Week ending 31 June 2003

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Posted by Administrator on July 2, 2003

Monday 23rd June 2003

The broadsheets contain articles ref Executive pay of Network Rail’s top management.

Best story is from the Independent:
Clayton Hirst (Labour challenge on £565M Stansted shortfall) – Consultants Berkeley Hanover challenge the Governments estimate if £1.88bn for road and rail infrastructure to support new runways and infrastructure at Stansted saying the cost will be £2.45bn and challenging the South East Regional Aviation Study (SERAS) – reported as predicting that 3 new runways at Stansted would generate up to 270,000 average daily car trips by 2030 and 43,000 rail journeys. Transport Watch comments – these numbers may be incorrectly quoted e.g. currently there are some 13 million arrivals plus departures per year at Stansted, (Transport Statistics Great Britain Table 7.1). Dividing by 365 yields only 37,000 per day.

Week ending 31st June 2003

Main news stories were:

The bonus payments to Network Rail’s top management totalling £1.8 million despite the failures of the company
The termination of the Connex rail franchise by the SRA. The alleged reason was the loose financial management of Connex climaxing with the need for an additional £200 million. Transport Watch comments: Connex’s performance may be compared with performance of the parent bodies (the SRA/Network Rail/Railtrack) where the overspend seems to be at least 10 times that of Connex’s. Separately from that one wonders whether we are seeing another Byers fiasco (placing Railtrack in receivership), but on a smaller scale – the Byers fiasco led to legal and other costs of £90 million).