Simon Calder, also known as The Man Who Pays His Way, has been writing about travel for The Independent since 1994. In his weekly opinion column, he explores a key travel issue – and what it means for you.
“People who rely on our railways have been very badly let down by the whole system.”
That scathing criticism is as true today as it was exactly four years ago, when the Transport Select Committee made it.
The cross-party committee of MPs, chaired at the time by Labour’s Lilian Greenwood, reported on the shortcomings of planning and executing the May 2018 timetable change. You might recall that two key rail firms, Thameslink and Northern, introduced radical new schedules even though they did not have the staff in the right places with the right training to run them. Things were so bad that, for a time, a steam-hauled train was deployed to connect Windermere with the rest of the rail network.
On 3 December 2022, the outlook for rail passengers is equally bleak. The advent calendar of industrial action has already brought two days of strikes on East Midlands Railway, with the biggest sustained stoppages since 1989 planned by the RMT union for before Christmas and after the new year – with an overtime ban neatly straddling the festive season.
Even “business as usual” is pretty grim in some parts of the country, with Avanti West Coast and TransPennine Express running reduced timetables and many other train operators hit by staff shortages. But listening to this week’s rail debate in the Commons made me wonder who had been running the railways since 2010.
In an “Urgent Question”, Louise Haigh, the shadow transport secretary, asked Huw Merriman, the rail minister, to “make a statement on rail cancellations and services, in particular across the north and nationwide”.
Ms Haigh, Labour MP for Sheffield Heeley, described “a sub-standard service” with “delays, cancellations and overcrowding”. She accused ministers of rewarding “the abject failure of the operators”.
Then, many Conservative MPs piled in. Avanti West Coast was particularly subject to a kicking. Chris Clarkson, representing Heywood and Middleton in Greater Manchester, said “As far as I can tell, the schedule is currently designed using a tombola.”
Sara Britcliffe, from nearby Hyndburn in Lancashire, said: “Delays and cancellations are the…
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