DB is publically owned. Just in a very stupid way. They made it a stock company cause they planed to privatise it, and then didn’t cause of the 2008 financial crisis. So it’s a stock company with a board and a CEO, that is supposed to make a profit, but all the stock is owned by the state.
In my eyes, they should reform it into something more sensible that is still publically owned, but the current government is more likely to go through with privatisation than do that.
Zwiebel@feddit.org 2 days ago
It is publicly owned, it was just defunded by conservatives
unknownuserunknownlocation@kbin.earth 2 days ago
It's more complicated than that. The DB as an umbrella organization (consisting of over 100 companies) is publicly owned, but:
The infrastructure is completely separated from operations, with a lot of regulations to make sure that the infrastructure company doesn't cooperate with any operations company for fear they might discriminate against other companies, effectively throwing sand into the gears of railroad operations because many communication paths that are standard in other railroads are banned.
The companies that carry out operations are expected to be completely self-sufficient, with no direct support from the government, but only through contracts auctioned off to the lowest bidder for local services (definitely no connection with competing companies who bid really low regularly going bankrupt /s). Long distance services are expected to finance themselves but are expected to cross subsidize services to cities that aren't quite as lucrative (because they are, after all, owned by the government) and at the same time compete with companies that aren't government owned that just offer rides on the most lucrative routes.
The budget that is available for infrastructure is decided by the government every year, meaning absolutely no financial stability. This means that construction companies don't end up growing because it could be too risky, and when suddenly there's a lot of work to be done the few construction companies that are able to do the work demand insane prices and conditions, and the infrastructure company is essentially forced to swallow if they want anything done at all.
Source: I work in this clusterfuck.