Railtrack came under pressure today to justify its pre-tax profits of £428 million, more than £20 million up on the previous year.

It is an awful lot of money. But then, Railtrack only deals in large figures. As the power behind Britain's rail infrastructure, it owns and runs 20,000 miles of track, 9,000 level crossings and 2,500 stations.

To counter criticism of its huge profits, the company immediately points to another vast sum: the amount it is investing on the rail network. Only last month it announced a £27 billion programme to upgrade the tracks, including the East Coast Main Line, tackle bottlenecks and improve stations.

Railtrack chief executive Gerald Corbett today defended the profit figure as a necessary factor to secure more investment. "Profit and investment are two sides of the same coin," he said. In other words, the shareholders must be rewarded for risking their money on the firm.

However, the taxpayers' contribution - a Government subsidy of £700 million by 2003 - was dismissed as "peanuts" by Mr Corbett.

Railtrack's need to make money is not doubted. Once the rail network was taken from our collective ownership and put into private hands, its primary purpose became to yield profits for shareholders.

The question is whether the company has the balance right between earnings and investment. And most people will consider it obscene that this monopoly is making well over £1 million a day in profit.

Certainly the travelling public will be outraged by this figure. Five years since Railtrack took over the network, passengers are still regularly experiencing overcrowding, delays and cancelled services thanks in part to infrastructure problems.

It is no longer enough for Railtrack to bleat about the run-down state of the network that it took over. And considering the size of today's profits, its complaint about restrictions on the amount it can charge the train operators is particularly hollow.

Most other company bosses look at Railtrack with envy. It has no competition. Its main customers have no choice but to pay up - they can hardly take their trains elsewhere. It also enjoys a public subsidy.

Railtrack's large spend on the network should be acknowledged. But the company will not have invested enough until passengers are so delighted by the quality and reliability of train journeys that they are no longer enraged by its huge profits.

see NEWS 'Railtrack announces £428m profit'

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