Saturday, 14 June 2014
New Trains Everywhere Else
Reading Rail magazine I read of £6.2Bn for 1,039 new cars for Southern and LOROL, there are new IEP's for ECML and GWML, WCML had a new fleet 10 years ago, Thameslink and Crossrail have large fleets on order; HS1 and HS2, all excellent news - all linked by one common denominator - London.
I read that Industry Insider suggests that cost reduction is required so as to enable funding for rural and secondary services - i.e. services not heading for London. This will affect North of England, Wales, West Country and Anglia services - services which have had little or no investment. Tram-trains are suggested, same old story as for the genesis of Continuously Rattley and Pernickety Pacers - go cheap and the people in the outer reaches have to live with them.
My Solution - relocate the DfT to Hartlepool, Chorley (Lancashire), Abergavenny, Lowestoft and Plymouth where they will surely see the necessity to arrange investment and service improvements. I am convinced that decision makers first priority is their own backyard. Cost effective transportation of DFT can be provided in the form of Continuously Rattley and Pernickety Pacers.
Let everyone recognise that my tax pounds and fare pounds collected in Chorley are exactly the same as those collected in London. And why the DFT thinks that because it pays 25% of the cost as against my 75% in the fare box (100% if you include my tax) it refuses to arrange the halcyon days of free spending more equitably defeats me.
Services in the North are packed into short trains - no more people can get onto them despite the demand - so more carriages will increase the patronage and reduce running costs - simples. Spending billions of pounds lengthening trains in the south-east and not in the outer areas is poor government and leads to thinking that my solution of transportation of DfT is what is needed.
A major part of the function of government is to enable fairness and equitable treatment across the kingdom - the DfT must start the hard fight to maintain services and quality across the rural and secondary services and it must win, otherwise outside London the DfT will be seen as a failure - and remember more people live outside London than inside it.
I want to see a strong London and strong regions - continually treating the regions to low quality services only reinforces the stereotype of rail services - only for London.
I want to see the replacement of the old slow and arthritic trains by modern trains delivering modern services to the whole of the North of England, and Wales, and South West England - areas which are missing out on the excellent services provided around the South east of England.
Labels:
Chorley,
Northern Trains,
Trains
Location:
Chorley, Lancashire, UK
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