Reappraising State-Owned Enterprise

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The Financing of a Large Infrastructure Project The Case of the Channel Tunnel

Terry Gourvish

INTRODUCTION: STATE-OWNED TRANSPORT IN BRITAIN: PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

Debates about the effectiveness, or otherwise, of the British public sector have not disappeared with the drive to privatize most of the nationalized industries from the mid-1980s. After World War II, much of inland transport was taken into public ownership under the aegis of the British Transport Commission. The move, which was largely dictated by the poor state of the assets and their unattractiveness to private capital, offered the promise of scale economies and operational integration for the railways, bus services, and road transport, activities which were in any case either ...