RSS

Contact us

Sunday 7 September 2008

Bring back Railtrack

Tom Winsor, the Rail Regulator, tells Boris Johnson why he has hopes for a privatised future — in spite of unwarranted political intervention

‘I don’t think Railtrack did put profits before safety,’ says Winsor, ‘because everybody knows that a safe company is a profitable company. Look at PanAm. It lost a plane, and went bust.’ Comparatively safe though it was, Railtrack’s problems were then compounded when a further four lives were lost a year later, at Hatfield, in October 2000; and though these fatalities were statistically unexceptional, there was a media and political hysteria of such proportions that the network was more or less paralysed, and trains — literally — travelled at rates slower than Stephenson’s Rocket. Then matters were made even worse when the government decided to crush Railtrack, overrule Tom Winsor, and, in the old Trotskyite phrase, ‘take back the track’.

Winsor is still full of rage at the way Stephen Byers threatened to bypass him if, as was his right as an independent Regulator, he decided that the interests of the travelling public would be best served by keeping Railtrack alive, and with it the discipline and potential of raising railway money on the markets. ‘Everything was made far worse by the lost year of Railtrack’s administration, which ended up taking 360 days in which costs exploded, performance plummeted and the railway was in crisis. The administration of Railtrack ended up costing the taxpayer £14 billion, which is a pretty expensive way of replacing a board of directors. Overall,’ he says, ‘the railways have suffered from unwarranted political intervention which has delayed improvements, driven up costs, alarmed private investors and done no good at all.’

And for those of us who are left on the platform while our trains limp around the country like wounded worms, there is a further cause of chaos, which is directly attributable to government. Even though rail is at least 20 times safer than road, the companies — faced with the prospect of Hatfield-style litigation — are not so much safety-conscious as phobic. ‘There is a great deal of caution, and an unwillingness to go for a professional judgment in going for a derogation from a safety standard, because no one ever went to jail for complying with a safety standard.’

More articles from: Boris Johnson | this section

Print this article  |  Email to a friend  |  Permalink  |   Comment

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Advertisement

Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine

Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms

Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP

All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved