FT.com / Companies / Rail – National Express rail empire hopes end

Posted on July 2 2009

FT.com / Companies / Rail - National Express rail empire hopes end.

I think it's time to face reality:

1) Privatisation does not pass risk to the private sector - only profits

2) Rail privatisation has failed

3) We once had a very good rail operator who required a much lower level of subsidiy for a much higher level of efficiency than we have now - that operator was called British Railways.

And that's where we should be heading back to.

The East Coast route should stay in public hands - and be joined by all other franchises as they end or fail.

Then we can have a cohesive transport system again.

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3 Responses

Paul says:

July 2 2009 at 1:50 pm

Steve Bell’s cartoon in the Guardian today captures things very nicely.
CamKC says:

July 2 2009 at 2:08 pm

—

Ken Livingston tells it how it is over rail privatisation on Radio 4’s news programme “The World Tonight” last night (Wed 1st June 2009).

Hear the audio (only available for one week) at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00l9s86

If you haven’t time to listen to the whole programme, advance the iPlayer by clicking your mouse in front of the purple line until the time elapsed shows 16.45 on the time elapsed.

He makes the simple truth plain: if you ask the private sector to provide a service, then you must pay for the service to be provided and you have to pay the shareholders – so how can that be a good deal?

He stresses this is only in situations of a natural monopoly, like the railways and Underground.

Further, he says private business employ the smartest accountants and lawyers to ensure that they can “run rings around” the unfortuante civil servants who are charged with completing the deal, and unremarkably, they get “taken to the cleaners”
alastair says:

July 2 2009 at 2:57 pm

why do you think this was privatisation? As far as we can tell (although it sounds somewhat ambiguous) they kept the infrastructure and sold the profit potential for a peppercorn rent

So its their bodged contracts that failed

Don’t think I have ever heard BR and good put together in the way you imply. In fact Government meddling in the railways has never worked; they don’t understand transport.