After Railtrack was forced into bank-ruptcy in October 2001, the government transferred ownership of the country's railways to a third-wayish, not-for-profit-but-not-state-owned outfit, Network Rail. Things had been so bad under Railtrack that people assumed they could not get worse. They were wrong. There are 70% more delays than there were three years ago. Network Rail has been cancelling services to try to improve the remaining ones' punctuality, but says it will not get back to the level of reliability passengers enjoyed in 2000 (which was anyway pretty lousy by international standards) until 2010. Costs have doubled to nearly ￡6 billion a year while fares are rising faster than inflation.
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