Take railways. Like lots of people, I travel to Central London by train. This is often a trying experience. Yet recent chaos from weather and major repair works have produced major delays and hastily re-organised plans.

There’s a range of targets to blame, from chronic under-investment to poor management. However, I believe the real culprit for the problems is the structure of the privatised rail industry.

Note, I’m not blaming privatisation, by itself. My concern was always the dogmatic way the Conservatives carved up the railways to flog them off.

First, there are just too many firms, making things unnecessarily complex.

Second, splitting track ownership from running trains inevitably led to the ping-pong of blame between Railtrack and various train operators.

The current crisis track replacement would probably not have happened if regular maintenance had been continued. "Cheap" options of reducing maintenance have now ended up costing rail firms much more.

Some privatisations managed that, like telecommunications: new technologies re-inforced competition. Others, like water, have enabled the regulators to use "yard stick competition" quite imaginatively.

Railways however were privatised almost without competition: Railtrack is a pure monopoly, while train operators like South West Trains only compete when their franchise is up for renewal, as it is now. Too late?

All this leaves me worrying about how we avoid future transport disruptions.

Government plans for London Underground and the National Air Traffic Services are all-too-similar to the Conservative railway experiment.

That’s why Liberal Democrats support a re-think in both projects. Let’s not make the same mistakes.