Steve Kidd 002454726 TRAN2050 Transport Tutorial

1. Personal research

• Buy some shares in Railtrack - Watch them fall
• Try to email Railtrack with a complaint
• Try to 'phone Railtrack with a complaint
• Try to complain to Railtrack staff
• Try to get to Pontefract on a train (OK I know sometimes it's Northern Spirit, or Arriva, but Railtrack were responsible for several months of cancelled trains at the end of 2000, start of 2001)

1. Periodicals

• Private Eye (Signal Failures)
• Transport 2000 (Transport Retort)
• Broadsheets (see 4.)
• Railway magazines

1. Internet

• Enrol for as many Transport Modules as possible.
• Hansard
• Naturally it is difficult for books to be current but new publications might offer an insight.
• e.g. Jeremy Toner "I have not met one transport academic yet who thinks they don't deserve it" (or something on those lines)

"The railways have always been a disaster area. If the classic film The Railway Children had been a bit more accurate, Bernard Cribbins would have been a grumpy old porter whose only line would have been to tell the kids to piss off "

John O'Farrell

2. What are the main events that have lead to Railtrack's existence being threatened?

Given the fatal flaw outlined in (4), a brief history of the nails in Railtracks coffin:

• 1992 July: Privatisation introduced via White Paper

• 1993 Commons Transport select committee protests about absence of full details
• 1994 November: Railtrack PLC
• 1997 November: Antoine Hural, the chief executive of Connex, ascribed the rail delays to leaves on the track to the British love of trees.
• 1999 October 5^th: 31 people die near Paddington
• 2000 October 17^th: Hatfield Crash
• 2001 January 1^st: The shadow strategic rail authority (SSRA) finally became the SRA
• 2001 February: Railtrack announced that the cost of upgrading the East Coast main line would be £4bn. As a result, the Strategic Rail Authority announced that the award of the franchise would be delayed.
• 2001 February: Car came off the M62 at Great Heck south of Selby and caused a GNER passenger train to crash into an oncoming coal train. Ten people were killed.
• 2001 June 20^th: Cullen Report published. Damning Indictment of the rail industry, describes 'Railtrack's lamentable failure'
• 2001 7^th October: Bombing starts in Afghanistan (Oh yes, ten minutes later Railtrack was wound-up, having lost £500 million)

2. How does all this affect the public perception of the railways?

• The public have a warped view of railways and railway safety.
• e.g. ten people a day die on British Roads
• e.g. Great Heck was not a 'train' accident
• e.g. Great Heck was remarkable in that sixty commuters hit a goods vehicle at a combined speed of 150 mph yet 83% survived. Surely an incredible testament to safety.
• The public trend to bracket all railway companies together, therefore bad practice by train operators reflects on Railtrack (EG "wrong type of snow", etc.)
• The public opinion varies from neutral to contemtous

2. How well has the media covered the main issues and what role do they play in forming public and political opinions?

• The media tend to sensationalise the mundane (Anthrax?)
• After the crash at Great Heck (10 dead) it was remarkable that after four full pages of railway coverage in the Gruarniad, page six, column eight, half way down, two paragraphs told of a minibus crash in Wales which killed five. (Only after Versace had 'stormed the catwalk' in Paris)
• Massive role in opinion forming and fuelling

2. Was Railway privatisation a good idea in the first place?

The railway network on an island such as Great Britain is a fantastic example of a system subject to economies of scale. Because of these, it would be daft to fragment the track system, and potentially unwise to divide the infrastructure. This was the fundamental flaw in Railtrack, in that a private company, answerable to shareholders, is duty bound to maximise profits. Unless the most robust legislation is in place, business will invariably compromise wages, safety, environment, the future and the truth. In a market where competition exists there may be some pressure from other players to modify their competitor's 'cheating'. Railtrack was given the monopoly on a plate, a monopoly which government has felt duty bound, until now to support. Even with a strong, independent and legislative governor, privatisation would have been dodgy. Without it was doomed. So no.