Trains

[Pootle]

Will the railway system ever be as punctual, reliable and comfortable in the UK as it is on the !continent!, how long will it take, and if not why not?

[Mattk]

you have to say that in theory it should run exactly on time as the trains always travel at the same speed and there should never be blocked rails so how do they get so badly delayed !

[andy hughes]

Simply - no.

The rail system has been mismanaged and underfunded for the last fifty years -a situation which was only exacerbated by privatisation. The whole point of a private company is to make money for its shareholders, that is its first and over-riding concern. This is done by under-investment in everything - infrastructure, safety measures, you name it. The rail network has been bled dry by the fat cats who were determined to take their money and walk away. Add to that the criminal incompetance of successive companies put in place to run the thing, and it has now reached a stage where it would take investnment of hundreds of millions of pounds, and possibly shutting the entire thing down for a few years and stripping it back to the wires and starting again.

Of course,this is never going to happen, so we lurch on with the make-do-and-mend philosphy that has kept the whole thing limping along, with occasional fatalities on the way, and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.

You want public servies to run properly? Don't allow anyone to make a profit out of them, either financial or political, and you'll be on the right track (pun intended!) Can you see that happening? No, nor can I. 

[KebabMeister]

I hated using trains in the UK because when coming back from London they'd give you 3 minutes to catch the connecting train in Peterborough to Leicester.  The train was always late and therefore I had to wait an hour for the next train!  Not good!

Here in Munich the public transport is not only excellent but very cheap (trains, subways, trams, buses - I pay �27 for a monthly ticket).  They also do trains to European and other German destinations from �20 each way.  They also have a special weekend ticket where a group of 5 can travel anywhere in German, and some places in the Czech Republic, for only �20 (�4 each) return. 

[Gef]

Since First took over the franchise in the Greater Glasgow area the service has improved immensely. The trains run on time, are clean and very rarely cancelled. It is almost impossible to make a journey now without paying so perhaps they are putting some of this previoulsly "lost" revenue back into the business. I also travel quite a lot from Glasgow to the North East of England and have no complaints about GNER (apart from their impending smokig ban).

[Grunty]

I have to agree with Andy's every word.  Somewhere I have a book called The Great Railway Conspiracy which explains the running down of the railways in the 1950s to make us buy oil. 

Sorry to hear that GNER have taken so long to ban smoking.

[KebabMeister]

I find myself getting angry when I think about all the train lines and stations that were closed in the 50s and 60s.  I know the upkeep of them would have been expensive but how useful they would be in todays age.  The Government want us to use public transport but in all honesty you can't because it's either unreliable or horrendously expensive.  It's just a constant lack of investment in the rail system when you compare to the likes that France, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland etc. all have.

[redmug100]

Too many trains too few lines.  If you put express, regional, local and freight trains on the same lines you can't expect everything to run to time. Also Britain tends to build railways on the cheap - The Victoria Line with tiny platforms or the Jubilee line (with huge platforms and stations) with knackered out signalls.