The Rail White Paper

Once again, yesterday's rail white paper has left me asking - what exactly is this government's policy on climate change, carbon emissions and transport?  In order to increase capacity of the railways, commuters will be forced to pay yet more inflation busting ticket price rises.  Indeed, this will sort out the capacity problems because it will force people off trains and back in their cars.  While the cost of running the railways is expecting to go up from £5bn to £9bn, the government's subsidies are about to go down - from £4.5bn to £3bn.  The shortfall will be made up by passengers.  So the cut in tax payers' money (which tax payers will see no benefit from in the pay packets as the money will be frittered away elsewhere) will be topped up and exceeded by bending over the taxpayers' who use the trains.  The "give with one hand, take even more with the other" economics that we have become used to.  The message from government - if you want a tax break, get in your car.

What will this all mean?  Longer trains and bigger stations in certain areas (in fact none of this white paper is particularly new as far as I can tell).  All paid for by train users rather than the pseudo privatised industry.

The mixed messages given by government over the environment on this and many other issues only reinforces my belief that the government uses the climate change debate as an emotive and convenient argument to raise coffers.  How else can you explain the completely irrational and un-joined up policies between our government’s departments?