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  3. Fair Fares Railways: Cheaper Tickets Will Not Solve Rail’s Problems Most of the time, parliamentary committee reports embody

Fair Fares Railways: Cheaper Tickets Will Not Solve Rail’s Problems Most of the time, parliamentary committee reports embody

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问题           Fair Fares Railways: Cheaper Tickets Will Not Solve Rail’s Problems
    Most of the time, parliamentary committee reports embody every foreign stereotype of the British—dry, reserved and slightly dull, with only the occasional flash of sarcasm to lighten the mood. Not so those of the transport committee. Its latest report, on rail fares, accuses the rail industry of " holding passengers to ransom " with "extravagant" fares and an "impenetrable jungle" of ticket types.
    Some of these criticisms are fair. Ticketing arrangements, especially for long distance journeys, are Byzantine: the National Fares Manual describes over 70 ticket types within its 102 pages. Stung by public criticism, several big train companies, including Virgin, GNER and First Great Western, promise to simplify things.
    The MPS are on shakier ground with their complaints They point to the amount of state money given out to the railways— ￡4.4 billion this year, with ￡5. 3 billion planned for next year—and argue that train firms should be forced to cut prices. Costly tickets, they claim, are " pricing many passengers out of the market".
    That is a tough argument to sustain at a time when more people than ever are using the railways. On some parts of the network, overcrowding, not under-use, is the biggest problem, with commuter routes into big cities such as London, Leeds and Manchester especially jammed. Fares on these routes are already capped. That’s unwise, says Stephen Glaister of Imperial College. " If there is traffic jams in the system, then the economically correct solution is higher prices," he says. "Otherwise you just end up with shortages and queues." Giving railway firms greater freedom to set their own prices would let them spread demand around peak times, cutting traffic jams.
    The only way to reduce traffic jams and prices together is to do things like lengthening platforms and upgrading signals,. which would mean more people could be carried in the busiest areas. That would require tough decisions. A big improvement to the railway network would be expensive, and the government has shown little enthusiasm for increasing subsidies still further. Extra cash could be found by closing little-used (and heavily subsidised) rural lines, but that would be unpopular with fans of rail transport, who argue that branch lines provide a vital service to the poor and the earless.
    The report occasionally hints at such dilemmas, only to shy away from discussing them in a satisfactory way. The transport committee plans a broader look at rail policy next year. Perhaps then it will do a more thorough job.
The word "Byzantine" (Line 3, Para. 2) most probably means______.
选项 A、absurd
B、complex
C、excessive
D、puzzling
答案B
解析 本题考查根据上下文推测词义。理解词汇要联系上下文。先定位到第二段第二句。该句中Byzantine一词用来形容票务安排的特点，冒号后面部分是对这一特点的解释说明：国内票价指南用102页的篇幅描绘了70多种车票。显然这种安排是极其复杂的。此外，上文第一段末句提到，铁路行业被指责其车票种类有如“无法穿越的密林”。这也说明了票务安排的复杂性，[B]为最准确的含义。
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