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Unread 24-03-2010, 20:21   #29
markpb
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Posts: 541
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I'm not familiar with the line at all but I wonder if the government would consider tendering out the operation of the line to a private company. They could take the railcars, subsidy and license from IR and offer them as a package to the operator. Line maintenance would remain with IR and some of the ticket sales would go to the government. Integrated ticketing with the rest of the IR network would be part and parcel because they wouldn't have any control over it.

A private company wouldn't have the baggage of IR and would have a strong incentive to operate a service people would want to use. IR would win because they'd lose a loss making service (but also lose the subsidy). They could probably reduce their costs by making some staff redundant or transferring them somewhere more productive.
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