杏吧原创

Governments thinking of making a fast buck by selling off their national rail
networks to the private sector should learn from the British experience.
Britain鈥檚 railways are in chaos鈥攁nd you need go no further than the Web to
find out just how badly they鈥檙e faring in private hands. But at Britrail, the
site for Americans planning to visit Britain
(www.britrail.com/train_travel.htm),
you could be forgiven for thinking there鈥檚
no problem. 鈥淎ll the places you want to visit are easily accessible by rail,鈥� it
says. But that was before private track operator Railtrack owned up to hundreds
of broken rails.

Railtrack鈥檚 timetable says a London to Edinburgh train journey takes around
4 hours. But the small print talks about 鈥渟peed restrictions鈥� and 鈥渞evised
journey times鈥�. At www.nationalrail.co.uk,
the train operators say the journey now takes 6 hours 37 minutes.

The chaos is a legacy of the fatal accident at Hatfield in October, when a
broken rail caused a crash. With hundreds of rails cracking up, a go-slow has
been ordered. Before the railways were privatised, many feared that profit would
be put before safety. But last year, Railtrack boss Gerald Corbett was
reassuring: 鈥淧rivatisation has not been the disaster that has been advertised,鈥� he said
(www.warwick.ac.uk/services/publicity/WD/corbett.htm).

But after Hatfield, Corbett鈥攚ho has now resigned鈥攁dmitted: 鈥淭he
railway was ripped apart at privatisation and the structure that was put in
place was a structure, if we are honest, to maximise the proceeds to the
Treasury. It was not a structure designed to optimise safety鈥︹�� And last week,
Victor Coleman, the chief inspector of railways, confirmed in evidence to the
Paddington crash enquiry, that putting the network in the private sector led to
deficiencies in safety management.

Despite all this, the Blair administration鈥攄etermined to learn
nothing from history鈥攊s now pressing ahead with a part-privatisation of
Britain鈥檚 air-traffic control service.