Tom Barry wrote:

I've long wanted to find it again, but I remember reading a quote from a
Tory candidate in Hackney or similar saying basically that - private
sector involvement in the Tube is a great idea, trust the socialists to
mess it up. Which isn't necessarily the view on the street.

It's an interesting conundrum. Do you turn it over to private enterprise who are
driven to increase profits or keep it as a government (read: unionized)
operation who are driven to increase costs? Both result in the passengers paying
more.

Profits aren't necessarily evil if the appropriate controls are in place to
ensure performance - but that obviously didn't happen with the PPEs. The history
of the system prior to the PPEs isn't much better.

I've always thought the idea of splitting the track from the operating companies
(for both the Underground as well as intercity) was untennable and a fatal
flaw. We're talking a _system_ here. Trying to manage manage parts of a single
system as separate entities seems on it's face to be a recipe for disaster.