LONDON — The problems of Britain’s privatised rail network have led inhabitants of other European countries to fear their national railways could suffer similar punctuality and safety problems, BBC News reports.
As a result, rail privatisation programmes in France and Germany have been delayed.
And the Dutch government is assessing whether privatisation remains in the country’s best interests while it sorts out its current rail crisis.
Although international high speed trains generally manage to run on time in the Netherlands, 20% of Dutch trains run late – a sore point with the general public.
“Trains are late or they don’t go sometimes and it’s got worse since privatisation,” said one Dutch commuter.
Behind the times
The Labour Transport Minister, Tineke Netelenbos, has installed a crisis management team at Dutch Railways because the state- owned company failed to meet punctuality targets.
But there are signs that the move might not be enough to resolve the ongoing rail crisis.
A lack of spare parts means trains cannot run which “is very bad for punctuality,” explained Wiekus Spithorst, who is the spokesman for the Dutch Rail Passengers Association, Rover.
But there are more deep-rooted difficulties.
“The main problem at the moment is the great amount of defects on the tracks,” he said.
“Overhead wires are hanging down, points don’t work, signals are going out and this makes the product very, very bad.”
The rail crisis has been brewing since 1995 when the previous government split Dutch Rail into separate companies – an independently-run passenger service under state control and government-run track and infrastructure firms.
The split was intended to prepare Dutch Rail for full privatisation in 2000 but subsequent drops in efficiency and a rift between management and unions led to the shelving of the privatisation plan.
Stationary plans
The Labour MP Jeroen Dijselbloem says there never was a political majority in favour of privatisation and better service would come about with more government involvement.
“Motivation has dropped dramatically -18% of the people that drive the trains in Holland have gone on sick leave over the last year and this has led to trains not being able to run on time any more.”
“So that is task number one, bring back motivation and bring back results.”
Similar concerns are surfacing around privatisation plans for the French and German national rail companies and there is increasing resistance to reforms designed to pave the way to privatisation.
In the Netherlands the government may well abandon the idea of a privatised rail service when the current crisis is over but for the moment Dutch Rail’s most urgent priority is to regain the confidence of the travelling public.