Search
Research and Reports
A database of documents and reports released by industry bodies. You can download the document by clicking on its title, and can filter reports by author or subject. If you have a report you would like to submit to the Rail Hub, please email [email protected].
-
Flood defence: time for a radical rethink
05/01/2016Dieter Helm SearchResearchItemsEconomist Dieter Helm argues that a rethink is needed in the approach to flood defences - something that with recent flooding having even severed the West Coast Main Line is far from being mainly of interest to farmers and house owners. “The conventional approach to flood defence, carried out by the Environment Agency (EA), and financed largely by the Treasury, is at best inefficient. Sometimes it is even counterproductive, encouraging the sorts of land use and land management decisions that can actually make flooding worse in the medium term,” reports Prof Helm. Instead, he argues for root and branch reform, including establishing what the ideal flood defence system would look like, and the splitting-off of flood defence from the Environment Agency.
-
What to do about the railways?
22/09/2015Dieter Helm SearchResearchItemsWhat does society want from the railways, which is the right structure, and what is the appropriate subsidy? These big questions are asked in a paper that argues the structure chosen at privatisation “was the wrong answer to what turned out to be the wrong question”. It suggests three possible options: making railways less reliant on subsidies (a la the view of the 1980s and 1990s); going for expansion largely within the current structures; or undertaking restructuring in an evolutionary manner. Recommendations include government deciding strategically what railways are ‘for’, setting up a ‘national transport balance sheet’, and creating a system operator from Network Rail, which would mean the other bits could be broken up.
