Train overcrowding isn’t set to get better

Part of the problem is that the train operating companies don’t actually own their rolling stock, they lease it from other companies at considerable cost. This actually discourages them from putting extra carriages on trains, if they owned the stock themselves the reverse would be true.

I can’t think of any other solution to this problem that wouldn’t require a massive investment in infrastructure and take years to implement.

Agree with the previous posting, there is little incentive to encourage creative thinking in this respect e.g. perhaps one could make counter-commuter routes more attractive price-wise to encourage commuters to fill those trains and alter work practices.

We only need a nasty crash where passengers are penned in due to overcrowding to make government and train operators have to sit up and take stock (tragically at the expense of lives I am sure). It amazes me that the Health & Safety Exec choose to simply ignore this flagrant dismissal of such a serious issue.

I commute regularly from Reading into and out of London and further west to Swindon – another major concern is that if trains become ever more crowded, how on earth are the toilets (which rarely work and are generally filled with foul sewage at the best of times) going to cope with the increased demand!?

Phil – definitely. It’s a bizarre system isn’t it? The rolling stock companies are one part of it, but central government actually specifies the number of carriages on services and how many of those services there are per day, as the operators don’t have an incentive to.

Simon – interesting point about the health and safety angle. There sometimes seems to be no consistent thinking on that in relation to the railway – for example it’s fine to have Tube train spearing into Tube stations at pretty startling speed because they need to have short dwell times to keep the frequency where it needs to be, but overground trains trundle into stations up and down the land at what seem to me a snailspace. And when escalators and platforms under or above ground get too crowded, they’re closed. But when is a train closed for being too crowded?

The government announcement of the Thameslink programme plus NorthWest electrification plus some (the 1,200 for Thameslink and 600 for Crossrail don’t count in my book, they were already planned – it’s just that those schemes aren’t being scrapped) new carriages is welcome, and much better than nothing.

But it all seems slow compared to the increases in fares coming in January and the increases in passengers we’re seeing now.

The biggest part of the problem is that the lines are being shared amongst several different companies, none of whom have any interest in helping out their rivals. One way to sort this out would be to nationalise the railways again, but since that’s not going to happen under this lot or New Labour how’s about creating a new overlord, Oftrains, to tell who to run what, where?

I thought not. Better get used to it then. We’re screwed.

What you say about trains not being like sandwiches is, with great respect, eyewash. When BR and its predecessors ran the system, the people in charge at station level were obliged to add additional coaches when an unexpected rush of passengers suddenly arrived.
Many a time I had to shuffle my stock of vehicles in order to cope – and that was when most trains ran with ten to fifteen coaches!
Today, with only a fraction of the passenger traffic we had to deal with, the railways seem to take a pride in making passengers feel miserable.