The Metronet debacle has inevitably led to the unions and other groups to call for renationalisation of the London Underground.
The logic is that since Metronet has gone bust the part privatisation is a failure and only government could run it.
This argument is simply the ‘public good, private bad’ argument, which is as bad as the ‘private good, public bad’ statement. What this has shown is that private companies fail. It doesn’t show that they must or are worse than public companies. Tubelines is doing very well managing their lines.
Instead of a condemnation of the part privatisation of the tube, I see this as a vindication. True, Metronet have gone bust, but this is in the open, we know, the government is not going to be bailing the company out (we hope) and another company will take over.
Imagine now the public sector. Lets be generous and assume the same costs and rate of failure (the public sector is likely to be more expensive, but we’ll cast that aside). So if Metronet were instead run directly by TfL and went bust what would happen? In all likelyhood the management would seek to hide it. It would look bad for TfL and therefore the Mayor. That would lead to more money being thrown at it to try and save it and to hide the problems leading to a continuation of the same failings. This would lead to higher fares and taxes for a (probably) worse service.
(It need not be this way, but it is far more likely to work like this than for failings to be exposed)
So, with minimal disruption, we have a system which exposes failings far more easily and quickly. I think that’s a good thing.
Metronet’s failure also sends another signal- this is not just an easy way to make quick buck from the taxpayer’s pockets, it carries risks, but as Tubelines shows, those risks need not be without reward.
In the long run, keeping on the course we’re on will result in far better results than the retrograde step of renationalising the tube network.
