June 30th, 2006
6:33 pm
Was the government right to privatise the railway?
In the past three years there have been four major train accidents, 19 September 1997 a speeding express from Swansea to Paddington crashed into an empty freight train at Southall, killing seven people, 23 June 1999 thirty-one people were injured after a London to Glasgow Virgin Rail train collided with a stationary local train near Winsford, Cheshire, 5 October 1999 thirty-one people were killed when two trains collided at Ladbroke Grove, just outside Paddington station, and on Tuesday 17 October 2000 a 12:10 pm GNER high speed train going from London to Leeds derailed at a speed of up to 130Mph, killing 4 people, and 33 were taken to hospital. Is this the Peoples Lottery?
The IUR (The International Union of Railway) based in Paris, their last statistic in 1998 suggest that Britain has one of the best safety record in Europe, 0.23 deaths per million kilometres, compared to Germany with 1.93 deaths per million kilometres, however, the German figures include the horrific crash in May 1998 of an Inter City Express (ICE) which slammed into a bridge in Eschede. When the 1999 – 2000 statistic are collected Britain will likely be one of the worst in Europe. Many members of the public have lost their confidence in British rail travel. Joseph Williamson asks “ Was the government right to privatise the railway?” We will be looking at some pros and cons, and comparisons of railways in other countries.
The Pros
It has already been done in other countries, such as the United States, Switzerland, and both countries runs a successful railway network. More competition should mean better service, like television, didn’t it get better since ITV was introduced?
The government will save money, since there will be private investment.
The Cons
If delays or other problems occur, train operators will likely blame each other. The communication between different routes will be more difficult. The reason Switzerland have such a successful railway is because there are not many trains running on the same stretch of track at the same time.
The train company’s aim will be generating large amount of profits for shareholders, instead of reinvesting the money in better safety or new trains.
Lastly Britain already runs a successful railway so why change it.
The Conclusion
I see there are good arguments on both side, but I think the Cons has a stronger argument, the way the railway are now is not good. Maybe the privatisation will not be so bad if it’s all one-company, or keep Railtrack a national organisation. The Pros about rail privatisation simply did not happen. The service got worse, there were no new trains, the trains were dirty, and worst it’s no longer reliable. The last Conservative government thought £200 million on automatic train protection system (ATP) was too expensive (they put the cost on people’s lives). But they spend double of that amount just to get the railway privatised.
One of the biggest problem in the privatisation is that Railtrack does not actually mend the railways them self, instead they employ contractors such as ACTA to do the work, this means when the fault is found by, lets say the train driver, he/she will report it to the train operator, after a bit of paperwork it will then report the problem to Railtrack, more paper work, they then report it to people like ACTA, now how much time has already been wasted here, also how many detail information might have been lost, by the time ACTA knows about it, a train might have already crashed.
Lastly, all the 120 companies who run Britain’s railway, they all have one thing in common, that they all want to make money for their shareholders, especially Railtrack. Here is a speech by a reader of BBC online “At the interview I was asked to name the people to whom Railtrack were responsible. I said the passengers & the government. They said the shareholders”. The railway is taken out of our control, we can’t do anything about our trains if they crash, but if the railway were still a national organisation, at least we can do something about it on the day of the election, a Guardian/ICM poll found that 73% of all voters would support renationalising Railtrack.
Information on this report were mostly collected from:
www.bbc.co.uk/news
www.railtrack.co.uk
uk.railway
Completed on Wednesday, November 8, 2000