Just how much worse can rail travel in Britain get? One day after the public were, in effect, denied the right to travel because only five of 28 rail firms were running services on Boxing Day, there’s more misery to come.
Today, staff on some of the country’s busiest routes (including South Western Rail services into London Waterloo) will round off their Christmas break with a 24-hour strike — with further action planned for New Year’s Eve.
On Saturday it’s the turn of Northern Rail to disrupt services. This follows new figures showing train punctuality has slumped to a 13-year low after the chaos caused by new timetables and engineering works over 2018.
In the three months to September, a shocking 10.3 per cent of TransPennine trains were cancelled or seriously delayed; the same applied to nine per cent of trains on LNER (services from London, Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh); 7.3 per cent of trains on Govia Thameslink, and 6.5 per cent of CrossCountry trains.
Staff on some of the country’s busiest routes will round off their Christmas break with a 24-hour strike. (Stock image)
The one thing that will be arriving on time are fare rises. Next month regulated fares will rise by an average of 3.1 per cent.
As for 55 per cent of rail fares which are not government-regulated, train companies are free to push them up as much as they like and have ruthlessly exploited their monopolies.
A standard return fare from London to Manchester, for example, is now £338, more than three times what it was 20 years ago. You can fly to New York for considerably less.
As for the Tube, London Mayor Sadiq Khan has tried to freeze fares, but it is almost certain that he will have to abandon that plan as Transport for London is running a deficit of £2.7 billion.
Of course, it’s not just passengers who are picking up the tab for poor cost control, but taxpayers, too.
Remarkably, the public subsidy going into the rail system has rocketed from £900 million in 1995 to £4.2 billion.
So why have we ended up with such a poor-value public transport system? When the railways were privatised we were promised more choice, lower fares, more reliable services, fewer strikes and a lower burden on taxpayers.
And yet what we have is a system which is neither in the public nor private sector, but combines the worst of both — not least excesses of corporate greed when it comes to managers rewarding themselves.
In 2016, Network Rail — the government-owned company which owns and operates the tracks and stations — paid 48 of its executives more than £150,000 a year.
New chief executive Andrew Haines earns £588,000 making him one of the highest-paid public servants in the country, earning nearly four times more than the Prime Minister.
Everything to do with our railways seems to involve splashing the cash and then some.
The National Audit Office recently reported that the cost of property acquisition along the HS2 line linking London with the Midlands and the North has tripled to £3.3 billion — further inflating the overall cost of the project from £34bn to £56bn and counting.
Needless to say, HS2’s chief executive Mark Thurston is the fattest of all rail fat cats, on a salary of £600,000.
However, it is a very different story when rail companies are losing money through strikes or poor performance.
No pay cuts for managers, instead they are quick to go cap in hand to the government for more subsidies.
The strikes during the festive period include South Western Rail services into London Waterloo. (Stock image)
They have discovered over the years it’s so much easier for them to give in to the unions over outrageous pay claims and beg for a public bailout to cover the extra costs.
What is more, in most cases rail companies don’t have to worry too much about the quality of service and passenger numbers because in all but a few locations they enjoy a monopoly on the lines they operate. Inevitably, this has led to the unions becoming ever more militant in their demands.
Certainly, no one could have envisaged a time when train drivers would be earning more than some doctors, lawyers and airline pilots.
Yet thanks to the settlement of last year’s strike, drivers on Southern Railway will soon be earning £75,000 a year.
But who’d drive a mainline train when you could be a Tube driver in London and pocket another £25,000!
Earlier this month, it emerged that nine Tube drivers earned more than £100,000 this year, and 30 made over £80,000. And that doesn’t include the two free travel passes Tube drivers enjoy, worth £3,500 a year each.
Some London Underground drivers are now among the highest-paid five per cent of UK workers, earning more than the average doctor (£71,455), solicitor (£45,367), or airline pilots (£60-£80,000 for a medium-sized airline).
Yet, the irony is that five of the Underground’s 11 lines are nearly fully automated — with another four due to be automated by 2023 — so drivers on these routes are largely needed just to open and close doors.
But why do we still have drivers anyway? There are more than 30 metro systems in the world which run with fully automated trains.
One of them is in London: the Docklands Light Railway, which has been operating in safety for the past 31 years. The savings would be enormous, allowing fares to be reduced and more investment made in commuter lines.
A similar case could be made for removing the last remaining guards on trains.
The Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers Union (RMT) — which has called today’s strike — has already held 40 strikes on the beleaguered Northern Rail in protest against such a plan — something they claim will compromise safety.
The truth is that guards have not been necessary since the 1860s when improvements in signalling meant it was no longer necessary to employ someone, in the event of a breakdown, to run back down the line and warn following trains.
Driver-only trains, running since 1982, account for a third of all services and have been shown to be safer and have a lower rate of assaults — possibly because investment in CCTV is better at dissuading criminals than guards ever were.
But, still, the unions are fighting to preserve jobs even British Rail succeeded in abolishing.
And that’s the nub of it. The failure of successive governments to take on the rail unions has encouraged them to wield their power much like the National Union of Mineworkers once did — by trying to hold the country to ransom.
No transport minister was ever brave enough to defy the late Bob Crow of the RMT because of fears of bringing the transport system in London and beyond to a halt.
Soaring costs, runaway salaries and unions that call the shots are a symptom of an industry which has grown fat on public subsidy, and where the rewards are out of all proportion to the quality of service being delivered.
What other major capital city would close or partially close its key stations, including Paddington, Victoria, Liverpool Street and Euston, over the festive period?
The reason given is engineering works, some of which are to do with Crossrail, the new east-to-west line across London due to have opened this month but now delayed until at least 2020.
The fact is that Britain’s railway system has made enormous riches for some — but we are all paying the price.
It’s time this obscene gravy train was derailed and we learned to run affordable, reliable systems like the rest of the world does.
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News Pictures Our railways are an obscene gravy train, writes ROSS CLARK
You don’t have to pack away your bikini just because you’re the wrong side of 20. These body-beautiful stars reveal their secrets to staying in shape and prove you can smoulder in a two-piece, whatever your age. Read on and be bikini inspired!
TEENS
Hayden Panettiere
Size: 8
Age: 18
Height: 5ft 1in
Weight: 8st
To achieve her kick-ass figure, Hayden – who plays cheerleader Claire Bennet in Heroes – follows the ‘quartering’ rule. She eats only a quarter of the food on her plate, then waits 20 minutes before deciding whether she needs to eat again.
Hayden says: “I don’t have a model’s body, but I’m not one of those crazy girls who thinks that they’re fat. I’m OK with what I have.”
Nicollette says: “I don’t like diets – I see it, I eat it! I believe in eating healthily with lots of protein, vegetables and carbs to give you energy.”
kim cattrall
Size: 10-12
Age: 52
Height: 5ft 8in
Weight: 9st 4lb
SATC star Kim swears by gym sessions with Russian kettle bells (traditional cast-iron weights) and the South Beach Diet to give her the body she wants. To avoid overeating, Kim has a radical diet trick – squirting lemon juice on her leftovers – so she won’t carry on picking.
Kim says: “I am no super-thin Hollywood actress. I am built for men who like women to look like women.”
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2018/12/27/01/7852130-0-image-a-3_1545875469354.jpg
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