Most railways had not become all that bad although the suburban lines into London were becoming pretty grim. *But* it was generally possible to go to any major town and get reasonably fast transport elsewhere at a reasonable price.
Why the railways were disintegrating (and still are) is due to governmental policy decisions, as you say.
Beeching ccame in the context of a general transport policy which had at least been thought out (badly, to be sure). The assumption was that most people would get a car and therefore investment should go into building bigger and faster roads. This was obviously self-fulfilling because when the branch lines (simultaneously with removal of support for country 'bus services) people needing to travel the countryside had no choice but to drive a car. The chaos and pollution that road-centric transport would have on towns and cities was hardly considered.
Even when the effect of car travel and lorry transport was becoming obvious to most people, there was no attempt to revive the railways - in great contrast to what happened in France, Germany and most other west European countries. Indeed some governments were actually opposed to railways per se, thus further reduced investment and subsidy leading to the state of rail that you mention.
The privatisation of the railways, done in the last months of a dead-duck government, was one of the most corrupt political acts that we've known. But it was done in the name of 'competition' splitting the railways into numerous fragments "would improve services" which clearly cannot happen *physically* on railways. What happened was that we got smarter, prettier trains (in some places) but continued to pay huge subsidies (which went to shareholders, not into wages or investment in infrastructure) for higher fares and an enormous bureaucracy to manage just the ticketing system (last week, booking a train to London, I had twenty-three ticket options - no longer just first/second, single/return, day/period varying in price from £8 to £163 ..... ).
It's not the way I'd run the railways!
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Originally Posted by henrya Don't blame Dr Beeching - it wasn't his idea. He just did the job he was asked to do. Blame his bosses. And as for the state of the railways today, has everyone forgotten how dreadful they had become under British Rail before they were privatised?
henrya |