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Most London buses are leased now - yes the operator can take lower margins, but the profits just go to the leasing companies instead. At least the bus companies are not seen as 'fat cats' , but the same/similar profits are still there, just with a different set of people. 1725953863 Civic...

The biggest issue is that, outside of the former PTE areas, the Local Transport Authority has no taxation powers to provide additional Transport services / cheaper fares etc - most of their current revenue and grants are being used to fund statutory services such as Education/education...

No. It is a company wholly owned by the council, and has to operate, by and large, on commercial lines. They could, but there are a number of obstacles preventing it in practice. Many councils have outsourced the management of leisure centres, museums, theatres etc. mostly for good...

Welcome to the state of most European railways today, ours included but not really any worse than most of the others.

I would guess that the quantity of schoolchildren boarding has probably reduced since those times, certainly as a percentage of the school population.

Hopelessly uneconomic I should think...

When Marylebone Station was built, the residents of the slums were moved to 6 (?) large blocks of flats known as Wharncliffe Gardens, at the junction of Lisson Grove and St. John's Wood Road, near the GCR Marylebone Coal yard. (1st Earl of Wharncliffe was chairman of board when the London...

Sorry, I didn't want to imply that politicians or civil servants will necessarily be signing off on individual projects. However, if the mission is double modal share with half the current subsidy (for instance), the Government will be tying the management's hands quite tightly compared to...

The railways consume subsidy. Unless your suggestions are sure fire schemes that are subsidy neutral or reduce that subsidy, then whether any of them are allowed to happen will be up the Government if they wish to increase such subsidy. Even if the management of GBR think they are such sure...

I doubt any MP has got the time or energy to formulate an own reply to such a question! Maybe on some matters within own constituency, but on national policy? Very unlikely, and I don't think that suggests anything about the MP.

Presumably the operator would be responsible for the costs through the slot charge (if Getlink/HS1 are happy to provide the capital?)

Is there some evidence that slots would sell 'like hot cakes' ? These slots are not going to be cheap - the charge for them would have to include the costs of fitting out the station, and the immigration/customs/security/customer staff and operations [ these are not provided free by...

However, the cost of the foreign money (interest payments or equivalent) will be going abroad.

Train the cleaners then!

Is this risk really that significant to the Government, on pensions of two people earning that much?

I don't think car ownership increasing and package holidays had anything to do with the unions wanting road haulage to be nationalised. They wanted road haulage to be nationalised so the railways could have a good old fashioned monopoly (and charge prices nothing to do with market forces)...

'does nothing' ? This seems a tad hyperbolic. The railway does a lot for disabled passengers. Not everything goes right. But then it doesn't always go right for able bodied passengers either. Not saying that incidents can't be investigated and things can't be improved, but every...

Because only reasonable adjustments have to be made. It may be considered unreasonable to have sufficient staff on hand to cater for a maximum number of such passengers arriving at a particular time, rather than having sufficient staff for the normal or normal plus a bit scenario. Nowhere...

There is not a lot of finger pointing in the book - it is well worth a read to understand the situation at the time. Written by a well respected time served Manager.

Well quite - Belgium and Netherlands are fairly similar to the UK in this regard. (fairly similar rather than exactly the same, before all sorts of differences are pointed out!)