Fixing Britain’s railways in the holistic sense is controversial. I have compiled a modest manifesto of how ticketing could be dragged kicking and screaming into the second quarter of the 21st century.
Fixing the nation’s railways in the sense of mending and modernising the infrastructure also causes many arguments, especially over a bank holiday.
From 8pm on Saturday to 8am on Monday, the southernmost 75 miles of the link connecting London King’s Cross with Yorkshire, northeast England and Scotland will close completely, between the capital and Peterborough. The prospect of a rail replacement bus from Bedford, the Thameslink terminus on the East Midlands line from London St Pancras International, to Peterborough, will tip the most hopeful journey into misery. Rather than a 47-minute intercity journey, passengers must invest around two and a half hours and several handfuls of hassle.
Their temperament may not be improved by the knowledge that some sacrifice is necessary for a brighter future. The work is part of the East Coast Digital Programme – intended to deliver signalling information direct to the driver. After almost two centuries of strictly analogue signalling, the expensive and fragile lineside equipment will be obsolete. And there should be less copper cable for villains to steal – as they did this week on the West Coast Main Line, causing mayhem from Glasgow to London.
The investment is desperately needed. When best to invoke those rail replacement buses? Inevitably, that question is modified: what is the least bad time to close one of the UK’s key arteries?
At this point, Network Rail summons the ghost of the father of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham. His prescription: the option that ensures “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”. In a Network Rail context, that becomes damage limitation: “the least unhappiness of the lowest number”. Choosing the Sunday in the middle of a bank holiday weekend is arguably the best call. The busiest days of the weekend are Friday, Saturday and Monday, and many of the people affected are flexible enough to either shift their travel time or take the hit of the Sunday slowdown. Better, rail bosses believe, than impeding commuters and business travellers on working days.
But perhaps the decision to close the line during a bank holiday weekend is a bad move for the future of the railway? Either the industry shrinks to try to reduce the shocking £12.5bn annual subsidy, or more travellers are enticed onto the trains. Repeated bank holiday shutdowns merely confirm what many prospective passengers believe: that the railway cannot be relied upon for fast, comfortable and affordable journeys.
Actually, most of the time, the Victorian-era network delivers. As with the nation’s biggest airports, we extract an absurd quantity of transportational capacity, way beyond the original intention of the infrastructure. But like a human, the older it gets, the more intervention it needs. Everyone involved with the railways has a view; mine is that longer closures are the best solution. Rather than string out the work over a dozen weekends, close the line for a fortnight or a month. Give plenty of warning, and people can work around the problem.
Members of the RMT, meanwhile, deploy their own version of Bentham’s principle: seeking the greatest unhappiness of the greatest number. Closing the entire CrossCountry network on a key Saturday in August meets this test.
Currently staff working for CrossCountry Trains are in dispute over issues of pay, staffing and safety. Like unions anywhere, they will press home their demands at the time that causes maximum disruption. Tens of thousands of families are seeking a seaside escape or a journey home from the coast, so successfully shutting down trains from Plymouth to Glasgow and Bournemouth to Manchester is a win.
On Saturday morning I went along to Birmingham New Street, the hub of the CrossCountry network, to report on the effects. There I discovered a minor miracle: the first time in living memory when trains have replaced rail replacement buses. Network Rail had been telling the press and passengers that the key intercity line between Birmingham New Street and the city’s International station, serving the city’s airport, would be closed. “Rail replacement buses will be in place between Birmingham International and Birmingham New Street,” the organisation had insisted.
Yet trains were running normally. On board the packed 9.36am from New Street, happiness abounded.
