The mad Vulcan is at it again.
This near illiterate anti-rail rant from Redwood's blog:
Listening today to criticisms of the governemnt’s aim to get the UK railway system to a similar level of efficiency as contiental systems by reducing some 30% of cost, I was struck by people telling me our system is dearer becausee it is privatised. I seem to remember passanger numbers and freight volumes rising strongly, and subsidies falling, when it was fully privatised. Then costs and subsidies rose swiftly again ocne the main part of the railway, the track and signals were renationalised. The old nationalised monopoloy had a poor record with falling use, safety problems and high levels of subsidy.
Happily the Welsh national anthem mangling car-loon has been neatly fisked by Captain Deltic in the blog's comment section:
You claim, presumably from Conservative mythology that “the old nationalised monopoloy had a poor record with falling use, safety problems and high levels of subsidy”.
That is all.
Posts
Fact. Between 1983 amd 1989/90 subsidy fell, at 1989/90 prices from £1,329 m to £587m.
Fact: Over the same period Government subsidy as a share of total passenger revenue fell from45% to 25%. Today it’s around 50%
Fact. Ridership increased from 18.3 bn passenger miles to 20.9bn (21.3bn in 1988/89.
Fact: Over the same period Freight tonnage was down slightly from 145.1 m tonnes to 143.1m (149.5m in 1988/89)
Fact: By 2000 when Railtrack was forced into adminstration passenger miles were 23.7 billion and freight tonnage lifted down to 95.4 million.
1989/90 is chosen deliberately because it marks the end of the economic cycle. Note that passenger ridership in 2000 had only just topped the 1988/89 peak.