Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Infrastructure

  • America’s $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill, Explained

    Arthur Ravenel Jr Bridge South Carolina
    Arthur Ravenel Jr Bridge outside Charleston, South Carolina, December 2, 2017 (Unsplash/David Martin)

    The United States Senate is expected to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure bill this week with funding for everything from broadband Internet to road safety.

    The bill, which is believed to have the support of enough Republicans to overcome a forty-senator filibuster, falls short of the $2 trillion President Joe Biden had proposed to spend on (green) infrastructure over four years.

    The compromise bill has $550 billion in new spending. The rest consists of existing infrastructure funds which are either being diverted or renewed.

    Unlike Biden’s $2 trillion proposal, which would have been funded by corporate tax increases, the compromise version draws money from various sources, including around $200 billion left over from COVID-19 relief programs. (more…)

  • Great British Railways: Neither Public Nor Private Enough

    Waverley train station Edinburgh Scotland
    Waverley railway station in Edinburgh, Scotland (iStock)

    This week, the British government published its long-awaited and somewhat delayed review into the British railway network.

    The proposals — putting infrastructure, timetables, fares and tickets back into government hands but allowing private companies to run the trains — are a step in the right direction, but they would keep the network in a twilight zone.

    British rail is neither fully private nor fully public, despite the government and the Treasury in particular having control over many aspects of the railway. Accountability is murky. Industry fragmentation — 29 train companies, fifteen leasing companies — has only made it worse. (more…)

  • Germany Invests in Rail, But Is It Enough?

    Cologne Germany train station
    Central train station of Cologne, Germany (Unsplash/Kai Pilger)

    Germany is investing €86 billion over the next ten years in its aging rail network. The hope is to shift Germans toward less carbon-intensive forms of travel.

    The federal government will cover the bulk of the cost, €62 billion. Deutsche Bahn, the state-owned railway company, will pay the remaining €24 billion. The money will be used to update tracks, stations, signal boxes and energy supply systems.

    The government also intends to cut fares by 10 percent for trips of 50 kilometers or more in order to incentivize the use of trains for long-distance travel.

    With this package, Germany kills two birds with one stone: it modernizes its infrastructure while reducing carbon emissions.

    It also demonstrates Germany’s willingness to spend. (more…)

  • Renationalizing British Utilities and Rail Would Be a Mistake

    London England train stations
    St Pancras and King’s Cross railway stations in London, England (iStock/Johnny Greig)

    Rising energy rates and railway fares in the United Kingdom are lending credence to the argument that privatization was a mistake.

    YouGov last year found majorities in favor of taking energy, water and railways back into state ownership.

    Telecom is the exception. Only 30 percent believe it should be run by the government.

    The reason may be that the benefits of telecom privatization have been obvious whereas those of other privatizations are harder to discern.

    Compared to the 1970s, however, utilities and railways provide a far better service today. (more…)

  • Macron’s Liberalization Has Made Travel More Affordable in France

    Paris France
    Aerial view of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France (Unsplash/Rodrigo Kugnharski)

    Emmanuel Macron’s liberalization of intercity public transport in France is paying off.

    Until 2015, railroads had a monopoly on domestic ground routes of 100 kilometers or more. Macron — then economy minister, now president — wrote legislation that allowed buses to compete.

    Bloomberg reports that 6.2 million passengers took a long-distance bus in 2016 and bookings are up another 25 percent this year.

    That’s still a fraction of the more than 100 million annual high-speed train passengers, but competition from buses is forcing the state-owned railway to cut rates. (more…)

  • East Coast Rail’s Problematic Return to Market

    Earlier this week, the East Coast rail franchise that links London to Inverness via key cities such as Doncaster, York, Edinburgh and Glasgow was handed back to the private sector. Given the past performance of companies operating the franchise, the handover has not been without controversy.

    The first operator, GNER, owned by Sea Containers, paid £1.3 billion to run the franchise for ten years. This was a third higher than rivals FirstGroup, Virgin Rail and a joint venture between Denmark’s DSB Railways and freight operator EWS had offered. It also worked out at significantly more than the £22 million they had been paying in previous years. A year later, the government took away the franchise when GNER faced financial difficulties, including the bankruptcy of its parent company.

    Then in 2007, National Express won the contract. They outbid rivals Arriva, First and Virgin Rail and promised to pay a £1.4 billion premium to the Department for Transport over seven years.

    But just two years later, National Express announced it was pursuing talks with the government for possible financial assistance in operating the franchise. Little came of the talks and National Express said it would default on the franchise before the end of 2009. (more…)

  • Rising British Rail Fares Boost Support for Renationalization

    Waverley train station Edinburgh Scotland
    Waverley railway station in Edinburgh, Scotland (iStock)

    This week, it was announced that rail fares in the United Kingdom will rise 3.5 percent — more than double the rate of consumer price inflation and six times as fast as the growth in wages. This has led to some head scratching. Are British rail users getting value for their money? (more…)

  • High-Speed Rail Not Coming to Britain Fast Enough

    Great Britain, inventor of the railway and home country to Sir Isambard Brunel, is once again taking its time on a proposed high-speed rail network, known as HS2 that is meant to connect London with the north of England.

    Currently, Britain has one such high-speed rail line, known unsurprisingly as High Speed 1, and it connects St Pancras International in London with the Channel tunnel. It was the first new mainline railway to be built in the United Kingdom for a century and, as an added bonus, it was finished on time, on budget and is surpassing its original forecasts for growth.

    With this precedent perhaps the rest of Britain’s high-speed rail network may now emerge? (more…)