bhg481 - // Everybody knows that the UK is the only country in the entire world whose transport system is affected by bad weather. The rest of the world is able to carry on normally when the weather gets bad but a single snowflake on London is sufficient to close our capital city. //
This is a common response whenever bad weather paralyses our transport systems.
The difficulty is, the other countries you mention have routine periods of bad weather sufficient to impact of transport, which means they are justified in spending on large amounts of resources to combat such eventualities, safe in the knowledge that they will be required, and justify the expense of providing them.
The UK weather is nowhere near as predictable as that.
Therefore, we cannot invest in large amounts of bad weather resources which may sit largely idle for all but occasional days in any given year, the outlay would simply not be justified.
That means that on occasions when we do experience severe weather, and overall it is nowhere near as much as the other countries in your comparison, then yes we are under-prepared, and forced to play 'catch-up' but that is still more economically sound and effective, than planning with expensive hardware and manpower that may not be called on for anything more than a day or two, if at all.