(The following Associated Press article was published on Yahoo News)
LONDON — Blaming spiraling costs, Britain’s rail development body said Thursday it is scaling down the number of improvements to some lines and facilities and delaying work on others.
The Strategic Rail Authority, a government-appointed body that oversees development of the rail network, said rising costs had meant that the rail industry’s operating deficit had risen from 200 million pounds (US$320 million) in 1999-2000 to 1.5 billion pounds (US$2.4 billion) in 2002-03.
“The railway industry has its destiny in its own hands. We have set out a clear route map to 2004 which details the key steps we are already following to improve performance and drive down costs,” said chairman Richard Bowker.
Earlier this month, the authority announced it had agreed with train companies to cut more than 90 services a day in an effort to reduce congestion on the country’s busy and often unreliable railway network.
Planned spending to upgrade the London-to-Edinburgh East Coast Main Line was cut by at least two-thirds. The East London Line extension through the east of the capital has been put back two years, to 2008, while Thameslink 2000, a north-south link through London, also faces delays.
A 9.7 billion pounds (US$15.5 billion) upgrade of the West Coast main line is going ahead. And the authority hopes to announce soon who has won the 1 billion-pound (US$1.6-billion) contract to improve power supplies for trains in southern England.
Since privatization of the British railways in the 1990s, the number of rail services has grown by about 20 percent nationwide, severely taxing the system.
“Too many trains are canceled, not enough arrive on time and the whole experience of using the rail system, from queuing to buy a ticket to sitting on a dirty train, is simply not good enough,” the Strategic Rail Authority said.
The government aims to increase the number of miles (kilometers) traveled by rail passengers by 50 percent by 2011 but the Strategic Rail Authority said the figure was more likely to be 25-35 percent.