Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Our crazy approach to our crazy loss-making railways | Julian Glover (Guardian)

Unions, passengers and politicians will all find fault with Sir Roy McNulty's
review this week ? and it will change little

Every so often, a bald-headed businessman writes a report on the efficiency of
the railways and everyone panics. It happened in 1963, when Dr Beeching lopped
charming lines ? which steam enthusiasts with buckets of cream and chocolate
paint have spent the last five decades trying to reopen ? and it's about to
happen again on Thursday. The McNulty review, commissioned by Labour but
delivered to the coalition, is the latest hardheaded attempt to bring some
order to the network's uncontrolled costs, now ?11bn a year of which ?5bn
comes from the taxpayer.

Two things are certain. McNulty will not transform the railways. And before
that there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the unions,
passengers and politicians about the prospect of higher fares and fewer trains
and the general disaster of everything about Britain's railways since the day
they stopped serving kippers for breakfast on the night sleeper to Aberdeen.

Sir Roy McNulty has come up with a series of reasonable but dull improvements
intended to cut costs. In any normal ...
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