state run British Rail and that was bad too. Neither nationalisation nor private operators have done well with British trains over the past fifty years.

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wizzwizz4 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The current UK government is re-nationalising the railways. Several operators are currently nationalised (and the train fares have dropped!), and the plan is for all of them to be, once the contracts run out.

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nephihaha 5 hours ago | parent [-]

The Welsh government has already nationalised local trains.

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wizzwizz4 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm still not sure why everywhere's devolved except England.

	▲	nephihaha 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		London is one of the places that least needed to be devolved (because the UK is run like a city state). It is in England the last time I checked. Bits of Northern England have been offered it and refused it. There has been some popular demand for Cornish devolution, but Whitehall is only prepared to entertain it within some greater south west region. There is also some devo to councils.

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tialaramex 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The arrangement (now gradually coming to an end) in the UK is very silly, ToCs (which run trains) were district from the ultimate station owner (which was various notionally for-profit companies but of course always ultimately the government) and the track owners. Most of that nonsense is being gradually absorbed into a single government owned passenger rail entity.

A "one under" (likely suicide) plus signal problems (which can be basically anything) meant I was delayed by over an hour home from Yorkshire on Saturday, but that also means it was effectively free.

	▲	scotty79 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There was a post on hn by someone who built a model to predict which trains are going to be late to get ticket refunds and travel for free (albeit slower).