I thought this was sort of proposal was a thing of the past but apparently not. Can anyone ever imagione the government allocating £5.1bn to the rail network? Yeah. Right.
These links might elucidate the matter further.
Additional:
In response to the comments I would like to rephrase a sentence above. It should read: "Can anyone ever imagine the government allocating £5.1bn to spend directly on the rail network and rolling stock instead of penalty payments to the regulator, director's bonuses and marketing campaigns?
£5.1bn doesn't get you very far these days....cf the West Coast Main Line - £8bn so far and counting...
ReplyDeleteIts a good point. But I read somewhere (I thought it wa in one of those links but I can't find it now - grrrrr) that a lot of that money doesn't get spent on engineering. In France SNCF is a national institution with its own R&D department, its own budget (like British Rail used to have) and no board of directors to pay £million bonuses to.
ReplyDeletehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4541331.stm
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tssa.org.uk%2Farticle-101.php3%3Fid_article%3D139&ei=-io_Ru-vBoug0wST_qncAQ&usg=AFrqEzesj-HSoH9QqUXj8HD-nqkhdW-cNw&sig2=y5XPSIi0LR5brIxJr4ZhNQ
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffindarticles.com%2Fp%2Farticles%2Fmi_qn4158%2Fis_20060526%2Fai_n16438205&ei=Zis_RrveJ4uE0gSJzumwAQ&usg=AFrqEzf-Vt04yYibxj_bTJkXtGFa5BHA9Q&sig2=FUx1uH-b45GLlC8LDEaZ7A
SNCF can also turn a buck selling the technology it develops to other nations. Contrast this with the situation in the UK where the government also has a budget for the rail networks but instead of spending it on maintaining and replacing track and rolling stock the money goes on marketing, consultants fees, penalties for missing targets set by the regulators and other measures that keep the privatised company's stock high but contribute nothing os substance to the service. The absolute last thing that money gets spent on in this business is track and stock.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/540440.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/the_company_file/504329.stm
A final comment: on the continent local and regional train services are punctual, efficient and incredibly well maintained. On a TGV from Paris to Lausanne recently I couldn't believe how good the ride was- there wasn't a ripple in my cup of coffee as it sat on the table, seriously! I could have been convinced that the passing scenery was projected onto screens and that I was sat in a room in a building. Why have so many governments on the continent embraced the concept of supplying their population with high quality public services and yet ours has considered it to be beyond them?