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.

Of course in Ireland, we pay mere lip-service to public transport these days. Our railway service must rank as one of the poorest within the EU schema. It will never be boosted to decent levels of network spread and efficiency, while the automobile industry holds dominant sway on foot of its revenue producing potential for the state’s coffers.

Consecutive governments of the past half-century or so, have, like many other things, let the national infrastructural transport facilities dwindle and debilitate. Bar, of course, the motorway system for the ‘golden-calf’ which is the car industry. Ah well, why not continue to rip-off all & sundry, pollute the atmosphere and burgeon the dependence on oil imports, when we can travel to work in our over-priced shells of singular occupation, like ants on the march, one by one.

Stressful ‘comfort’ and pressurised personal space are clear winners over freedom from road-rage.

Jim Cosgrove

Lismore

Co Waterford