Railway Rant
Those of you who know me will know that I whinge quite a lot about the railways. Don't get me wrong, I really love train travel, and as a non-driver I rely on it quite a bit to get around. It's just that there seems to be an awful lot of governmental bureaucracy which hampers the system.
In light of yesterday's headlines about over-crowding I feel that now is a good time to share my feelings with the world at large. The idea of a congestion charge for railways, is, quite frankly ludicrous. Just recently Tony and his cronies - who ride around in Jaguars, oblivious to everyone else - deemed it a good idea to try and price people out of their cars by using a sateliite based charging system. *cough* Big Brother *cough*. And now it seems that you will also be financially penalised for using public transport instead. At this rate I'll be charged for walking at peak times next...
I can't believe that one of the solutions is to 'scrap smaller stations and underused trains'. What really annoys me however is that the overcrowding problem is the government's fault in the first place. If they didn't interfere and had a bit of vision we'd be fine. Since privatisation, services have vastly improved, the number of people using the railway has grown hugely, and the UK still has some of the fastest growing passenger numbers in the world. And how have the government chosen to deal with this? By setting up a sub-group called the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) and letting them meddle with the system.
Let's look at what they've achieved:
1) They refused to allow Virgin Trains to run longer trains on the Cross Country routes - the very same ones which are now overcrowded. Before you blame Virgin for this, you should be aware that the Cross Country franchise is now run by the SRA in all but name.
2) Millions of pounds has been spent on the West Coast Mainline, with new track and trains capable of 140mph between London and Manchester. But the SRA have announced that they're not going to finish the upgrade for 140mph running So, after spending all that money the trains are still limited to 125mph.
3) Midland Mainline are taking delivery of some new trains this month (to replace some older ones). They've been languishing for a while since being built because the SRA couldn't decide what to do with them. One minute they were going to be shortened and deployed elsewhere, the next they were going to be used on the Cross Country routes to relieve overcrowding, and eventually now they're being used as originally intended.
4) The break-up and refranchising of the Central Trains franchise has been postponed because "the SRA have not thought it through".
5) The Greater Western franchise proposals must not, according to the SRA, include plans for a replacement High Speed Train. This means that by the end of the 7 year block the current High Speed Trains will be 30-40 years old, and a replacement will still be some way off.
My final whinge is with Network Rail, another governmental group. They somehow deem it acceptable to ignore the 12-week minimum notice period for engineering works and the other day I watched some poor Aussie girl failing to book a return ticket from Edinburgh in just two weeks because "Network Rail had not yet sorted the engineering timetable". Network Rail are also responsible for the removal of several late night and early morning trains from the timetable, which has wound up a few passengers.
Still, preventing people from buying tickets does at least solve the overcrowding problem...
In light of yesterday's headlines about over-crowding I feel that now is a good time to share my feelings with the world at large. The idea of a congestion charge for railways, is, quite frankly ludicrous. Just recently Tony and his cronies - who ride around in Jaguars, oblivious to everyone else - deemed it a good idea to try and price people out of their cars by using a sateliite based charging system. *cough* Big Brother *cough*. And now it seems that you will also be financially penalised for using public transport instead. At this rate I'll be charged for walking at peak times next...
I can't believe that one of the solutions is to 'scrap smaller stations and underused trains'. What really annoys me however is that the overcrowding problem is the government's fault in the first place. If they didn't interfere and had a bit of vision we'd be fine. Since privatisation, services have vastly improved, the number of people using the railway has grown hugely, and the UK still has some of the fastest growing passenger numbers in the world. And how have the government chosen to deal with this? By setting up a sub-group called the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) and letting them meddle with the system.
Let's look at what they've achieved:
1) They refused to allow Virgin Trains to run longer trains on the Cross Country routes - the very same ones which are now overcrowded. Before you blame Virgin for this, you should be aware that the Cross Country franchise is now run by the SRA in all but name.
2) Millions of pounds has been spent on the West Coast Mainline, with new track and trains capable of 140mph between London and Manchester. But the SRA have announced that they're not going to finish the upgrade for 140mph running So, after spending all that money the trains are still limited to 125mph.
3) Midland Mainline are taking delivery of some new trains this month (to replace some older ones). They've been languishing for a while since being built because the SRA couldn't decide what to do with them. One minute they were going to be shortened and deployed elsewhere, the next they were going to be used on the Cross Country routes to relieve overcrowding, and eventually now they're being used as originally intended.
4) The break-up and refranchising of the Central Trains franchise has been postponed because "the SRA have not thought it through".
5) The Greater Western franchise proposals must not, according to the SRA, include plans for a replacement High Speed Train. This means that by the end of the 7 year block the current High Speed Trains will be 30-40 years old, and a replacement will still be some way off.
My final whinge is with Network Rail, another governmental group. They somehow deem it acceptable to ignore the 12-week minimum notice period for engineering works and the other day I watched some poor Aussie girl failing to book a return ticket from Edinburgh in just two weeks because "Network Rail had not yet sorted the engineering timetable". Network Rail are also responsible for the removal of several late night and early morning trains from the timetable, which has wound up a few passengers.
Still, preventing people from buying tickets does at least solve the overcrowding problem...
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