In message <20020114013535.61744.qmail at web20010.mail.yahoo.com>, Cian O'Connor <cian_oconnor at yahoo.co.uk> writes
>They can't be run privately because it was a botched
>privitisation scheme conceived to give Labour a poison
>pill. Prior to that they had been under funded. No
>reason why they had to, except the treasury seems to
>think that spending money is wasteful.
I agree that it was a botched privatisation scheme (in fact it was no privatisation scheme at all, since government increased, not decreased its regulatory powers over the railways, which had more independence as British Rail). But it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the railways will never be profitable again. I see that since my first posting the BBC has found losses of 120 million sterling in ten of 18 rail operators (out of a total of 25) books. Those losses will eat into the govt's planned rail subsidy.
When Cian answers the question 'who wants rail' as follows
>
>
>Well for a start commuters to London, seeing that
>commuting by car is not a realistic alternative.
I think he is making a mistake. Distance travelled in cars per person is much greater than distance travelled by train. In London it was 3,393 miles by car to 823 miles by rail in 1998. In the South East (excluding London) it was 6,804 miles by car to 533 by rail.
Objectively speaking, there is no way in a hundred years (and no way without a profound assault on working class living standards) that rail could displace road as a means of transport. There simply is no comparison. I'm constantly surprised by people who compare the two as if they were commensurable. They are as different as socks and pants, or theatre and cinema. It's just not the same market at all. (For example, if I was travelling alone from London to Manchester or Glasgow, I'd take the train - our inter-city airlines are pretty primitive. But it's cheaper to take the car if I have it full of family or friends. It's more convenient to take the car for shorter journeys - as far as Oxford, say.)
>So
>we're talking about a group that includes popular
>middle brow journalists, investment bankers and
>lawyers. The rest of the rail network may, or may not
>be feasible (we've never really tried to find out) -
>but the links to London are essential. And they're the
>most broken part at the moment.
I don't think that you can ignore the rail losses as merely fictional. I agree that profitability is no full measure of human need, but the public's preference for the car is real, not imaginary, and it has a practical effect on the economics of railways.
In message <p05100308b868aad17723@[192.168.1.104]>, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>So how much does Britain subsidize car travel, through public roads and
>highways, the traffic police and court systems, the socialization of
>pollution- and accident-related medical costs, etc. etc.?
I don't have figures, but as I remember them cited, the money that the chancellor takes in road and petrol tax exceeds the spending on roads (we pay a lot more in both taxes than Americans do, I believe). On the further reaches of 'externalities' I'm not sure that one can do a proper audit. After all you would have to add in the external economies of road transport as well as the external diseconomies. Road transport makes a contribution to general economic growth that is not reflected in the market price of cars, petrol, etc.. Balancing the losses with the gains would be quite a difficult - if not to say fanciful exercise. For a simple comparison, you could just look at the GNP of a country with negligible car transport and one with an extensive one.
In message <Pine.GSU.4.21.0201131755300.10364-100000 at garcia.efn.org>,
Dennis Robert Redmond <dredmond at efn.org> writes
replying to Jordan Hayes'
>> But if it's the "worst in Europe" then what does that say for it in
>> general?
>
>That says nothing about railroads, but everything you need to know about
>Britain's continuing economic decline. The sad truth is, the British
>bourgeoisie is *so* stupid, they can't even hack the metric system, let
>alone something as stupefyingly complex as proportional representation in
>Parliament (and don't get me started on the euro). Like Spain after the
>Golden Age, they may have to hit bottom somewhere in the late 21st
>century, for things to ever get better.
I'm all for heaping scorn on the British bourgeoisie, but rarely for the same things that Dennis wants to. I still prefer the imperial to the metric (12 is so much easier to subdivide than ten); and proportional representation only leads to greater power for non-elected authorities called in to mediate between ambiguously balanced political parties (see Italy, for e.g.).
I agree with Dennis that the British transport policy has for its objective basis the economic decline of the UK. But that is to avoid the correspondence between the objective condition and the subjective policy pursued by the UK govt.. Suspending road building was at root a cost-cutting exercise by a bankrupt govt (John Major's). But ecology gave it a usefully radical gloss. The Blair team inherited a policy that was hostile to roads and 'favoured' trains. The end result is the road system is in gridlock, and the trains... well.
I don't see Dennis's contrast with Europe on transport policy. The basic pattern is the same. Subjectively European governments are committed to restraining car use. But such policies fly in the face of the preferences of European citizens who continue to increase their car use despite all the no-driving days and other schemes. At the same time, the decline in rail use is an overall trend across Europe.
-- James Heartfield Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age is available at GBP19.99, plus GBP3.26 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'. www.audacity.org