It will come as little surprise to those of us who use the railways on a regular basis that the government is not really interested in improving the network beyond what exists today. While the government continues to consider railway investment as ‘subsidy’ and ‘cost’ there is little hope of this ever changing in times of such great need.
There are to be no rail reopenings considered except at local authority level for the next seven years, the electrification decision has been postponed again, there will be no decision on a new north-south high speed line until 2012 at the earliest, and there is little forward thinking and guidance from the Department for Transport in these matters. It, therefore, comes, also, as no surprise that ‘investment’ in roads is talked about quite a lot.
The Times ran a very interesting article detailing this phenomenum: the road network is growing fifteen times faster than the railway network. According to The Times, “In five of the past eleven years, no track was added to the domestic rail network, and in the peak years for rail growth, in 2001 and 2002, the network grew by only six miles a year.” Reopenings have happened in Wales and Scotland, however. The Highways Agency has 40 new projects in the planning stages and the only seriously considered railway project is Crossrail which only benefits London and the surrounding area.
It may come as another surprise that London is already quite well served by railway connections. What about the rest of the country? As usual, it seems like it doesn’t exist or is not of sufficient importance. A very sad situation. This is despite the fact that rail passenger miles have increased by fifty per cent compared to twelve per cent for roads.
This is hot on the heels of the announcement that BAA wishes to build a second runway at Stanstead and the third runway at Heathrow seems to be a given making domestic flying even more of an option. Flybe announced several new domestic routes recently all of which, there is no doubt, will cost less than the equivalent train journeys.
As the BBC recently highlighted in one of their news reports, it is now cheaper for two people to take a taxi from Bristol to London during peak hours as it costs £137 for a return ticket on the day, if you happen to have to attend an important business event in London, or some other short notice event. Similar prices open up opportunities for airlines to run fifty thousand seats between Manchester and London, despite train services operating every thirty minutes.
The changes to CrossCountry have enabled domestic flights to take off as there have been a massive reduction in the number of through trains to many destinations, almost doubling the duration of some journeys. It is quite absurd that it takes eight hours from Preston to Penzance, for example – and for quite a price too! Due to this, there are now 1,200 domestic flights per day, or 454,000 per year offering something in the region of fourty million seats. This is compared with thirty million in 2001.
The changes to CrossCountry and the changes to the portion now served by First Transpennine Express are starting to really affect people’s choice in how they travel. It seems absurd that a three car commuter train is operating InterCity services that people could be on for up to five hours from Manchester to Glasgow or Edinburgh. These trains are not suitable for such journeys and consequently when they reach top speed they feel like they are going to come off the track, the journey is horrendous according to some reports.
These problems are not going to go away over night. But what can we, the taxpayer and passenger, do about it? The answer is as usual: not a damn thing.