In an era when politicians - and sometimes the rest of us too, even though we should know better - clutch increasingly at the slightest straw of comfort, the importance instead of taking the long view has been underlined by a couple of stories in the past week or two. One of these is about trains: the Office of Rail Regulation has warned that government investment plans for the railways may not be affordable unless present railway funding and structure is overhauled. It is all about the debt Network Rail will rack up over the next 20 years and the ORR says it will be hard to achieve further substantial advances without a more commercial, customer-focused approach, driven by operators rather than government. We can be sure this will generate heated debate, which will be why the ORR wants to get the debate started now, before a problem becomes a crisis.
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