Rail fare rises are a blow to those feeling the squeeze

” Our research showed that just three in ten(30%) trust the rail industry to act in their best interests -”

I am concerned that anybody feels that any company acts in the best interest of its passengers, subscribers, or customers. The best interest of a company is never likely to be that of its customers other than a short term coincidence of views.

Is it just me or is the question actually intellectually dishonest ?

Certainly we should rail at companies that are inefficient, sloppy, rude, pay obscene salaries, avoid taxes, and rig terms and conditions. To ask if they are run for their users benefits seems a bizarre assumption about how private enterprise works.

Railways are expensive to operate. For decades, little real money has been invested – mostly because of the daft privatisation introduced by Thatcher, which didn’t encourage long-term investment – in fact it positively discourage investment.

We need to ask two questions:

1. Should commuters’ rail fares be subsidised (tax breaks or government subsidies) or should the railways have to pay their own way as a commercial business rather than a vital service?

2. Are railways really the solution to commuting (really, who in 21st Century would design a form of transport that uses trains weighing 100s of tons with steel wheels running on fixed steel tracks)?

We need a 21st Century answer to the problems of twice daily mass commuting.

“Expecting employers to relocate is probably unrealistic” However not bringing more jobs into central locations and recruiting local staff rather than those who are offering to travel many miles might reduce the need for rail and road subsidies.

Which? said at the AGM that they would be putting more jobs into London with a new Mortgage Advice office. This seems daft as costs and salaries are 30% higher than other places in the UK. The reason of “you can get the right staff in London” rings hollow when I know for a fact that Lloyds used to have a dozen highly efficient 60 – man commercial business process centres scattered around the UK.

Seems a bit rich to highlight commuting costs as a problem when the organisation is actually complicit in the London-centric problem. Southampton, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, or Leicester are all viable – and I suspect many would be quite grateful to move from the South-East to a good job with a decent employer.

Living 40 miles or more from work – whether it is “essential” or not – is such a waste of resources, and personal time. When Metroland was developed no doubt people moved into Bucks but were never far from an underground station, with commuting fairly quick and cheap. The scale and distance has now got out of hand. It is lunacy to continue with commuter-congestion. We must in future think about distributing jobs more widely by giving incentives to companies – particularly administrative such as banks, public services, publishing – to locate in regional towns (and disincentivised to locate or expand in London particularly). There are many places I would choose to live rather than the south east, with cheaper houses and shorter journeys.

To the extent that the costs of commuting are reflected in payroll costs through higher salaries and London [or similar] weighting supplements which then feed into consumer prices, plus the amount of direct and indirect taxation required to support and subsidise the road and rail infrastructure, the economic price of commuting is unsustainable and the personal well-being and societal implications are just as unfavourable. So why are we adding to the misery?

Dieseltaylor put his percipient finger right on the spot when he challenged Which? over their intensification of headquartering in London and suggested Southampton, Exeter, Chester, Norwich or Leicester as suitable alternative locations [and there are no doubt several others within the same general arc]. It would probably be argued that the upper strata of the Which? organisation need to be close to their contacts in the regulatory bodies and the centre of government as well as near the major airports for visiting the international trade shows. Well, Ithe first part of that proposition doesn’t hold water in these days digital communication, and, as for the second part, I happen to think that the staff would be able to enjoy such an enhanced quality of life and saving of time every single day that it would be a pleasure to make an occasional journey to London or Heathrow. I live near the Norfolk-Suffolk border and Heathrow to home by car takes just two hours door-to-door through beautiful countryside most of the way]. I wonder how that compares. And as I have said in these Conversations before, you can easily get a good four-bedroom detached house with garden and off-road parking within ten miles of Norwich at a much lower price than in the London region. There are nearly four hundred of them on the market right now between £200k and £300k. You could pay a lot more or considerably less. Only an inconsiderate and short-sighted employer would deny their staff the opportunity to enjoy such benefits! There are scores of towns and cities that need the shot in the arm that the transfer of major office-type employment to their centres would inject so there are even more good reasons why, as Malcolm has already said, the government should stimulate and incentivise this shift.

I am in favour of the HS2 rail link because it will improve connectivity of the midlands and north to London but it will release so much capacity onto the existing lines from Rugby southwards that a whole new world of commuting opportunities will open up and fill the trains to bursting once again. I think we’re going to have to wait nearly twenty years before all that comes to pass however and in the meantime the problems persist.

I see that one of the sites proposed by a think tank for a new “Garden City” is at Gerrards Cross in Buckinghamshire – just 20 miles from London centre on overcrowded rail connections and congested local roads. Not likely to have much local industry to provide local employment – it is a posh area. Have I missed something, or are nincompoops in charge? I would prefer to see a garden city built with local commercial and industrial employment in a less populated part of the UK to begin to reduce the need for wasteful commuting.