Britain's rail meltdown

Jordan Hayes jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com
Sun Jan 13 11:26:04 PST 2002



>> "Why do you have trains at all?"
>
> Because it is the most efficient form of mass land transport
> available (cost , environmentally, speed and carrying capacity
> wise).

So how come no one can make it work in that "efficient" way?

I agree: GB should be the perfect example of rail. It's (the non-Eire part anyway) a small country (even London->Glasgow is shorter than even Boston -> Washington DC; most interesting routes are shorter); much of the right of way has existed for hundreds of years; car ownership is low; it's part of the culture already.

But if it's the "worst in Europe" then what does that say for it in general?

And: I'm not sure what you mean by 'efficient' here: if it cannot be run profitably, how 'efficient' could it be?

Let's focus on cost; here's what I see:

-- The train goes from A to B no matter if it has passengers or not -- Adding trainsets is difficult -- Adding/removing cars from trainsets seems unheard of -- Changing the schedule (dropping empty trains, adding more capacity

during peak times) is expensive and tricky (pax/freight conflicts) -- Maintenance is constant and expensive

/jordan



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