44 injured as two trains collide head-on in Switzerland – local media

Sounds like competition amongst other things. Could be that some companies are on the black list of the powers that be. These jobs in general are carried by para-governmental-military groups working for them.

Spain is f%@ed after the crash, it's economy. One of it's financial pillars is going to stay behind the global competition. At the same time Spain gets more and more sucked in debt while losing one of its main income sources.

I sense the vultures are coming to town.

EU railway law to halt 'stagnation, decline'
31.01.13 @ 09:29
RELATED China looking to snap up EU factories, railways European Parliament calls for more rail transport EU injects small dose of competition into its railways
BY ANDREW RETTMANAndrew email
BRUSSELS - The European Commission has proposed breaking up national railway monopolies to save passengers money and to stop industry "stagnation."

The draft law, put out on Wednesday (30 January) in Brussels by transport commissioner Siim Kallas, says state giants, such as Germany's Deutsche Bahn or Italy's Ferrovie della Stato, should be split in two, with one part responsible for infrastructure and the other part to run passenger services.

It recommends full "institutional separation" as the best model.

But it says that a softer option, in which the two parts remain under one "holding structure," but in which day-to-day business is separated by "Chinese walls," is also acceptable.

Firms which fail to do either will be locked out of providing passenger services in other EU countries when the sector opens up fully to cross-border competition in 2019.

The commission said the move will save passengers and railway firms €40 billion by 2035.

It noted that the industry, which is worth €73 billion and which employs 800,000 people in Europe, is "currently facing stagnation or decline," with operators in Belgium, Bulgaria, Portugal and Spain applying for government bailouts in recent years.

"We can take the tough decisions now ... [or] we can accept an irreversible slide down the slippery slope to a Europe where railways are a luxury toy for a few rich countries and are unaffordable for most in the face of scarce public money," Kallas said.

In other measures, the European Railway Agency (ERA), based in Valenciennes, France, is to issue EU-wide "safety passports" for railway vehicles and operators.

The commission said EU countries have 11,000 different safety rules in place and that it can take two years and cost €6 million to get permits for a new locomotive to operate abroad.

It said the ERA move will save firms €500 million by 2025.

Zooming in on the "holding structure" idea, the two parts of the new-model companies will have separate decision-making bodies, separate accounts, separate IT systems to stop leaks of commercially sensitive information from one to the other and "cooling off periods" for executives who switch sides.

The commission said national incumbents currently control over 90 percent of the passenger market in 16 out of the 25 EU countries which run trains.

In one example of how they strangle competition, Deutsche Bahn currently charges passengers up to 40 percent less for tickets than its competitors can. In another case, Austria's OBB Infrastruktur increased track access costs for a competitor, Westbahn, when it started operations on the Vienna-Salzburg line.

The UK-based International Railway Journal, an industry paper, reported on Thursday that Austria, Germany and Italy lobbied to stop Kallas from enforcing the full "institutional separation" model only.

His bill now goes to MEPs and EU countries for amendments.

But a statement by a Deutsche Bahn source to Reuters indicates the lobbying is set to go on. "[The bill is] not acceptable, because the planned remedies actually lead to a separation," the contact said.

"We think the German model, with an integrated company, is a good one, a successful one. These structures in Germany do not only allow competition, they support it," a German transport ministry spokesman noted.

SECTION Economic Affairs
TAGS Transport
RELATED China looking to snap up EU factories, railways European Parliament calls for more rail transport EU injects small dose of competition into its railways

Early on this year the discussion about the ''bad'' public companies that can charge less than the private oligarchs' companies can. Is it a sector where privatisation hasn't already occured? Still ''rotten flesh'' around for the vultures?

Peace

reply to post by MDDoxs


An alternative explanation for all the transportation accidents in the last month is discussed on a website:

www.9starki.com...

2013, for instance, is a "5 soil" type of year. (9 Star Ki is a Japanese system of numerology, complementary with the Chinese Feng Shui system. 9 Star Ki relates to time as Feng Shui relates to the environment.)

As the following page on that website suggests (see the bolded blue print section), a Six Metal month (July) in a 5 Soil year (2013) calls for caution with any mechanical forms of transportation. Coincidence or not? I'd say it's worth seriously considering. Here's that page from their website:

www.9starki.com...

As a further example of current transportation problems, here's a link from CNN International with photos of the entire Kenyan International Airport, now in flames:

edition.cnn.com...