Rail monopoly news – 25th January 2016 4th Railway Package: co-operation agreements will neuter it + CER goes for North Korean-type control! Fourth Railway Package Trilogue. Amid some improvement, the UK Government still tries to retain ‘alliances’ or ‘co-operation agreements’ between Infrastructure Managers and one or more Railway Undertakings – in order to be nice…
Ministers are being bombarded on all sides by irate politicians worried about the performance of the passenger railway in their constituencies. From those Tories in the constituencies south of London stretching to the sea, the performance of the trains has been heavily criticised; ’trains are always late, we can never get a seat, they close…
Rail monopoly news – Dawn Raid by the Commission – first of many? The annual Rail Freight Conference organised by the European Commission in Vienna on 4th December provided an interesting backdrop to the dawn raids by the European Commission as part their investigations into possible violations of ‘EU anti-trust rules that prohibit cartels and…
Thames Tideway Tunnel was justified by a model which is so flawed that OFWAT fined Thames Water £86m last year. Based on actual readings of Dissolved Oxygen the Thames would comply now, except that TW have recently started pumping more sewage into the Thames to ‘prove’ that the Tideway Tunnel is necessary. So reverting to…
Rail monopoly news. An irregular comment paper from Tony Berkeley, 7 November 2015 France and Germany’s railways are falling apart; other member states may not wish to follow them. France and Germany still lobbied the Transport Council against the changes that could revitalise their railways. Now, with the EC/EP/Council Trilogues already started, I reflect on…
