Sick transit

It's reported that negotiations between the Department of Transport and Virgin Trains, aimed at adding more carriages to trains on the West Coast Main Line, have ended in failure. The DoT apparently feels it has given too much away to Virgin in past negotiations and doesn't want to get fooled again. Passenger numbers on the line have risen dramatically and the trains are already extremely overcrowded. If this was really a market-driven business, Virgin itself would pay to add more capacity, but of course the franchise system is such a mess that it can't do this. Instead, it's likely that Virgin will raise fares in order to discourage people from taking the train.

That's not even the worst of it. The DoT will, in fact, start adding carriages in 2012, after Virgin's franchise ends. But it will only add them to about two-thirds of the trains, and may be considering splitting the franchise in two, which would force passengers travelling from Glasgow to London to change trains at Preston. You have to ask yourself whether Ryanair and EasyJet are helping the DoT to set policy for the railways, except that they would probably be more subtle about it.

Mind you, it's not just the railways that make you want to throw up your hands in despair. Several airlines are likely to sue the Civil Aviation Authority over its recent decision to allow BAA, the owner of all the main London airports, to boost landing charges dramatically in order to service its massive debt burden. Like the railway franchises, privatisation of the airports has been a major disaster, combining the worst features of private and public monopolies.

Separately, it appears that the DoT has connived in the manipulation of key pollution and traffic data in order to justify the further expansion of Heathrow, the world's worst-located major airport. So huge piles of money will be spent on more capacity at Heathrow, while nobody can figure out how to lengthen the West Coast trains. Next time Gordon Brown talks up his government's green credentials, or Alastair Darling tells you that petrol taxes have to rise to protect the environment, feel free to flip them the bird.