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Article: Off track; Railways.(Is it worth saving small rural railways?)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- November 27, 2004
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The little engine and the big fat subsidy
Subsidy-gobbling rural railways get another chance
CARTING fresh air around, argues Alistair Darling, the transport secretary, is a poor use of public money. So why not close the country's least-used and most-subsidised railways, perhaps replacing them with buses? That's too controversial: hundreds of branch lines and thousands of stations were closed in the 1960s, and many people still mourn them.
Instead, the government is now rethinking the future of 56 lightly-used rural branch lines, which consume [pounds sterling]300m in public subsidy. Every passenger on Wessex Trains, in south-west England, is ...