On a morning where transport is disrupted across the UK by snow and cold winds, it’s worth returning to this post from a few years ago, which explains why small amounts of snow here are so much more disruptive than the much larger amounts which are easily managed elsewhere. In short, the marginal cost of being ready for severe weather, when there isn’t very much of it, isn’t justified by the benefits from another day or two a year of smooth operations. That is a very sensible trade off – the existence of which is immediately forgotten when the bad weather arrives.
It’s a trade off with much wider application than snow-covered railway tracks. Once you start looking, it can be seen in almost every area of public policy, culminating in the macro view that everybody (it is asserted) wants both lower taxes and better services. Being more efficient is the way of closing the gap which is simultaneously both clearly the right thing to do and an excellent way of ducking the question, but at best shifts the parameters without fundamentally changing the nature of the problem. Hypothecation is a related sleight of hand – let’s have more money, but only for virtuous things. In the end, though, public policy is about making choices. And letting the trains freeze up from time to time is a better one than it appears in the moment to the people whose trains have failed to come.