Reuters: Oct 31, 2007

Thousands of rail passengers were stranded in Thailand after trade unions called a nationwide strike to protest against a trade pact they said would allow Japanese firms to bid for rail service contracts.

About 2,000 passengers on nine south-bound trains were transferred to buses after their carriages stopped 800 km south of the Thai capital, officials said.

"The strike forced State Rail of Thailand to cancel our daily southern schedule of 18 trains to and from Bangkok, which will affect two to three thousand passengers a day," Tanongsak Pongprasert, director of southern train services, said.

Another 12 trains carrying 1,000 passengers per day in the south were also cancelled, he said.

The strike also halted seven trains in the north, northern service director Surin Piaprasert said. Supichet Suwanchatree, head of State Rail of Thailand's southern branch, told reporters the strike was to urge the government to stop the liberalisation of the logistics industry, which would have an impact on the debt-ridden rail monopoly.

But a Commerce Ministry official told Reuters the rail union had misunderstood the Japanese-Thai Economic Partnership Agreement due to come into effect on Thursday.

"There's no direct link between JTEPA and privatisation of state enterprises. Someone may try to turn this into a political issue," said the official, who declined to be identified.

Posted on 10:09 AM | Permalink

BBC News: 30 October 2007

A train operator is to fit laminated windows - currently only being installed in high speed trains - to every train it runs, costing £8m.

Transport firm, FirstGroup, which runs First Great Western trains, announced the move on Tuesday.

The news comes as an inquest into the Ufton Nervet train crash in Berkshire in November 2004, which involved a First Great Western train, continues.

FirstGroup said it was committed to delivering high levels of safety.

The Ufton Nervet crash occurred when the First Great Western high-speed Paddington-to-Plymouth train hit chef Brian Drysdale's car on a level-crossing.

The ongoing inquest has heard some of the seven people who died were thrown out of the windows.

"There's a compelling case now to fit laminated glass across train fleets" - Andrew Haines, managing director of First Great Western

FirstGroup's announcement comes after a Rail Safety and Standards Board report published on 31 July this year recommended "that breakable windows should cease to be a recognised method of escape for passengers and that laminated glass should be progressively fitted throughout rail vehicles".

Andrew Haines, managing director of First Great Western, said: "We've acted quickly and responsibly.

"There's a compelling case now to fit laminated glass across train fleets.

"Certainly Ufton Nervet was a very tragic event and we've given a lot of consideration to it.

"But the safety and standards board looked at several incidents."

FirstGroup hopes its £8m programme - which will also involve First Capital Connect, First ScotRail, First TransPennine Express and First Hull Trains - will be completed by the end of 2010.

Emergency exit windows

Laminated windows began being fitted on trains in Britain in 1993, however at the time of the Ufton Nervet crash on 6 November 2004 high speed trains (HSTs), like the First Great Western Paddington-to-Plymouth train which was involved, were not able to have them installed.

But all first Great Western trains are now being fitted with the windows as part of the £63 programme, which is due to end by March 2008.

All trains built since 1994 already have laminated windows, except for those windows currently designated as emergency exit windows.

This includes the First TransPennine Express fleet of Class 185s, the Pioneers of First Hull Trains and the Class 170 trains, operated by First TransPennine Express and First ScotRail.

Last Tuesday, Her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate, Peter Randal told the Ufton Nervert inquest that laminated glass windows in trains may have prevented 12 deaths at seven of the UK's recent rail crashes.

Posted on 04:45 PM | Permalink

Southampton Echo: 30 October 2007

SOUTHAMPTON'S clogged roads could be relieved of more than one million lorry journeys a year after the Government backed a long-awaited plan to improve the rail freight network.

The Department for Transport is giving £43m to modernise the railway system round the city. It will give large containers access from the city's port to Birmingham, the north-west and Scotland on the West Coast Main Line.

Money will be spent on lowering tracks, raising bridges and removing obstacles to make the Southampton to West Midlands rail line more compatible with the bigger freight containers.

The work, due to start early next year and finish by 2011, will include improvements to the tunnel linking Southampton port and station with the rest of the network. The growth of rail freight has been hampered by the use of the larger containers, which are too big for certain sections of the network when fitted to standard rail wagons.

The project is likely to mean misery in the short term for commuters on road and rail,with disruption unavoidable.

Work to widen the major tunnel that runs underneath Southampton city centre is set to cause long-running disruption to services and to motorists.

The work is essential to modify the tunnel to cope with today's 9ft 6in high containers - a foot taller than their predecessors, which are being phased out. As a result, the number of containers leaving from the docks by rail has fallen from 35 per cent to just 28 per cent today, or 255,000.

Port bosses aim to get the numbers up to 40 per cent - about 400,000 containers currently, but as the container terminal pushes ahead with ambitious plans to nearly double in size, it could soon approach one million.

As well as cutting road congestion it is hoped that the multi-million-pound scheme will help to boost the city's economy and help the environment.

Southampton docks owner Associated British Ports and regional development agency SEEDA are contributing almost £12m to the scheme.

Port boss Doug Morrisson said: "It is great news and it's something we have all been working towards for some time now.

"The percentage of boxes going by rail out of Southampton has dropped over recent years because of this gauge clearance problem.

"We have an aspiration to get the percentage up to 40 per cent of our total volume and we couldn't do that without this project.

"The real beneficiaries are everyone who lives between here and the Midlands. They will see less traffic on the roads."

Route director David Pape, of track management agency Network Rail, said: "This funding represents a huge opportunity for rail freight.

"Network Rail will now begin delivery of the projects, working with all parties to carry out the enhancements to enable the rail freight market to grow and remove thousands of potential lorry journeys off the congested road network.

"We will now be continuing with feasibility studies into the best way to go ahead with the work.

"We will certainly bear in mind any potential disruption the work could cause, and we will do our best to minimise that disruption."

Bosses at Freightliner, which transports more than 225,000 containers around the country each year on its 34 daily services from Southampton docks, said that the announcement would make a big difference.

"This announcement for funding will make a difference in the ability of rail freight operators to move 9ft 6in containers on standard wagons from the major deep sea ports," said Lindsay Durham, head of rail strategy at Freightliner.

"We are pleased that the DfT recognises the important role that rail plays in the transport of containers from major ports.

"Rail movements have a much lower carbon footprint per container moved than road movements and can help to relieve road congestion.

"Rail freight has not only kept up with market growth but also increased its market share from 17 per cent to 24 per cent over the last ten years.

"This has meant last year about 800,000 lorry journeys were kept off congested roads such as the A34 and the A14 by trains."

The South East England Development Agency, one of several organisations which have contributed funds to the scheme, estimated that reduced congestion on the roads in the Southampton and Winchester area alone would deliver a £13m boost to the economy.

Its chief executive Pam Alexander said: "The port of Southampton is a major player in regional and UK economic performance, so we are delighted that the project has full approval to go ahead."

Southampton's transport bosses said the funding was "fantastic."

Cabinet member for environment and transport, Cllr Gavin Dick, said: "These improvements will help take thousands of lorries off our roads and will help to significantly reduce carbon emissions in Southampton and the UK.

"This is fantastic for both our local environment and our economy."

Captain Jimmy Chestnutt, director general of the Southampton and Fareham Chamber of Commerce, said: "This is exciting news for Southampton and the surrounding region. The Chamber of Commerce, working with other parties, has lobbied in support of this project for a number of years.

"The proposed enhancements to the rail freight gauge will provide improved sustainable transport links to the West Midlands and beyond. This will ensure that the port of Southampton is able to handle the latest generation of containers and enable more freight to be transferred from road to rail systems with the obvious resultant environmental benefits.

"It will also ensure that the transportation links to and from the port and city of Southampton will be able to more effectively support the economic aspirations of this region."

Southampton Itchen MP John Denham said: "This is a fantastic boost for Southampton. It is a real statement of Government confidence in the future prosperity and importance of our port on which so many jobs rely. I'm grateful to the transport ministers who have taken a personal interest in the development of the project."

Southampton Test MP Alan Whitehead said: "As well as helping to ensure the future competitiveness of the docks, this project will deliver huge environmental benefits by reducing the amount of freight transported by lorry and sending it by rail. John Denham and I have lobbied hard for this project and I am delighted it is going ahead."

Posted on 03:49 PM | Permalink

Reuters: Oct 30, 2007

LONDON - The government is to look at ways of speeding up rail and motorway links between London, Birmingham and Manchester and has underlined its support for airport expansion in southeast England.

The transport department said it had 20 billion pounds still to allocate in the five years from 2014 to 2019.

In a report entitled "Towards a Sustainable Transport System," it raised the possibility of widening motorways, introducing congestion charging schemes in towns and expanding high-speed rail.

It also invited the private sector to play a bigger role in plans to ease congestion of the clogged transport network -- while keeping a lid on CO2 emissions.

Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly said expansion could be achieved without increasing climate-damaging CO2 emissions.

"This framework document ... dispels the myth that as an economy we face the false choice of being 'poor and green' or 'rich and dirty'," she said.

But environmentalists criticised the plans to expand airport capacity while relying on the European emissions trading scheme to deal with growth in aviation's CO2 emissions.

"Without blocking plans for new runways we'll continue to tinker ineffectively with Britain's fastest-growing source of emissions," said Greenpeace director John Sauven.

"Any carbon savings from personal travel plans and tweaking road policy will be wiped out many times over by flights from British airports," he added.

Posted on 01:08 PM | Permalink

There has been growing discontent amongst RMT Train Driver members with regard to the disciplinary procedures at First ScotRail.

Drivers claim they are being suspended from duty and having to wait anything up to two weeks before they are brought before a disciplinary hearing. Management are using scare tactics by removing Drivers from their jobs for minor incidents. As a result of the harsh action taken by management members are becoming exceedingly anxious, resulting in more incidents.

The matter has been placed before the RMT General Grades Committee and their decision is to ballot Train Driver members for strike action, and action short of a strike. The ballot will open on Wednesday 31st October 2007.

There has also been growing discontent amongst RMT Train Driver members on Northern Rail ,with regard to the lack of progress on harmonisation with Northern Rail.

This is not a situation RMT is prepared to tolerate and the General Grades Committee has sanctioned a ballot for strike action which will be held in conjunction with ASLEF. The ballot will open on Friday 2nd November 2007.

Posted on 07:13 PM | Permalink

Reuters: Oct 26, 2007
By Emmanuel Jarry

SAINT-DENIS, France - French President Nicolas Sarkozy told railway workers on Friday he would not be blackmailed into withdrawing a reform of their pensions privileges by strikes and street protests.

Sarkozy made his comments during an unscheduled visit to a depot of state train operator SNCF, just over a week after transport strikes caused widespread disruption in France.

The unions have threatened further strikes unless the government backs down over the reform and will meet again on Wednesday to decide what to do. If they do decide on further action it may coincide with a nationwide strike by civil servants on November 20, compounding the disruption.

"The street will not make us give in because we're in a democracy. Street blackmail will not work," Sarkozy told a group of workers, who warned him of new stoppages in the weeks ahead.

"I don't agree with you," said Fabien Monteil, of the Sud-Rail union, one of the most militant railway unions.

"I think the street will speak. We will be in the streets soon. It has always worked like that and each time we have made the prime ministers give in," he told Sarkozy.

There are 1,000 workers at the site and the strike rate was 73 percent on October 18. One member of the CGT union, wearing red overalls, refused to shake his hand.

"You are in your role, defending your social benefits. I'm in my role by saying ... you cannot go on like that. And deep down you know that perfectly well," Sarkozy said.

Posted on 04:44 PM | Permalink

Sunderland Echo: 27 October 2007

A direct rail link from Sunderland to London is not now likely to start until at least mid-November.

Grand Central's service was due to begin in late 2006, but it has been hit by delays.

The company said it was still awaiting delivery of revamped rolling stock.

Managing director Tim Clift apologised for the continued delays.

The three-times daily East Coast Main Line service will call at stations in Teesside and North Yorkshire. These include Hartlepool, Eaglescliffe, Northallerton, Thirsk and York, and maybe Seaham.

Mr Clift said the delays were caused by contractors who had been unable to meet completion dates for rolling stock which was being refurbished.

He said: "As a result, our earlier predictions about a service launch have been thwarted, and as slippage in deliveries of the vehicles continues, we cannot set a launch date in stone until we actually have enough vehicles delivered, tested, approved and fit to use.

"It seems we should have enough vehicles to start an interim service in mid-November, from which we should be able to ramp up to a full service a month later."

Posted on 03:03 PM | Permalink

Associated Press: October 26, 2007

BERLIN: German train drivers ended a 30-hour strike Friday morning against commuter and regional services across the country but did not get closer to an end of the conflict with the national rail operator.

The GDL union's strike, which started Thursday at 2 a.m. (0000GMT) and ended Friday at 8 a.m. (0600GMT), was the third such walkout — the longest one yet — in a pay dispute with railway operator Deutsche Bahn AG.

GDL wants better working conditions and a significant pay rise for train drivers.

More than 2,000 train drivers walked off their jobs, according to GDL, and only one out of every two trains ran in western Germany on Friday morning. The east was even worse-hit with only 10 percent of all regional trains running.

A spokesman for the union said the motivation among the striking train drivers was still very strong and that GDL would announce at a news conference later Friday further plans regarding strikes next week.

"The willingness to strike is high and unbroken," Maik Brandenburger said.

GDL hopes to pressure Deutsche Bahn into giving in to its demands of a cut in the working week by one hour to 40 hours and a pay increase of up to 31 percent for its members.

It has rejected a 4.5 percent raise that Deutsche Bahn agreed to in talks with two other unions that represent railway workers.

Deutsche Bahn carries some 5 million passengers daily.

See also:

AFX News: 10.26.07

Deutsche Bahn says strike costing 10 million euros per day

FRANKFURT (Thomson Financial) - The ongoing series of strike by German train driver from the GdL union is costing Deutsche Bahn AG 10 million euros per day of inaction, a company spokeswoman said.

GdL held a 30-hour strike over the last two days, which started on 2.00 am Thursday and ended today at 8.00 am.

In total, 2.7 million commuters were affected, said Karl-Friedrich Rausch, a member of the rail operator's management board, in a statement.

Posted on 02:12 PM | Permalink

Civil Georgia: 2007-10-28
 
Tbilisi -- The Georgian Economy Ministry has invited interested entities for expression of interests in privatisation shares of the state-run Georgian Railway Ltd.

The announcement was posted in the Economist’s classified section.

Interested parties, the announcement reads, should submit purchase price and the railway network’s development plan, including volume and timeline of intended investments.
 
Deadline for submitting proposals will expire on January 25, 2008.

Expression of interest by an entity does not oblige the Georgian side to sell any share, according to the announcement. The Economy Ministry said it reserves the right at to withdraw from the purchasing procedures any time; or suspend or change procedure, or exclude any interested party from the purchasing procedure.

The announcement was made after the Georgian authorities have confirmed that an earlier deal with Parkfield Investment to hand over the management rights of Georgian Railway for 99 years has fallen through. Parkfield Investment, which still remains a mysterious company with almost no information available about it, was not selected through tender. 

Kakha Bendukidze, the state minister in charge of economic reforms, has admitted that some mistakes have been made in the process.

He said that the Georgian side now wanted to announce “a general tender to receive general proposals.”

“Discussions are currently underway within the government on the issue,” he told reporters on October 24, “on whether to totally privatise the railway or only part of it, or to sell the management rights of all the company or just some of it. So what we want to do is to announce a general tender.”

Posted on 01:56 PM | Permalink

Civil Georgia: 2007-10-24

Tbilisi -- Signalling that an earlier deal with a mysterious company, Parkfield Investment, has fallen through, the Georgian government is set to announce a tender for the management rights of the Georgian Railway, reports say.

The Ministry of Economy has yet to officially confirm the reports, but sources familiar with the matter say a final decision on who will manage the rail network will be made within the next three months. Parkfield Investment refused to comment on the issue on October 24.

According to a decree signed by Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli on August 16, management rights of the Georgian Railway was handed over to UK-based Parkfield Investment for the following 99 years.

Both the company and the Georgian authorities were tight-lipped about who were behind Parkfield Investment. The lack of information created a vacuum that was filled by speculation that several Moscow-based businessmen of Georgian origin and business and media tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili were behind the deal. Patarkatsishvili, so the speculation went, allegedly agreed to swap his media outlets for the rail network.

Patarkatsishvili has since strongly refuted such suggestions. In October, when Patarkatsishvili became involved in a political standoff with the authorities, he did, however, say that previously the government had offered him “numerous lucrative proposals” in exchange for Imedi TV and radio stations. But he declined to elaborate further on these “lucrative proposals.”

See also:

At Least USD 2 bln Needed for Georgian Railway, Investors Say

Civil Georgia: 2007-08-20
Giorgi Sepashvili, Tea Gularidze

Parkfield Investment Ltd., the company which took control of Georgian Railways, was set up specifically for this particular investment project by a group of individual investors, whose identities will be revealed at a later stage, an official from the company said.

On August 20, Sarah Kendall, speaking on behalf of investors from London by phone, told Civil.Ge that Parkfield Investment was a UK-registered company. “Formalizing the process needs to be complete first,” she said, “and then when all the formalities are done we will be revealing the investors.”

Parkfield Investment recently received the management rights of the railway company for the next 99 years. Earlier reports had suggested the time period would be 89 years. In a decree signed by Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli on August 16 and posted on the government web-site on August 20, Parkfield Investment is committed to invest USD 1 billion in the rehabilitation and development of railway infrastructure within the next 10 years.

Sarah Kendall, however, said the railway network would probably need two or three billion US dollars in investment in the next 10 to 15 years.

The investment company has also pledged to maintain existing passenger tariffs until December 31, 2008. Increased tariffs, according to the decree, have to be agreed with the Ministry of Economy. “No prior agreement [with the Ministry of Economy] will be needed if the increase is in line with annual inflation,” the decree reads. Giorgi Arveladze, the economy minister, has been tasked to oversee the deal.

Parkfield Investment, according to its representative, is in the process of looking for a company to operate the railway on behalf of the investors.

“We will have a tender process to select an operator company,” she said. “We expect the operator will likely be either from the UK or another western European company with experience of managing this type of railway operation.”

She pointed out that the investment will help to develop the railway network and “will also be a key contributor to the Georgian economy.”

Kendall’s comments to Civil.Ge, although far from explaining everything, are the investment company’s first public pronouncement. Lack of information about the company, has fuelled speculation as to the identity of the secretive investors.

News about the government’s decision to hand over the railway management to Parkfield Investment broke on August 16, with an announcement by the economy minister, Giorgi Arveladze.

The announcement even caught top management of the Railway Company by surprise, indicating that the decision had been made within a very narrow circle of individuals in the government.

Most commentators in Georgia have welcomed the decision to hand over management of the railway to a private company, but the murkiness surrounding the deal has triggered concerns.

Rezo Sakevarishvili, a journalist and an economics analyst, points out that at this stage no clear conclusions can be made.

“I really do not know who might be behind this company,” Sakevarishvili told Civil.Ge. “There are various and numerous rumors. Some of them say it might be Badri Patarkatsishvili, others suggest it might be Bidzina Ivanishvili or some business people close to Arveladze. But these are rumors and more information is needed.”

Several sources familiar with the matter say Patarkatsishvili is probably behind the deal. However, some commentators have challenged this assumption, citing the fact that Patarkatsishvili has fallen out of favor with the authorities.

“I doubt Patarkatsishvili is behind this deal,” Gia Khukhashvili, an economics analyst, told Civil.Ge. “I do not see any logic in this because of the tense relations between Patarkatsishvili and the authorities; if it is true, then a question rises: what was exchanged to make this deal possible?”

Patarkatsishvili is at odds with the current authorities since last March 2006, when he publicly accused the authorities of an attempt to put pressure on his media holding and on other business interests in Georgia.

Patarkatsishvili has moved from Tbilisi and spends most of his time in London. He has also sold some of his businesses in Georgia, including an oil terminal in Kulevi on the Black Sea coast. The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) has bought it.

The only major business in Georgia he still holds is Imedi media holding – a radio station and a television station. The company is co-owned by News Corporation. This is an important asset, not from a commercial, but from the political point of view. Even Patarkatsishvili himself described his Imedi assets as “a charitable project.”

Guga Kvitaishvili, a spokesperson for Patarkatsishvili in Tbilisi, has declined to comment on the speculation about Patarkatsishvili being behind the railway deal. “I can not comment on rumors,” he told Civil.Ge.

Whoever the investors are, Tbilisi is most likely to see a major facelift as a result of this project. Kakha Bendukidze, the state minister in charge of reforms, said the plan was to relocate the railway network, which currently crosses the city and divides it two, to the outskirts of the city.

“At least 100 hectares of land will become available as a result of this relocation in the capital city and this land will then be engaged in the city’s economic processes,” he said.

See also:

Patarkatsishvili Denies Swapping Imedi TV for Railway

Civil Georgia: 2007-09-10

Tbilisi -- The business tycoon and co-owner of Tbilisi-based Imedi media holding, Badri Patarkatsishvili, rejected on September 10 suggestions that he had taken control of the Georgian Railways in exchange for his media holding.

Last month the Georgian government said it was handing over management rights for 99 years to Parkfield Investment Ltd. – a company set up just for this particular investment project by a group of individual investors, whose identities are still unknown.

The lack of information about the company has fuelled speculation that Badri Patarkatsishvili was probably behind it. Patarkatsishvili, so the rumours go, had made a deal with the government and agreed to give up his shares in Imedi media holding, involving a TV and radio station, in exchange for the management rights to the country’s railway infrastructure. Imedi is also co-owned by News Corporation.

“There is no asset in Georgia worth being swapped for Imedi,” Patarkatsishvili told reporters in Tbilisi. “Imedi is not something that will be traded off for something else.”

He said that he currently planned to create an even larger, as he put it, “regional telecommunications holding”, which would unite Imedi and his recently purchased businesses.

Patarkatsishvili’s Salford Georgia and a partner, Compound Capital Ltd., purchased the U.S.-based Metromedia International Group Inc., including its businesses in Georgia, for USD 154.5 million in August.

Metromedia International Group Inc. has a 34.5% share in MagtiCom, a mobile operator; 85% in Ayety LLC (“Ayety”), a cable television provider in Tbilisi; and 30% in Telecom Georgia, a long-distance transit operator.

Posted on 02:22 PM | Permalink

Edinburgh Evening News: Tue 23 Oct 2007

TRANSPORT Minister Jim Fitzpatrick has killed off the idea of a 186mph rail link between Scotland and London.

As Network Rail deputy chief executive Ian Coucher put the idea to civil engineers yesterday, Mr Fitzpatrick said the £30 billion cost was too high.

Mr Fitzpatrick said the government was committed to improving links to Edinburgh, Glasgow, the north east and the north west of England by investment in existing train services.

At a meeting of the Institution of Civil Engineers yesterday, Mr Coucher suggested the super speed route to Edinburgh or Glasgow, calling at one of York, Darlington or Newcastle, was the way forward.

But in a Commons exchange, Mr Fitzpatrick told former transport minister John Spellar: "The capital cost of constructing a high-speed line between London and Scotland is likely to be £30bn, whichever route is taken.

"Presently, there is no justification for such expenditure."

Posted on 03:30 PM | Permalink

BBC News: 23 October 2007

Eurotunnel is halving the cost of taking rail freight through the Channel Tunnel, as it attempts to win more business from the ferry operators.

Eurotunnel finally agreed a deal this year to slash its huge debts

The average toll for a train of freight will be £3,000 from the start of next year, down from the current £6,000.

Eurotunnel said its freight business had fallen steadily over recent years, down from 3 million tonnes in 1997 to just over 1 million this year.

The firm is continuing work to turn itself around and return to profit.

'Considerable potential'

The company blamed the fall in freight traffic over the past decade to a growing lack of competitiveness in relation to the ferry companies.

It said this had been partly caused by its increased security costs.

Eurotunnel said its new reduced prices had "considerable potential" to reverse its downward trend of rail freight.

Its most recent results showed that for the six months to the end of June, the Anglo-French company cut its net losses to 32m euros ($44m; £22m), compared with 105m-euro deficit a year earlier.

Eurotunnel also finally managed in June to halve its debt, following a long-running battle with creditors.

Posted on 03:25 PM | Permalink

Prague Daily Monitor: 23 October 2007

Prague (CTK) - The Czech government Monday approved separation of cargo transport from the national rail operator Ceske drahy into independent unit CD Cargo as of December 1, Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek has told a news conference.

CD Cargo will have a share capital of Kc8.8bn.

Some 13,000 of CD's current 57,000 staff will be transferred to the new company.

The government hopes the change will make the financing of railway transport more transparent. It particularly expects the cross-financing of loss-making passenger transport from the profits of cargo transport to end. This cross-financing involved Kc600m annually.

CD general director Josef Bazala said CD wants higher subsidies for passenger transport from the state budget. "The Transport Ministry is now looking for a solution," said spokesman Karel Hanzelka.

He added that the ministry will most probably propose to the cabinet the spin-off of passenger transport into an independent unit as well.

CD's cargo transport is the fifth largest in Europe, and the last in central Europe that is not operating independently yet.

CD annually transports 80 million tonnes of goods and always makes a profit from cargo transport. Last year, the profit stood at Kc1.5bn.

Posted on 07:44 AM | Permalink

SUD-Rail: October 22, 2007

Notice of the railway Union Federations: CGT-FO - CFDT - CFTC - SUD - UNSA-CFC / CGC - FGAAC

The railway trade unions met today to discuss the outstanding work of the strike on October 18, 2007 and decide what further action to call. With 75.56% of workers on strike, a very large majority of all grades, Railworkers sent clear messages to the government and the management of SNCF:

* A clear message to reject the reform of our special retired railworkers’ pension scheme. An increase in purchasing power and development of working conditions are closely related to this requirement.

* A clear message on freight: railworkers demand a complete halt to the break-up of this sector including infrastructure, stations and jobs. The future of rail freight, including land use planning, economic development and environmental impact, must be the subject of public debate.

The real warning shot addressed to the government and the SNCF management on October 18 must compel them to provide the answers railworkers expect. So, we hope, in the sense that the Minister of Labour is calling further bilateral meetings this week to discuss the reform due to the strength of the social movements and Trade Unions.

Above them the following trade union federations CGT-FO - CFDT - CFTC - SUD - UNSA - CFE / CGC - FGAAC, having gained the upper hand on 18 October, addressed the Minister of Labour.

* First to remind him of their rejection of the reforms.
* Second, asking him to organize, at the end of these meetings, a national round table on the special arrangements with the government and all railway workers’ trade unions.

The organisations desire to reinforce the balance of power in unity and the broadest possible alliance to put all the cards on the side of the railworkers to win. In this context, we propose that all the trade union organizations of companies call a special meet in the coming days to discuss and decide on necessary mobilisations.

In any case, the railway federations will meet again, on October 31, 2007, on a bilateral basis to analyse the situation and the government’s responses. If the government refuses to reconsider its proposals, it would bear the responsibility for a longer conflict.

Posted on 11:57 PM | Permalink

Reuters: 22 Oct 2007
By Jean-Baptiste Vey

MONTREUIL, France - France's rail unions threatened on Monday to repeat last week's national walk-out that crippled public transport if President Nicolas Sarkozy's government did not alter its pension reform plans.

The unions said they would meet at the end of this month to assess the government's response to Thursday's walk-out, which virtually shut down public transport across the country, and could hold another strike in mid-November.

Trade union resistance to the proposed pension reform is seen as the first test of Sarkozy's ability to push through the changes that were a central part of his campaign pledges.

"The eight rail workers' trade unions have decided to meet again on October 31 in order to assess the answers provided by the government," Didier Le Reste, head of the CGT union's rail branch, told reporters after a meeting of rail unions.

"If the plan ... is not revised, the federations have committed themselves to holding a strike in mid-November that could be extended," he added after the talks in a Paris suburb.

The decision was a show of unity after a split emerged between most rail unions, which have since ended their strike, and two hardline groups that continued their walk-out on Monday.

Metros, buses and trams were back to normal but regional train services were still heavily disrupted in some places.

The Sud Rail and Force Ouvriere unions were set to meet later on Monday to decide whether to carry on striking over the plan to end the right of a minority of state workers to retire after 37.5 years, compared with 40 years for most other workers.

DEEP DIVISIONS

The two unions' continued action badly disrupted services on Paris's regional RER service, and state rail operator SNCF said there would still be a reduced service on some RER and train lines in the Paris region on Tuesday.

But six other unions have already gone back to work in a sign of deep divisions over a reform that enjoys broad public support.

"We are making life worse for the tens of thousands of people who are going to work, whereas if we were united we would be stronger," Francois Chereque, head of the moderate CFDT union, told LCI Television.

"The action of the FO (Force Ouvriere) and the Sud Rail doesn't achieve anything."

Sarkozy has said the government is open to discussions on some points of his plan to reform some pensions but has promised to stand firm on the key issue of increasing the contributions period needed to ensure a full pension.

Labour Minister Xavier Bertrand met the management of the SNCF, the RATP Paris transport company and EDF and Gaz de France, the power and electricity companies on Monday afternoon.

"Everyone must be persuaded that there is more to be earned from negotiating than from conflict," he said.

Unions have also called for demonstrations on November 20 to protest against government plans to cut the number of civil servants, and to call for measures to boost purchasing power.

Posted on 11:29 PM | Permalink

Bloomberg: Oct. 22
By Chad Thomas

German train drivers will strike for 30 hours nationwide later this week as they continue to press for higher wages and better working conditions.

The engineers will walk off the job at 2 a.m. local time on Oct. 25 and return to work at 8 a.m. Oct. 26, the Frankfurt-based GDL train-drivers union said in an e-mailed statement. The strike will affect local and regional railway traffic, the union said.

The GDL rejected Deutsche Bahn AG's most recent contract offer, which includes a one-time payment of 2,000 euros ($2,830) and a 10 percent raise, calling it "insufficient.'' The state- owned railway, which operates Europe's largest track network, has refused to meet the union's demands for a wage increase of as much as 31 percent.

Train drivers have held temporary walkouts during the past three months to press their demands for higher pay. Berlin-based Deutsche Bahn wants the railway's 12,000 train drivers to work two additional hours per week.

A ruling by a court in Chemnitz, Germany, on Oct. 5 prevents train drivers from striking on long-distance and freight routes. The GDL and Deutsche Bahn have both appealed the labor court decision.

Nov. 2 Hearing

The union wants the freedom to strike on any service, while the railway seeks to block all walkouts. The appeals court said today it will hold a hearing in the case Nov. 2.

Karl-Friedrich Rausch, Deutsche Bahn's passenger-service director, urged the union to return to negotiations and appealed to the GDL to at least wait until after the court's hearing at the end of next week to conduct further strikes.

The GDL is seeking a contract separate from one reached with the railway's other unions, while Deutsche Bahn says any agreement must be "within the framework'' of a previous accord with other workers.

Two other railway unions, Transnet and the GDBA, agreed in July to raises of 4.5 percent. Talks between the two unions and the GDL on developing a common strategy collapsed in September. Transnet and the GDBA together have 134,000 members.

Posted on 08:00 PM | Permalink

Financial Times: Oct. 22, 2007
By Adrian Michaels in Milan and Robert Wright in London

Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, chairman of Ferrari and Fiat, and one of Europe's most recognisable industrialists, is taking advantage of the European Union's so-called "3rd rail package" (which recently passed through the European Parliament) to launch what could be Europe's first wholly private, high-speed train service.

Mr Montezemolo and partners are set to announce formally the service, called NTV, in the next few weeks. Alstom, Siemens and Bombardier are on a shortlist to build the trains, which have been made possible by liberalisation legislation and are scheduled to start running towards the end of 2010.

The trains will be the next chapter in the varied career of Mr Montezemolo, once named by a Japanese magazine the world's most elegant man. He has close ties to the Agnellis, the founders of Fiat, and is chairman of Confindustria, the main Italian employers' body, until May next year.

He has portrayed his activities as being at the service of the public and, like Sir Richard Branson in the UK, another populist businessman, he now seems determined to make his country's trains work better.

Mr Montezemolo's partners include Diego Della Valle, the founder of fashion company Tod's, industrialist Gianni Punzo and Giuseppe Sciarrone, former head of passenger services with the state-owned Trenitalia operator. Mr Sciarrone has since 2000 been the chief executive of Rail Traction Company, Italy's successful private rail freight operator.

Another private passenger service, Rail One, is also being put together for 2010 by Carlo Toto, the man behind Air One, the Italian airline bidding to acquire Alitalia.

The two Italian companies will be Europe's first wholly private operators of high-speed trains - the UK arm of the cross-Channel Eurostar service linking Paris and Brussels with London has private shareholders but the operation is still dominated by France's state-owned train operator, SNCF.

The new entrants will be taking advantage of domestic Italian legislation which is opening up the country's dedicated high-speed routes between the largest cities to competitors to Trenitalia, the monopoly operator of nearly all of the country's passenger services.

The competition could be disastrous news for Trenitalia, which has complained loudly since the legislation was proposed that it threatens the most profitable parts of its business.

The liberalisation of the sector has the backing of the government of Romano Prodi, which has lately been talking about the need to open up the market.

Posted on 07:38 AM | Permalink

The Times: October 22, 2007
Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent

Train companies are putting the lives of passengers at risk unnecessarily because they are refusing to fit laminated safety glass on their older trains.

A report by the Rail Safety & Standards Board shows that most of the people killed in the two most recent rail crashes died as a result of being thrown through breakable windows. The windows are found on almost half of Britain’s trains.

Laminated glass would cost only £125 per window but train companies are trying to delay making the change as long as possible in order to save money.

Under the industry’s current plan, passengers will continue to travel for at least the next 15 years in trains from which they have a greater risk of being thrown out and killed.

In crashes at Potters Bar in Hertfordshire in 2002 and Ufton Nervet in Berkshire in 2004, 15 people were thrown out of breakable windows. Eight of those died.

In the 95mph crash at Grayrigg in Cumbria in February, the windows of the Virgin train were laminated, preventing anyone from being thrown out despite several of the carriages rolling over. Only one person – an 84-year-old woman – died later in hospital.

Under an industry safety standard, all trains built since 1993 have had to have laminated glass. But the standard does not apply to older trains.

The safety board studied seven fatal crashes in the past decade and found that breakable windows were one of the greatest causes of death among passengers, with 12 dying after being thrown through breakable windows.

In the report, the board said: “Industry and glass experts agreed that laminated glass provided significantly better passenger containment protection in accidents.”

It said that laminated glass would also reduce the risk of injury from “crash debris or other objects penetrating the windows”.

But the board decided that not enough lives would be saved to justify the immediate replacement of all breakable windows. Instead, it recommended that “windows on existing vehicles should be considered for progressive replacement with laminated glass particularly at refurbishment”.

The industry had acknowledged the risk after a crash in Polmont near Falkirk, Central Scotland, in 1984, when 13 people died, several after being thrown through windows.

Peter Webster, who saw his daughter Emily, 14, being thrown to her death in the Ufton Nervet crash, said that she would have survived if the window had been laminated.

“The industry has continually given excuses for not fitting laminated glass because they are trying to save money. But the cost is pretty minimal and it would avoid other families suffering in the same way we have.”

Lawyers for relatives of passengers killed at Ufton Nervet commissioned a report by David Greenway, a rail safety expert and vice-president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, into the benefits of fitting laminated glass to older trains.

Mr Greenway’s report, which has been seen by The Times, concludes: “The likelihood of another window-breaking event would appear high and delay in fitting laminated windows would leave a higher than average risk.”

Two companies, First Great Western and GNER, are refurbishing some of their trains and fitting laminated glass. All GNER trains are due to have the glass by 2009. The Association of Train Operating Companies said that there was no deadline for replacing breakable glass in the entire British fleet. First and Stagecoach, two of Britain’s biggest train companies, said that no decision had been made on when laminated glass would be fitted to all their trains.

Mr Greenway found that the dangers of breakable glass were greatest on trains that travel at 125mph (200km/h). Stagecoach, which takes over the Midland Mainline franchise next month, said that it was “looking to fit laminated glass” to its high-speed fleet “in a couple of years’ time”.

Mr Greenway found that Stagecoach could, if it chose to, replace the windows within six months without causing disruption or needing to hire additional trains.

Anson Jack, the safety board’s director of policy, research and risk, said that it had rejected the faster fitment of laminated glass because “it is so much more expensive”.

Mr Jack also dismissed the idea of putting labels on windows telling passengers whether or not they were laminated.

“If you introduced a situation where people were given advice that sitting in a particular part of a coach was more or less safe than another part, based on the very low probability of an incident, there is a likelihood that using trains could become more difficult for people.”

Louise Christian, a lawyer representing bereaved relatives at the ongoing inquest into the deaths at Ufton Nervet, said that the coroner had £125 refused to accept the Greenway report as evidence after being advised against doing so by the rail industry.

“We have to ask why the rail industry parties are trying to suppress this evidence. I think it is because they don’t want to incur the extra cost.”

Posted on 12:02 AM | Permalink

AFP: 22 Oct. 2007

PARIS — French rail unions are meeting today (Monday, 22 October) to plan their next step after mounting a crippling two-day strike over President Nicolas Sarkozy's plans to cut pensions for rail and energy workers.

Unions claim last week's rail and bus strike -- followed by three quarters of workers -- was a historic success and hardliners are warning of further commuter chaos unless the right-wing government revises its plans.

The biggest rail union, the CGT, officially called off the strike on Friday to resume talks with the government, but two smaller unions -- Sud Rail and FO -- were continuing to badly disrupt suburban rail links to Paris.

On Monday, officials predicted a virtual shut-down of the RER B line which carries 700,000 people to work each day, although Paris metro and bus networks were up-and-running again, along with TGV fast trains and regional services.

The strikes were to protest plans by Sarkozy's government to cut pension privileges for hundreds of thousands of rail, energy and other public sector workers such as fishermen, miners and parliamentarians.

Some 500,000 workers pay into the special systems but there are 1.1 million drawing pensions, leading to an annual shortfall of five billion euros (seven billion dollars).

The government says the proposed reform to make workers contribute for 40 years to earn a full pension rather than 37.5 as at present was non-negotiable but that it was "awaiting proposals" on everything else.

Labour Minister Xavier Bertrand was Wednesday to hear the proposals of the main unions, who appear divided over what strategy to adopt.

CGT Rail leader Didier Le Reste has said negotiations are the priority -- though he has warned that unless there is progress in the talks, he would back longer strike action.

But Sud Rail issued a tough statement Sunday arguing for an open-ended strike to force the government to back down: "We all know that Sarkozy's government will only give in to popular pressure," it said.

See also:

French Unions Extend Strike, Disrupt Transport

Bloomberg: Oct. 19
By Helene Fouquet

France's biggest transport strike in more than a decade continued for a second day, forcing commuters to walk, use bikes, share cars or stay home. Some buses and metro lines in Paris began operations today.

About half of the capital city's metros were running as also about 37 percent of the national high-speed trains. Yesterday, France was paralyzed as most public transport ground to a halt. Public workers went on strike to oppose a government plan to roll back their pension privileges. There will continue to be disruptions today, rail companies said.

The stoppage marked the first union challenge to President Nicolas Sarkozy, elected in May on a platform of cutting taxes, reducing the cost of pensions, and liberalizing labor.

"I'm determined to complete this reform,'' Labor Minister Xavier Bertrand said in an interview today. "This reform is indispensable,'' he said, adding that the changes will pave the way for an overhaul of the national pensions system.

Currently, 20 million people contribute to the French pensions system. About 500,000 workers at some state-owned companies contribute less because they work fewer years. They were left out of a 2003 effort to bring the number of years worked by civil servants in line with that of the private sector. Bertrand said everyone needs to contribute equally.

The pension changes require these employees to work 40 years instead of 37.5 years in order to earn a full pension. Sarkozy wants the plan completed by 2012. Bertrand said the pension system in general will be re-examined next year.

Change Needed

Bertrand said he will meet union representatives next week.

A three-week strike in public transport that paralyzed cities across France in 1995 ended a previous government's attempt to tackle the so-called "special regimes.''

"The special pension regimes must be reformed,'' Socialist lawmaker Laurent Fabius said on BFM TV today. "But the government must negotiate honestly.''

Yesterday, about 319,000 people at railroads, power and gas utilities, schools and the postal service failed to turn up at work in their fight to keep a special pension system that costs the state about 5 billion euros ($7.1 billion) a year.

About 21,000 demonstrators marched in protest in central Paris yesterday, city police reported. That's about a quarter of the capacity of Stade de France, where the final Rugby World Cup match will be played tomorrow. About 65,000 people marched in cities including Marseille, Rouen and Tours, unions said.

Extended Strike

Two unions at RATP, which runs public transport in Paris, UNSA and Sud, extended the strike today. RATP said in a statement that there would be "major disruptions'' for commuter trains and that about a third of the metro lines would function, with a possible "improvement'' during the day.

Some RATP operations began this morning, after coming to a near standstill yesterday. There were still no trains bringing commuters from the suburbs to the capital city today. RAPT says it normally does about 11 millions trips a day.

SNCF, the national railway, predicted "major disruptions'' in the morning, after Sud Rail and Force Ouvrier unions said yesterday they would do continue the strike.

About 37 percent SNCF's 700 fastest trains, the TGVs, are running today, the rail company said. The Eurostar train service between Paris and London is almost back to normal, while local trains are still disrupted, it said.

Anne-Marie Idrac, SNCF's chief executive officer, said the strike will cost the company about 20 million euros in terms of refunds to customer for canceled trips.

Breaking Ranks

One of the unions at the SNCF, the "Autonomous'' FGAAC, which represents about a third of the train drivers, said it has started negotiating pension terms with the company, breaking ranks with other unions.

Yesterday, all five of Paris's train stations, including the biggest commuter hub Gare Saint Lazare, were deserted, and schedule boards listed no arrivals or departures.

Thousands of pedestrians and bicycle riders dominated the streets of major cities. Demand for "Velib,'' Paris's public bicycle rental system more than doubled, BFM television reported. It normally averages 100,000 daily rentals.

The more general strike yesterday included workers at the Bank of France, the Budget Ministry, the Paris Opera and the Comedie Francaise, Electricite de France SA, Gaz de France SA, some school and university teachers, public transport and rail companies.

Fifty-five percent of the respondents in a poll published in Le Figaro on Oct. 17, said the strike is "not at all'' or "not really'' justified. It was backed by forty-three percent of those polled.

"The president was elected on a program of reforms,'' said David Martinon, spokesman for Sarkozy, on LCI television today. "He'll accomplish those reforms.''

Posted on 12:01 AM | Permalink

New York Times: October 19, 2007
By ELAINE SCIOLINO

PARIS — For President Nicolas Sarkozy, a day does not get much darker than this.

Protesters in Paris backed national strikes Thursday. The sign refers to concerns about pensions, salaries and social welfare - Charles Platiau/Reuters

A headline in a French newspaper Thursday introduced a special report on the Sarkozys.

On Thursday, Mr. Sarkozy, the 52-year-old French leader, was reeling from blows on two different domestic fronts: a wave of strikes that swept through France and an official announcement that his 11-year marriage had come to an end.

Shortly after a presidential spokesman, David Martinon, told a hastily called news conference that he had absolutely no comment about his boss’s marriage, the Élysée Palace dropped the bombshell that Mr. Sarkozy and his wife, Cécilia, “announce their separation by mutual consent.” The palace later clarified that the couple “had divorced.”

Other French leaders have led unconventional love lives. One president, Félix Faure, died in the bed of his mistress in 1899; another, François Mitterrand, fathered a daughter with his mistress.

But Mr. Sarkozy, who was previously married and divorced long before he was elected president, is the first to divorce while in office.

Immediately after the news was broadcast on radio and television, striking protesters in the port city of Le Havre shouted: “Cécilia, we are like you! We are fed up with Nicolas!”

The Élysée Palace statement, which ended weeks of speculation, said that neither the president nor Mrs. Sarkozy would comment on the news.

The announcement coincided with a national strike in the public sector — the first in Mr. Sarkozy’s five-month presidency — to protest the conservative government’s plan to eliminate special retirement privileges that employees in private businesses do not enjoy. Labeled “Black Thursday” by the news media, the 24-hour strike halted most trains, subways and buses throughout France and canceled classes in many schools and universities.

State unemployment offices and many museums were closed. Mail delivery was uneven. Some Paris theatrical performances were called off.

Workers at the state-owned electricity and gas utility giants joined the walkout, leading to a reduction of 16 percent in electricity output by the country’s nuclear reactors. The ultimate indignity for Mr. Sarkozy was that power was cut off to La Lanterne, which he is using as a secondary residence, in Versailles.

Some unions threatened to continue their protests beyond Thursday, but the news gripping France was not the strike — the French are used to those — but the announcement that the Sarkozys had ended their marriage.

Mrs. Sarkozy has been out of the public eye recently, but last week, she posed — at her request — on the balcony of a Paris hotel for the cover of Paris Match, whose latest edition appeared on the newsstands on Thursday.

She was said by the popular weekly magazine to have been unhappy with unflattering pictures of her that had appeared recently in the news media. She chose the same photographer who had taken her husband’s official presidential portrait.

The three-page Paris Match spread showed her staring vacantly into the camera next to the caption “Cécilia Sarkozy, a Serene Woman,” but it revealed nothing about the state of the Sarkozy marriage. Her whereabouts on Thursday were unknown, although friends said she was preparing for an engagement party this weekend for her 20-year-old daughter, Jeanne-Marie, one of her two children from a previous marriage. Mr. Sarkozy also has two adult children from his first marriage, and the Sarkozys have a 10-year-old son, Louis.

Asked in a telephone interview about Mrs. Sarkozy’s plans, Carina Alfonso-Martin, her spokeswoman, said: “I don’t know them. This is her private life. It’s up to her to say.”

Mr. Sarkozy kept to his daily schedule and traveled to Lisbon on Thursday afternoon for a two-day meeting of the leaders of the European Union. He will be accompanied on a state visit to Morocco next week by Rachida Dati, his minister of justice.

The opposition Socialist Party suggested that Mr. Sarkozy timed the announcement of the divorce to coincide with the strike, perhaps in an attempt to mute its news impact.

“The Élysée has chosen this Thursday, a day of strong social mobilization, to make the information official,” said Annick Lepetit, the Socialist Party’s national secretary, in a communiqué. “We will leave it to the French people to judge if it’s only a simple coincidence.”

The separation of Ségolène Royal, Mr. Sarkozy’s Socialist rival for the presidency, and François Hollande, her longtime partner, the father of her four children and the head of the Socialist Party, was announced on the night of France’s legislative elections in June.

Portraying herself as a woman scorned, Ms. Royal was quoted in a book leaked to the news media that night as saying, “I asked François Hollande to leave our home, to pursue his love interest, which is now laid bare in books and newspapers, on his own.”

Since then, the tabloid magazine Closer has published a photo of a French journalist with her arm around the pleasantly rotund Mr. Hollande on a Moroccan beach. Mr. Hollande has sued the magazine for invasion of privacy.

With the Sarkozy divorce finally out in the open, the finger-pointing began. Patrick Balkany, a close friend of the couple and the mayor of the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, called the separation “inescapable” because “Cécilia was in this state of mind.”

“She no longer wanted to participate in the life of the president, in public life,” Mr. Balkany told RTL radio, saying that Mr. Sarkozy was “very serene” and “had turned the page.” He added, “She left; she came back. When she came back, they perhaps thought that it could go back like before. It did not.”

Some of their friends confessed that they were heartbroken. “I love Nicolas, I love Cécilia,” said André Santini, a secretary of state in Mr. Sarkozy’s government. “This gives me so much pain.”

The political opposition used the news of the divorce to poke fun at Mr. Sarkozy.

Yann Wehrling, the Green Party spokesman, mocked Mr. Sarkozy’s campaign pledge to force a “rupture” with the outmoded ways of the past, telling Agence France-Presse, “We can finally say that we have a president of “‘the rupture.’”

The rumors of the break-up have circulated for weeks, but the country’s most important newspapers largely ignored the story. On Thursday, however, the left-leaning Libération, which had vowed not to print rumors, suddenly shifted course. It published a special report with a front-page photo of the couple and the headline, in English, “Desperate Housewife.”

“A newspaper must publish information and not rumors,” the newspaper said in an editorial explaining the shift, adding, “Things have just changed.”

The Thursday afternoon edition of Le Monde, regarded as France’s most serious newspaper, reported that a petition for divorce agreement was prepared by a lawyer for Mrs. Sarkozy months ago.

“They were heard by a judge, and the judge granted their divorce,” Michéle Cahen, the couple’s lawyer, said on Europe-1 radio after the official announcement was made. “It went very well. There was not the slightest difficulty.”

The current strikes, which started Wednesday evening, were not as dramatic as had been anticipated, perhaps reflecting a shifting public mood that economic changes are necessary.

Even union leaders have said this is not a repeat of 1995, when three weeks of strikes and street protests over pension reform so damaged the government that it lost a general election to the Socialists two years later. President Jacques Chirac, a conservative, was thereafter forced to govern in an uncomfortable arrangement with a Socialist prime minister.

In Paris, a pleasantly cool and cloudless fall day contributed to an atmosphere of calm and normalcy, as commuters used their cars, bicycles, in-line skates, legs and even motorcycle taxi services to get to work. The capital’s new self-service bicycle rental system was sold out in most locations. Other towns and cities throughout the country reported fewer bus and subway disruptions than predicted.

The strikes were staged to pressure the Sarkozy government to drop plans to change France’s special pension privileges enjoyed by 500,000 workers and 1.1 million retirees, mostly in the state-run transportation and utilities sector but also by parliamentary deputies, fishermen and miners. The privileges, which, for example, allow workers in the electric and railroad industries to retire at 50 with a full pension, have created an annual shortfall of $7 billion that taxpayers have to shoulder.

Mr. Sarkozy is determined to level the playing field by bringing these so-called special public sector pensions in line with the private sector.

But more serious is the question of whether the breakup of his marriage will negatively affect the way Mr. Sarkozy governs France. Known for his quick temper, and suffering episodically from migraines, he has openly professed his dependence on his wife.

“Even today, I have difficulty talking about it,” he wrote in his 2006 campaign book, “Testimony,” of their months apart when she left him, apparently for another man, in 2005. “I had never known such an ordeal. Never would I have imagined that I would be so profoundly distressed.”

Posted on 06:36 PM | Permalink

SUD-Rail - Railworkers' Union Federation: October 18, 2007 - Strike Bulletin No. 4
17 boulevard de la Liberation, 93200-Saint-Denis, FRANCE
Tel 00 33 (0)1 42 43 35 75 - Fax 00 33 (0)1 42 43 36 67
Federation-sudrail@wanadoo.fr
http://www.sudrail.org

The strike

• railworkers refuse to see their pension reduced by 20 to 30%!
• railworkers are opposed to Fillon’s new plan which foresees us making 40 years pension contributions in 2007, and then increasing everybody to 41 years in 2008.
• railworkers are resisting and have shown that nothing is inevitable.

The government and SNCF management initially wanted to deny the strike was happening: last week Guillaume Pépy (Chief Executive of SNCF) was still claiming "one train in two, one train out of three" would run. They knew the reality of the strike mobilisation but tried to give out false information. Given the scale of the strike movement, they changed tactics and decided to stick their heads in the sand until the end of the day on 18 October.

And what should we choose?

• Should we simply say that we did not accept the project?
• Should we conclude it is necessary to keep up pressure on the unions to call new action in November?
• Or, should we decide:
➢ Based on the balance of power established on Oct. 18 to continue after Oct. 19?
➢ To control the strikes ourselves in our general assemblies?
➢ To ask the trade union federations to support us and coordinate our fight?

We have our future in hands!

SUD believes it is more effective to keep the momentum going, to keep up the pressure, to force the government to withdraw their project and keep negotiations under the control of the strikers.

That's what we did in 1995 ... And we won. The tactic of "shows of strength" 24-hour strikes followed in 2003, and we lost. All opinions should be respected and allow General Assemblies to speak, listen, discuss and decide.

The SUD, FO, FGAAC federations served notice of all-out strike action that allows railworkers to determine the next step. The CGT, CFDT, CFTC did the same in several regions.

Railworkers, your strike belongs to you!

➢ This number of strikers is the highest at SNCF for many decades.
➢ It is 10% above the highest day of the strike movement in 1995.

Government and SNCF Executives have never surrendered on matters of such importance after a 24-hour strike.

The strength of our strike allows us to win, if we choose to go there, to "put the nail in the coffin” now.

We are not on strike to demand that the Ministry or SNCF Board re-explain to the trade unions how they will get rid of our special schemes.

We want this project abandoned and negotiations to improve the pension plan for all workers!

The SUD, FO and FGAAC union federations have called for the strike movement to be decided by General Assemblies.

On the ground unity exists!

The all-out strike has also been agreed at RATP (many subway lines, RER A and B, bus depots)

SNCF managers don’t have to sell UMP policies

A special feature of October 18, is the very high participation of managers in the strike. We know that pressures on them are strong; SUD-Rail calls on managerial staff to remain in solidarity and to refuse to play the role of strike breakers as the SNCF Board would like.

The General Assemblies on Oct. 18.

NB: Incomplete list: we are waiting for updates, and several General Assemblies that were held finished after midday.

Posted on 01:12 PM | Permalink

SUD-Rail - Railworkers' Union Federation: 15 October 2007
17 boulevard de la Liberation, 93200-Saint-Denis, FRANCE
Tel 00 33 (0)1 42 43 35 75 - Fax 00 33 (0)1 42 43 36 67
Federation-sudrail@wanadoo.fr
http://www.sudrail.org

October 19, let’s keep it going!

Management and government propaganda will not stop a massive strike mobilisation on October 18. On the ground, in the regions and branches the only thing everyone is speaking about is our pension scheme. Office staff and Traincrew, operational staff, control, supervisors and even senior managers: there will be many of us on strike. All this excitement is already a failure for the leadership and the government who believed that "some informal meetings at the summit" would be enough to get us to swallow the bitter pill. It is imperative that on October 18 there is the highest possible turnout on strike. SUD appeals to those rail workers who may still be hesitant about going on strike on October 18. Government and management are watching carefully the number of strikers and the size of the demonstrations let’s make sure we are up to the challenge!

The railworkers will not be taking action alone!

Returning to 37.5 years pension contributions for all is possible!

The contents of the counter-reform are well known; it will lead to significant financial losses for all and leaves no room for negotiations of substance ... unless our collective action changes things!

The widely disseminated consultation paper on the reforms is clear: the most important thing is not negotiable! Moving to 40 years pension contributions over 5 years is presented as non-debatable. The discount system in place from 2010 will financially penalise all those who have not contributed at least 40 years to the pension (then 41, etc.). Individuals can work it out for themselves, in the long run the fall in retirement will be the same as with workers in the private sector, in the order of 20-30%, depending on their year of retirement. Even if train drivers keep their current subsidies, they will also suffer reductions and from 2009 the new recruits will have no subsidies. The negotiations that SNCF management proposed to us last Friday made it clear that it was not prepared to negotiate, seek only to propose some minor measures.

For SUD the priority is to mobilise ourselves to force the government to retreat over what is at the heart of the reforms: the increase to 40 years pension contributions.

Striking on October 19 will give us the means to win!

Therefore we are proposing General Assemblies of workers, from the morning of October 18 to 19, to take place everywhere, all points of view can speak, and the railworkers can decide on where the strike movement is going.

All-out on strike and demonstrations from October 18! Railworkers' General Assemblies to decide democratically on the direction of the movement!

Posted on 10:51 AM | Permalink

Bloomberg: Oct. 19
By Helene Fouquet

France's biggest transport strike in more than a decade continued for a second day, forcing commuters to walk, use bikes, share cars or stay home. Some buses and metro lines in Paris began operations today.

About half of the capital city's metros were running as also about 37 percent of the national high-speed trains. Yesterday, France was paralyzed as most public transport ground to a halt. Public workers went on strike to oppose a government plan to roll back their pension privileges. There will continue to be disruptions today, rail companies said.

The stoppage marked the first union challenge to President Nicolas Sarkozy, elected in May on a platform of cutting taxes, reducing the cost of pensions, and liberalizing labor.

"I'm determined to complete this reform,'' Labor Minister Xavier Bertrand said in an interview today. "This reform is indispensable,'' he said, adding that the changes will pave the way for an overhaul of the national pensions system.

Currently, 20 million people contribute to the French pensions system. About 500,000 workers at some state-owned companies contribute less because they work fewer years. They were left out of a 2003 effort to bring the number of years worked by civil servants in line with that of the private sector. Bertrand said everyone needs to contribute equally.

The pension changes require these employees to work 40 years instead of 37.5 years in order to earn a full pension. Sarkozy wants the plan completed by 2012. Bertrand said the pension system in general will be re-examined next year.

Change Needed

Bertrand said he will meet union representatives next week.

A three-week strike in public transport that paralyzed cities across France in 1995 ended a previous government's attempt to tackle the so-called ``special regimes.''

"The special pension regimes must be reformed,'' Socialist lawmaker Laurent Fabius said on BFM TV today. "But the government must negotiate honestly.''

Yesterday, about 319,000 people at railroads, power and gas utilities, schools and the postal service failed to turn up at work in their fight to keep a special pension system that costs the state about 5 billion euros ($7.1 billion) a year.

About 21,000 demonstrators marched in protest in central Paris yesterday, city police reported. That's about a quarter of the capacity of Stade de France, where the final Rugby World Cup match will be played tomorrow. About 65,000 people marched in cities including Marseille, Rouen and Tours, unions said.

Extended Strike

Two unions at RATP, which runs public transport in Paris, UNSA and Sud, extended the strike today. RATP said in a statement that there would be "major disruptions'' for commuter trains and that about a third of the metro lines would function, with a possible "improvement'' during the day.

Some RATP operations began this morning, after coming to a near standstill yesterday. There were still no trains bringing commuters from the suburbs to the capital city today. RAPT says it normally does about 11 millions trips a day.

SNCF, the national railway, predicted "major disruptions'' in the morning, after Sud Rail and Force Ouvrier unions said yesterday they would do continue the strike.

About 37 percent SNCF's 700 fastest trains, the TGVs, are running today, the rail company said. The Eurostar train service between Paris and London is almost back to normal, while local trains are still disrupted, it said.

Anne-Marie Idrac, SNCF's chief executive officer, said the strike will cost the company about 20 million euros in terms of refunds to customer for canceled trips.

Breaking Ranks

One of the unions at the SNCF, the "Autonomous'' FGAAC, which represents about a third of the train drivers, said it has started negotiating pension terms with the company, breaking ranks with other unions.

Yesterday, all five of Paris's train stations, including the biggest commuter hub Gare Saint Lazare, were deserted, and schedule boards listed no arrivals or departures.

Thousands of pedestrians and bicycle riders dominated the streets of major cities. Demand for "Velib,'' Paris's public bicycle rental system more than doubled, BFM television reported. It normally averages 100,000 daily rentals.

The more general strike yesterday included workers at the Bank of France, the Budget Ministry, the Paris Opera and the Comedie Francaise, Electricite de France SA, Gaz de France SA, some school and university teachers, public transport and rail companies.

Fifty-five percent of the respondents in a poll published in Le Figaro on Oct. 17, said the strike is "not at all'' or "not really'' justified. It was backed by forty-three percent of those polled.

"The president was elected on a program of reforms,'' said David Martinon, spokesman for Sarkozy, on LCI television today. "He'll accomplish those reforms.''

See also:

Rail chaos continues as French workers strike for a second day

Independent: 19 October 2007
By John Lichfield

French rail workers voted overwhelmingly last night to extend their one-day strike into a second day. The vote – against the advice of leaders of the more moderate trade unions – threatened to prolong the misery of yesterday's 24-hour protest against government plans to reform pensions for public sector workers.

However, the extended strike seems unlikely to disrupt Eurostar services carrying England rugby fans to the World Cup Final in Paris tomorrow. Four in every five Eurostar trains ran yesterday and a full, but possibly delayed, schedule is expected today.

Most commuter and long-distance trains were halted across the country yesterday as an unprecedented 80 per cent of railwaymen joined the walkout over plans to cut their special pension privileges. Smaller numbers of Métro, electricity and postal workers also took part in the one-day stoppage.

Last night, at meetings at key stations and depots in Paris and other major cities, some workers voted overwhelmingly to take a second day of action. Fewer were expected to heed this call but there will be severe disruption on the lines again this morning. Xavier Bertrand, the Social Affairs Minister, offered to meet union officials next week in an attempt to head off further protests.

The government wants to reduce the long-standing special rights which allow railway, Métro, electricity and other public workers to retire at 55, or even 50 – costing the public purse £3.84bn in pension payments this year alone.

Ministers and unions both see this as a symbolically important battle of wills which could shape the future of President Nicolas Sarkozy's social and economic reform programme.

Posted on 04:05 PM | Permalink

The Times: October 19, 2007
Angela Jameson, Industrial Correspondent

Eurotunnel is to postpone a planned capital raising intended to pay back convertible loan notes until market conditions improve.

The decision means that the Channel Tunnel rail group has accepted that some of its bonds will convert to shares.

Jacques Gounon, chairman and chief executive of Groupe Eurotunnel, said: “We have three full years in which to refinance – until August 2010, so I am not in a hurry. I would prefer to raise the full amount in three years’ time in a single capital raising, rather than try to raise a small amount in such bad markets.”

To buy back all the notes redeemable for shares, Eurotunnel would need to raise €1.6 billion (£1.1 billion). It had intended to begin the capital raising in January, but the troubles in the markets would make it difficult and expensive to do so.

However, by deferring the plan, 5 per cent of one third of loan notes will convert to shares in August next year, and a further 5 per cent in 2009. “We are accepting that there will be some dilution of the shares,” Mr Gounon admitted.

A review will take place later next year and if it is then considered possible to raise the entire amount in one go, the group could go to the market a few months later.

“We know there are a significant number off shareholders who want to participate in a rights issue, but we would rather hold off until the credit crunch disappears,” Mr Gounon said.

Eurotunnel said that it would launch a 1 for 40 share consolidation on November 12. Once the share consolidation has been achieved, the company is expected to try to attract more institutional investors, who have largely shunned the stock since its restructuring.

The group’s revenues climbed 10 per cent to €214.2 million on a pro forma basis for the first nine months of 2007. Car traffic through the tunnel was up 7 per cent on the first nine months of last year, while lorry traffic was up 10 per cent. The figures were helped by a buoyant summer market and the boost provided in the past month by the Rugby World Cup.

Revenue from rail passengers also rose, largely because of an increase in Eurostar passengers. Freight volumes passing through the tunnel on other companies’ trains were disappointing, falling 25 per cent in the quarter, but Eurotunnel said it is to unveil a new strategy for developing rail freight.

“A favourable climate in the third quarter has enabled us to consolidate Eurotunnel’s substantial and consistent growth since the start of the year and 2007 looks set to be an excellent year,” Mr Gounon said.

Challenge from New York

Two US hedge funds are suing Eurotunnel because they are unhappy that the company was restructured under French insolvency law this summer.

Elliott Advisors, an arm of New York hedge fund Elliott Associates, and Resurgence Asset Management, both based in New York, were among creditors of the Channel Tunnel group that believe they would have received more in the British courts.

Eurotunnel said that the first part of the litigation, which will reexamine whether the group was mainly a French business, will open in the next few weeks in a Paris court. The company is confident that it will overturn the case brought by the US hedge funds.

“I am fully comfortable with this litigation,” Jacques Gounon, chairman and chief executive, said. “They have discovered that French law is different from UK law so if you are doing your job you can use some levers in French law, which has been a big surprise for them.”

The legislation under which Eurotunnel was restructured – the Procedure de Sauvegarde, the Gallic equivalent of America’s Chapter 11 - was only introduced to the French legal system last year and this was its first major application.

Posted on 03:18 PM | Permalink

Financial Times: October 17 2007
By Nikki Tait, Law Courts correspondent

Thousands of workers who were exposed to asbestos due to their employers’ negligence have lost the right to claim compensation if they subsequently developed pleural plaques, one of the least serious asbestos-related conditions.

The House of Lords, Britain’s top court, on Wednesday morning turned down an appeal by a group of employees in four test-cases against an earlier Court of Appeal decision. This had concluded that pleural plaques – scars on the lungs that indicate asbestos exposure – did not amount to a compensatable injury.

The long legal battle has been closely watched because of the implications for thousand of similar claims, and the financial ramifications for the insurance industry.

Wednesday’s decision could save insurers hundreds of millions of pounds over the next few decades.

According the Association of British Insurers, about £.4bn had been paid out in respect of pleural plaques since the 1970s by last year. However, as with other asbestos-related conditions, it has taken time for claims to come through. As a result pleural plaque claims are expected to peak only in 2010-2015.

In the past, it was standard practice to provide compensation in pleural plaque cases. But about three years ago, insurers brought the test-case challenges, arguing that there was now better medical understanding of asbestos-related conditions. Pleural plaques, they contended, did not have any symptoms and did not impact directly on the lives of people who developed them.

Employees’ lawyers, however, argued that the plaques did amount to evidence of damage and that victims usually suffered anxiety – sometime severe – because of the asbestos cancer risk.

The decision brought angry reaction from both unions and personal injury lawyers. ”This is a harsh decision which will affect thousands of people with pleural plaques now and in the future,” said Derek Simpson, joint general secretary of Unite, the UK’s largest union.

”I am absolutely staggered the Law Lords have dashed the hopes of these men who have been negligently exposed to asbestos,” said Martin Bare, president of the Assocition of Personal Injury Lawyers.

But Zurich, one of the insurers involved in the test-cases, defended its action. ”The insurance industry has a responsibility to compensate people who’ve suffered an injury and not to pay out policyholders’ money for a condition that causes no symptoms”, it said.

See also:

Asbestos condition claims stopped

BBC News: 17 October 2007

Thousands of British workers suffering from an asbestos-related condition will not be able to claim compensation, the Law Lords have ruled.

Asbestos exposure can cause pleural plaques

The move only applies to sufferers of pleural plaques, a scarring of the lungs, leaving other asbestos compensation claims unaffected.

Union leaders have attacked the decision, saying it will lead to "massive savings" for insurance firms.

Unions had appealed against a January 2006 ruling by the Court of Appeal.

The Law Lords ruled that pleural plaques was not a disease.

"They will be baffled and offended that the House of Lords has decided that pleural plaques is not worthy of any compensation" - Ian McFall, Thompsons Solicitors

Derek Simpson, joint general secretary of Unite, said it was a "harsh" decision which will affect thousands of people with pleural plaques now and in the future.

"The judgment will disadvantage many of our members who have been exposed to asbestos in their work by denying them the right to sue their former employers for developing pleural plaques," he said.

Ian McFall, head of asbestos policy at Thompsons Solicitors, representing the union, added: "This decision is very disappointing for the thousands of people who are living with the worry of knowing that their lungs have been scarred by asbestos.

"They will be baffled and offended that the House of Lords has decided that pleural plaques is not worthy of any compensation."

Past rulings

Pleural plaques are areas of thick scar tissue which form in the chest lining and diaphragm and are caused by asbestos exposure.

Over time, this thickening of the pleural membrane, which lines the lungs, can make breathing difficult and can, in some cases, be accompanied by the development of serious respiratory diseases including mesothelioma and lung cancer.

The insurance firms said they should not be liable because pleural plaques was not a disease as it had no symptoms.

"The Lords accepted that employers had been negligent but denied the workers the right to any form of redress" - Brendan Barber, TUC general secretary

The case dates back to November 2004 when 10 men went to court seeking compensation from insurance companies which wanted to stop payments.

In February 2005, the High Court ruled that people suffering from pleural plaques should receive compensation.

It found there was an increased risk of developing other asbestos-related diseases, and that having the plaques caused anxiety.

However, it reduced payment from between £5,000 and £15,000 to £3,000 and £7,000.

Speaking about the latest ruling, TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "This is yet another attack, spearheaded by the insurance industry, on workers' ability to claim compensation for exposure to dangerous hazards at work.

"The Lords accepted that employers had been negligent but denied the workers the right to any form of redress."

Posted on 01:14 PM | Permalink

Associated Press: October 16, 2007

PARIS: One-day strikes this week could leave France without a viable transport system and are shaping up as the first real challenge to Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency and his drive to change the way the French work.

Labor leaders hoped Thursday's walkout would be a show of unity unseen since strikes in 1995, during Jacques Chirac's presidency, that paralyzed the country and sapped Chirac's appetite for reform.

Transit workers initiated the strikes but employees of state-run electricity, gas and other services also could take part in the action, which was to begin Wednesday at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT) and continue through Thursday.

After months in the shadow of the powerful and popular president, unions were mounting the strikes as a cry of anger and an alert to the government as it seeks to reinvigorate the economy through changes to labor laws.

The day of strikes is aimed at protesting plans to cut back on special retirement benefits accorded to employees in state-run businesses, such as transport companies. Sarkozy, who pledged changes to France's labor protections during his election campaign this spring, deems the benefits too costly, outdated and unfair.

"I think this strike will be strong ... and I even have the feeling that there may be virtually no trains, buses or Metros," Labor Minister Xavier Bertrand said during a weekend media forum.

Still, he added, he remains "totally determined" to see through the changes — "in a spirit of dialogue."

Most unions at the national SNCF train authority and Paris' RATP transport authority were taking part in the strikes.

High-speed TGV trains — including the Eurostar route between Paris and London — will also be affected. The Eurostar will run eight trains in 10, the SNCF said in a statement Tuesday, warning that nationwide traffic would be "nearly paralyzed."

The RATP warned of "very serious disturbances" on Thursday of Metros, buses, suburban trains and tramways.

Repercussions from the transport tangle were expected to be felt in a wide swath of the French economy.

Most teachers were not planning to strike, but some schools were expected to close for fear that staff would not be able to get to class.

Air transport also faced potential disturbances, according to civil aviation authorities, who said there was a risk that flights would be "modified," particularly early in the day.

Aviation administrative employees and airport personnel could have trouble getting to work due to the transport strikes, the civil aviation authority said.

Sarkozy is looking to trim special retirement packages for chosen groups of workers — more than half a million workers plus 1.1 million current retirees.

Train and bus workers, for instance, can retire with a state pension at the age of 50. Such special privileges date from World War II and earlier, when some sectors were considered dangerous or vital to France's interests.

The strikes could overflow into Friday. Three train federations were calling for a daily vote to see whether to extend the strikes.

It was not the only front in Sarkozy's reform battle.

Hospital interns and doctors completing residencies have been striking overnight and on-call duties since Sept. 27 to protest plans to outlaw new medical offices in large cities in favor of regions where doctors are less numerous.

Posted on 07:06 PM | Permalink

Reading Evening Post: 16/10/07

A GROUP of leading railway bosses says Crossrail should come to Reading to benefit the South East and not just London.

A group called Superlink is proposing £3 billion worth of additions to the £15 billion Crossrail scheme which as currently proposed “does so little for so few”.

They have put forward a five-point plan which includes the extension of Crossrail from Maidenhead to Reading – a move campaigned for by Reading’s MPs and the borough council.

The other four points, which they say will generate real benefits to train users and make the scheme more profitable, are:

* A short extension to Terminal Five at Heathrow, not just Terminal Four – and a short tunnel under Staines which would allow Crossrail to serve Woking, Basingstoke and Guildford relieving congestion at Waterloo.
* Trains from Northampton, Milton Keynes and Watford should also be diverted to the new Crossrail tunnels relieving congestion at Euston.
* A new branch line from Canary Wharf to Stansted Airport with through trains to Cambridge supporting the development of the airport as a real alternative to Heathrow.
* A branch from the eastern end of the line from Shenfield to Barking to support development in the Thames Gateway.

They also question the use of the Great Eastern Line for the Stratford to Shenfield section which they say will make existing services worse.

John Prideaux, former British rail senior executive and now Superlink chairman, said: “We applaud the City of London, Canary Wharf and BAA on agreeing with the Treasury and the London government to fund the Crossrail project.

“But given that complex funding agreements for other major rail projects, including the Jubilee Line extension and Channel Tunnel Rail links, had to be renegotiated before construction could actually proceed, we urge Crossrail promoters to improve the case for the project now.

"We need to get this once-in-a-lifetime project right.

“We remain concerned that so much money is being spent on a rail scheme that does so little for so few.

“Extending Crossrail to Basingstoke, Milton Keynes, Reading, Stansted, Cambridge, Ipswich and Southend would add about £3 billion to the cost but would be more than self-financing – generating much greater passenger revenues.

“We believe that now is the time to study these proposals in order to implement them following the construction of the core Crossrail tunnels.”

The Crossrail plan, first raised 18 years ago, involves redeveloping tunnels under London to improve the east-west rail link through the city providing a “Metro-style” high frequency service.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced the go-ahead for the Maidenhead to Shenfield scheme on Friday, October 5. The first trains are due to run on it in 2017.

See also:

Call to expand Crossrail's route

BBC News: 16 October 2007

Construction on Crossrail is due to start in 2010

A planned rail route through London should be expanded as it does "so little for so few", a group of railway managers has said.

The £16bn Crossrail plan was approved by the prime minister last week.

It will run from Maidenhead, Berkshire, through to Essex, but the Superlink group wants it to start in Reading and terminate at Stansted Airport.

Crossrail said Superlink's proposals had been analysed by experts before the route was finalised.

Construction of the route is expected to start in 2010 with trains running from about 2017.

It will provide 24 trains an hour into the heart of London from the east and west, improving rail links to the West End, the City and Docklands.

The proposed new line would also have spurs off to Heathrow and to south London.

But among changes Superlink would like to see are an extension as far west as Reading in Berkshire, a link to Heathrow's new Terminal 5, and a branch line from Canary Wharf in east London to Cambridge via Stansted Airport.

The group also wants to see extensions taking in Woking and Guildford in Surrey, Basingstoke in Hampshire, as well as links to Barking and Tilbury in Essex.

Superlink chairman John Prideaux - a former British Rail InterCity boss - said: "We remain concerned that so much money is being spent on a rail scheme that does so little for so few.

"Extending Crossrail to Basingstoke, Milton Keynes, Reading, Stansted, Cambridge, Ipswich and Southend would add about £3bn to the cost but would be more than self-financing - generating much greater passenger revenues."

A Crossrail spokeswoman said Superlink had promoted several alternatives to Crossrail for many years including the longer-distance "regional" services.

She said: "Compared to the Crossrail scheme Superlink's concept would be considerably more expensive, entail major environmental difficulties, offer fewer regeneration benefits and present considerable operational difficulties.

"It offers limited congestion relief to the most crowded sections of the existing Underground network.

"It was partly on this basis that the Crossrail scheme was submitted to Parliament in the Crossrail Bill in 2005 and it is this scheme that is now being taken forward, with full funding and full government support."

The government is providing a third of the money with the rest made up from borrowing against future fares and a levy on London business rates.

Posted on 01:02 PM | Permalink

Financial Times: October 16 2007
By Daniel Thomas

Network Rail is searching for a property partner for a £500m development project across several key stations in London and south-east England.

The rail operator is looking to establish its first 50-50 joint venture with a developer for eight of its station sites, which is part of a £4bn, 10-year overhaul of the station network.

The project is expected to attract interest from large property developers such as Land Securities, British Land and Hammerson, as well as brownfield site developers such as St Modwen given the nature of the land around the stations.

“This is the first deal of its kind for Network Rail,” said Mick Martin, director of commercial property.

“By creating a genuine partnership with our commercial partner, with each of us retaining a 50 per cent stake, we will maximise the value of the chosen sites and develop a sustainable income stream for improving the railway for years to come.”

Network Rail owns some attractive development sites owing to its stations’ locations.

The sites initially earmarked for development are Twickenham, Guildford, Wembley Cutting, Walthamstow Central, Enfield Town Station, Epsom, Maidstone East and Paddington Enterprise House. In total, there are about 20 acres of development land.

Iain Coucher, chief executive, said: “Together we will build a long-term relationship to unlock the potential of our many inner city sites.”

The rail operator has already signed development agreements for several London stations, including Euston and Victoria. In the past, Network Rail has signed development agreements for its stations rather than entering into shared ownership schemes.

Network Rail will contribute the land as its half of the deal, the value of which will be matched with cash by its development partner.

The rail operator said it would work closely with train operating companies to optimise benefits for passengers.

See also:

Network Rail looks for partner to develop brownfield sites

Builder & Engineer: 16 October 2007

Network Rail has begun its search for a development partner to work on improving its stations on brownfield sites across London and the South East.

The sites initially earmarked for development are Twickenham, Guildford, Wembley Cutting, Walthamstow Central, Enfield Town Station, Epsom, Maidstone East and Paddington Enterprise House.

Well connected to public transport, regeneration of these railway lands will support sustainable development. It will also create an additional revenue stream for future investment into the railways, which according to Network Rail will not place additional burdens on the fare- or the taxpayer.

Mick Martin, director of Commercial Property, Network Rail, said: "This is the first deal of its kind for Network Rail. By creating a genuine partnership with our commercial partner, with each of us retaining a 50% stake, we will maximise the value of the chosen sites and develop a sustainable income stream for improving the railway for years to come.

"We are determined to simplify the development process and reduce the cost and time taken to deliver successful and profitable developments. This joint venture will expedite real improvements to stations and facilities for local communities, and is the first of many changes we will make to improve value creation from our assets."

Posted on 12:52 PM | Permalink

AFP: 16 Oct 2007

NAIROBI — A South African-led consortium will invest 29 million dollars (20.4 million euros) in the 106-year-old Kenya-Uganda Railway by June next year to revitalise operations on the decrepit track.

A Kenyan girl looks at the Lunatic Express going from Mombasa to Kisumu, in 2001 near Nakuru

The Kenyan and Ugandan governments handed over the money-losing colonial-era railway to Rift Valley Railways Consortium (RVRC) under a 25-year concession last year, and the company will pay an initial five-million-dollar fee to Nairobi and Kampala plus 11.1 percent of gross revenue.

RVRC said in a statement that it had invested 11.5 million dollars since it took control of the facility in November and planned to inject an additional 17.5 million dollars by June 2008.

The cash surpasses five million dollars that the RVRC must invest annually over the next five years in infrastructure upgrades under the leasing agreement between the firm and the governments.

The consortrium expects to reap benefits from the recently expanded East African Community -- Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi -- and the creation of a customs union which opened up markets for 90 million people.

RVRC Chief Roy Puffett said 400 railway workers would be retrenched and paid off in full.

"It is important for the media to note that a bloated workforce is counterproductive to our efforts to restructure this organization thus the need to retrench and retain staff in core functions," Puffet said.

"We shall however be retaining the services for some of the retrenched workers as preferred suppliers as part of our commitment to boost local entrepreneurial capacities."

Conceived under the British mandate, the Kenya-Uganda railway began service on December 20, 1901 after more than a decade of planning and construction which was halted more than once by lion attacks on workers.

The line was widely known as the "Lunatic Express" or the "Iron Snake."

Derided by lawmakers in London for its enormous cost, the line runs some 900 kilometers (580 miles) from Kenya's Indian Ocean port of Mombasa, through Nairobi, and up the Rift Valley to Kisumu on the shores of Lake Victoria. From there, rail-steamer services go to Uganda, where a separate line runs.

Due to mounting financial woes, the East African Railways Corporation, as it was then known -- owned by Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania -- halted regional operations after the East African Community collapsed in 1977.

Its largest section was taken over by the government-owned Kenya Railways Corporation, but poor management, lack of maintenance and insufficient funds for the purchase of new engines forced it to cut back services.

RVRC is made up of Sheltam Rail Company of South Africa with a 61 percent share, two other South African firms, Comazar Limited and CDIO Institute for Africa Development Trust, with a total of 14 percent, a Kenyan company, Primefuels (Kenya) Limited, with 15 percent, and Mirambo Holdings of Tanzania with 10 percent.

The consortium's lead investor, the Sheltam Group of Companies, operates railways in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe while Comazar runs national railroads in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and northern Madagascar.

Posted on 11:57 AM | Permalink

O/23/10: 18th October 2007
RMT Circular No. MF/111/07
To: All Branches Region 7, South Wales & West

Dear Colleague,
At the close of nominations on 10th October 2007, only one candidate had sufficient nominations to stand in this election. Therefore, the Council of Executives declared that candidate, Bro Brendan Kelly of Bristol Rail Branch, elected to the position unopposed.

Yours sincerely,
Bob Crow, General Secretary

Posted on 06:30 PM | Permalink

International Construction Review: 15/10/2007

When, on 5th October, Crossrail chairman Douglas Oakervee announced that details of how the project would be funded would be included in the Government’s comprehensive spending review, it seemed the Treasury would disclose in the following week how the new £16 billion railway is to be financed.

But in the event, in the press summary of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s statement on the CSR running to 12 pages of small print, the Treasury mentioned Crossrail funding only in the context of an additional £15 billion to be made available for railway investment.

Even the Treasury’s full statement on the Pre-Budget Report and 2007 CSR said little more than that Crossrail would commence construction with grants from the Department for Transport of over £5 billion, the remainder being contributed through the Crossrail farebox (used to service debt) and the private sector.

The additional £15 billion for rail investment, the Department for Transport has explained, will be available to Network Rail over the five years 2009-14 following the doubling of current expenditure on upgrading the national rail network over the two financial years 2007-09.

The main pre-Budget report paper speaks of this £15 billion being used over a period of five years to enhance rail capacity, as forecast in the recent Transport White Paper.

This work will include provision for longer trains in and around major cities, the Thameslink upgrade in London and removal of pinch points on key inter-urban lines.

Funding for this programme however is quite separate from the capital sum being advanced to Crossrail.

But later that week Crossrail gave more information about its own funding arrangements. Project Bulletin 10 explained that the railway’s expected cost of up to £16 billion would be met by three parties, the Government, businesses and farepayers.

It confirmed what the Government had said about a grant of over £5 billion from the Department for Transport during Crossrail’s construction and gave a lot more background as to how the project is to be financed.

“Crossrail fare payers”, said the bulletin, “will ultimately contribute through projected operating surpluses used to service debt raised during construction by Transport for London and by Network Rail in respect of the works on the national rail network.

“Direct contributions have been agreed with some of the project’s key beneficiaries along the route. Canary Wharf Group has agreed to make a significant contribution to the project, and will in addition be responsible for delivering the Isle of Dogs station on advantageous terms.

“The City of London Corporation will make a significant contribution from its own funds and will assist in delivering additional voluntary contributions from the largest London businesses.

“The Government will offer the Corporation its support, where necessary, to deliver these additional contributions. BAA British Airport Authority, the company that owns and runs airports has also agreed in principle to make a financial contribution.

“The Government is separately publishing a White Paper setting out its proposal to introduce a power for local authorities to raise supplementary business rates to fund economic development.

“Following discussions with Government, the Mayor of London has indicated that, subject to appropriate consultation, he envisages using these powers to levy a supplement of two pence per pound of rateable value across London from April 2010, with relief for businesses with a rateable value below £50,000.”

This revenue, says the statement, will be used to service £3.5 billion debt raised by the Mayor during construction.

“The Mayor has further indicated that he envisages securing contributions from property developers, particularly those who develop in the vicinity of Crossrail stations, and that subject to any appropriate obligations such as Examination in Public, he expects to bring forward London Plan alterations to this effect.”

This last might well be a fruitful area for contributions, judging from the size of the increments in the value of sites around Jubilee Line stations reported by Transport for London a few years after the tube extension to Stratford had come into service.

Posted on 06:16 PM | Permalink

Birmingham Post: Sept 28, 2007
By John Duckers, Business Editor

Health and safety officials could be seeking a high profile "scalp" to drive home the implications of the new corporate manslaughter legislation which becomes law next year.

Darren Smith issued the warning as new figures revealed the West Midlands as being among the worst in Britain for workplace deaths showing a year-on-year increase of more than 100 per cent.

While national figures show workplace fatalities increased by 14 per cent, from 211 to 241 in the years 2006 to 2007, the number of incidents in the West Midlands rocketed from 16 to 33 over the same period.

Mr Smith, a risk and liability specialist who is a partner in the Birmingham office of international law firm Reed Smith Richards Butler, said: "I think the figures mean that the region will be under the spotlight once the new legislation is implemented in April next year.

"The authorities will almost certainly be looking to prosecute a firm with a very high profile to achieve the maximum impact following the implementation of the new law.

"Although the legislation targets companies rather than individual directors, it will come into play when there is evidence of 'organisational failure' on the part of senior management. Alarmingly for businesses, the scope for prosecution will be huge. The law covers everyone who might be owed a 'duty of care' by a company from employees and the occupiers of premises, to members of the public, such as rail passengers.

"This potentially will be a really big issue for the transport sector."

Recalling some of the major rail disasters of the recent past in which passengers have died, Mr Smith predicted that in future fatal incidents investigators will have to have one eye on how it occurred, and what steps might have been taken before the event which could have helped prevent it.

However the standard of proof is likely to be high, he says.

In order for a manslaughter prosecution to succeed it will have to be shown there was a 'gross breach' of management responsibility leading to the death, and strong evidence that standards fell far below industry standards and those of similar organisations.

Although individuals will be exempt from the corporate manslaughter charge, health and safety officials will still be able to draw on the existing health and safety at work regulations to prosecute executives and employees who are found to have contributed to a fatality.

Investigations will be wide ranging and will include enquiries into what senior managers were doing - and how much they knew that might have prevented the death - in the build up to any fatal incident.

The investigators will look at what decisions were taken and whether they were in any way reckless, whether profit was put before safety, and whether health and safety regulations were taken seriously, Mr Smith added.

If it transpires that decisions were taken which might feasibly have resulted in a death, then the firm will be in the firing line.

Although the penalties will vary according to the extent of the negligence involved, in severe cases they can be draconian. In the worst cases the law permits unlimited fines which could be calculated to put offending firms out of business. Remedial orders can also be issued, requiring convicted companies to rectify the management failures that led to any fatality.

Guilty firms will be unlikely to escape the glare of public scrutiny. The law can compel them to publish details of their convictions, and the amount they were fined, a measure intended to stimulate tough scrutiny of health and safety procedures by shareholders. Annual reports could also be used to shame offenders.

Mr Smith added: "There is clearly an opportunity for some high profile prosecutions of the kind we haven't seen before in this country.

"When you look at the worst incidents over the past few decades, no-one in authority was successfully prosecuted over the Herald of Free Enterprise sinking, or over the Piper Alpha oil platform fire, or any of the rail crashes.

"Under the existing legislation only twenty one individuals and eight organisations have ever been prosecuted for manslaughter. All of the convictions related to small ownermanaged businesses where it was obvious who had taken the decision that led to the deaths - very different to determining who took the decisions in a very large company."

The new law also closes a loophole that might have allowed directors to dump responsibility for health and safety onto a low ranking fall guy.

That would be seen as a positive decision by the board to try to evade responsibility, said Mr Smith. He says companies that take health and safety seriously have little to fear from the new legislation.

Posted on 06:05 PM | Permalink

Trades Union History Conference
Friday 23 Nov 2007
10:00 to 15:30
Organised by South West TUC
Location: UNISON Offices Emperor Way, Exeter Business Park, Exeter, EX1 3QS
Cost Free

The South West TUC is working with partners, including UWE, to develop a project around discovering, saving, storing and celebrating West Country trade union, radical and working class history. A range of initiatives is planned including this event for trade unionists and students of history wishing to know more.

Register interest or request more information
Please use this email form or contact:
South West TUC, Church House, Church Road, Bristol, BS34 7BD
Tel: 0117 947 0521
Email: southwest@tuc.org.uk

Download a flyer for more information
http://www.tuc.org.uk/extras/SWHistory.pdf

Posted on 02:35 PM | Permalink

The Voice: 15 October 2007
BY Janelle Oswald

It has all the elements of a thriller - conspiracy, child ghosts and a pile of dead bodies.

Beverley East's new book Reaper of Souls is a semi-fictional effort about The Kendal train crash, a significant historical event that has been the subject of hushed conversations in Jamaican circles for decades.

As midnight drew near on Sunday, September 1, 1957, a double-engine diesel train with 12 wooden coaches sped around a bend on a track near the sleepy town of Kendal, in the central parish of Manchester, Jamaica.

Church excursion

The train was on its way back to Kingston, where it had left that morning for a church excursion to Montego Bay on the west coast. There were nearly 1,600 persons on the train that night as it approached Kendal.

Many were members of the St. Anne's Roman Catholic Church. Others were known hooligans, who had hopped on-board for a free ride into town.

Residents of Kendal say that as the train approached their community, they heard three shrill whistle blasts, then a deafening rumble. The train derailed and plummeted over a precipice. Some of the coaches fell onto others packed with passengers, crushing them instantly.

The Kendal rail crash is the greatest transport disaster to have rocked the small island nation. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the tragic incident in which 254 people died and more than 700 were injured.

Beverley East lost 14 members of her family on that fateful train. She explores the possibilities of their lives and the effects their deaths had on the family in her latest offering.

Disasters

Forget Paddington, Potters Bar, Hatfield or Selby. The Kendal rail crash still ranks in the top 10 rail disasters of all time. At the time it happened, it was the second worst rail accident in the world and a nightmare for those who had to deal with its consequences.

The blanket of silence that has covered the details surrounding the crash has stained the Jamaican psyche over the past five decades. Yet despite unfriendly advice to let sleeping dogs lie - in this case humans - East has unveiled its horror sheet by sheet exposing 'the truth', in an attempt at bringing closure to the victims both dead and alive.

"The truth needs to be told, if not, how can there be peace?" she asked. "How can the dead rest? To this day there is still no marker at Kendal, which irritates me. The Jamaican government needs to acknowledge what took place and the people that died," she said. She added: "I find it harrowing that there are approximately 180 people lying in a mass grave in Kendal and no marker has been placed, which means people without any knowledge can casually walk over the dead." East explained that the first time she went to Kendal to lay flowers she had to calculate where the spot was by reading archive documents.

"It felt so wrong that I had to guess where my family and other victims were," she stated. The best-selling author of Finding Mr. Right claims power over what had eluded her for so long.

"Bodies belonging to my family were never found to bury, which is why my family, in particular my dad found it so hard to grieve. There wasn't any point for my dad to return to Jamaica. There was no nine-nights, or funerals. Nothing was organised because there were no bodies to bury," she lamented. The non-burial of victims claimed by the Kendal crash was not unique to the East family. Numerous other families suffered the same consequence, which is why many have argued that there was and still is a subconscious oath of silence.

Routes

Since a youngster, East could never understand why her family was petrified of traveling on trains. Customarily they would always split into groups and travel via different routes despite all going to the same destination.

"As soon as I knew about my family's skeleton, I was able to make sense of our family's traveling rules and why my father fell into sudden depression."

No longer seeing Jamaica in rose-tinted holiday glasses, East opted for trips to the library in order to research the crash rather than topping up her tan at the beach. "The more information I learnt, the more I became attached to the crash," she told The Voice. East discovered the most shocking revelations during her interviews with various survivors. The allegation of rape was often mentioned, because of the bandits on the train.

"My mind always wonders if my grandmother, aunts or female cousins fell prey to the sexual assaults that allegedly took place on the train but because they never lived to tell the tale; nobody including myself will ever know the truth."

As to the secrecy surrounding the crash, East feels the hush is due to the horrific nature of the accident. "The crash was swept under the carpet because the government was embarrassed. You know, when something is so bad, you just want it to go away and stay away. That's exactly what Jamaicans have done all these years.

Difficulties

"I believe people died a very slow and painful death. Kendal is in the middle of nowhere and like all isolated destinations, when it's dark it's pitch black! The emergency services would have had great difficulties responding to the crash. I feel more people would have survived if the incident took place in daylight and in a more active town such as Montego Bay or Kingston."

No conclusive reason has been given for the train's derailment. But conspiracy theories have remained rife and grown over the years. East said: "Some say the train was over-crowded, some say it was going too fast. Others say it crashed because a Roman Catholic priest who was on board condemned the train due to the criminal activities that were taking place. Who knows?"

However, an element that many who tell the tall tales about Kendal agree on is the numerous sightings of 'restless spirits' that have haunted the spot over the years.

East is a believer: "I do think there are hundreds of lost souls who died in the crash roaming Jamaica. In fact, while composing my novel I was befriended by many who assisted me in my research. I would often retire to bed exhausted and mentally blank but, when I rose the next day I was filled with knowledge about the crash and ready to write again. I know within my heart it was spirits helping me all the way, especially my relatives."

She told The Voice of a visit she made to Kendal with her sister to photograph the area. At the time there was nobody there except for both of them yet. Yet, when they looked at the pictures they developed there was a small girl or woman in the distance - on the track, dressed in a very old-fashioned style. "She had to be a ghost!

There was no other explanation," declared East. 'The ghost' from East's photograph has now found her way on to the front cover of the book. "There was no way I could leave her out. If I did I would be ignoring her all over again," stated East. Woven throughout the novel are various ghost characters because East strongly felt that her spiritual connection with the Kendal spirits were so pronounced within her research experience.

"My favourite chapter in the whole novel is Lucy, which is based on a female ghost. I dreamt her from the get go and I know she guided me all the way through my journey," said East.

Overwhelmed with the attention Reaper of Souls has gained including film and documentary offers, East cannot believe her penmanship regarding the crash is over. "I have finally given birth to my baby, albeit the labour took 25 years, beating my biological son. This book means so much to me and my family. I can't express my emotions into words. I had to fight so many obstacles and issues and I'm so grateful for everybody who has helped me on the way." She continued: "I wanted to make my novel exciting and I really wanted my characters to come alive especially because they are based on my own family members who died. I did not want my book to be sad or morbid because the crash was tragic enough." Now back in the USA, after living in Kingston for the past 4 years researching background information for her novel and interviewing survivors, East's future writing plans will be on immigration and a selection of short Caribbean stories.

"I am not picking up a pen for all of next year because I will be concentrating on developing Reaper of Souls to higher levels. I'm all played out," she laughs.

"But whatever I do I hope it will bring me as much joy as Reaper of Souls. May the Kendal dead finally rest in peace!"

Posted on 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

WSWS: 13 October 2007

Train drivers took strike action on Friday, affecting large parts of the German regional and suburban train network.

The train drivers’ trade union, the GDL (Gewerkschaft Deutscher Lokführer), called the strike on Thursday shortly before a high-level conference between union representatives and the management of Deutsche Bahn (Germany Railways—DB).

The high-level conference in Berlin was convened by the head of the DB’s supervisory board, Werner Müller. Müller was minister of economics in the previous German government led by Gerhard Schröder (Social Democratic Party) and is at present chief executive of the Ruhr Coal AG.

Taking part in the discussion were the chairman of the GDL, Manfred Schell; the chairman of DB, Hartmut Mehdorn; and the head of the Transnet railway workers’ union, Norbert Hansen; as well as Transport Undersecretary Jörg Hennerkes (SPD), on behalf of the German government. Müller declared that the intention of the meeting was not a continuation of the previous months of discussions, but rather a meeting aimed at arriving at “a fair solution.”

After three and a half hours of discussion, Mehdorn announced, “The DB executive committee will submit a new offer on Monday,” but gave no details of the offer. He also made no mention of whether the offer includes a separate contract for the GDL—one of the main demands of the union, which is also calling for a substantial increase in wages for its members.

GDL head Schell declared that if the offer on Monday were acceptable, the union would call off any further action until October 31. Due to the late announcement of the results of the conference, the union was not able to call off the strike action on Friday.

Deutsche Bahn declared its intention of taking legal action against the strike if it affected long-distance and goods traffic. One week ago, the Chemnitz Labour Court had banned the GDL from striking on long-distance routes, declaring that such action was “disproportionate.”

DB also has the firm backing of the transport minister, Wolfgang Tiefensee (SPD), and the trade union Transnet. Tiefensee rejected a renewed call from the GDL to mediate in the dispute.

On Thursday train drivers in the city of Frankfurt/Main (including Transnet members) expressed their dissatisfaction with the role played by their own union. One member was considering resignation: “I am on the verge of resigning from Transnet. I have paid dues for 30 years, but I do not have the impression that Hansen and the union leadership have the interests of the members at heart.”

When one train driver defended the deal accepted by Transnet for a 4.5 percent wage increase and accused the GDL of splitting the unity of railway workers, he was turned on by other train drivers, who declared his comments to be nonsensical and completely beside the point. “In reality it is Transnet which has split workers. The deal they made isn’t even enough to compensate for inflation.”

Formerly, railway workers were organised in a single large trade union. Although the train drivers were separately organised, wage negotiations had always been conducted collectively.

Another train driver reported that he had only just learned in discussions with colleagues of the low wages paid to young train drivers. “I am a civil servant, but it is completely impossible to live and bring up a family in Frankfurt on the basis of the wages paid to young co-workers.”

The driver reported that he had received a call a week ago telling him to take the place of a regular driver following the partial strike by the GDL last Friday. “I refused, however,” he said, and made clear that he is not the only employee who was not prepared to act as a strikebreaker.

According to the newspaper Die Welt, Deutsche Bahn reacted to the train drivers’ strikes last Friday with verbal notices of sackings and suspensions. Thomas Schutze, tariff advisor for the GDL, told the newspaper, “We know of cases where train drivers were sacked by the DB subsidiary Regio following the strike on Friday.”

According to the GDL, three rail workers employed by the Regio Berlin Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania were verbally given notices to quit last Friday because they refused to work on the basis of the company’s emergency timetable service—i.e., as strike breakers. Another driver in the GDL is alleged to have been suspended in the state of Baden-Württemberg.

In Berlin at the main stations of Alexanderplatz and Ostbahnhof a young train driver organised in the GDL declared that the motto for Deutsche Bahn was that “one could carry out strikes, as long as they did not do anyone any harm.” When economic reasons are given as the basis for banning a strike, “one could just as well pack up and abolish the unions.” He was dissatisfied with the way in which the GDL had failed to properly inform its members over what was being planned. Some important information had only been made public by the media. For this worker, the issue of overtime was central. Many drivers were working overtime without receiving any remuneration for the extra hours.

Tino Blossey and Melanie Kowalski, both in their early twenties, confirmed this. They were on the way to a local job centre to participate in a training scheme. Tino’s uncle is a train driver for Deutsche Bahn. “He informed me that there is a great deal of unpaid overtime and poor wages,” he said. “Despite their obligation to the workforce, the DB management refuses to pay up. My uncle had considered switching to the private rail company Inter-Connex, which pays the same low wages, but does not require its workers to work overtime.”

Most passers-by supported the demands raised by the train drivers. A young trainee working in a legal office agreed that the train drivers had a very responsible occupation. “They are perfectly entitled to strike, they have suffered cuts in the past.” She also declared her opposition to the court ban on previous strikes because they “violated the principle of autonomy in contract bargaining.”

Several passers-by also referred to the tremendous gulf between the huge sums paid to members of the railway’s executive committees and those paid to train drivers. In 2006, Mehdorn received 3.18 million euros, an increase of 100 percent compared to the year before. One woman said she could see the big luxury cars being driven by members of the DB management. For train drivers, who bore great responsibility, on the other hand, “their wages are stagnating, as are wages in general during the last 10 years.”

An elderly passer-by finally summed it up: “Mehdorn makes too much money, the others too little.”

Posted on 10:56 AM | Permalink

Belfast Telegraph: October 13, 2007

Thousands of rail commuters in the south of the country will face disruption, as Inspection and maintenance staff are preparing to carry out a one day stoppage in a dispute over use of contract labour by Iarnrod Eireann (Irish Railways).

SIPTU and the NBRU have served strike notice, to take effect at midnight on Sunday, which will hit train services in Cork, Mallow, Tralee and Limerick.

SIPTU Branch Secretary Willie Noone fears that the employment conditions of his members will be eroded over time if the practice of hiring contract workers to do their work continues.

"We have asked the company to stop those practices and allow us to enter discussions on this - but unfortunately for whatever reason they are saying they will not go back on their decision," he said

See also:

Rail workers to stage 24-hour strike

Irish Times:12/10/2007

Rail workers in the south west are to stage a 24-hour strike on Monday next in protest at changes to work practices at Iarnród Eireann.

The move by line inspection and maintenance staff at the company is likely to cause major disruption to train services in Cork, Mallow, Tralee and Limerick.

Siptu, which represents the workers, served Iarnród Eireann with notice of industrial action which it said would take effect from midnight on Sunday until midnight Monday in the south west region.

The union said: "Rail workers are being forced to take industrial action because management is continuing to forge ahead with plans which undermine existing working conditions without agreement".

SIPTU branch organiser Willie Noone said: "Management is progressively introducing a five-day week spread over seven days for certain categories of workers and utilising contract workers to carry out essential work which should be done by our members".

"As no resolution could be found, after exhaustive negotiations our members had no option but to serve notice of industrial action on September 7th", he said.

Mr Noone said the staff regretted any inconvenience their action might cause the travelling public and remain available for talks over the week-end in an effort to resolve the issue in dispute.

Commuters face chaos with threat of rail strike

Irish Examiner: 13 October 2007
By Stephen Rogers

THOUSANDS of rail commuters could face travel chaos on Monday as Irish Rail staff threaten to grind all services into and throughout Munster to a halt in a 24-hour strike.

If the action by up to 500 workers goes ahead as proposed by SIPTU and the National Bus and Rail Union, it would mean Irish Rail cannot guarantee the hourly Cork-Dublin services, along with services from Ennis, Limerick and Tralee to Dublin, Tralee to Cork and all Cork commuter services.

The dispute surrounds claims by the rail unions over the terms and conditions of permanent-way staff who look after line inspection and maintenance.

The workers are claiming that, contrary to agreements put in place with the company in 2000, they are not being given access to premium night-time and weekend shifts because those are being given to cheaper labour.

“Rail workers are being forced to take industrial action because management is continuing to forge ahead with plans which undermine existing working conditions without agreement,” said SIPTU Branch Organiser Willie Noone.

“Management is progressively introducing a five-day week spread over seven days for certain categories of workers and utilising contract workers to carry out essential work which should be done by our members,” he said.

However, the company claims it is following all the correct procedures, that the staff are currently employed on a Monday to Friday basis and have no right to claim priority for the other shifts.

The unions balloted their members for strike more than a month ago and set midnight Sunday as the date for the action.

Both sides have endured marathon talks in the Labour Relations Commission.

Tomorrow, the unions will meet with their members to decide whether they will forgo the strike and take the matter to the Labour Court in a week’s time.

The company is hopeful that the unions will opt to defer the disruptive action to see if third parties can find a resolution.

Posted on 10:46 AM | Permalink

RMT Circular No: IR/0238/07: 10 October 2007

PAY ERRORS - TAX ON COMPANY VEHICLES - PTR&R ARRANGEMENTS - CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR ARRANGEMENTS 2007

Dear colleague,

(BR4/9/16)

Your union has been complaining for some time to Network Rail about the amount of pay errors our members are suffering. The matter was discussed at a National Maintenance Council meeting on 28th September. Our worst fears were confirmed when the company told us that there have been over 8,000 pay errors in the past year, which means that over 55% of maintenance staff had suffered from pay problems.

The company identified a number of causes

* missing timesheets
* errors in completing timesheets
* complex number of terms and conditions
* at least 36 different types of timesheets
* inputting errors at Manchester,
* different days of week for completing timesheets
* lack of administrative support

Your union has expressed its shocked at the scale of the problems and has been scathing in our criticisms. In response, the company identified a number of possible solutions which it believes would considerably reduce the number of pay errors and go a long way to solving the problems.

* Introduction of 46 new admin posts in the maintenance areas to support the payroll system
* Trialling of a new single timesheet for all maintenance workers
* Introduction of new system for identifying timesheets to ensure none go missing when sent to Manchester
* Introducing a uniform day for all employees to complete the timesheet, which is Friday of each week
* Briefings and information on completing timesheets for members

The company asked for union support for the proposed changes. We sought and were given assurances that none of the changes proposed would change terms and conditions which are being separately discussed.

In responding, your union agreed to trialling the new timesheets in Scotland but only following consultation with our Scottish representatives. However, before we accepted the whole proposal, we informed the company that we would seek the views of our representatives particularly about the introduction of a uniform day for completing timesheets.

Currently, timesheets are completed on any day from Friday to Monday and sent to Manchester on Monday. In future, timesheets would have to be completed by Friday with the first turn being a Friday and last turn being a Thursday, but only for timesheet completion. This will not change the roster week for employees. Currently, former First Engineering and Carillion workers have a roster week that starts on a Friday and finishes on Thursday.

Network Rail management assure us that by introducing all these measures together they will reduce pay errors.

I would like to have your views, particularly about the uniform day for completing timesheets.

TAX ON COMPANY VEHICLES (BR5/10/5)

Network Rail has informed your union that since the introduction of the new tax regime it has been in discussions with the Inland Revenue over complying with the new regulations. In a nut shell, management say that they need to be able to prove to the tax authorities that the pooled vehicles used by the majority of maintenance staff are not being used for personal use. They have concerns that the driving mileage books are not being completed properly and unless the system is improved individuals who drive the vehicles could face paying more tax.

One solution suggested was to put electronic tracking devices in the vehicles. We have raised serious concerns about such a solution and have asked Network Rail to have a re-think. In the meantime, the company stated that it will need to ensure that employees complete the mileage books correctly. Members can expect the company to be tougher on completing the books in the future.

PTR&R ARRANGEMENTS (BR5/16/4)

Network Rail has made a proposal to alter the PTR&R arrangements for maintenance. The company would like to replace the current Sectional D section of the agreement and has made a proposal which has been sent out to area council representatives for their comments. A meeting of representatives is to be held at the end of October with the General Grades Committee to discuss the matter.

The union has a clear policy to fight any erosion of the PTR&R and when we meet our representatives we will discuss how we can best pursue our policy.

The issue was raised by management at the National Maintenance Council meeting on 28th September 2007, but I have made it clear to the company that we will not discuss its proposals further until we have met with our representatives.

CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR ARRANGEMENTS 2007 (BR4/7/2)

Network Rail has written to the union with proposals which are identical to arrangements agreed last year. The matter has been place before GGC for consideration.

I will keep you advised of developments on all the above matters in due course.

Yours sincerely

Bob Crow
General Secretary

Posted on 08:16 PM | Permalink

Transport Briefing: 09/10/07

A nationwide, multi-billion pound project to roll-out the European Rail Traffic Management System across the UK railway network is due to begin in 2011, according to a newly published government strategy document.

The ERTMS National Implementation Plan has been submitted to the European Commission to comply with a series of EU railway directives and commits the UK to installing the next-generation system on 72% of the National Rail network between now and 2038.

ERTMS is currently being trialled on the Cambrian Line in Wales but once adopted on busier routes would have the potential to increase line capacity for a relatively modest investment in infrastructure. The technology would replace conventional trackside signals with high-tech beacons which would communicate with in-cab equipment, allowing trains to safely travel more closely together and potentially at higher speeds.

Under the government’s rail strategy, new trains will be ordered with ERTMS capability and lineside signaling infrastructure will by upgraded to the new technology when renewals are due.

New rolling stock, including the recently approved Thameslink Programme fleet, Crossrail trains and Intercity Express carriages will be fitted with ERTMS equipment. The Brighton Main Line is scheduled to carry the first ERTMS-ready trains from 2011 although trackside infrastructure is not due to be ready until 2021 at the earliest.

The first major infrastructure implementation is due to start in 2017 on the Great Western route, although the Midland Main Line is expected to be the first inter-city route to fully implement ERTMS, some time between 2021 and 2023. The Department for Transport expects the majority of ERTMS work on the Great Western and East Coast Main Lines to be complete by 2025, although infrastructure work may drag on for another decade.

Passengers using the Channel Tunnel Rail Link are expected to be among the later beneficiaries of the ERTMS upgrade with infrastructure fitment scheduled to take place between 2038 and 2042 and rolling stock not expected to support the technology until 2025 at the earliest. The DfT says it remains in discussion with the French Transport Ministry about plans to replace the existing Eurostar trains, which will dictate exactly when High Speed 1 gets the new signalling technology.

The data used to produce the implementation document was collected by Network Rail, rolling stock leasing company HSBC Rail, the Department for Transport and the Association for Train Operating Companies.

Posted on 07:49 AM | Permalink

The Guardian: October 10, 2007
Mark Milner, industrial editor

Britain's transport industry yesterday received a boost when the chancellor promised to extend inflation beating funding arrangements until 2018.

Emphasising the need for long term investment in Britain's transport infrastructure, Alistair Darling said he was extending the guideline that government funding should rise by 2.25% a year above inflation until 2018.

He told the House of Commons: "In the past we paid a heavy price as a country for failing to invest when it was necessary, particularly on transport. We are putting that right."

Business and motoring organisations responded with caution and some criticism, with calls for further increases in spending, especially on roads.

As well as extending the funding guideline by an extra four years, Mr Darling said that investment on transport would rise to £14.5bn a year by 2010.

He said the cash would provide additional funding for strategic road schemes such as the widening of the M1 and M25 as well as providing £1.3bn a year to improve local and regional transport networks.

The amount being spent on upgrading the rail network would double over the next two years, ahead of a further £15bn over the following five years. The transport funding programme also provides for the construction of the £16bn trans-London railway link, Crossrail, which was given the go-ahead by Gordon Brown, last week.

Yesterday Mr Darling, a former transport secretary, described Crossrail as "the largest transport project since the Channel Tunnel and essential for the competitiveness of not just the City of London but for the whole country."

Other projects include modernisation of the Thameslink line, the provision of an additional 1,300 rail carriages to help cut overcrowding, an extensive programme of station modernisations and more investment in freight.

Ruth Kelly, the transport secretary, welcomed Mr Darling's statement. "This settlement confirms that investment in public transport will continue to grow in real terms, bringing sustained improvements for the travelling public. The historic commitment to deliver Crossrail will support Britain's economic growth and relieve the pressure on the tube by carrying around 200 million passengers a year."

Ms Kelly also welcomed the extension of concessionary fares which will allow residents aged 60 and over, as well as eligible disabled people, free off-peak bus travel in England.

Professor David Begg, a former government adviser on transport, said it was "very encouraging" that Mr Darling had chosen to extend the period covered by the funding guidelines until 2018. "Normally chancellors are reluctant to make that kind of long term commitment. It is so important, more so for transport than other sectors, because of the length of time it takes to undertake projects.

Prof Begg said that spending on transport in Britain had lagged behind other European countries. "We are playing catch-up and it's good the government is prepared to ensure there is funding for that process."

Mr Darling's transport plans came under criticism from the British Chambers of Commerce. Director general David Frost said: "The chancellor's report was a disappointment for British businesses which are crying out for investment in the country's struggling transport infrastructure. The £14.5bn of new investment announced is a smokescreen, covering only a series of already announced projects.

"We would have hoped for a greater injection of funds to cover the wider improvements that are so desperately needed. This is simply not good enough, and much more will be needed if the UK is to keep pace with global competitiveness.

"The white paper on supplementary business rates (SBR), published alongside today's statements, indicates that the government wants to tax businesses further to bridge the gap in transport spending. It is unacceptable that businesses should be subjected to an SBR for this purpose."

Edmund King, the executive director of the RAC Foundation, said any increase in spending was welcomed but added: "We need to see a greater proportion spent on roads. The vast majority of trips are by road and the motorist already pays more than twice as much in motoring taxes each year as the total transport budget. The motorist will view the recent fuel duty increase and proposals for yet more increases over the next two years as money for nothing unless the road infrastructure is improved."

Network Rail, which is drawing up its strategic business plan, said it welcomed any additional investment in the rail network. The not-for-dividend organisation which is responsible for Britain's rail infrastructure argues that while it will be able to reduce the costs of maintaining the existing network, more funds are needed to cope with the projected expansion of rail use.

See also:

Darling safeguards transport budget rises until 2019

Transport Briefing: 10/10/07

The Department for Transport has survived yesterday’s (9 October) Comprehensive Spending Review with an above-inflation three-year settlement that will see the DfT's programme budget increase by an average of 2.25% each year to reach £14.5bn a year by 2010.

Despite experts predicting that transport would feel the squeeze as the Chancellor of the Exchequer responded to a slowdown in the UK economy and an increase in government borrowing, Alistair Darling said that he would continue to fund the 2.25% annual real term increase for the Department, set out in the 2004 Spending Review, for another three years. Additionally, he said he would specify in the government's Long Term Funding Guideline that this rate be maintained until 2019, allowing the DfT to work to a pre-agreed budget for the next decade. On this basis, by 2018 UK transport spending is on course to double in real terms over a 20 year period.

The additional money will help the government contribute more than £5bn to the cost of the London Crossrail project as well as funding the Thameslink upgrade programme, Reading station redevelopment and 1,300 additional carriages (Transport Briefing 24/07/07). Each year £200m will be provided to help local authorities implement the enhanced national concessionary travel scheme which will entitle everyone in England aged 60 and over to free off-peak bus travel anywhere in the country from 1 April 2008.

Money will also be released for key road schemes, such as widening the M1 and M25 motorways. The government says this will support Sir Rod Eddington’s three recommended strategic economic priorities for transport policy of investing in congested and growing city catchments, key inter-urban corridors and key international gateways. The Transport Innovation Fund will be made available, as previously announced, to support local road pricing schemes to tackle congestion alongside public transport investment.

Both Network Rail and the Highways Agency will be expected to improve efficiency to release additional cash to invest in transport enhancements. Network Rail will be given further cost efficiency targets for the period 2009-14 on top of the 31% target that it is required to achieve by 2009 while improved contractual arrangements by the Highways Agency are expected to release £144m by 2011.

Secretary of State for Transport, Ruth Kelly, said: “This settlement confirms that investment in public transport will continue to grow in real terms bringing sustained improvements for the travelling public. The historic commitment to deliver Crossrail will support Britain’s economic growth and relieve the pressure on the Tube by carrying around 200m passengers a year. The extension of concessionary fares, the focus on local and regional transport as well as the increased capacity on the rail network will bring tangible improvements to passengers’ journeys."

Edmund King, executive director of the RAC Foundation, said: "While any increase in transport spending is welcome, we need to see a greater proportion spent on roads. The vast majority of trips are by road and the motorist already pays more than twice as much in motoring taxes each year than the total transport budget. The motorist will view the recent fuel duty increase and proposals for yet more increases over the next two years as money for nothing unless the road infrastructure is improved."

Posted on 07:37 AM | Permalink

Deutsche Welle: 10.10.2007

Germany's Transport Minister wants to stop spending money on provincial stations with few passengers. Local politicians say that could leave passengers who live outside cities permanently cut off.

Lützow station - provincial rail stations could become an endangered species

The Financial Times Germany reported on Tuesday that Germany's Social Democratic Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee has drawn up a position paper calling for drastic cuts in government subsidies stations receive.

The report says the plan involves discontinuing all subsidies for maintenance and improvements to stations where fewer than 100 people get on or off trains per day.

The station closure plan comes as Tiefensee readies legislation, to be put forth in 2008, that would privatise parts of Germany's national rail system.

Off the Beaten Track

Wolfgang Tiefensee is under fire for the plan

Local politicians, already wary of what privatisation could mean for their constituencies, are up in arms about proposed cuts.

"According to Tiefensee's criteria, we'd have to shut 53 percent of stations in our region," the transportation minister of Saxony-Anhalt, Karl-Heinz Daehre, told the Financial Times. "His plans are beyond discussion for Germany's federal states."

Advocacy groups also lambasted the plans, particularly reported that subsidies would be discontinued for stations with "complicated platforms," that is, containing ramps and other modifications for disabled passengers, if they did not meet a workday minimum of 1,000 passengers.

"Ending subsidies would further reduce the already insufficient number of disabled-friendly stations," the managing director of the German Welfare Association (Deutscher Wohlfahrtsverband), Ulrich Schneider, told the DPA news agency. Referring to Germany's ageing population, he added: "Tiefensee is showing that he's out of touch with demographic developments."

However, the transport minister's office has denied that part of the report, calling it "unfounded."

Even at the federal level Teifensee's plans have provoked ire.

"It's not very clever to connect this decision with the privatisation of the German railways," the deputy head of the conservative parliamentary group, Hans-Peter Freidrich, told the AP news agency.

Posted on 07:19 AM | Permalink

Aberdeen Evening Express: 08 October 2007

Offshore union the Offshore Industries Liason Committee is heading for a merger with the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union.

Delegates of the OILC voted unanimously to ballot members on the merger at their national conference in Aberdeen.

General secretary Jake Molloy said the vote had been taken after a thorough two-hour debate.

It is proposed the OILC will become the offshore energy section of the RMT.

The merger could be concluded by January 1.

Posted on 08:31 PM | Permalink

TUAEUC: October 9, 2007

Trade Unionists Against the EU Constitution demanded a referendum on the issue today, in line with TUC policy, after MPs declared that the new version of the treaty is "substantially equivalent" to one thrown out by Dutch and French voters in 2005.

The Labour-dominated Parliamentary European scrutiny committee said it was "misleading" for the government to claim that the so-called Reform Treaty was not the same as the constitution.

RMT general secretary Bob Crow said that the MPs had made clear what everybody knew already and it was time the government came clean and delivered the referendum it promised two years ago.

“The committee has revealed that the text was drafted in secret and only made available to governments hours before being agreed back in June.

“The only that has changed is removing the word constitution and references to the flag and anthem, which will clearly remain in place anyway.

“If our new ‘listening’ government does not give us a vote, its credibility will be in tatters,” the TUAEUC chair said.

The scrutiny committee's chair, Labour MP Michael Connarty, also said that the UK's supposed safeguards and red lines on the revised EU Constitution were “not sustainable” as the European Court of Justice would challenge them “bit by bit”.

ends

For more information contact Brian Denny on 07903 376 303 or Doug Nicholls 07966277329

Posted on 06:38 PM | Permalink

BBC News: 8 October 2007

A man whose partner and daughter were killed in the Ufton Nervet rail crash has told an inquest of the moment he realised the pair were on the train.

Anjanette Rossi, 38, and Louella Main, nine, were among seven people killed in the crash on a level-crossing near Ufton Nervet, Berkshire, in 2004.

David Main told the jury inquest in Slough how the pair had been shopping and missed their first train home.

He was waiting at Newbury station but could not get hold of them by phone.

The inquest began on Monday morning after a delay of nearly three years while Mr Main, of Speen, Berkshire, successfully fought for legal aid.

Train driver Stanley Martin, 54, of Torquay in Devon, and five passengers died when the high-speed London Paddington to Plymouth train hit motorist Brian Drysdale's car on the level-crossing at 100mph.

All eight carriages derailed in the crash on 6 November 2004.

"I knew something was wrong and I tried to ring Anjanette but she didn't answer" - David Main

Mr Main told the inquest he had dropped Ms Rossi and his daughter at Newbury station on the day of the crash so they could spend the day shopping in Reading.

He said: "When Anjanette phoned and said she had missed the train, I said 'I will come and pick you up' and she said 'No, we enjoy the train - we will have a coffee'."

He told the inquest he then waited with his son to collect them at Newbury station.

He said he saw a train coming the other way, which people were getting off, and it was announced there had been an incident.

"Then I knew something was wrong and I tried to ring Anjanette but she didn't answer. Then I knew something was seriously wrong."

Close to tears

The inquest heard how he called a friend to pick his son up and he went straight to the police station.

Close to tears, he said: "I said I knew there had been a train crash and I knew Anjanette was on it."

The five passengers who died were: Mr Main's partner Anjanette Rossi, 38, of Speen, Berkshire, and daughter Louella Main, nine; Charlie Matthews, 72, of Warminster, Wiltshire; Barry Strevens, 55, of Wells, Somerset; and Emily Webster, 14.

Mr Drysdale, who was 48 and from Reading, also died.

The inquest continues.

See also:

Rail victim 'enjoyed' crash video

BBC News: 10 October 2007,

The inquest heard Brian Drysdale had no 'natural disease or illness'

A man who was killed when a high-speed train hit his car in 2004 "enjoyed" watching a video of a 2001 rail disaster, a jury inquest has heard.

The Selby rail video told the story of how a Land Rover rolled onto the tracks derailing a high speed train.

A workmate told the inquest at Slough that Bryan Drysdale, 48, talked about the programme two weeks before he died.

Mr Drysdale and six others were killed in the train crash at a level crossing near Ufton Nervet in Berkshire.

He made reference to watching that documentary. He said he had really enjoyed it
Sean Paterson

"In hindsight about two weeks before there was a documentary on the TV about the guy who fell asleep in the Land Rover and rolled down the bank," said Sean Paterson who worked with Mr Drysdale.

"He made reference to watching that documentary. He said he had really enjoyed it."

Mr Paterson also said that Mr Drysdale had complained that his manager Laurent Beaunier "picked on him".

The inquest heard that Mr Drysdale filed a complaint with Thames Valley Police four days before the train crash, claiming that Mr Beaunier had been around his house "making threats towards him".

But Mr Beaunier told the court this came as a shock to him because he did not know where Mr Drysdale lived.

"He didn't give me any signs he was troubled by me," he said.

Toxicology tests

The inquest was also told that Mr Drysdale was a heavy drinker who took cannabis and ecstasy.

However toxicology tests found no presence of drink or drugs in his body.

Forensic pathologist Dr Nathaniel Carey told the inquest jury that Mr Drysdale died from multiple injuries sustained when the high-speed First Great Western London Paddington to Plymouth service collided with his Mazda car.

He said there was no natural disease or illness present that could have contributed.

The inquest continues.

Posted on 07:14 AM | Permalink

AFX News: 10.08.07

LONDON - SNCF trade unions Sud-Rail, FGAAC and FO called for an open-ended strike starting Oct 18 in a railworkers' meeting today.

The request was in contrast to calls by major trade unions CGT, CFDT, Unsa, CFTC and CFE-CGC for a 24-hour strike.

No agreement was reached, union sources said.

Strike action has been sparked by planned government reforms of the SNCF's pension scheme and issues relating to freight and employment.

Posted on 11:37 PM | Permalink

Sydney Morning Herald: October 8, 2007

Rail buffs are speculating Australian company Toll Holdings Ltd is finding New Zealand too hard a place to make a dollar and may sell its rail business to the government.

"Green and yellow locomotives might not be seen for much longer," editor Graeme Carter said in the latest New Zealand Railway Observer magazine.

However, Toll NZ is not for turning.

Toll NZ spokeswoman Sue Foley said Toll NZ was absolutely committed to rail in New Zealand and freight was increasing on a number of its services.

She said the article's claim that Toll had not honoured its contractual obligations in the National Rail Access Agreement were not correct. Toll had spent the $100 million it agreed to invest in rail.

The article pushes the idea that the government should have bought the rail operator as well as the tracks in the interests of the national economy in much the same way that the government rescued Air New Zealand.

It is now four years since the government bought the rail network back but it has not been able to agree long term access fees to it with Toll NZ and this is holding up investment in new locomotives.

Mr Carter said the government was proving to be a hard player on the access issue and Toll was not getting its own way.

Further, Toll NZ did not have a harmonious relationship with the government track operator Ontrack. At the same time parent Toll Holdings was focusing on Asia.

"Toll Holdings could be a keen seller," he said.

The Government was preparing to prop up a collapsing Tranz Rail back in 2003 when Rail America and then Toll Holdings emerged as bidders.

Toll NZ ended up gaining control of the company and is currently in the process of moving to 100 percent ownership.

Toll Holdings says in its latest annual report that its results in New Zealand were on target even though full-year earnings were down on a year ago.

It says there has been an ongoing and positive dialogue with the New Zealand Crown in recent months aimed at developing a suitable model to ensure the viability of rail in New Zealand.

"We believe more than ever before, the future of rail in New Zealand depends on the Crown's ability and willingness to work with the private sector, to create improved infrastructure and to drive rolling stock upgrades".

Toll Holdings was hopeful a resolution was "only a matter of months away", the annual report says.

Posted on 10:45 PM | Permalink

Financial Times: October 7 2007
By Tom Mitchell and Robin Kwong in Hong Kong

Minority shareholders in Hong Kong’s largest rail group will vote tomorrow on a controversial merger plan that critics say puts government policy objectives ahead of investor interests.

Under a proposal announced last year, MTR Corporation, 75 per cent held by the government, would pay HK$49.5bn ($6.4bn) – including an initial HK$12bn followed by HK$750m a year for 50 years – to lease and operate the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation’s rail and property assets.

MTR operates Hong Kong’s underground rail system and airport express line. KCRC, which is still wholly government-owned, runs commuter rail lines connec- ting population centres in Hong Kong’s northern New Territories district to urban areas, and cross-border ser- vices into China.

As part of the deal, MTR would surrender its right to set fares – an important selling point when the government floated the company on the Hong Kong stock exchange – and agree to a regulated “fare adjustment mechanism”.

Last week Institutional Shareholder Services, an independent advisory company, recommended that minorities vote against the proposal, noting that “fare autonomy was a key aspect of MTR’s original long-term operating agreement with the government.”

David Webb, an independent investor and corporate governance activist, has also railed against the proposal.

He wrote recently: “While everyone recognises the economic efficiencies which could be achieved from combining the railway operations in a sensible way, shareholders of MTRC should not have to take a loss to make it happen.

“We are left with no choice but to vote it down.”

The government counters that efficiency and earning gains from combining the two companies under one management system would more than compensate MTR for the surrender of its fare autonomy.

It also says that the proposed fare adjustment mechanism would “depoliticise” fare changes and also have resulted in higher fares than the MTR had freely implemented since it began operations in 1984. A government spokesman last week said it would be inappropriate to further comment as it is a connected party in the deal.

MTRC said independent financial advisers had found the deal “in the interest of MTRC shareholders”.

The controversy highlights how the Hong Kong government’s policy priorities have shifted in the 10 years since it first proposed the partial privatisation of MTR. As outlined by Donald Tsang – Hong Kong’s then financial secretary and now chief executive – the government’s sale of a 25 per cent stake in MTR was the first in a potential series of privatisations of both the rail operator and other public assets, including Hong Kong International Airport.

Christine Loh, who was a member of Hong Kong’s legislature at the time and now runs Civic Exchange, a public policy think-tank, said: “1999 was a dreadful year at the depths of the [Asian financial crisis]. At the time [the government] said ‘Oh no, what can we sell? We’re going to run out of money’.”

With Hong Kong’s robust economic recovery now in its fourth year, the government is now more concerned about closing the city’s yawning wealth gap and lowering transportation costs for the working poor.

Posted on 09:49 PM | Permalink

South Wales Evening Post: 28 September 2007

A Swansea man who was crushed between two railway carriages in Carmarthen died by accident, an inquest has heard.

Station guard Dilwyn Davies, aged 60, of Ddol Road, Dunvant, was killed while working at Gwili Heritage Railway in Bronwydd.

An inquest heard how, on July 19, 2006, Mr Davies was involved in the coupling of two shunting coaches at the tourist railway when the accident occurred.

Graham Powell was driving the locomotive at the time of accident. He gave evidence at the inquest.

"I had agreed with my colleague Barry Frobel that we should add another carriage to the engine because it was going to be a busy day," he said.

"He had agreed to be my shunter, which meant he would guide the two carriages together.

"I believe I saw Barry give me the 'buffer up' signal to move towards the carriages. I thought Barry would do the linking up.

"I didn't expect Mr Davies to take part. There was no prior arrangement for him to do so.

"I heard Barry shout 'stop stop stop'. Somebody also shouted 'Dil's in there - he's trapped.'

"I tried to move away but couldn't because the carriages had locked together.

"I had to get out of the train and run to help Barry pull a chain to release the carriages.

"I know now that by the time I moved off again it was too late."

Coroner John Owen said: "Mr Davies's death was the unintended consequence of an intended action. He suffered crushing to the abdomen and chest after he was trapped between two carriages of a steam locomotive."

A jury of nine agreed on a verdict of accidental death caused by multiple injuries as a result of a railway accident.

Posted on 05:39 PM | Permalink

AFX News: 10.07.07

BERLIN - German train drivers' union GdL is considering strike action against Deutsche Bahn AG in the future without giving warning in advance, Welt am Sonntag reported, without citing sources.

Last Friday, GdL launched a strike from 8.00 to 11.00 am CET, which disrupted commuter traffic in many major German cities, after giving a warning on Thursday.

GdL said it will cease any further strikes until at least Tuesday.

See also:

Deutsche Bahn denies there are plans to shut down less frequented lines

FRANKFURT (Thomson Financial) - Deutsche Bahn AG said there are no plans to shut down some less frequented train lines, denying earlier press reports.

Financial Times Deutschland earlier reported that the German government plans to discourage German states from investing in rail connections that are only sparsely used, citing an excerpt of a draft paper for the privatisation of Deutsche Bahn obtained by the newspaper.

'We do not have a shut-down program and there will also in the future be no such plans,' said Deutsche Bahn's head of infrastructure Stefan Garber in a statement.

The state-owned rail operator's goal is to increase train traffic, he said.

Deutsche Bahn also pointed out that it is prohibited by law from shutting down parts of its infrastructure. Such a move would have to be pushed through by the Federal Rail Department.

Separately, a spokesman for the Federal Transport Ministry said the newspaper report is baseless.

'It is not and was never the federal government's intention to reduce funds for less used rail lines,' he said.

Posted on 05:30 PM | Permalink

AGI: 5 Oct. 2007

Berlin - A three-hour strike by engine drivers, from 8 to 11 this morning, almost entirely paralyzed railway traffic across the entire country.

German train drivers called for German government to intervene in the pay dispute and mediate after yesterday's strike with threats of more to come

Deutsche Bahn (German railways) had asked the administrative court of Chemnitz to prohibit the strike, but judges only upheld some of their requests.

At 2 am today the tribunal authorized the suspension of engine drivers' work only at a regional level, excluding long-distance trains and merchandise traffic. The Deutsche Bahn has said that during the strike two thirds of 750 long-distance trains continued running and half of the 19,000 trains at the regional level.

In Frankfurt railway workers forced engine drivers and the head of their union, Manfred Schell, to leave the station area. Strikers from the GDL union gave into intimidation after being threatened with police intervention.

For weeks a very tough struggle has been underway between the Deutsche Bahn and the GDL, which is demanding a contract for engine drivers separate from the one already signed by other railway workers, who received a 4.5pct increase. Engine drivers, on the other hand, are demanding a rise of up to 31pct and want an acknowledgement of their professionalism similar to that for Lufthansa pilots, who have a separate contract compared with the rest of company personnel.

German engine drivers also complain of receiving a salary much lower than the duties they carry out should require them to have. An engine driver receives a little over 2,000 euros per month and for the rest of his life cannot expect any increase in salary apart from annual pay rises. A survey released yesterday showed that almost three-quarters of Germans sympathize with the demands make by engine drivers.

Posted on 01:39 PM | Permalink

Bloomberg: Oct. 5
By Karin Matussek and Jeremy van Loon

Deutsche Bahn AG train drivers went on a three-hour strike today, disrupting regional rail travel across Germany, to press their demands for higher pay.

The German train drivers union began its strike on the morning of Friday, Oct. 5. Here a Deutsche Bahn train driver peers out of his window at Cologne's main train station.

Commuter rail services were officially scheduled to be affected until 11 a.m. local time and Deutsche Bahn, which operates Europe's largest track network, has implemented a special train schedule for the entire day to minimize effects on customers. The company expects about half of its 19,000 regional trains to run, Berlin-based Deutsche Bahn said on its Web site.

"Deutsche Bahn plays an important role in transportation in Germany and even a limited strike can hurt the economy,'' said Claudia Kemfert, head of the energy department at the Berlin- based DIW economic institute. "The railway can't afford such high salaries and agreeing to the GDL train drivers' union demands would hurt their image before their share sale.''

State-owned Deutsche Bahn, which has been lobbying the government to sell its stake, is resisting demands by the GDL for a pay increase of as much as 31 percent for 20,000 drivers and 10,000 ticketing employees. The union rejected a Sept. 27 offer of a 10 percent raise and has already disrupted rail travel with walkouts in July and August.

The DIW has estimated that all-out strikes by the GDL may cause revenue losses of 500 million euros ($707 million) a day.

Court Limits Effects

A labor court in Chemnitz, Germany, limited the union's plan to halt movement of passengers and freight on long-distance and commuter services nationwide, issuing a ruling at 2 a.m. after a hearing that lasted for eight hours. The drivers may only strike on regional and local trains, Klaus Herrman, the court's spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement.

Deutsche Bahn had asked the court to prevent any strikes, saying they were illegal, and arguing a collective agreement for train drivers was already in place.

"We appreciate that we may strike in local and regional trains,'' the GDL said in a statement on its Web site. "But it seems irrational to stop walkouts on other trains.'' The union said it will hold strikes nationwide today, though won't strike on the weekend to give Deutsche Bahn time to make a new offer.

The union is seeking pay increases to compensate for a gap with peers in France or Switzerland. and has said train drivers in Germany earn about 1,500 euros a month net on average. GDL Chairman Manfred Schell called on the railway to present a new offer by the beginning of next week.

Schell said Oct. 1 that Deutsche Bahn's 10 percent pay- increase proposal was "the joke of the week.''

Other Unions' Contracts

The railway's wage offer already exceeds 4.5 percent raises over 19 months that two other unions, Transnet and GDBA, agreed to in July for their combined 134,000 members. Talks collapsed Sept. 20 between the GDL and the other unions, which were pushing the engineers' group to agree to similar contract terms.

"We want an agreement that doesn't cause the other employees who work as hard and responsibly for Deutsche Bahn to be disgruntled,'' Margret Suckale, Deutsche Bahn's personnel chief, said in an interview today on German ARD television.

Plans by Chancellor Angela Merkel's government to dispose of a stake in Deutsche Bahn would mark Germany's last big sale of state assets after initial public offerings of Deutsche Telekom AG, Europe's largest telephone company, in 1996, and Deutsche Post AG, the region's biggest mail carrier, in 2000.

See also:

Train Strike Slows Germany's Commuters

Deutsche Welle: 05.10.2007

Many commuters looked for other ways to get to work
 
German train drivers walked off the job for three hours Friday, Oct. 5, in a strike over wages. Despite contingency plans, delays were reported during the morning commute.

Train drivers went on a three-hour strike across Germany starting at 8 a.m. Friday morning, complicating the morning commute. In some German cities, such as Stuttgart, two commuter train lines had been closed for lack of drivers and many regional trains had also been either delayed or cancelled.

In other cities, strike contingency plans put into place by Germany's state-owned Deutsche Bahn kept trains running, although less frequently. The contingency plans aimed to keep half of the country's 19,000 regional trains and two of every three long-distance trains operating, according to a Deutsche Bahn spokesman.

Some drivers are not members of the union, allowing Deutsche Bahn to staff some of its most important commuter routes.

In Germany's industrial heartland of North Rhine-Westphalia, commuters seemed to have taken other modes of transportation. Commuter trains in Essen, Bochum and Dortmund were relatively empty as the strike got underway Friday morning.

Drawn-out wage dispute

Waiting for a connection

Deutsche Bahn has been in a months-long wage dispute with the German train drivers' union, GDL. The union says its members are underpaid when compared with train drivers elsewhere in Europe.

In June, two larger unions representing 134,000 workers launched a series of small strikes. Deutsche Bahn eventually agreed to give them an inflation-beating 4.5-percent pay increase. The GDL broke ranks with the two other rail unions and rejected the deal. The union wants a separate labor contract and a pay raise of up to 31 percent.

The two sides held new talks in September to try to come to an agreement on wages, but have been unable to reach a compromise.

"If they don't do this, then they should prepare for another battle with labor," union boss Manfred Schell said.
Long-distance trains barred from striking

A court ruled that freight train drivers couldn't strike

A labor court in the eastern German city of Chemnitz ruled early Friday morning that long-distance trains could not be included in the strike due to concerns that it would harm the economy. The strike would have to be limited to local trains, the court ruled.

Schell welcomed the green light the court gave to go ahead and strike on local trains, but said the drivers felt other trains should have been included in the strike as well.

"We cannot comprehend why we can't strike on freight and long-distance lines," he said after the court ruling.
Deutsche Bahn carries 5 million passengers each day and is an important engine of the German economy. Transportation Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee has warned that a drawn-out strike could have "disastrous consequences" for Germany's economic upswing.

See also:

Strike Halts Regional and Local Trains throughout Germany

Der Spiegel: October 05, 2007

RAILING AGAINST THE BAHN

German drivers parked their trains on Friday morning after a labor court ruled they could strike on local and regional train routes. Though the ruling forbade strikes on long-distance and high-speed trains in the country, it still left hundreds of thousands of commuters and tourists stranded.

Humans weren't the only ones left stranded by the train drivers' strike on Friday. Here, the bulldog "Dolly" waits at Hamburg's Altona station, wondering if the next train will ever come.

German train drivers walked off the job on Friday morning in the wake of a court ruling that gave the green light for a limited strike on local and regional trains. Friday's strike lasted from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. and left tens of thousands of commuters stranded across the country.

All of Germany was affected by the strikes. In Stuttgart some local trains were completely removed from the schedule. Around 330,000 passengers travel the S-Bahn in the larger area of Stuttgart each day. The long-distance connection between Stuttgart, Karlsruhe and Munich was postponed.

Hamburg was also hit hard, with many commuters opting to take the bus rather than wait in long lines at S-Bahn stops. Bavaria saw the loss of one of two regional and local trains, the former running every two hours and the latter at 40 to 60 minute intervals. An emergency plan was put into effect at 4 a.m. in the capital of Berlin, where fewer than 60 percent of the trains were running. Some lines were running at regular 20 minute intervals and others at 60.

Court Decision

The legality of the strike was determined at a labor court in the eastern German city of Chemnitz, which issued its ruling at 2 a.m. on Friday morning, permitting the German train drivers union GDL to go forward with a strike on local and regional trains nationwide. Long-distance trains, including the country's intercity and ICE high-speed rail networks, and freight transports, the court decided, were forbidden from participating in the strike.

The leading judge in the case said the court had sought to find a balance between supporting the right of the train drivers to strike while minimizing the economic damage. In the run-up to the work stoppage, German Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee warned in SPIEGEL that "a strike could have a devastating effect on the economy and the current economic growth."

The locomotive drivers union (GDL) strikes outside of the main train station in Cologne. The union is demanding a salary increase to keep drivers on a par with European counterparts.

Deutsche Bahn, the state-owned train system challenging the GDL in the labor dispute over wages and tariffs, decided ahead of the decision -- and in preparation for a broader strike -- to cancel one-third of its long-distance trains. It had also prepared an emergency plan to keep the nation's trains running on a pared-down schedule. Spokesperson Gunnar Meyer said Deutsche Bahn planned to keep half of the country's 19,000 regional trains running by using non-GDL drivers.

GDL union boss Manfred Schell has been locking horns for months with Deutsche Bahn CEO Hartmut Mehdorn now on the issue, with neither side ready to come to a final agreement. And on Thursday, Schell challenged Deutsche Bahn to reassess its position and come up with a new offer for train drivers by the beginning of next week.

Schell is demanding a 31 percent pay increase to bring train drivers up to the levels his union claims its European counterparts are paid. "If they are not able to do this," Schell said, "then they have to be prepared for further labor disputes." Currently, starting train drivers with Deutsche Bahn earn €1,970 ($2,781) per month, but the union is demanding a beginning wage of €2,500. The union also wants to have its own tariff agreements with the passenger rail and logistics company.

Deutsche Bahn has refused to meet that demand, but has repeated its offer for GDL to join in with the agreement that it made in July with the Transnet and GDBA railway workers unions that Schell had turned down at that time. However, Deutsche Bahn made a new offer last week after lengthy negotiations with Schell: Drivers were offered a 5 percent wage increase if they were willing to work two more hours per week. And train drivers willing to work even longer hours could get an increase of up to 9.5 percent, paid out in the form of wages and overtime bonuses. But Schell rejected the offer out of hand.

On the eve of the strike, Deutsche Bahn issued a statement criticizing Schell's recent verbal affronts against the national railway, saying that he appeared to be "losing touch with reality." Deutsche Bahn estimates that the strike on local and regional trains and the loss of passengers is costing the company €1 million a day in lost revenues.

GDL said Friday that if it doesn't reach a deal with Deutsch Bahn, the strike could resume on Monday.

See also:

Germany: Train drivers need a new perspective

WSWS: 5 October 2007
By Peter Schwarz

More than three months after its first warning strikes, the German train drivers’ union (GDL) has called nationwide walkouts for October 5.

In August, GDL members voted overwhelming for industrial action—with 95.8 percent supporting an unlimited strike. Since then, however, the union bureaucracy has spent the past eight weeks in compromise discussions, conciliation negotiations and a secret high-level meeting with Deutsche Bahn (German railways) chief Hartmut Mehdorn.

In the meantime, it has become clear that Deutsche Bahn was never really interested in reaching a compromise but wanted to teach the more militant sections of railway workers a lesson. Management has used the compliant stance of the GDL to prepare systematically for a strike by developing emergency plans and deploying strikebreakers.

Chief Personnel Officer Margret Suckale said this week in Berlin that Deutsche Bahn would do everything “in the interest of the customers” in order to limit the effects of the strike. It would oppose the planned strike “by all means.” Newsweekly Der Spiegel quoted a board member saying “the thing had to be fought out now, even if it is painful at first.”

A spokesperson said the company would seek to maintain over half its operations in the event of a strike. “In the next weeks, travellers will still be able to use the railways regularly,” he said. “More than half of all trains will still be running despite the industrial action.”

Deutsche Bahn plans to do this by deploying engine drivers that have civil service status (and are thus legally prevented from striking), as well as using members of the Transnet and GDBA unions, which have already agreed to a contract. Just over 25 percent of all train drivers are organised in Transnet and GDBA, with about 30 to 40 percent of all drivers having civil servant status, including many GDL members.

In addition, Deutsche Bahn has taken out newspaper advertisements during the last two weeks seeking some 1,000 new engine drivers. It claims to have already found around 800 suitable candidates. There was also talk of bringing in engine drivers from Austria and Switzerland, who could replace GDL strikers at short notice. The use of drivers with insufficient training and knowledge of the routes would only be possible by largely ignoring current safety regulations.

However, there can be no doubt that Deutsche Bahn has used the last weeks to make ready for industrial action and is no longer trying to avoid a conflict. It has obviously decided to inflict a defeat on the drivers.

A comment in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on Monday concluded, “The single-mindedness with which the management is confronting this core demand [the GDL’s demand for its own contract] points to the fact that they are currently less concerned with settling the conflict than with finishing off the GDL.”

Deutsche Bahn has also undertaken new legal proceedings against the strike. In the summer, it went from one court to another until it finally found a judge who would outlaw the strike on the grounds of the economic damage it might cause. Although expert opinion was that the judgement had little chance of being upheld, the GDL refused to seek an appeal and voluntarily renounced taking strike action at the time.

In the past weeks, railway boss Mehdorn has sought to embarrass GDL chairman Manfred Schell. New contract offers were regularly leaked to the media even before the GDL knew about them. In one case, a GDL representative who sought to attend a Deutsche Bahn press conference to find out about a new offer was thrown out by security staff.

In conciliation discussions under the auspices of Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politicians Kurt Biedenkopf and Heiner Geißler, both sides had agreed that in future the GDL would only represent drivers and would relinquish its representation of other railway staff. However, Deutsche Bahn’s subsequent proposal made no reference to a contract specifically for GDL drivers. The proposals also never exceeded the 4.5 percent wage increase that management had already agreed to on August 6 with Transnet and GDBA and which it has since sought to impose on the GDL.

Last week, Mehdorn told the tabloid Bild-Zeitung he was “immediately” making an offer of approximately 10 percent. On Thursday, he then met with GDL chair Schell for private discussions. Afterwards, Schell called Mehdorn’s offer the “joke of the week” and said it was an “affront.” The management would pay an additional 5 percent on top of the 4.5 percent increase already offered, if drivers worked two hours longer each week—a zero-sum game.

“Staff shortages already mean drivers face a mountain of overtime and work till they are exhausted,” commented Schell. “They simply can’t do any more.”

There are several reasons for Deutsche Bahn’s confrontational course.

On the one hand, the federal government and employers’ associations fear that the engine drivers’ wage demand—for pay increases of up to 31 percent and a cut in the number of hours worked each week from 41 to 40 hours—could set an example. For 20 years, real wages in Germany have been sinking or stagnating, while productivity has been rising and business profits and speculative gains on the stock exchanges have increased. The demands of the engine drivers speak to the situation and sentiments of broad layers of the population who no longer accept the constant redistribution of wealth from the bottom of society to those at the top. In opinion polls, more than 70 percent of respondents support the drivers’ strike.

On the other hand, the train drivers’ demands challenge the privatisation plans developed by railway boss Mehdorn and transport minister Tiefensee. To make Deutsche Bahn attractive for future shareholders, Mehdorn must prove that the enterprise is profitable and that he has its staff under control.

Mehdorn has succeeded in the first, thanks to the support of the Transnet and GDBA unions, which support the privatisation plans unreservedly. The extensive concessions the two unions have agreed to covering pay levels, working time and shift rosters mean Deutsche Bahn has moved out of deficit to become a highly profitable enterprise.

The GDL quit its joint contract bargaining with Transnet and GDBA in 2001 because the concessions they had accepted went too far, and has since then faced bitter opposition from these two unions. Transnet and the GDBA now stand unreservedly on the side of Deutsche Bahn in the conflict with the engine drivers.

Transnet boss Norbert Hansen has already called on his members to strike-break. “Our members will not let themselves be abused as strikebreakers, but will do their duty,” he said. Since management intends to alter the rosters in such a way that drivers prepared to take strike action are not even scheduled for work, “doing their duty” means that Transnet members will take over the jobs of the strikers.

For weeks, Transnet and GDBA have been agitating against the demands of the GDL. Following the first token strikes, they signed an agreement on July 6 including a wage increase of 4.5 percent, taking the wind out of the sails of the engine drivers. It contains a clause under which their contract becomes invalid if management agrees to a separate contract with the GDL. Since then, Hansen has been openly threatening to cancel the agreement he signed in July covering 134,000 employees if Deutsche Bahn makes any concessions to the engine drivers.

The GDL has nothing with which to oppose this united front of government, big business, Deutsche Bahn management and the other unions. GDL boss Manfred Schell has twisted and turned for weeks, hoping desperately that management would be ready to reach a compromise.

He is still trying to keep the strike on a low flame. The GDL has given Deutsche Bahn plenty of warning by announcing the strike for this Friday long in advance, so that management has had ample time to prepare. For the time being, the strike will be limited to one day: “We assume that one day will be enough for this industrial dispute,” Schell said on Monday—an absurd conception in view of the experiences of the past weeks.

The drivers could paralyse the railways, producing enormous economic pressure. According to calculations by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), the complete shutdown of the rail network would cost the German economy up to a half a billion euros per day. The drivers could count on the solidarity of broad layers of the population and on those members of Transnet and GDBA who are indignant about the strikebreaking being organised by their own unions.

But just like the two other unions, the GDL also wants to make sure there is no broad mobilisation that could get out of its control and develop into an open conflict with management and the federal government. They are primarily concerned with their own status and privileges.

GDL boss Schell has shown he is largely ready to drop demands for better work time and pay if the GDL is granted the status of an independent contract-negotiating partner. His main concern is not attaining the drivers’ wage demands, but achieving this status with management. This is paramount while everything else is negotiable.

As an independent contract partner, the role of the GDL would be substantially strengthened within the company. At present, it can be pressured by the substantially stronger Transnet. For example, unlike Transnet, the GDL does not have its own member on the company’s supervisory board.

The GDL also does not take a principled position on the question of privatisation. Schell, a former member of the Bundestag (federal parliament), constantly points out that he was the only CDU member to oppose the privatisation of Deutsche Bahn. At the same time, he supported the privatisation of the post office and Deutsche Telekom, which had a devastating effect on the wages and working conditions of the respective workforces.

In the meantime, the GDL can expect to gain some advantages from railway privatisation. It enjoys a substantially stronger position in smaller private businesses than with Deutsche Bahn, and has negotiated contracts that are far below the level at Deutsche Bahn. If Deutsche Bahn is floated on the stock exchange, the GDL advocates the splitting up of train operations and the rail network infrastructure, something that is also supported by the Federal Association of German Industry (BDI) and the Free Democratic Party.

If the present industrial action remains under the control of the GDL, it will inevitably end in a devastating defeat that would also have a lasting effect on other railway staff and large sections of the working class.

The engine drivers must establish committees that will take the leadership of the strike into their own hands. They must turn to members of the other rail unions, mobilising them against the strikebreaking activities of Transnet boss Hansen and Co. And the strike must be expanded to the entire railway network for an unlimited period.

Above all, it is necessary to draw the political lessons of the failure of the GDL and the transformation of Transnet and the GDBA into strikebreaking organisations.

The rightward turn of the trade unions and the social reformist parties is an international phenomenon. The globalisation of production and the hegemony of internationally operating financial cartels have undermined the policy of social reformism. The trade unions and the Social Democratic Party react by placing themselves unreservedly on the side of big business in order to defend “German interests”—i.e., the interests of the German banks and corporations—in a violent struggle on the world arena. The results of this are militarism, increasing state powers and aggressive attacks on workers’ wages and rights.

The defence of workers’ incomes, as well as of social and democratic rights, requires a fundamentally new political strategy, one that does not make the profit interests of big business the measure of all things, but places the needs of working people at the centre and so pursues socialist objectives. Production in general, and particularly in such important enterprises as Deutsche Bahn, must be taken out of the control of the financial aristocracy and placed in the service of society as whole.

Posted on 10:21 AM | Permalink

Press Association: 5 October 2007

Rail firms have been accused of sitting on £1.3 billion of unpaid tax and of using a loophole to fund massive increases in dividend payouts to shareholders.

The Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT) union claimed that almost half the £1.5 billion in dividends paid out in the last five years by rail and rolling stock firms had been funded by unpaid tax.

The union said a study it commissioned by tax expert Richard Murphy showed that tax payments remained almost constant between 2002 and 2006 even though combined profits almost doubled to £810 million.

"Deferred tax is supposed to be an allowance against investment and amounts to a hidden subsidy for rail firms, but it is being exploited to increase dividends to shareholders," said Mr Murphy.

"Rail companies are hiding behind accounting rules when presenting their figures that let them suggest they're paying more tax than they are, and that means the massive hidden subsidy the tax system gives them is not apparent. It should be."

RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: "Passengers are facing a future of massive fare increases and the government is cutting direct subsidy to the rail industry by £1.5 billion over the next six years, yet these private companies are sitting on a tax-break nest-egg worth £1.3 billion.

"This is money that should be funding railway engineering, but it is being used instead for financial engineering and turning hidden subsidies into pure profits for shareholders.

"At the very least the government should tell these companies to stump up the £1.3 billion they owe in tax and use the money to reverse the planned funding cuts."

A spokesman for the Association of Train Operating Companies said: "Train operators are major PLCs and as such comply with UK tax law."

See also:

Private rail industry profits from £1.3 billion in unpaid tax

RMT: October 5 2007

Companies using deferred-tax loophole to fund leap in dividends

THE PRIVATE rail industry is profiteering on £1.3 billion in unpaid tax and is using a deferred-tax loophole intended to encourage investment to fund massive increases in dividend payouts to shareholders, Britain's biggest rail union reveals today.

Nearly half of the £1.5 billion in dividends paid out in the last five years by nine private train operators and rolling-stock companies has been funded by unpaid tax, according to a detailed analysis for RMT by tax expert Richard Murphy of Tax Research.

Almost £1.3 billion of deferred tax is owed by the biggest six train-operating companies (Tocs) and the three rolling-stock leasing companies (Roscos) - but this is tax that will most likely never be paid, and is effectively a hidden subsidy that dramatically increases cash profit levels.

The report shows that the nine companies' declared profits almost doubled from £435 million in 2002 to £810 million in 2006, but their declared tax charges remained almost constant at about £190 million a year throughout the period. The declared percentage rate fell from 43 per cent in 2002 to 24 per cent in 2006.

This though hides the real story. Tax is not paid on accounting profits. The accounts charge for goodwill is not, for example, allowed for tax. And the charge for tax in accounts includes 'deferred tax' - which this survey shows is never likely to be paid, as well as the current tax bill the company expects to settle in cash.

Comparing pre-goodwill profits and current tax charges that will actually be paid shows that these companies' profits rose from £584 million in 2002 to £894 million in 2006, and that the tax they actually paid plummeted to £109 million in 2002 and just £71 million in 2006, at a rate of  just 7.9 per cent in that year.

The study also reveals that by 2006 one pound in every three used to fund the private-sector rail operators was represented by deferred tax - which is in effect a tax-free loan from the government, with no repayment date.

"Deferred tax is supposed to be an allowance against investment and amounts to a hidden subsidy for rail firms, but it is being exploited to increase dividends to shareholders," said report author Richard Murphy.

"Rail companies are hiding behind accounting rules when presenting their figures that let them suggest they're paying more tax than they are, and that means the massive hidden subsidy the tax system gives them is not apparent. It should be," Richard Murphy said.

"It might be legal but it shouldn't be," RMT general secretary Bob Crow said.

"Passengers are facing a future of massive fare increases and the government is cutting direct subsidy to the rail industry by £1.5 billion over the next six years, yet these private companies are sitting on a tax-break nest-egg worth £1.3 billion.

"This is money that should be funding railway engineering, but it is being used instead for financial engineering and turning hidden subsidies into pure profits for shareholders.

"At the very least the government should tell these companies to stump up the £1.3 billion they owe in tax and use the money to reverse the planned funding cuts.

"Better still they should face the fact that the private sector's involvement in the railways is a barrier that stands in the way of delivering the growing, affordable people's railway that our economy and environment desperately need," Bob Crow said.

ends

Notes to editors: An executive summary of the report and biographical notes on Richard Murphy follow. The full report is also attached.

The companies whose accounts are analysed in the report are:  First Group PLC; Go-Ahead Group PLC; Stagecoach Group PLC; Arriva PLC; National Express Group PLC; Virgin Rail Group PLC;  Porterbrook Leasing Company Limited; HSBC Rail (UK) Limited, and Angel Trains Limited.

RMT general secretary Bob Crow and Richard Murphy are both available for interview 

Tax paid by Railway Companies - A report for the RMT

Executive Summary

This report is based on detailed analysis of the accounts of six railway operating companies and three railway leasing companies operating in the UK. In each case their last five available sets of accounts were reviewed, meaning that the survey concentrates on the period 2002 to 2006.

In this period the declared profits of the companies in question increased from £435 million in 2002 to £810 million in 2006. Their sales income curiously varied little over the period, moving about an average of about £11.6 billion a year throughout the period.

The tax they paid did, however, fall dramatically over the period. According to their profit and loss accounts their tax charges fell from £188 million or 51.4% of reported profit in 2002 to £169 million in 2004, when the declared tax rate was 22.1%, a rate that was also seen in 2006.

But this is not the whole story. The profits these companies declare are not the profit figures on which they pay tax. Most of the railway operating companies (but not the rail leasing companies) have significant goodwill charges in their accounts which are highly unlikely to be tax deductible. This increases their taxable profits by this amount.

At the same time, all the companies include in their accounts charges for 'deferred tax', which can best be described as estimated amounts of tax that might be payable at some time in the future as a consequence of transactions that have already occurred, but with there being no certainty as to when, if, or ever that tax might be due. Overall the amount of deferred tax owed by these companies increased from £948 million to £1,297 million over the period. The increase was less than the total deferred tax charged against their profit by all the companies in the period, which totalled £527 million because of changes in the rules on the way the balances had to be accounted arising as a result of the introduction of International Financial Reporting Standards in 2005.

Two points are however clear: first that these balances seem unlikely to be paid and second that deferred tax charges can therefore be ignored as real tax charges. They should instead be considered to be interest free loans to the railway industry for which there is no repayment date. By 2006 one third of all the finance required by the industry was being provided by the government in this way without it taking any credit for the benefit it was providing.

Taking these two adjustments to the profit and tax charge into account a very different picture of tax paid is revealed. Profits now increased from £584 million before tax to £894 million before tax over the period. Taxes due fell from £109 million to £71 million. The tax rate fell from 18.7% to 7.9% (and just 3.8% in 2005).

If tax had been paid on these profits at the 30% headline UK corporation tax rate the sums due would have been £66 million in 2002 and £198 million in 2006. Over the period £731 million of tax was not paid as a result of the low tax rates the industry enjoyed.

Of this sum £527 million is explained by the deferred tax charges. According to the accounts of the companies themselves the second biggest reason is 'prior year adjustments'. What this means is that they have not had to pay tax that they had declared they might. Almost certainly this means that tax planning arrangements the companies had presented to HM Revenue & Customs but were too cautious to assume would work were accepted as valid by that authority, or at least were not challenged.

The resulting impression is of an industry that has saved itself over £700 million in tax in five years and is sitting with £1.3 billion of unpaid tax on its balance sheet: tax that might never be paid but which is being used to provide one third of the funding required to keep this sector going.

Who benefits from this tax lost? Certainly not the government. And there's no indication that it is the consumer. It must be the companies themselves. Profits of the companies surveyed almost doubled during this period. Their tax paid tumbled. And they paid almost £1.5 billion in dividends to shareholders in this five year period. Half of this sum was financed by tax not paid.

There is an obvious question. What better use could have been made of that tax not paid, in the railway industry or in society at large? And why have we allowed the railway industry become a mechanism for financial planning, one of whose primary purposes is to turn unpaid tax into an income stream for shareholders?

It's certainly no way to run a railway.

Richard Murphy - biography

Richard Murphy is a chartered accountant and graduate economist. He trained with KPMG in London before setting up his own firm in 1985 in London. He and his partners sold the firm in 2000 when it had 800 clients. He is a serial entrepreneur, having directed more than 10 SMEs.

Since 2000 Richard has increasingly been involved in taxation policy, both as an adviser and campaigner. He is director of Tax Research LLP and advises the Tax Justice Network, the Publish What You Pay campaign and many NGOs on tax and development.

He is a member of the ACCA's Research Committee and is a research fellow at the Centre for Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex and at the Tax Research Institute at the University of Nottingham.

A regular radio and TV commentator on tax and corporate accountability, he has also addressed UN, EU, HMRC and international diplomatic meetings on these issues. He writes a daily blog at www.taxresearch.org.uk/blog

You can download the full report here as a pdf: Tax paid by Railway Companies

Posted on 07:52 AM | Permalink

The Economist: Oct 4th 2007

LONDON'S Crossrail project — a £16 billion ($32 billion) plan to build an east-west rail link across the crowded city — is something of a standing joke in politics.

First officially proposed by Margaret Thatcher in 1989, it was subsequently endorsed by each of her three successors. All the main political parties are in favour, as are most of London's lobby groups. Yet, after 18 years of prevarication, rows and ever-more-packed public transport, not a single clod of earth has been turned.

Now, at last, there may be movement. On October 1st Gordon Brown gave his backing to the scheme, provided that London businesses were prepared to pay their share of the construction costs. And that, of course, is precisely what has always been the rub.

Despite near-unanimous agreement that choked-up London needs Crossrail, no government has ever been willing to pay the full whack for it. The plan is for a big chunk of the money to come from a combination of a loan secured against future ticket receipts, voluntary donations from the scheme's beneficiaries (such as BAA, which operates Heathrow airport, and Canary Wharf, a property developer responsible for London's second financial hub, in the Isle of Dogs) and a special tax on all but the smallest London businesses.

Such a compromise annoys virtually everybody. Non-Londoners grumble that their taxes will be spent for the benefit of wealthy City slickers. Londoners retort that their city pays more in taxes than it gets back in spending, and that local funding for Crossrail is odd when almost all big infrastructure projects have been financed with central-government cash. But now it seems that broad financial agreement has been reached.

Companies with deep pockets, such as BAA and Canary Wharf, have agreed on “voluntary” contributions. The City of London, the Square Mile's local authority, held out a little longer. Eventually, in a closed meeting on the evening of October 2nd, the City's councillors agreed to come up with a sum believed to be between £250m and £400m over and above the special tax paid by firms in the capital. The City's capitulation came in return—or so the rumours go—for an increase in its grant from central government. In theory, that leaves the way more or less clear for Crossrail to go ahead. An announcement was expected as The Economist went to press.

Why the sudden accord? The transport case for Crossrail gets more convincing every year. London Underground regularly breaks its own records for the number of passengers carried on its sardine-tin trains. Road-traffic levels in central London are rising again after dropping when congestion charging was introduced in 2003. And with the city's population projected to rise from 7.5m today to 8.1m by 2016, the problem can only get worse. The economic case, if less cut-and-dried, is also accepted by most. Crossrail's backers reckon their project will bring £30 billion of benefits to Britain over its lifetime by persuading more foreign firms to locate in London and saving time for existing commuters. Not building it, they say, costs the economy £1.5 billion a year.

But politics is likely to weigh more heavily than either of these factors. As a Scottish Labour politician, the argument runs, Mr Brown needs something to keep Home Counties voters on his side. With speculation about an early election swirling, announcing a big, solid infrastructure project seems a perfect way for Mr Brown to distinguish himself from the Conservatives. Their leader, David Cameron, has styled himself the heir to Tony Blair, but he has been wrong-footed by Mr Brown's focus on grittier matters. Revealing firm progress on Crossrail would be another way for Mr Brown to underline this difference.

Yet even with the money problems solved, it is not clear when the trains might start running. Construction firms say that massive works for the 2012 Olympic Games will suck up thousands of builders, causing costs to soar.

Optimists reckon parts of the line could be finished by 2015. But Crossrail's long and ignoble history of delays inspires caution. “I'll believe it's really going ahead,” says Tony Travers, an economist and Crossrail-watcher at the London School of Economics, “when I see the queen with a spade in her hand.”

See also:

Crossrail fuels northern frustration

Financial Times: October 3 2007
By James Wilson and Chris Tighe

London’s success in securing Crossrail will be welcomed through gritted teeth in the north of England, where regional policymakers and businesses believe the government pays insufficient heed to their own calls for more transport investment.

No one disputes London’s importance as the biggest contributor to the UK economy but there are worries that without more being done to improve rail and road links the region’s economic performance will continue to lag behind.

Sarah Green, the CBI employers’ body’s north-east director, said: “We recognise the importance of a strong capital . . . . but equally we need to recognise that infrastructure must go beyond London and serve the rest of the UK.”

Last month the north’s three regional development agencies produced a report identifying £10bn of economic benefits – accruing as much to London as to the north – if rail infrastructure were improved. The gains would come from better east and west coast links to London and, most importantly, from the north’s version of Crossrail – a longed-for high speed route across the Pennines to link conurbations such as Manchester and Leeds.

Tom Riordan, chief executive of Yorkshire Forward, one of the agencies, points out that it is roughly the same distance between the ends of the London Underground’s Central Line as it is between Leeds and Manchester city centres. “A ‘northern Crossrail’. . . . could change the perception of investors, businesses and graduates about the north’s potential as a career and investment destination,” he says.

Northern frustration is compounded by long-running arguments with Whitehall over schemes that are much cheaper than Crossrail but could provide “quick wins” in improving economic performance. Mr Riordan cites the years of delays in approving a short road upgrade through Hull to link the Humber’s big but underused ports to the motorway network.

Ross Smith, head of policy at the North East Chamber of Commerce, said London needed top-quality transport infrastructure but said Crossrail was highly expensive. “There are transport projects the north east has been crying out for for two decades which could be carried out at a fraction of the cost,” he said. “We would be looking for some kind of guarantee that the spending on this is not going to wipe out the budget for spending on much needed transport infrastructure elsewhere in the UK.”

That fear has been inevitably heightened by a concern that government resources will be diverted towards paying for the London Olympics.

See also:

Go-ahead for $33bn rail link across London

Financial Times: October 6 2007
By Alex Barker and Robert Wright in London

Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, yesterday approved funding for the £16bn ($33bn, €23bn) Crossrail east-west rail line across London, giving the green light to a rail link that has been stuck in its early planning phase for almost two decades.

Mr Brown said it was a project "of enormous importance" that would help the capital maintain its position as the "world's pre-eminent financial centre".

The long-awaited go-ahead comes after months of tough negotiations between the government and the biggest business groups in London.

Full details of how the project will be financed - costs are split between the government, farepayers and the private sector - are to be revealed in the public spending review announcement on Tuesday.

Construction work on Crossrail will start in 2010 and be completed by 2017. The dates are two years later than many previous reports had suggested - although 2008 has long been an unrealistic starting date.

The bill allowing for the line's construction will not receive final parliamentary approval until next year at the earliest.

The line - similar to the existing RER lines in Paris and the S-Bahn lines under many German cities - will be one of the UK's largest construction projects.

It will take mainline commuter trains from the east and west of the capital under the city in 41.5km of entirely new tunnels.

Crossrail will resolve the long-standing problem that London's mainline rail termini are all on the edge of the city centre. This means that arriving commuters and other travellers have to change to the city's overstretched underground rail system to reach the main economic centres in the West End, the financial district in the City of London and Canary Wharf in east London.

Trains on the new route will use existing tracks from Maidenhead in Berkshire and Heathrow airport to reach Paddington before heading across the city in tunnels to east London, where they will split into two branches at White-chapel.

One branch will go on existing tracks to Shenfield in Essex and the other on a new line to Abbey Wood in south-east London.

City institutions approved more than £1bn of additional funding this week after the government raised pressure ahead of the public spending review. The final piece of the finance jigsaw fell into place this week when the City of London Corporation's Court of Common Council, its ruling body, overwhelmingly voted to pay a financial contribution of about £250m. City companies are also understood to have pledged some £100m of additional support.

Most of the private-sector support come from three groups: Canary Wharf Group, BAA, the airport operator, and the City of London.

The scheme could cut journey times from central London to Heathrow by half and is forecast to cover about 40 per cent of the additional rail capacity London is expected to need by 2016.

See also:

Gordon Brown gives go-ahead for 16 bln stg Crossrail project

AFX News: 10.05.07

LONDON (Thomson Financial) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown has given the go-ahead for Crossrail, the long-awaited project to link Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west with Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east via an underground tunnel through central London, after agreeing to a £16 bln stg funding deal.

Work on the line, which will link London's West End, City financial district and Canary Wharf, will begin in earnest in 2010 and the first trains are expected to run in 2017, the government said in a statement.

Crossrail is expected to carry 200 mln passengers a year, and will bring an additional 1.5 mln people to within 60 minutes of London's key business areas and will add at least £20 bln stg to the UK's economy, it said.

The Prime Minister said: 'I believe this is a project of enormous importance not just for London but for the whole country. By generating an additional 30,000 jobs and helping London retain its position as the world's pre-eminent financial centre, it will support Britain's economic growth and maintain Britain's position as a leading world economy.'

The total project cost will be split equitably between the Government, Crossrail farepayers, and the private sector, according to the government statement. Full details will be set out in the Comprehensive Spending Review, due next week.

The City of London Corporation agreed earlier this week to approve a contribution of £350 mln stg for the project, including £200 mln stg from its own funds. It is also leading the effort to raise additional contributions of £150 mln stg from businesses across London.

'The City Corporation has been pushing for Crossrail for nearly 20 years,' said Michael Snyder, chairman of the City of London's policy and resources committee.

'I am delighted that the many hours of detailed discussion in recent days have finally helped to bring about this success and will deliver the new railway that London so desperately needs.'

The owners of Canary Wharf reportedly have also agreed to commit between £500 mln stg and £800 mln to the project and airports operator BAA, owned by Grupo Ferrovial SA, is understood to have pledged £300 mln.

Mayor of London Ken Livingstone welcomed the announcement. 'Crossrail is not just a transport scheme -- it's the key to the next 20 years of economic development of London,' he said in a statement.

'Crossrail will provide the transport underpinning for the greatest centres of London's business -- the City, Canary Wharf and the West End -- as well as linking these areas of high jobs growth to the areas of greatest deprivation in east London and opening up the areas of new housing development in the Thames Gateway (nyse: GTW - news - people ).'

London First, which represents more than 300 of the capital's leading companies, also voiced approval.

Chief executive Baroness Jo Valentine said: 'This is a great, great day for London and surely the best news for London commuters and businesses in a generation.'

The RMT union said Crossrail 'made sense from every angle', but it warned that the new line must not become a premium railway with fares too high for anyone but business people to use.

Posted on 07:40 AM | Permalink

The Times of Zambia: 5 October 2007
Andrew Lungu, Ndola

TRANSPORT infrastructure plays an important role as a catalyst in regional economic development because it helps trade among the neighboring countries.

Zambia, just like many other countries in the region boasts of rich and abundant natural resources.

These large deposits of mineral wealth are of no economical value if they cannot be transported to the market just like huge agricultural potential areas cannot be exploited if they are inaccessible.

It is a well known fact that trade enhances development and fosters economic growth for many developing countries.

Adverse transport cost can have an impact on trade efficiency and it is for this reason that Regional Economic Communities (RECs) such as Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) are promoting infrastructure development as the only means of cementing regional integrations.

The official launch of the Chipata-Mchinji rail line by the Zambian Republican President Levy Mwanawasa together with his Malawian Counterpart Bingu Wa Mutharika on August 24, 2007 was a new dawn for regional economic integration for Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique.

Initially, the Chipata-Mchinji rail line was suppose to have been officially launched by the three head of states from Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique who were also invited to grace the Kulamba ceremony of the Chewa speaking people from the three countries in Katete.

But, the Mozambique leader Armando Emilio Guebuza could not be present at the ceremony as he only managed to fly direct to Katete the following day for the traditional ceremony.

However, the Mozambique officials including the Zambian High Commissioner to that country George Chulumanda were present to witness the colorful official launch of the Mult Million US dollar project that had been turned into a white elephant for 25 years.

The officials from the three neigbouring countries were happy with the official launch of the rail line because it brought great hope to the growth of trade in the region.

Once completed, the three neigbouring countries are expected to further explore their abundant natural resources and compete favorably on the international trade market

HISTORY OF THE CHIPATA-MCHINJI RAIL LINE

The Chipata-Mchinji rail line was conceived in 1982 as a bilateral project between Zambia and Malawi.

The purpose of the project was to connect Zambia via Malawi to the port of Nacala in Mozambique.

The Government of Malawi with the assistance of the Canadian Government completed their portion of the rail line in 1984, which was within the earlier stipulated agreement by the two governments that the project be completed within the time frame of two years.

However, the Zambian government was not able to complete the construction of the rail line on time due to inadequate resources.

Only a stretch of 3.5 from Chipata towards the Mchinji border post was laid on the Zambian side.

But by the time the project was revitalize in 2006 it was discovered that the quality and size of the rail line that was erected on the Zambian side when the project had first started in 1982 was not compatible with the modern standards and it was removed.

Speaking during the official launch of the Chipata-Mchinji rail line, President Mwanawasa apologised to both the Governments of Malawi and Mozambique for any inconveniences delay on the Zambian part may have caused on the project.

"In an effort to complete the railway line, my administration has decided to construct the railway line on a build, operate and transfer (BOT) basis. To this end the government signed a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) with the private sectors to construct the railway line on BOT basis." President Mwanawasa explained.

The President said unfortunately all the studies which were carried out by the private sectors indicated that the project was not viable unless the Zambian Government contributed funds and material towards the project.

In Some cases the private investors requested the government to contribute almost 80 percent of the project cost.

It was against this background that the present Government in 2006 decided to have the railway line constructed using its own resources because the private sector could not raise the necessary capital required to complete the railway line.

The remaining 27 kilometers stretch to link Chipata to Mchinji in Malawi is now 100 percent funded by the Zambian government.

In order to facilitate the process of constructing the remaining 27 kilometers stretch, the government appointed Zambia Railways (ZR) Limited with its expertise to construct the rail line.

President Mwanawasa says the US $10 Million project is earmarked for completion at the end of 2007.

The Government with the assistance of the European Union are yet to advertise a tender for the construction and operation of a dry port at the Chipata railways station as a Transshipment point between road and rail.

Most of the labour has been recruited in Chipata while most of the material used in the construction of the rail line has been sourced locally.

LOCAL ECONOMICAL BENEFITS

In Zambia , about 80 percent of people and goods are transported by road followed by railways.

Since most of the goods are transported by road it is proving very expensive because of the need for frequent maintenance and rehabilitation of the damaged roads.

Eastern province has been one of the biggest producers of many agricultural products in the country.

Both the agricultural inputs and produce from the Eastern are transported by road; this has been causing undue pressure on the durability of the Great East roads which is used in the transporting bulks of agricultural produce to the market.

The advent of the rail line would provide cheaper means of transport and also serve the durability including reducing congestion on the Great East road.

President Mwanawasa explained that the government was also examining the possibilities of extending the rail line from Chipata to other areas of economic interests.

He said in future the project would be connected to Petauke and Mpika to link it with the Tanzania-Zambia Railways Authority (TAZARA).

"The government plans to construct another link from Nseluka to Mpulungu which can economically service the Great Lakes for its imports and exports through the Nacala corridor." he said.

The President explained that the project would bring a lot of economic benefits to the locals because it would create employment to the people wherever it would pass.

Mr Mwanawasa also assured the locals who have waited for the period of more than 25 year for the project to be completed that the government was very committed to complete the project.

"You have waited for 25 years to get this job done. This time around this job is going to be done. This is the commitment I am making to you in front of the Malawian President Mbingu Wa Mutharika," he said.

President Mwanawasa challenged the local people that the rail line was of little meaning unless they produce goods which would be transported to neighboring countries.

"I have always known you us hard working people and therefore appeal to you to produce even large quantities of groundnuts, maize, cotton and other agricultural produce," he said

With the completion of the Rail line, farmers in eastern province could easily trade across the border with less transportation cost.

ECONOMICAL REGIONAL INTEGRATION

President Mwanawasa said once completed, the project would greatly boost regional integration among Zambia , Malawi and Mozambique which are also members of the Zambia , Malawi and Mozambique Growth Triangle Trade (ZMMGTT).

President Mwanawasa who is also the chairman of SADC said the project underscores the importance of infrastructure for regional integration.

He said the official launch of the project was a practical step in furthering the objectives of SADC beyond mere talk.

Once completed the project would provide an important rail line link to the port of Nacala in Mozambique which is not just an important corridor for the three countries but also offers the eastern part of Zambia with the shortest route to the seaport for their export and import.

Malawian, President Mutharika said the Chipata-Mchinji rail line would assist in reducing transport cost among the three countries by 55 per cent.

The Malawian leader said in the past the three countries were failing to compete favourably on the international market due to high cost of transportation.

He hoped that with the completion of the rail line more goods in the regional would be imported and exported.

"The project would bring in fair trade, because the transportation cost for the three neighboring countries would be cheaper. The three countries can now compete favorably on the international market," Dr Mutharika said.

Eastern province Chamber of Commerce and Industry (EPCCI) Chairperson George Chabwera said the project would transform the economy of the three countries and it would enhance trade in the region.

He said more employment opportunities are likely to be created in all the three countries where the railway line would pass.

CONCLUSION

There is no doubt that once the Chipata-Mchinji rail line is completed it would boost regional integration and also add more impetus to the Chipata Municipal Council who a spearheading the campaign for a city status as more of the benchmarks would have been met by then.

Posted on 01:24 AM | Permalink

Wiltshire Times: 4 October 2007
By John Ballard

RAIL campaigners in west Wiltshire have given mixed reactions to First Great Western's 2008 timetable, despite the company's claims it will deliver significant service improvements' for customers.

Rail campaigner Graham Ellis

The timetable, which comes into force on December 9, was unveiled on Monday, and features a number of changes affecting passengers in the district.

The major changes include some services from Gloucester being re-routed to Westbury, Weymouth and Brighton, while the number of trains running between Bristol and Westbury is to be increased.

Trains with more seats are being introduced on services to Westbury and there will be re-timed and extra trains on the Bristol to Warminster line, as well as alterations to services at Warminster and Dilton Marsh, and additional stops at Bradford on Avon by Portsmouth to Cardiff services.

Weekday trains to and from Melksham are unchanged in the new timetable, but there will be the return of a southbound Sunday service for the town.

Graham Ellis, who runs a campaign to get better train services to and from Melksham, said: "Weekday trains at Melksham remain at the two services per day, so they are still timed at First's operational convenience, using the train off the Stroud Valley line when it's not wanted there, which is very disappointing indeed.

"The return of a southbound Sunday service, calling at Melksham in the early evening, is one good piece of news. This means residents of Melksham can get back to the town, after spending the weekend away, by public transport."

Roger Newman, from the West Wiltshire Rail Users Group, recognises positive and negative aspects to the new timetable.

He said: "An increase in the number of express trains stopping at Bradford on Avon is a good point, but some changes, like services from Gloucester being re-routed to Westbury, will not really bring improvements."

Both Mr Ellis and Mr Newman also highlighted the leasing of rolling stock and relying on older trains as bad news for passengers.

First Great Western however, insists the changes are good news.

Tom Stables, the company's commercial director, said: "First Great Western used the customer feedback from the December 2006 timetable to make significant improvements to the new timetable.

"We believe the new timetable will address many of the suggestions received from customers, stakeholders, MPs and Welsh Assembly members."

Posted on 11:03 PM | Permalink

Der Spiegel: October 04, 2007

After months of negotiation between Deutsche Bahn and labor union GdL, as well as an attempt at a Chemnitz labor court to stop it, a nationwide strike, representing 8,000 train drivers and affecting millions of passengers, will take place on Friday, October 5 -- Germany's first major train strike in 15 years

Manfred Schell, head of the GdL, the German union of locomotive drivers, appearing at a press conference on October 1, 2007 in Frankfurt. The GdL announced a general strike to begin on Friday, October 5, to force Deutsche Bahn to accept a 31% pay increase for its drivers.

Germans are braced for national rail strikes set to take place on Friday morning, the biggest stoppage in 15 years. "From Friday, Oct. 5, there will be a nationwide strike on commuter and freight lines for a limited period," Manfred Schell, the president of a German train driver's union, GDL, told reporters in Frankfurt on Thursday. The GDL represents 8,000 train drivers in Germany.

The strike comes on the heels of a last-ditch effort by Deutsche Bahn, the state-owned rail system, to halt the strike with an appeal to the labor court in Chemnitz about the legality of GDL's actions. The strike will effect locomotives, S-Bahn, local and long-distance trains.

Deutsche Bahn, a transport and logistics behemoth that reaches across Europe and into Asia -- and Germany's largest employer -- has been locked in wage disputes with the GDL over the past several months, forcing smaller strikes throughout the summer. Negotiations have been in session throughout the month of September, with no deal being reached. GDL members have refused to accept the terms of a wage contract between Deutsche Bahn and two other railway employee unions -- Transnet and GDBA.

GDL argues that real monthly wages are not equivalent to those of fellow operators throughout Europe. Entry-level drivers currently receive a 2,000 euro monthly salary; the GDL is asking for a raise to 2,500 euro and a one-hour reduction in work hours. Union head Schell, unmoved by Deutsche Bahn's recent offer of a 10% pay increase starting in 2008, called it "the joke of the week." He also said that Deutsche Bahn bears "sole responsibility" for the upcoming strike. The GDL is ultimately demanding a 31% pay raise for its drivers.

Deutsche Bahn's personnel chief, Margret Suckale, said that DB had exhausted all measures to settle the ongoing wage dispute. "We have emergency plans in place and are readying ourselves for a labor conflict," she told Die Welt on Wednesday. Part of this plan is to bring in 1,000 non-GDL drivers to continue transportation services.

The strikes could have a devastating impact on the economy. Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee told DER SPIEGEL that a strike would have "catastrophic consequences" for Europe's biggest economy. According to the German Economic Institute (DIW), the action could cost some 500 million euros a day.

Last year Deutsche Bahn moved 1.85 billion passengers and collected revenues of 30 billion euros ($43 billion). Ten million people take the train in Germany each day.

Posted on 10:40 PM | Permalink

Morning Star: October 3, 2007
By Alex Gordon, RMT EC member

The European Parliament recently voted to prise open international EU rail passenger traffic to ‘market competition’ by 2010.

Predictably, the EU spin machine portrayed this major step towards a fully privatised passenger rail market as a ‘victory for consumers’, claiming new rights for passenger compensation.

However, the small print reveals that such compensation is triggered only if train operators are held responsible for delays, not if they are caused by engineering work, points or signal failures or bad weather.

EU Directive 91/440/EEC, which mandates member states to create a “vertical split” between train operations and rail infrastructure, means that severe rail disruption, such as swept parts of the UK this summer, would almost certainly not leave rail companies facing compensation claims.

The ‘liberalisation’ measures in the EU’s so-called ‘third rail package’ also includes common EU rules for train driver certification covering medical fitness and professional skills to facilitate “professional mobility and cross-border services”.

Train companies that operate over international routes from 2010 will also be able to practise ‘cabotage’ – meaning to stop and take on passengers in countries they cross.

This latest ‘package’ amending Directive 91/440/EEC marks the second major step in implementing EU rail privatisation since rail freight was liberalised in 2003, when trans-Europe networks were opened to competition, followed by international freight and domestic networks from March 31, 2006.

A similar staged ‘liberalisation’ process is now being applied to passenger rail regardless of the consequences. The European Commission will now report on the next stage of ‘liberalising’ domestic rail services by 31 December 2012.

This hugely complicated process, proposed by the German MEP Georg Jarzembowski, amounts to little more than the enforced mass privatisation of the entire rail sector across the EU.

The European Parliament left group GUE/NGL has opposed the introduction of competition for international rail services, arguing that, once again hardline neo-liberal ideology, promoted by corporate lobbyists, had prevailed.

GUE/NGL President Francis Wurtz described the "Jarzembowski report" as a new stage in the politics of "liberalisation at all costs" without serious studies of the effects of ‘liberalisation’ such as the disastrous experience of rail privatisation in the UK.

He told the European Parliament that such a path was “dangerous for public employment and service and a path subjected to an obsession with competition and the market". However, Jarzembowski, an MEP from German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s right wing CDU, assumed that “national governments are going to apply the new Regulation as soon as possible also for domestic trains. We will be able to do away with the notorious change of train drivers at borders”.

While right wing Belgian MEP Dirk Sterckx described the agreement as a “serious step” towards a European railway market.

“European railway companies have to organise themselves to face international competition, national administrations will have to act more as regulators instead of financers of national monopolies," he said.

The third rail package is a dramatic escalation of the drive to transform rail services from a social railway towards a rail business with an investment bias towards freight and business travel and away from regional and urban rail services.

The proposals were criticised earlier this year by Hans Rat, secretary-general of the International Association for Public Transport (UITP), who noted the EU focused too much on "glossy" trans-European projects, such as high-speed trains and stressed the need to re-direct attention towards regional projects that play a "decisive role" for revitalisation of cities and improvement of public transport services.

The latest moves clearly lean towards the former and directly benefit Europe’s largest rail interests and the development of private rail monopolies, particularly in Germany.

German rail operator Deutsche Bahn (DB) has extended its dominance of the rail freight sector buying up companies in Poland, Slovakia, Netherlands, Denmark, Spain and most recently, English, Welsh, Scottish Railways Ltd with a 75 per cent share of the UK rail freight market. DB is due to be privatised, with an Initial Public Offering of 30 per cent expected this year.

It is easy to see why DB bosses would welcome interoperability and a common EU train driver licence. The newspaper Bild am Sonntag has reported that DB is planning to hire foreign train drivers from Austria and Switzerland to break a national rail strike by the GDL drivers' union.

“We plan to hire locomotive drivers from other countries such as Austria and Switzerland to help out,” a senior manager told the newspaper.

DB now also threatens French state operator SNCF in its own backyard through EWS’s international rail freight operating arm. SNCF lost €260 million on its freight business last year and is also facing an imminent national rail strike on October 18 against pension cuts proposed by president Nicolas Sarkozy.

While Brussels may dress ‘rail packages’ and privatisation up as a matter of consumer rights, competitiveness or ‘liberalisation’, in fact, it represents a political decision about what sort of a society we will be living in.

In short, the third rail package marks a decisive turn by the EU towards consolidation of the neo-liberal project embodied in the Single European Act of 1986 and further developed through the Lisbon Strategy in March 2000. It is a strategy that is also reflected in the EU Constitution rejected in 2005 and now being undemocratically resurrected. One of the 52 areas where all national vetoes will be abolished, as envisaged in the Constitution is transport, including rail.

The effect of EU rail privatisation will increase downward pressure on jobs and wages in the rail sector and inevitably undermine occupational and environmental safety standards.

For European rail unions a serious strategy to defeat the social dumping which will undoubtedly follow is long overdue. Next spring RMT is organising an international conference to discuss these issues.

Posted on 10:39 PM | Permalink

The Economic Times: 4 Oct, 2007

LLANDUDNO (WALES): Indian Railways, the world's second largest under a single management, has entered into a pact with Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways, one of the world's smallest, to cooperate in a wide range of areas.

The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, the first railroad to be granted World Heritage status, was modelled on Ffestiniog Railway and first opened in 1882. "The two railways will soon be discussing technology transfer of turning coal-fired engines into oil-fired," said Welsh Railway company manager Samantha Hughes at a Showcase Wales tourism event.

"The 'twinning' agreement will help in exchange of ideas on crossings, signal technology and even guard operations," Hughes said referring to the pact that allows exchange of ideas, knowledge and technology, among other issues.

The two railroad networks hope the pact, which is similar to a sister-city concept, will help the two sides to preserve the respective heritage of their railways.

They also want to take the 'twinning' pact beyond its traditional meaning - of basic bonding between two cities, civic bodies and governments.

Last year, Ffestinog Railway was assigned by a British client to build two replicas of the Darjeeling-Himalayan carriages. "We ran them for a few weeks on our engines and they were real popular with enthusiasts," said Hughes.

Ffestiniog Railway, that runs a 25-mile network along with Welsh Highland Railway, celebrates its 175th anniversary this year, while the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway is in its 125th year in 2007. Ffestiniog Railway has "twinned" with HSB in Germany and a railway company in South Africa

Posted on 10:32 PM | Permalink

Western Mail: Oct 2 2007
by Aled Blake

BUS and trains operator FirstGroup said strong rail revenues had helped the firm make a “good start” to its financial year.

The Aberdeen-based group, which holds the First Great Western, First ScotRail, First Capital Connect, First TransPennine Express franchises and Hull Trains, said like-for-like passenger revenues had grown 9% in the six months to September 30.

First, which carries nearly 260 million rail passengers a year, added that it was confident of further growth in the business after completing the refurbishment of its high-speed train fleet early next year.

The company said, “The group has made a good start in the first half of the year, in line with management expectations.”

FirstGroup will also today close its deal to buy US group Laidlaw – the yellow school bus giant and owner of trans American bus company Greyhound – for around $3.4bn (£1.66bn) after reaching agreement with US anti-trust authorities.

Investec analyst Joe Thomas said, “Trading across the group is healthy. We have grown increasingly positive on First as the Laidlaw transaction has approached completion and today’s statement will provide further momentum.”

Posted on 10:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Financial Times: October 2 2007
By John Kay

London and Paris were already large cities at the beginning of the railway age.

So when 19th-century magnates built lines radiating from the capital to the provinces they constructed the termini on the edge of the central area. The results remain obvious today. Commuters are deposited each morning at congested hubs and mostly transfer to other forms of transport to complete their journeys.

More than a century later, tunnels were bored under Paris to enable passengers on the suburban rail network, the RER, to travel directly through the city. So today you can journey quickly by train from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Notre Dame, or from Les Halles to the modern commercial centre at La Défense, more quickly than in the cab of even the most frenzied Parisian driver.

There have for many years been proposals that London should do something similar. In the 1980s, clever improvisation exploited an old postal tunnel near St Paul’s Cathedral to create a north-south link from Bedford to Brighton. But the main axis of central London runs from east to west. Crossrail would create a new tunnel along this axis to link commuter railways on each side.

The current plan was first proposed in the 1980s. A bill to promote it was rejected in parliament in 1995, but a new version is before the legislature today. The government has promised support but funding plans are vague. The future of the scheme is uncertain, but brighter than for many years.

At first glance, the saga seems another contrast between the French commitment to grands projets and the English inability to manage big infrastructure schemes. That observation is justified but the issues are more complex. Crossrail was never a good, or viable, scheme and its attractions have diminished, not increased, with time.

The need for a rail link from London’s main western rail terminal at Paddington to the City of London was anticipated by the Victorians. They built it, too, although what is now the Hammersmith and City line is one of the least reliable parts of the Underground system and needs substantial upgrading. Perhaps for these reasons, it is not among the most congested parts of the London transport network. The bottlenecks are elsewhere and Crossrail is almost irrelevant to them.

And while the proposal has stalled for 20 years, the development of London has not. The main focus of new housing development around London is the north-west corridor to Milton Keynes and Northampton, to which Crossrail does not connect. Links to another large planned centre, the Thames Gateway, have been almost eliminated in the despairing attempts to make the project politically, technically and financially feasible. A new international rail terminal for London will open next month at St Pancras, but Crossrail does not go there. The fast route to Heathrow that Crossrail was intended to provide has already been built. A rail link from the City to the airport that stops at all stations but not at British Airways’ new terminal will not persuade bankers to abandon their limousines. The fast-growing airport at Stansted requires better connections to central London, which Crossrail does not provide.

London desperately needs better public transport but Crossrail is not the better public transport it needs. There is an improved Crossrail proposal called Superlink, but it might be better to scrap the whole scheme and build the long-envisaged Underground from Chelsea to Hackney or, better yet, to spend the money on more piecemeal improvements. There is wide but privately lukewarm support for Crossrail, only because no one can bear the prospect of going back to the drawing board and beginning another 20 years of inconclusive discussion.

The imperative requirement is for processes that both require and allow elected politicians to make choices and implement them. Institutions that have no effective processes for making good decisions drift into bad ones. There is a real danger that through two schemes whose costs are disproportionate to their benefits – Crossrail and the 2012 Olympics – London in 2020 will have spent £25bn without getting the infrastructure that a 21st-century city needs.

Posted on 09:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

AFX News Limited: 10.02.07

FRANKFURT - Deutsche Bahn AG is seeking an interim injunction against strikes of train drivers union GdL at the Chemnitz labour court, a spokesman of the court told German news agency dpa.

GdL yesterday said there will be a nationwide strike on commuter and freight lines for a limited period on Friday.

In August, Deutsche Bahn countered attempts by train drivers to strike by filing lawsuits at labour courts across Germany.

See also:

Deutsche Bahn Asks Labor Court to Stop Train Engineers' Strike

Bloomberg: Oct. 2
By Karin Matussek

Deutsche Bahn AG, Germany's state-owned railway, asked a labor court to prevent a train engineers' strike scheduled for Oct. 5, saying it is illegal.

Deutsche Bahn is seeking an emergency ruling from the labor court in Chemnitz, near Dresden in eastern Germany. The court will ask the GDL train drivers' union for comment and decide whether to hold a hearing on Oct. 4, said Chief Judge Burkhard Houbertz.

The GDL union is planning a nationwide strike after wage talks failed. It staged a series of stoppages in July and August to press demands for a pay raise of as much as 31 percent. The GDL, which held off from resuming walkouts until Sept. 30, following a court order and mediation, rejected a Sept. 27 offer of a 10 percent raise.

"We went to the Chemnitz court because we think that the union will concentrate its strike efforts in the eastern part of Germany,'' said Uwe Herz, a spokesman for Deutsche Bahn. He declined to provide more details.

Deutsche Bahn claims that the strike is disproportionate and violates labor law because a collective agreement for train engineers is already in place, Judge Houbertz said.

GDL spokesman Maik Brandenburger couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Walkouts will affect freight as well as long-distance, regional and local passenger services of Deutsche Bahn, the union said yesterday.

Wage Talks

GDL members gave the union approval in a vote Aug. 6 for the first open-ended railway strike in Germany since 1992. A labor court in the city of Nuremberg curtailed the union's ability to stage walkouts two days later, and the GDL agreed not to strike between the end of August and yesterday after government mediators arranged more pay negotiations.

Talks collapsed Sept. 20 between the GDL and two unions that were pushing the engineers' group to accept terms similar to collective agreements they had reached with Deutsche Bahn. The unions, Transnet and GDBA, agreed to 4.5 percent pay raises over 19 months in July for their combined 134,000 members.

Train engineers in Germany earn an average of about 1,500 euros ($2,100) a month, less than counterparts in neighboring France or Switzerland, according to the GDL. The union has asked for the workweek to be scaled back to 40 hours.

All-out strikes by the GDL could cause revenue losses of 500 million euros a day, the Berlin-based DIW economic institute has said.

Posted on 08:09 PM | Permalink

BBC News: 1 October 2007

German train drivers are set to strike at the end of the week after negotiations about a wage agreement collapsed, the GDL union said.

Officials say a prolonged dispute would hurt the economy

The strike will affect passenger and freight trains for a limited period from Friday, GDL added.

National rail operator Deutsche Bahn had proposed a 10% salary increase, but GDL is holding out for a 30% rise.

Deutsche Bahn has been locked in a wage dispute for months with GDL, which says that train drivers are underpaid.

The rail operator has already agreed a smaller deal with two other unions which will see workers receive a 4.5% rise in wages.

GDL chairman Manfred Schell said that Deutsche Bahn "bears sole responsibility" for the strike.

Government officials have warned that a prolonged strike could damage the German economy.

Deutsche Bahn carries some 5 million passengers daily.

See also:

German train drivers to strike again from Friday

Reuters: Oct 1

Germany’s GDL train drivers’ union announced on Monday that it would begin new strikes on Friday after failing to reach an agreement on a wage increase with national rail operator Deutsche Bahn.

GDL Chairman Manfred Schell said in a statement that Deutsche Bahn ”bears sole responsibility for the fact that on Friday, Oct. 5 there will be a limited nationwide strike affecting passenger and freight trains.”

Deutsche Bahn, which the government wants to partly privatise by 2009, has been locked in a months-long wage dispute with GDL, which says Germany’s 34,000 train drivers are underpaid compared with their counterparts elsewhere in Europe.

After disruptive GDL strikes over the summer, the two sides agreed to hold new talks through September, but they have been unable to reach a compromise.

GDL said it formally notified Deutsche Bahn that the latest round of wage negotiations have collapsed.

At the weekend, Deutsche Bahn personnel chief Margret Suckale said the company had done all it could to try to settle the wage dispute.

”We have emergency plans in place and are readying ourselves for a labour conflict,” Suckale told Die Welt newspaper.

Deutsche Bahn had hoped to convince GDL to sign up to a wage deal that it struck with two other unions, which foresees salary increases of 4.5 per cent.

Last week, it offered to pay the drivers for an additional two hours’ work per week -- which it said would result in bottom-line salary increases of up to 10 percent. But GDL has says the new offer just means more work for the same pay.

See also:

Train Strikes in Germany Approaching

Der Spiegel: October 01, 2007

Negotiations between Germany's national railway and the train drivers' union failed on the weekend. Unless an unexpected breakthrough materializes or the courts intervene again, nationwide strikes are set to begin as early as Friday.

German trains may not be moving as of Friday

For weeks, Germany's national railway company Deutsche Bahn has been putting together a plan for how to deal with a looming strike of the country's train drivers. The idea was to ensure that at least 50 percent of all trains run despite a strike by the Gewerkschaft Deutscher Lokomotivführer (GDL), which represents 80 percent of all train drivers in the country.

At the end of this week, it looks like they will have a chance to see if their plan works. The GDL has announced that it will begin strikes on Friday after wage negotiations over the weekend with Deutsche Bahn proved fruitless.

The exact time of the strike will be announced on Thursday, GDL Chairman Manfred Schell told the Associated Press on Monday. The strike could stall thousands of trains and strand many thousands more passengers -- and Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee warned over the weekend in SPIEGEL that "a strike could have a devastating effect on the economy and the current growth."

The strike was originally scheduled to begin as early as Tuesday, but it was pushed back in deference to the upcoming holiday on Wednesday, when Germans celebrate the 17th anniversary of Germany's re-unification.

But that's the only concession the union appears willing to make. Schell stressed that the union had as many weapons in its arsenal as the railway's management. Margret Suckale, Deutsche Bahn's human resources director, countered that the company would "fight the strike using all available means."

Just what those means might be were illustrated earlier this summer after warning strikes by GDL brought rail travel temporarily to a standstill. At that time, a German labor court ruled that the union could not strike (more...) until the end of September because industrial action during the peak summer holiday season would do major damage to the economy. According to Reuters, Deutsche Bahn may seek another such injunction.

The union has been seeking a 31-percent pay increase for Deutsche Bahn's more than 30,000 GDL train drivers, better working hours and a separate contract from other rail employees. The union rejected an earlier offer for a 4.5 percent pay increase, which unions Transnet and GDBA -- which represent the lion's share of Deutsche Bahn employees -- agreed to.

Deutsche Bahn CEO Hartmut Mehdorn has offered GDL a package that would increase pay by roughly 10 percent, but that would come as a 4.5 percent wage increase and bonuses in return for increased work hours, according to Bild.

Deutsche Bahn has tried to calm fears of a strike's repercussions by saying that over half of its trains will be kept running with the help of civil servants -- who are legally forbidden from striking -- and train drivers from Transnet and GDBA. Suckale also said Monday that the company's emergency plan called for the use of "foreign train drivers."

Günther Kinscher, GDL's deputy head, questioned the railway's ability to keep so many trains running, claiming that 80 percent of the company's train drivers are in the union threatening to strike, according to Reuters.

Locomotive drivers in Germany currently earn about €2,000 ($2,850) a month, and many argue that that is insufficient for the responsibility that comes with driving trains carrying as many as 400 passengers and traveling at speeds of up to 300 kilometers per hour (186 miles per hour).

The German government is preparing to sell about half its shares in Deutsche Bahn starting in 2008 through a number of channels, including an initial public offering. But there are concerns that increased wage costs could make the company less attractive to investors.

Posted on 11:09 PM | Permalink

Bloomberg: October 1, 2007
By Bradley Cook

OAO Russian Railways, the country's rail monopoly, and its German counterpart Deutsche Bahn AG jointly bid for a Polish cargo operator, RIA Novosti reported, citing Russian Rail Chief Executive Officer Vladimir Yakunin.

Yakunin, speaking to reporters in Moscow today, declined to specify which Polish company Russian Rail and Deutsche Bahn are seeking to buy, RIA said.

The Russian and German companies agreed last year to cooperate on shipping freight between Europe and Asia via the Trans-Siberian Railway to compete with sea routes.

Posted on 10:50 PM | Permalink

Sunday Times: September 30, 2007
Hugh Pearman

The true character of the famed London railway station is revealed by the long-awaited Eurostar revamp.

On November 14, you will be able to board a Eurostar train that will get you to Paris in a little over two hours, or to Brussels in a little under. And where will you catch that train? At the gothic fantasy of London St Pancras, a station that missed out on the 20th century altogether. It’s an almost surreal conclusion to a 40-year saga.

St Pancras: interior of the Midland Grand Hotel

Back in the early 1960s, high Victorian architecture was widely considered to be hideous, fit only for demolition. Many key buildings were lost. Next in line, the highest of high Victorian, were the smoke-blackened, sinister turrets of underused St Pancras, right next to dour old King’s Cross. With the railways long since nationalised and passenger numbers falling, what need for such duplication? So, in 1966, a merged station was mooted; the wrecking ball was readied.

By then, however, the tide was turning. The Beatles and the Kinks loved Victoriana, as did the cuddly poet and conservationist John Betjeman. St Pancras was duly listed as a Grade I building, on a par with the Tower of London. But, having saved it, nobody knew what to do with it. For decades.

Now look. St Pancras has had £800m spent on it, and is set to become the most important station in the UK. Britain’s world-class engineers, Arup, have been instrumental in the whole thing, and are shareholders in London and Continental Railways, which has built the line, the new stations, everything. The red-brick turrets of the old station hotel, designed by George Gilbert Scott at his most outrageously camp, are being converted back into a hotel and multimillion-pound apartments. Judicious additions to the old building are done in knowing reference to - and sometimes outright imitation of - the Scott style.

St Pancras: construction of the Barlow Train shed, 1864

Yet, like the Victorian psyche, St Pancras has always been Janus-faced. Where Scott’s hotel frontage and station flanks harked back to medievalism, the 1868 train shed behind, by the engineer William Henry Barlow, was another matter entirely. This was Victorian high-tech, a look-no-hands marvel, for many years the widest single-span arch in existence. It is plenty wide enough and high enough to take today’s super-stretch Eurostars, but, unfortunately, it is not nearly long enough. This, along with the need for extra platforms for rail services to the Midlands, has led to St Pancras sprouting a somewhat graceless rectangular station box at the back ? from an original idea by Norman Foster, but carried out by others. It does the job, and they have separated the old and new structures with a tall, glassy transept, but it does not raise the spirits. The best you can say is that it is inoffensive and doesn’t try to compete with Barlow or Scott.

In a way, though, this back extension doesn’t matter. What does is what has been done to the old station. This is more than mere restoration, though that is impressive. At first, I was unsure about the sky-blue paint on Barlow’s great iron arches. This was their second original coat of paint, the first having been a more typically Victorian chocolate brown. But the more I see the place, the more I go with that sky blue. Together with the extra daylight flooding in through reconstructed ridge-and-furrow roof glazing, it lightens the whole place, makes it feel bigger.

St Pancras: the modern Barlow Train shed

It is a complicated picture, with many hands at work. The first part you see - the restoration of the Midland Grand Hotel at the front, and its new annexe on the western flank, both by the Manhattan Loft Company - is designed by Richard Griffiths Architects with fellow architects RHWL. That bit started later, and won’t be finished until 2010. The main work at the station is by Alastair Lansley, a railway architect whose pedigree goes back to British Rail days. He took on the Foster concept for the train-shed extension, and master-minded and delegated aspects of the conversion to others.

So, I found the retail specialists Chapman Taylor fitting out the £50m shopping centre and departure lounges in the old street-level storage undercroft beneath the tracks, where Burton beer barrels used to reside. Dirt floors are being replaced with hectares of solid timber. Plunging further downwards in one corner, you get to the clangorous box of the new Thameslink station, threaded between enormous sewer pipes; it will open in early December. Just as the St Pancras cellar used to be for beer, Thameslink used to be a goods line for coal. Victorian infrastructure is an adaptable thing.

Think of it this way: for passengers, the old St Pancras was a single-layer cake consisting of the platforms under the Barlow roof. By December, it will be a giant three-tier cake, with the roof as the icing on top. Given that all this is taking place in a Grade I-listed building, you can imagine the agonising that went on.

In the end, the decision was taken that it was better for a 19th-century station to reemerge as a 21st-century station than remain in its Victorian time warp. The big new idea works very well: they have dared to cut large slots in the original floor of the Barlow shed. So, when you’re down there, emerging from the Underground into the shops and the Eurostar lounges, you can look right up and see the great roof, seemingly 20ft higher than it used to be. It’s a view nobody ever used to enjoy.

Down there, you stroll among the cast-iron columns and fat brick arches of the old undercroft, now revealed to the public gaze. It is there because the Midland railway directors opted to bring their line proudly into town at high level, rather than in a cutting. That, in turn, meant their terminus had to be built on a plinth, making it even more imposing. It might seem obvious to use the underplatform space in this way, but early studies for the revamped station largely ignored it, cramming more platforms into the train shed and filling it with access bridges instead. Luckily, someone noticed this was idiotic.

They claim the new St Pancras will do for London what Grand Central, with its shops and restaurants, did for Manhattan. For sure, retail therapy on the scale of Covent Garden market is being built down there. As for having Europe’s longest champagne bar at platform level - that raises a smile. You used to get a stale bun there if you were lucky.

Forty years ago, while Betjeman was rhapsodising about the gasoliers in the old hotel, the architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner spotted something else. Beneath the quasi-medieval facade, he observed, lurked a very modern composition. Neither man could have guessed just how true that observation would turn out to be.

Posted on 08:29 AM | Permalink

The Times: October 1, 2007
Carl Mortished
The chief of France’s rail giant believes that the high-speed link between Paris and St Pancras will transform travel

Guillaume Pepy CEO of SCNF

Guillaume Pépy has a nose for truffles, especially the rare black truffles of his home in Carpentras. There is a Friday street market in the town in the department of Vaucluse, near Aix-en-Provence, where local farmers sell truffles to merchants and epicureans — and the man who runs France’s national railway feigns ecstasy as he describes the aroma that rises from a basket of the precious fungi.

He is a good advertisement for France and, therefore, a good salesman for SNCF. Better still, he is no anorak-wearing train buff. When Mr Pépy talks about the joys of trains, it’s all about joining up markets, making things work and, above all, dragging European travellers back to earth from their unhealthy obsession with travel in the air.

After years working at the heart of SNCF, Mr Pépy is watching the business accelerate and make big inroads into the air travel market with a three-pronged attack: to the north, into Belgium and the Netherlands; eastwards, into Germany; and beneath the Channel to Britain, where, until now, the sleek Alstom TGV locomotives have been jammed up in Kent. On November 18, HS-1, the first 200mph Eurostar service, will leave St Pancras station in London for Gare du Nord in Paris.

The imminent launch of 2¼-hour train journeys to the French capital has provoked panicky protests from budget airlines. Eurostar already has about 70 per cent of London-Paris traffic and more than a few people believe that the faster service will force British Airways to abandon its flights to Paris, just as Air France has quit flying to Brussels. The French carrier still has a service to the Belgian capital, but it is operated on the ground by Thalys, the Franco-Belgian joint venture, on high-speed TGV trains.

“The train is back,” Mr Pépy enthuses. “Thank you to HS-1, thank you to TGV and thank you to the taxpayer. The taxpayer has done an enormous effort.”

The SNCF chief is unabashed about the massive public subsidy at a national and local level. The TGV Est project, which opened this summer linking Paris to Strasbourg and beyond to Frankfurt, cost the French State €5.5 billion (£3.8 billion). A fifth of that came from local taxpayers in Alsace and Lorraine. In Britain the Government has guaranteed £3.75 billion of debt held by London & Continental Railways, the private company that built the fast rail link to the Channel Tunnel.

Mr Pépy is as lyrical about the rebuilt St Pancras station as he is about Carpentras truffles. “It’s a wonderful building, an alliance of the 19th and 21st centuries.” But he finds British attitudes to railways baffling. “I am astonished that you collectively mistrust the infrastructure of railways. I hope that will be finally broken.”

It is what this investment is all about, a gamble that the St Pancras terminal will draw not just the London traffic on to the Eurostar but a catchment area that will extend to the Midlands, enabling Eurostar to raise significantly its passenger flow from its present level of almost four million. Speed easily wins the argument in London, but the French rail baron is also pushing the idea that the electric train is also morally superior to the kerosene-fuelled jet.

This truffle-hunter has a nose for the politics of the moment. “I can see in 2007 that the carbon footprint issue is being taken seriously by our customers. People are more and more convinced they should take the trains.”

It’s all about making trains more sexy to travellers fed up with the indignities of budget air travel. As SNCF and Deutsche Bahn jointly launched the Paris-Frankfurt link last summer, they stole an airline idea and announced Railteam, a joint marketing initiative that will enable travellers to book high-speed rail tickets on any network across Europe on a single website. For generations, Europe’s railways stopped at frontiers, where different gauges, signalling networks, power systems and trade unions forced tiresome changes of locomotives and staff. Finally, the barriers are beginning to come down and Mr Pépy admits that it has taken too long.

“In a way, we are late. Everybody was focused on their own domestic high-speed, a sign of technological prowess. Inter-operability was seen as a political matter, not a marketing and sales issue.”

With Hartmut Mehdorn, the chief executive of Deutsche Bahn, Mr Pépy found common cause, creating Alleo (Alliance Est Ouest), a joint venture to sell tickets on the high-speed Franco-German line.

Yet the German rail giant is also a strong competitor. Where SNCF leads Europe in high-speed passenger rail traffic, Deutsche Bahn poses a fierce challenge in international rail freight, SNCF’s Achilles’ heel. While SNCF runs its passenger business like a commercial airline with a passenger yield management system that generates good profits, freight lost it €260 million last year. Mr Pépy hints that radical solutions are needed to deal with freight because the track is monopolised at the moment by high-revenue-earning passenger trains. He says that prices need to go up and dedicated freight rail lines need to be built: “It requires political courage, otherwise the rail freight business will decline.”

Deutsche Bahn is on a different political path. It is to be privatised, with an IPO of 30 per cent expected this year, yet Mr Pépy seems to be genuinely bemused by suggestions that SNCF might follow DB’s stock market adventure: “I can see in France no debate on that. It is not on the table.”

What is on the table is a confrontation between the new Government of President Sarkozy and the rail unions over pension reform. Rail workers, like those in Gaz de France and Electricité de France, benefit from early retirement on generous terms — public sector privileges that the Government has said it will end. The unions have called a strike for October 18 and Mr Pépy has been trying to cool the atmosphere, asking that the rail workers not be stigmatised.

The SNCF chief likes to refer to himself as a cheminot, a railwayman and an ordinary guy, but beneath the bonhomie Mr Pépy has been schooled in the mysteries of French politics and government. He is an énarque, a graduate of École nationale d’administration, the civil service school for high-flyers. He spent some time as a tax judge, a job that he says he hated and readily escaped when offered a job in the railways.

Louis Gallois, Mr Pépy’s former boss, who now heads EADS, began to put French railways on a commercial path, shedding debt. The process will gain further momentum in 2010 when cross-border rail transport within the European Union is opened to competition. This is a tremendous opportunity, Mr Pépy thinks: he expects airlines such as Air France-KLM and British Airways to be running high-speed trains on short-haul European journeys within six years.

There is a feeling within London & Continental Railways that Eurostar UK will be sold when the new service has shown its worth in a year’s time. If it is as popular as Mr Pépy hopes, a British share of Eurostar could be an option for private equity or even an airline, which would demonstrate that Britain has begun, once again, to believe in railways.

Curriculum vitae

Age: 47

Education: Sciences Po, the French political science academy, and École nationale d'administration

Career: Worked in government departments and spent a period as a judge, dealing with taxation cases. In 1995, had a brief interlude in the private sector, working at Sofres, the opinion poll company. Joined SNCF for the first time, aged 30, when he was a chief of staff for Jacques Fournier, then the SNCF president. Subsequently held positions as strategy director and passenger director. As chief executive, he is responsible for day-to-day operations and is leading the management change programme, to prepare SNCF for full competition on its networks. He is also chairman of Eurostar, chairman of Voyages SNCF and non-executive director of Keolis

Posted on 01:31 AM | Permalink