Saint or sinner?

Story here DAILY MAIL (so it must be true!)

We know he used flawed data, and there are allegations of connections to the road building industry. But at the end of the day, the government took the decisions.

We now have the benefit of hindsight so what do we think?

I don't really know a lot about the cuts, but I get the impression that they're generally considered to be short-sighted, and only over the last 10-15 years have various governments have realized the railways are an important asset, they've been struggling to bring the whole system up-to-date after 40 years of neglect.

The worst thing they ever did. I know the railways were'bitty' but they worked.You could get anywhere-always a connection and on time. The money spent since then on the catastrophic mess we have now could have easily been spent on
smartening up and generally modernising what we had.
Beeching forgot that railways were for the people .Why do they have to profit all the time, breaking even would have
done leaving a bit left over for improvements.

Because the railways are privatised. there are also shareholders who will be wanting a return for their investments and you can't blame them for that, after all, the whole point in investing is to see a return for their money. Just think, if services were indeed for the people and convenient then likely they would be more inclined to use it, leave cars at home resulting in fewer cars on the road which would be a saving on the environment and the pocket - one would hope, however, there would not be as much paid in road tax, car running expenses, parking charges / fines / staff to monitor these things etc. It is now catch 22.