Reform Scotland - ‘On The Right Track’

[clc]

Reform Scotland has published a briefing paper calling for Network Rail to be devolved to Holyrood and for a Scottish Rail Infrastructure Commission to look at a strategic transformation in the rail network to 2050. Also comments that nationalisation should not be a priority as it will not make the trains run on time and points out that 54% of Scotrail delays were down to Network Rail:

https://reformscotland.com/2017/12/on-the-right-track/

Reform Scotland has released a briefing paper called “On the right track”, which:
● Highlights that the railway infrastructure – lines and stations – are already publicly owned
● Shows that over half of the delays on ScotRail trains are caused by publicly-owned
Network Rail
● Calls for Network Rail to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament
● Calls for a Scottish Rail Infrastructure Commission to look at a strategic transformation in the rail network to 2050 The briefing builds on Reform Scotland’s previous report Track to the Future.

Commenting on the publication, Reform Scotland Advisory Board member and former Transport Minister Tom Harris said: “There has been almost constant discussion about nationalising ScotRail for years, and it continues unabated. But it is a meaningless distraction....

 

[takno]

54% of delays to Scotrail trains were attributable to Network Rail rather than down to Network Rail. That presumably includes suicides, bird strikes by birds larger than a pheasant, cows on the line, landslips due to extreme weather and any number of other things you can't reasonably put down to them. It's a painfully tenuous argument to start from Britain's delay attribution framework arbitrarily assigning more delays to the infrastructure operator than the train operator, and end up with devolution being the answer.

In any case NR in Scotland is already working in the tightest alliance anywhere in the country, with heavy devolution of high level outputs. More devolution to the routes is also on the agenda at NR nationwide anyway.