What will the rail industry need to do to prepare for future extreme winter weather?
The amount, location and timing of snowfall is unpredictable, but its effects on the running of train services are hardly complex in and of itself.
There is a clear balance to be struck, based on the cost-benefit analysis of spending a lot of money on preparing for unpredictable situations. Neither wasting money on unnecessary precautions, nor treating every winter snowfall as an aberration, is going to cut it.
Network Rail and the operators obviously have “learned lessons”, as they did the year before and during every period of weather-related disruption before that. But is anyone learning fast enough to deal with the effects of heavy snow without needing to spend a fortune on infrastructure upgrades?
