Richard Schooling’s Blog: 12 July 2007

Off the rails

I knew that Gordon Brown had reshuffled his cabinet while I was away but did I miss the bit where he put Franz Kafka in charge of the railways?

This week’s papers reported on familiar themes: record passenger numbers; widespread overcrowding and relentless fare increases.

So what are Government and train companies planning to do? Well, business as usual it seems. The former will cut its subsidies while the train operators plan to keep on chopping carriages out of trains and putting up fares in order to maximise profits.

If a car fleet manager went to his or her board with a strategy that said “business is booming; demand has doubled; let’s shrink the fleet until it’s too small to do its job and put up our prices by 30%,” they’d be out of a job in no time.

Clearly, things work differently on the railways.

It’s hard to think of any business that treats its core customers as badly as the rail companies treat commuters. Passengers who pay thousands for season tickets endure delays, cancellations and carriages packed to 150% of their seating capacity on some routes.

Somehow, the rest of us are also still supposed to use trains in preference to cars for business travel so as to cut congestion and pollution. But even if you can find a seat after paying £100 for a standard return ticket to London, the chances are that you’ll have nowhere to rest a laptop: some train companies are reportedly taking the tables out of carriages to cram in more seats.

This week the Government will publish a 30-year strategy for rail. It’s believed that, while Europe builds its slick network of 200mph trains from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, the UK’s strategy for the next three decades will focus on finding seats for everyone on commuter trains. No, seriously.

Sadly, it looks as though everyone who wants rail to offer a genuine alternative to the roads for business travel is in for a long wait.

Till next time,

Richard