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| Christian Wolmar |
(First appeared in RAIL Magazine 31st October 2012)
Talking to railway managers about the West Coast debacle, time and again they came out with the same refrain, words to the effect that this is the biggest cock-up on the railways that they could remember. The words, of course, were not always so polite but there was a unified sense that this was a train crash without victims, except the taxpayer of course, that would have long term repercussions for the industry....Continue Reading......
Chaos threatens boom on the railways
(First appeared in Guardian, 31st October 2012)
These are both the best of times and the worst of times for the railways. They are enjoying an unprecedented boom with record passenger numbers and an investment programme that even the most diehard trainspotter could not have expected from a Tory dominated government mired in the language of austerity. Hundreds of millions are being spent on creating amazing new stations like Reading and Birmingham New Street, new trains for intercity routes, and two major schemes to help London commuters, Crossrail and Thameslink are due for completion around 2018, when work on Britain’s biggest ever engineering scheme, High Speed Two is also set to start.
Yet, not all is well in the railway garden, as illustrated so dramatically by the collapse of the franchise process for the West Coast main line that had to be pulled by the new transport secretary, Patrick McLoughlin. That has thrown the franchise process into disarray with delays to the letting of new deals and consequently a hold up in investment plans. This episode, stimulated by the desire of the Department for Transport to make operators pay as much as possible for the right to run services, is part of a wider malaise that boils down to one major issue: the railways are costing both taxpayers and farepayers too much....Continue Reading
