Britain's rail meltdown

Jordan Hayes jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com
Sun Jan 13 09:55:20 PST 2002


So, let me get this straight.

The government doesn't want it:


> But the government's apparent commitment to rail was never that
> serious.

Private investors don't want it:


> City investors were not remotely interested in getting people from A
> to B, but in raiding British Rail's assets, whether its valuable real
> estate, or its large pension fund.

Europe doesn't want it:


> The government's announced bias towards rail flies in the face of the
> European trend to reduce rail-track (down from 170000km in 1970 to
> just over 150000km in 1998) and increase motorways (up from 2000km to
> 5000 km over the same period).

No one thinks there's a balance to be made between revenue/expenses:


> In fact the railway companies have demonstrated that providing a
> rail-service is unlikely to be a profitable industry.

Why do you have trains at all?

/jordan



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