Cable theft is a recurring bad news story for the railways, with every new set of data released showing things getting worse, not better.
This is despite the efforts of hundreds of rail workers and British Transport Police officers to tackle it, the increasing use of technology to sound alarms and mark the thieves or the metal, and better co-ordination with scrap dealers.
The nature of the country’s rail infrastructure mean it is impossible to continuously monitor or protect the entire network – but the multi-million pound cost of the thefts, the repairs and the delays, on top of the money spent (wasted?) on trying to fight it, cannot be ignored.
Technology and manpower alone won’t solve this one – unfortunately, looking at the close correlation between metal prices and cable thefts, it is looking like only global economics can.
