Monday 1 March 2010

GOOD NEWS - NO NEW TRAINS!

The Government has spent well in excess of £20 million on design fees but it is SO good to hear that Andrew Adonis has 'postponed' the building of £7.5 billion fleet of high speed trains.

For 'postponed' read 'cancelled.'' Good. Good. Good.

It's said that a camel is a horse designed by a committee, and what the Inter-city express procurement programme was doing would have landed us for decades with a double-humped camel.

Civil servants in the Department for Transport came up with the brilliant idea of a train that could use both diesel and electric propulsion - but would be a very expensive way of doing both very badly indeed.

Adonis really is the best Transport Secretary the country has ever had. He has faced down his civil servants and done what everyone in the railway industry knew needing doing, even though too many people were afraid to say so.

I just wish he was going to be in the job for longer.

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