>They haven't exactly put the "For Sale" signs up yet, although The Age
>of a few days back said V/Line Freight would be the first unit to be
>sold (by mid year), and this morning's radio news said the whole lot
>(including Met Trains and Trams) would be sold within 12 months.
According to that "Age" article, Robin Cooper (Transport Minister)
said that it had not been decided whether to keep or sell the tracks
along with V/Line Freight.
Further to this, this morning (Wed 18/2 or 2/18 for MarBau1), John
Faine on Melbourne's 3LO was interviewing Robin Cooper. He (Cooper)
said V/Line Freight would be gone by mid-year and everything else by
March 1999. He also said that they were looking for an operator that
would rehabilitate the trackwork, signalling and other infrastructure,
and thus the highest bidder might not be the successful one (perhaps
just the one with the deepest pockets! - my comment, not his). This
would seem to eliminate the smaller local players (or does WCR have
"deep pockets"!?)
He also waxed lyrical about the rapid and trouble-free implementation
of our wonderful new automated ticketing, collecting much
disagreement, disbelief, disdain and derision from both John Faine and
his talk-back callers. It's lucky that the Kennett Government doesn't
listen to the ABC and regards all their listeners as radical left wing
socialists as the average ABC listener/commuter (I thought they all
drove BMWs) has very little positive feelings about our new Metcards.
Regards
Yuri
PS Agent's spell checker just asked me if I wanted to "Ignore All"
when it highlighted the word "Kennett".
Unfortunately, it didn't have an "I wish" button to select.