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A PETITION has been launched to try and save the Tyne & Wear Metro system from privatisation.
You can add your name to the on-line petition by clicking this link: Tyne & Wear Metro petition.
Petition creator Pete Woods says: "Tyne & Wear Metro is a public-sector success story, achieving record levels of punctuality & ridership and should be kept that way, funding for an upgrade of the network is conditional on fragmenting & privatising Metro's operations & infrastructure.
Nexus (Tyne & Wears Passenger Transport Executive)indicate that the government has insisted on the break-up, overruling the PTE's preferred option of maintaining Metro as a 'vertically integrated'railway. The model now proposed for Metro is in danger of repeating the mistakes of rail privatisation. Safety will be threatened as Metro will be fragmented into different sectors similar to the failed London Underground PPP, inevitably leading to a less efficient, more expensive railway which is why Nexus were originally opposed to the break up of Metro.
Large amounts of fare revenue & public subsidy will be used to pay dividends to shareholders instead of being used to improve Metro for the benefit of passengers & of course Metro workers' pensions, jobs & conditions will be under threat as the private sector tries to maximise profits.
