[Seán Himmelb(L)au]

(I wasn't sure where this should go... I thought it was too specialised to go in Political Circus and kind of related to the environment and pollution. Move it if it isn't)

In 1963, the then head of British Rail Dr. Richard Beeching announced his ‘Reshaping Plan’, an attempt to make public railways more economic by closing down approximately 2000 stations on numerous less busy lines, and even taking up tracks on existing routes. Houses were even built along these old routes in order to stop them being put back into service at a later date. The money the then Conservative Government hoped to gain was to be spent on the new motorway system.

Dr Beeching and his team found that 50% of stations were bringing in 95% of BR’s revenue. During the late 60s, extensive work was done to not only put many of the existing lines out of service but to also electrify the West Coast Mainline. It is worthwhile to note however that the Government changed from Conservative to Labour and the Beeching Plan was still approved by the Minister of Transport, Barbara Castle, who was of course a fervent socialist.

In the end, BR managed to spend £1.5 billion (in 1955 money) on these cuts and they still didn’t reverse their losses.

I would like to know your opinion on whether public transport- the railways like my example above, or another method- should be run based on revenue (expanding and improving on the busiest areas of the network, closing down the least productive, but reducing the flexibility of the system ) or on availability (keeping open transport links for everyone, letting the strong support the weak but keeping development more static).

For those who want to know more about the case I mentioned above go to http://www.beechingreport.info/

[Byrath]

As far as in-city public transport, availability. If the system is too limited, it will wind up going largely unused. As an example, in my city, the metro goes from the airport to a few destinations downtown, and not much else. It doesn't really get used that much, except when there are large events downtown, and parking would be a major hassle if not impossible. Reason being, by the time you take a bus (which may have one or multiple layovers or transfers) to get to the metro station, and then ride the metro, it will have taken you 5 times as long as it would have to drive.
If you are talking about a transport to get people from city to city, I guess mostly revenue based, as people don't need to be travelling around that much, it is not as vital.