POLITICIANS PLAYING TRAINS?

By Nicholas Newman 6 May 2007

That TGV, ICE, Eurostar, and AVE you see whistling past you at 300 kph, is certainly an amazing sight, and something of which, we Europeans should be proud. However, many a passenger will not realise the major political battles, which have taken place in political and national forums to achieve such examples of creating a modern continental rail network.

Politicians and lobbyists have been fighting over this policy in the European Commission and Parliament. The main question, they have been discussing, is to what extent, if, any, the private sector should be allowed to participate in achieving Europe’s goals of creating a competitive railway system fit for the twenty first century.

The result of these battles has been the defeat of the traditional statist left and the victory of the free market centrists. The Left have used arguments such as national interest, tradition and culture to prevent change and have not accepted that traditional left solutions have largely failed our railways and only managed to delay modernisation, not prevent it.

A good example of this is the new high speed rail route being developed between Paris and Germany, known as TGV Est., whose first phase will start commercial operations on 10^th June. When this project was first proposed, it was not countenanced that the private sector would be permitted to participate. Since then, the private sector, through its industrial associations, has become an active participant in the construction, maintenance, design of TGV Est. Private sector companies like Arriva will by 2010 be able to operate their own train services along this line, in direct competition with state owned operators DB and SNCF.

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