Rail privatisation is the road to ruin

“The only way we can make profits is by not doing the things we should do to make the railways better.”

Maeve Halpin’s quote (Letters, Aug 4) from the UK Railtrack CEO, Gerald Corbett, in 2000 resounds a blatant debilitation of this absurd slavery to a privatisation model of so-called ‘delivery’. Her appraisal sketches a grim reality apropos the privatisation/nationalisation hybrid dynamic as it pertains to an essential public utility such as national rail travel.

Her comparators make for depressing reading, as per the UK experience. Grotesque increases in ticket-prices coupled with cherry-pickedservice delivery and corner-cutting on upgrading, maintenance, etc, are the patent poisons of the privatisation option.