Letters Editor: The Times: (unpublished)

Not for profit my foot

Ben Webster reports a bottleneck on the West Coast Main line for a decade because of limited funds for “not-for-profit” Network Rail.

Meanwhile every household in the land will be contributing over £4,000 over 10 years. When they have finished “modernising”, at a cost of £60-120 billion, the system will be worthless in the market place, equivalent, in financial terms, to laying waste the product of 60-120 thousand working men’s lives.

Meanwhile (a) most of us scarcely ever use a train (b) the entire national rail function could be carried out buy express coaches and lorries at one quarter the cost of the train while using 20- 25 % less fuel, cutting casualty costs by a factor of two and providing all London commuters with seats in one quarter the space required by the trains.

Hence rather than describing rail as “not for profit” it would be more appropriate to describe it as loss making - on a massive scale. The truth is that rail is no more than a toy maintained so that grown men may play with a full sized train set. Is there no end to this railway madness?
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In support of the above see the Transport Watch facts sheets

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