Rail travel in the
United Kingdom is becoming the most unreliable form of travel. Over Christmas the railway lines were paralysed by snow. Every year England,
Wales,
Ireland and
Scotland have quite a bit of snowfall and every year the public transport system is totally unprepared to deal with it. They give you some guff about the wrong kind of snow (it's the wrong kind of leaves in autumn) as an excuse to leave thousands of travellers stranded during the holiday season when they desperately want a break from all the chaos. And this is despite the government always telling us that we should leave cars at home and take the train. It's not as though they are making the service any more affordable.
Rail travel hit the headlines recently with the first £1,000 rail ticket. It costs over a grand to get a train from a station in Cornwall up to Scotland - about five times what it would cost to do the same journey by plane. Many people don't want to have to go through all the inconvenience of checking in for a flight.
Rail travel used to be romantic and you could enjoy the beautiful British scenery going by while you played a game of cards with a friend. Now you are lucky if you get a seat let alone a table. Why can't we get it together? Rail travel is a pleasure on the continent, with spacious trains arriving on time and a general sense of bonhomie in the compartment. Surely privatising the rail service should have made it better not worse? Instead we have to skulk around in stations afraid that we will get mugged and stand in the aisles while yobs who haven't paid for them take up the best seats.
The latest bad news is that British rail staff will strike over Easter. Talking about envying rail travel on the continent I was not referring to that rather French habit of striking every five minutes. The British seem to have caught the disease. First there was the threatened British Airways plane strike, then the postal strike in which millions of letters never arrived (a few of mine were among them) and now another chance to hold the country to ransom over the holidays.
There would be more sympathy with the strikers if they didn't always choose to pull their stunts over the holidays. Strike during most of they year and it has a grave effect - both personal and financial. But when you strike over the few precious days of holiday that people have it drives them to distraction.
I used to be an avid public transport supporter but now I'm afraid I just can't. Rail travel is simply not heading in the right direction.