Needed: a joined-up system
IT IS TOO EARLY to speculate on the causes of the recent tragic Aberdeenshire rail accident that mercifully took only three lives (it could have been so much worse had the early morning train from Aberdeen to Glasgow not been almost empty).
However, the overall state of our railway system can only induce a feeling of deep concern.
As a result of a fatally flawed franchising procedure and the fragmented nature of the whole rail network – broken into a hundred different pieces in an orgy of litigation at the time of privatisation – we are now faced with an almost de facto act of re-nationalisation. Most of the operating companies, facing appalling financial difficulties thanks to the Covid lockdown, are being taken back under the government's wings.
Critics of the original ill thought out programme (and this modest paper was one of the fiercest) argued that the system needed to be kept more or less intact for it to be workable.
One does not need a particularly sharp memory to recall the spate of serious incidents – many involving fatalities – in the early days of the operation of Railtrack, the privatised body tasked with owning and operating the physical assets of the railways.
Failure properly to maintain these assets famously put the health of even Scotland's 'Eiffel Tower' (the super-iconic centenarian Forth Rail Bridge) at risk with an absurd denial that the structure was suffering corrosion and then a seriously botched re-painting programme.
To be fair, there were those in government at the time of privatisation, including the Iron Lady herself (not a reference to the Bridge) who thought the planned move was indeed a bridge too far.
To restore faith in this vital part of our infrastructure, there needs to be honest recognition that a major mistake was made in breaking up the system in the first place and an equally honest attempt to learn from these mistakes and put in place a new structure that will be able to care for the whole system and take joined up decisions about its operation.
From a government that seems to be hell bent on a zig-zag course of U turns in almost every field of operation this may seem a great deal to ask.
Add in to this equation the likely effects of climate change which bring the prospect of severe weather effects such as flooding and high winds and the situation grows still more pressing.
