Italy has seen tremendous success with privatizing High Speed rail.
I think the difference is that the infrastructure (tracks and stations) is still owned by the state and leased out competitively to private train operators.
They've been doing that here in Norway as well for regular trains.
The result is that the train operators get f'ed in the a by poor track maintenance and old trains. It has been so bad that when the trains run people joke it's "train for bus".
Also us customers can no longer buy one ticket that gets us from A to B but often have to contend with 2-3 different operators.
Italy has not exactly privatized high speed rail. The public rail operator Trenitalia is by far the largest high speed rail operator in the country. And it’s great.
What Italy has done is open the rails to access by private companies in addition to the public one, most notably high speed operator NTV/Italo.
Arguably this competition has helped spur on the public operator to greater heights. But it’s not the same at all as what Britain did (privatizing the public operator itself).
> Italy has seen tremendous success with privatizing High Speed rail.
I think whether privatization helps or hurts depends a lot on how corrupt or inept the government is, ie. the more corrupt or inept, the more privatization can probably help.
I think the difference is that the infrastructure (tracks and stations) is still owned by the state and leased out competitively to private train operators.
It’s kind of like the airline model.