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Date for East Coast nationalisation
05.11.09
The financial nightmare on the East Coast Main Line out of King's Cross is set to end at midnight next Friday the 13th, when Britain's most lucrative rail network is nationalised.
Transport Secretary Andrew Adonis said his Department will take over running the line at the end of next week from National Express which lost the licence because it could not keep up with payments.
Reader views (2)
This route will not be a drain on the public purse. This route is still highly profitable even in this recession. This company 'claims' it is making a loss on the route but when you actually look at why then you would actually see what's going on. The loss is created when the company then pays its franchise premium to the government - the franchise premium it ambitiously created.
Like any business NX knew the risk when it made the bid, it was fronted by a rather bullish Richard Bowker who really thought he was invincible as he walked the halls of the DfT expecting renegotiation. If the DfT had renegotiated this franchise every other operator in the UK would have run back to the government asking for the same and the public would have lost out on billions.
The NX bid should never have been accepted. The most sensible bid came from Virgin/Stagecoach/GNER which came in at £1-1.1billion for the 7 years and they had also factored in a recession scenario. NX chose to ignore this and their downfall is their own making - their current company position merely shows what a shambles even their own board is in.
- Bolton, York
It is easy to be critical in this situation of National Express which other than paying a higher price than the franchise was worth have done little wrong. Anyone in business would have known in 2007 , when the franchise was agreed , that a recession was coming but the government and National Express took little account of this. We are now faced with another drain on public finances and the prospect of another part of our infrastructure falling into foreign hands.
- Robin Brittain, Wolverhampton UK
