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With pricey fares, constantly cancelled trains and even more tube strikes set to cause another month of travel misery, Londoners are pretty fed up with rail travel across the city. But now, ASLEF and the RMT have suggested that taking part of London’s network under public ownership could help fix finances and improve services.
RMT leader Mick Lynch and ASLEF leader Mick Whelan have penned a letter to London mayor Sadiq Khan calling for the Elizabeth line and London Overground to be transferred into public hands.
They say that privatisation has been a ‘costly inefficient failure’ and that public ownership would see more of the profits from each line be reinvested into the network.
In the letter, Mick and Mick said: ‘There will be significant savings to government. Public ownership represents an opportunity to improve passenger rail services by removing the commercially driven focus on individual operators’ profit.
‘London would not only share the same policy direction as the national government, but public ownership would make it significantly easier to create the kind of governance structures that would enable greater devolution to London.’
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