Re: Road Cost Recovery.

[telljb@OZ.ozemail.com.au (Tell)]

Hi Les.
  
Privatisation of our railways just might fall flat on
its face, I don't know and neither does anybody else at
this stage, but are you seriously suggesting that we go
back to the old days of all government run railways.? 

What about this mess created by a previous Federal
Labor government.?  The present mob in Canberra are
hoping it will go away, the alternative lot waiting in
the wings do not have the answers either.!

Road cost recovery, it slips off the tounge easily, but
nobody yet, apart from the usual chorus of increased
road use charges have come up with a real solution.
You can increase charges as much as you like and all it
will do is increase the cost of living across this
great land,  why ......because the pollies and rail
bosses will still make a stuff of it, they have had
years of practise.  See, while ever the systems are
government the rail chiefs will DO NOTHING that is
outside the wishes of the Minister, good enough reason
to privatise as far as I am concerned.

Increased road charges alone will not make railways
competitive, you will need far more than that, and it
starts back with the railways themselves.

What do you suggest to keep the ever increasing number
of trucks off our roads.

Cheers
----Tell 
..........getting old and cranky and watching rail
going nowhere while truckies keep on trucking.


>pcc@ocean.com.au (Les Brown) wrote:
>Did you have a Damascus Road type conversion or have you always been
>in favour of privitisation? I thought you once help an opposing view
>perhaps?
>Whatever the case, I admire your wisdom, your farsightedness and your
>strength of character in admitting this on a newsgroup so seemingly
>biased against us. Yes, I agree with you as you seem to have such
>similar characteristics to myself (:-)) <- A very BIG smiley!!!
>Although, privately run metro transport should prove an interesting
>challange. The local papers in Melbourne (The Sun-Herald and The Age)
>both had as their editorials the Auditor-Generals report on the state
>of Melbourne's public transport infrastructure noting that billions
>are required to be spent on rolling stock, signalling and tracks to
>bring them up to a safe and reliable standard. The A-G most
>prominently noted that privitisation will not magically fix this any
>better than the state government. 
>Didn't the previous Liberal government (Thompson wasn't it?) admit
>that they made the public transport system into such a shambles by
>lack of investment that they might as well close it down anyway? Labor
>didn't do much better by selling the trains off and then leasing them
>back to make the books appear to balance better.
>Les Brown