Mostly agreed - they went bust and/or withdrew from contracts, and yes pandemic was an issue, but these companies were also getting huge amounts of public money (Gov was typically buying the trains), and the infrastructure/rail element has been properly nationalised for a few years now.
The idea that competition can have any real meaning on a highly constrained and contended single resource - like railways - is a bit laughable, so the market doesn't really offer much opportunity for optimization. Equally though, the old British Rail was nothing to get excited about. We just don't seem to have a decent economic model for running loss-making services with positive general externalities for the benefit of society.
The private model does work elsewhere in the world but I'm not sure whether we completely understand the differences and what makes these other countries work so well.
On the other hand, we tend to have rose-tinted memories of how cheap everything was in the old days, which I don't think is true. For the level of subsidy that our railways have, they are probably not actually that bad. Many people have said before that even places like France might do well on the high speed lines but their secondary routes can be as rough as ours and they get much more investment.
>The idea that competition can have any real meaning on a highly constrained and contended single resource - like railways - is a bit laughable, so the market doesn't really offer much opportunity for optimization
Of course not. The Tories always meant for it to be a vehicle through which they and their mates could extract rents.
