Yesterday the rail industry was celebrating the news that electrification of large parts of the rail network in Britain will ‘take place in the next four years’.
As far as I can see the first stumbling block in this announcement is the time scale; by this time next year there could be another government in power and so any announcements made now are only worth as much as the paper they are written on.
The secound is that this is all politics. I remember Geoff Hoon saying how ‘enthusiastic’ he was about electrification around a year ago and the closest we have come to that being fulfilled is yet another announcement.
I think we, like the government, need to keep our fingers crossed.
