Travelling In Hope But Not To Arrive

In her first time out as Secretary of State for Transport, Justine Greening has encountered the attentions of Boris Johnson the big bully of the politician’s playground. The Mayor of London demands that she take action to give him a hub.

This time he means a big brand new airport for London, replete with runways, services and all the shopping opportunities that his sponsors and favourite lobbyists could wish for. Heathrow is such a mean little place, Gatwick fit only for tourists and the others around London not worthy of attention.

My theory on this is that if all of Central London between Liverpool Street Station and Kensington Palace, north of the Thames and reaching up to Marylebone Road were to be flattened and used as the site of such an airport there would be many advantages.

Especially if other areas in London were put to a better use. Kensington and Chelsea would make a good sized trucking depot and Hampstead turned into the world’s biggest shopping mall. There would be other bonuses.

If no compensation was paid this would stop the property bubble in London at a stroke. Also, it would be a major correction to the imbalances in our national finances that could pay down a great deal of debt. Add to that it would redress the contrasts between the poorer parts of the UK and the richer South.

In the meantime, train buffs will have noticed the news item about a first ever, allegedly, rail journey starting at Euston and ending at Swanage. It was a steam special and done purely for fun. During WW1 and certainly in my memory in WW2 there were many train movements that had never been made before arising from the demands of war and disruptions from bombing.

No matter, in order to make this journey, if I am correct, the train will have crossed the Great Western Main Line, which has links, on which the Heathrow Express runs and then gone on to join a Southern line which allows routing to Gatwick and Manston.

This blog has already mentioned, more than once, the existing opportunities for links between major airports as well as a number of minor ones. The south east has many runways already in civil use with a number of former or other military ones. Around the rest of the country there are quite a number of others.

Has anyone in government, notably at the Transport department, set out to consider seriously all the possibilities and just how quick the trains could be on the basis of existing or available technology, without spending squillions on the fantasies of lobbyists acting for commercial interests anxious to raid the coffers of government?

Why is there so little interest in at least trying to work out a flexible dispersed and more responsive airport network fully linked? Boris wants to put all our eggs as well as his into one big basket regardless of cost as the ultimate political stunt of his career. Perhaps he should be offered the choice of either flatten London or forget it.

For Ms. Greening, all I will say is that Sir Edward Elgar’s mum was a Greening, so could she come up with a different tune?

Train Pain And Gain

Travelling by train, we are told by a government minister, is becoming strictly for the rich in that many of the lower paid cannot afford the fares. He may be right, but in my memory rail travel always made a hole in the personal cash flow.

There were a number of offers, certain cheap day returns, excursion trains and the occasional special for one reason or another. But in the mid 20th Century and earlier despite the flim flam of the films most people did not travel much having neither the time nor the cash.

It was why Beeching took the axe to so much of the rail system. There seemed to be little hope for increasing rail travel use and all the signs of a collapse in the passenger numbers due to the increasing car ownership which impacted directly onto rail’s key market segments (how about that?).

With freight demand also on the wane, partly due to reduced costs of road transport, better delivery possibilities and far less pilfering, especially in the parcels traffic, some places were notorious, there was little hope of making rail carriage for goods cheaper by taking advantage of the increasing demand for consumer goods.

Today, despite the huge subsidies and elaborate financing mechanisms, it is still a form of transport that has relative costs. Certainly, more people have been using rail lately and the numbers are well up. But with an increasing population that is more adult and the sprawl of modern life it is arguable how much traffic is being taken off the roads and just arises from natural increases.

Where services have been greatly improved or introduced to meet modern needs the use has been much greater, notably on the Chiltern Lines, again this may be due to urban sprawl in the South East. Also, with the Cotswolds increasingly part of the commuter belt you would expect more bottoms on seats, or rather squashed up against each other on the old GWR.

The real problem is that between the Ministry of Transcendental Meditation, formerly Transport, Network Rail or whoever it is and the various companies there is a muddle of thinking compounded by lurches into prestige projects like HST2 and schemes in the South East designed to create increased property values along selected corridors.

There is not much joined up thinking, nor for that matter joined up networks and facilities. At the same time there is talk of the need for infrastructure projects to deliver investment in the UK that retains the spending in the UK monetary system.

Which brings me back to the Big Idea for Railways. This is the decision that was ducked after the 1923 Rationalisation and the 1930’s Scotch Expresses and the 1947 Nationalisation and the Beeching years and then the turn of the 21st Century.

It is spurred on this time by the complaints of M.P.’s in the South East over the winter fiascos that badly affected the old slow third rail systems. Their hopes of a better type of electrification have been quickly put into the back of the bottom draw of the Ministerial filing cabinet.

It is to electrify the whole system to a single standard, join up a lot of lines that would benefit from it, add schemes like the Oxford to Cambridge link between the South West and the East and others and perhaps rationalise stock as well to decent modern and fast running standards.

Alas, that one would not make for either easy headlines or short sound bites.

Trouble On The Trains

There is a nasty accident waiting to happen. It is on the railways and it has been only a matter of luck that it has not already occurred. It is nothing to do with tracks or signals or normal running.

It is in the design and equipment of many trains now in use and what might happen. One reason why it has been avoided is that there have already been cases of passengers smashing their way out of carriages. The stories have been slanted to suggest that they have been foolish or impatient.

The new stock with its air conditioning systems, fully enclosed carriages with windows that cannot be opened and doors that lock shut all depend on the power available. What has happened recently is that trains have come to a halt and the power is shut off or has failed.

At most times of the year this would be a nuisance which may give rise to discomfort of one sort or another. In the London Underground even at cool times of the year a train stuck in a tunnel can became very uncomfortable.

At times when it is very hot and the train is either in a confined space which heats rapidly or out in open hot sun then the conditions in the carriages can deteriorate quickly. The carriages can literally become ovens.

The latest occurrence was on South Eastern Railways Dartford line. A train breakdown and South Eastern’s typical lack of ability to sort out the traffic or deal with it resulted in trains being held for hours without power or ventilation. Passengers then smashed the doors open and detrained.

Because of the media’s obsession that heat is good there is no mention of the risk that had the passengers not done so then there could have been a real threat to life. How many in the train were vulnerable to excessive heat? How many could have suffered real damage had the situation continued?

One trouble is that the RAIB which deals with safety etc. rather than the HSE are strong on the technical side but not so keen on messy passenger affairs. Having people on the trains interferes with their smooth running and the meeting of targets.

So South Eastern can get away with sending ambulances to wrong locations, not having first aid kits available and not bothering with tiresome accident reporting procedures.

There have been other reports of passengers elsewhere having to take their own action here and there but the prevailing attitude is unsympathetic, the authorities more or less claiming that they should sit and suffer until all the blunders and errors have been dealt with.

One problem is that there are cases of passenger foolishness that has had serious and sometimes fatal consequences so it is easy for the authorities to suggest that all the incidents are for these reasons.

But they are not, just how long will it be before a disaster occurs in a train that has been left without aid in overheated conditions?

Railway Mania

Apparently BAA have dumped the project to provide rail links from Heathrow to Reading, Guildford and London Waterloo because there are issues with three level crossings in Richmond and there is a lack of money. The figure suggested was £650 million.

The Reading connection would have allowed access to the Great Western main line and to other destinations, notably Oxford and beyond to the West Midlands via Banbury, Leamington Spa and Coventry to Birmingham.

Also, Chiltern Railways have announced a significant speeding up on trains across its network, notably from Birmingham and other West Midland destinations to London Marylebone. There has been a good deal of work done on improvements and newer trains are planned. More would improve matters further.

Meanwhile, Virgin Rail continues to run its services with a good degree of frequency between Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Coventry and London Euston. With a few added track and station improvements here and there some speeding up is possible.

In short it was feasible to have put in place rail services from Birmingham and area to three different termini in London with one going via Heathrow.

It does not end there. Because it would have been possible to start a train at Manchester Airport, run it south via Crewe to Birmingham Airport through Birmingham New Street and then on to Heathrow finishing at the vacant old Eurostar platforms at Waterloo.

Other stops could include Stafford, Coventry, Leamington Spa and/or Banbury, Oxford and Reading as connecting points.

But oh dear me no, this would be a boring old bits and pieces series of projects that would not grab the media headlines. Has any of the media paid any attention to the way the development of the Chiltern Lines has improved communications in the South Midlands?

It would not be the whizzbang prestige thing. It would not be big toys for the big boys. Above all it would not be big money for the financial world.

It would be about actual real transport needs for the ordinary persons on ordinary incomes who just want to get from one place to another at reasonable time and cost with options for wider use. It would mean real choices not only from Birmingham but from the several parts of the West Midlands.

It is difficult to see the BAA decision as anything other than as an early casualty of the HST2 project. There are going to be a lot of other casualties across the network and added costs and worsening services for everyone else if the HST2 goes ahead. The collateral damage could be extensive.

Does nobody in government understand that real growth that can be sustained does not come from throwing huge sums at limited prestige projects on a basis where the only growth appears in the accounts of investment banks but from detailed hard work across the economy in general in an array of smaller and more profitable efforts?

Pain On The Train

Amongst the many murky financial dealings of the last government the rail business is almost in a class of its own. As taxpayers we have been paying heavily for the privilege of having services provided by theoretically either commercial companies or substantially state owned agencies answerable to nobody except their financial advisers who have reaped rich dividends.

As passengers we have been living in a mysterious wonderland of guess the fare and find the service that has become increasingly complicated and also loaded against us. Get on the train without a ticket because the ticket office is not open and the machine won’t work and be hammered with penal fares.

Get off or on at a station that shortens your journey and also get hammered. Get on a train at the wrong time because that at the right time has been cancelled, guess what? Be on a train that is rerouted on a different line because a time target must be met or be dumped on an unmanned station late at night in the wilderness and find you own way home.

One of the best ones I saw was a train that finished up stranded in a power station siding because of some sort of mix up which left passengers several hours late in the early hours of the morning with all the respective parties denying liability.

The weird world of Network Rail is a subject much covered elsewhere with the boss of a government department (basically) able to retire young to a highland estate. The renewal of rolling stock has been an incredible giveaway to foreign firms. That many do not fit platforms here or there has not been a problem.

The companies were released from the obligations of Health and Safety over passenger accidents and the reporting and inspection of incidents relieved of the necessities of truth or on site examination.

Now tucked away in the back of the media we hear that HS1 the much trumpeted new High Speed service in the South East has been sold off fast to a Canadian outfit. The details are not clear but it seems that the UK end of the new high speed lines has been quickly dumped by the government.

On previous posts you learned that I am not entirely surprised that things did not go according to plan, but then I have only been travelling these seventy years or more around several countries and have actually done some railway work.

It is simple really. People pay money to travel by train and it is and always has been a significant cost to anyone on average or the ordinary run of wages.

On the new South Eastern HS1 service there are two main branches. The run from Ashford in Kent to London does save a good deal of time, but at a cost. The time taken from Dover and Ramsgate to Ashford was only a little quicker.

On the other line beginning at Faversham after Strood an HS1 journey to St. Pancras takes 34 minutes, exactly half the time of a stopping Charing Cross train.

However, if anyone works or wants to go to say the West End, Covent Garden area or close to London Bridge or Blackfriars then the half hour saved by HS1 is lost in going to any of those districts.

I know because I have done it. The times I did were because of weekend engineering works on the usual lines that were not convenient. Also as Underground stations go, Kings Cross St. Pancras is a good one to avoid.

What will happen now on HS1 is not known. What we do know is that South Eastern Railways lost a lot on the service and their takings are down also on other services.

The reductions and messing about with timetables to enable them to avoid any increase in staff numbers for the HS1 has increased car use and led to numbers of commuters moving house to other services. I doubt that if any of those reductions will be reinstated or any improvements made.

At present around the country a lot of the existing companies are looking hard at their accounts, potential liabilities and services. If there are reductions in the non ring fenced rail subsidies then it is likely that that fares are going to go up a lot more than inflation and trimming, reduction and some closure of services is likely.

What therefore is the governments Big Idea? Yes, indeedy, around £30 billion for an HS2 new line for the relatively short runs in England covered already by competing services. £30 bilion is of course the starting offer. A person who has actually read some rail history knows that almost invariably the start figure is laughably short of the final cost.

But we have a media fixated on Big Ideas. Together with big finance, big government, and big debt loadings what we get is big mistakes and even bigger bills for the taxpayer to pick up. What is hard for all these to cope with is the ability to look at the detail and get down to the detail.

This is no longer the way we work. It is not “sexy” or “big deal” or wow wow “Prestige” with the big “”P”. It is just hard work, co-ordination, real planning and a concern with real service.

Take London to Birmingham for example. In 1922 the fast morning train from Paddington to Snow Hill took two hours. The equivalent London and North Western train took two hours and eighteen minutes to New Street, the delay caused by the need to take off coaches for Northampton at Blisworth.

Today the New Street trains by Virgin are rather faster and the Chiltern Line trains from Marylebone to Snow Hill around the same as 1922 but stopping many more times. It would be possible to speed up either or both and to link them to the HS1 and Eurostar tracks at St. Pancras and all for a lot less than £30 billion.

If you wanted to go north also the routes are there on existing tracks. There are many possibilities and believe it or not there is the “Big Idea”. It is to have a system of electrified rail links on a standardised traction basis covering the whole UK. This will link not only all major urban areas but airports and seaports as well.

It is the big decision Labour flunked in its period of office from 1945, again in the 60’s and the 70’s. The Blown Labour government (Bl + own) handed the railways over to the financial sharks.

Can the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats finally wake up to what is needed, scrap the HS2 and get down to the detail and the basics?

High Speed Train Crash Due On Platform Number 10

The Government has just renationalised the old LNER East Coast Main Line, lately run by National Express, who gave up for financial reasons, and who took over from GNER whose franchise went bad, essentially for the same reasons. Not too many miles away in Earth distances is the West Coast Main Line, more or less in the hands of Virgin Rail, that allegedly turns an apparent profit, but only after huge government subsidies, hidden and otherwise.

Both just operate the trains, all the track etc. is in the hands of Network Rail, I am told a non-dividend paying setup and what is left of Railtrack after it went into a sort of you know what I mean government administration at high cost to the taxpayer. In short the existing railway lines from London to Scotland are costing us all a great deal of money even if we never travel on a train.

Amongst the flurry of prestige project proposals from the Department of Bright Ideas run from the Cabinet Office frantically trying to shore up support in their political heartlands and to outbid the enemies south and north of the Scottish Border is for a new railway from London to Scotland, that is to be built up to Birmingham and Manchester and then to fork West and East to satisfy the party faithful either side of the Pennines, and in the long divided communities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. This is to be a high speed line built to European standards. What a pity British Railways closed and tore up the old high speed line in the 1960’s at the urging of a Labour Government, just for the record I worked on this line for a time.

The cost currently mooted is a stunningly cheap £30 billion. If my memory is correct the existing Eurotunnel tunnel line, much shorter and less complicated, estimated at an affordable level, went way over budget, and landed the government with a huge problem in refinancing and other costs. Even now, with the debt waived away, it is a struggle to do well, the freight has not been forthcoming. The latest wheeze has been for the Ministry of Transport to strongarm South Eastern Railways into buying a number of Japanese trains and run a high speed service from St. Pancras to improve times to Thanet and East Kent, coincidentally where there are Labour held seats.

How well this service will do has to be seen. One way of trying to make it pay has been both to cut and slow down services along the three existing lines. The high speed times are quicker, but not that much for the money the punter has to pay, and St. Pancras is a lot less convenient as a destination for most than either London Bridge or Charing Cross.

If, at least out of a sense of humour, we allow that the new lines will be built for that £30 billion, then do the finances look like? The train sets will not be cheap, there is a lot of expensive looking hardwear there. The operating costs will also be high. Who will travel on these trains? It will not be the 25-30% of the Scots population currently on benefits, and nor is likely to be many of the other 30-40% in public sector jobs catering for the locals. The private sector has a lot of low paid labour. It means that it will depend on the limited number of high rollers in the private and public sectors currently entitled to first class travel.

There are not that many of them to sustain such a service and some may prefer to fly. If the good times were to return and many could use the high speed high cost service, then it will wipe out much of the First Class element so important to the existing franchises. All in all, is there is snowball’s chance in hell of these new lines making the one or two billion per annum above operating costs to pay the interest and financing charges on a £30 billion build cost, plus train sets and other installations? If the usual suspects that handle financing, consultancy and other costs are to be involved think of a few figures then write in the largest.

Currently Birmingham already has two lines to London, also there are two from Leeds. Although Manchester has but one, it would not take too much to reinstate one of the old ones. I could go on at length at what series of minor improvements here and there could be made to existing lines that could transform times and service. But this would not be politically “sexy” and would not shower money on the Governments favourite accomplices.

Also, I have explained before that the obsessions of the old companies as well as British Railways with the East and West Coast main lines had a seriously damaging effect on other provision. There is a great deal that could be done, both in England and Scotland. There is too much to explain again about the possibilities. They involve improvements in areas and constituencies that are not Labour held, and that would take responsible government, something that we have long forgotten.

During the Miner’s Strike of 1984-1985 one of the running jokes in Yorkshire was what Arthur would come up with next. One favourite was that he would demand that to give work to unemployed miners the Channel Tunnel should start in Barnsley. If Brown is re-elected will Arthur be invited to turn the first sod on the new high speed line from Camden to Cowdenbeath?