成人快手

Actually Douglas the real problem with just about ALL of the UK Rail Industry is that it is too political and just not outcome focussed or customer focussed enough.

I could quote numerous examples. They claim to put safety first, yet you can find plently of "inter-city" trains (not even commuter services) with standing passengers on them blocking the emergency exit routes from carriages. Why? Well they want to optimise profits and provide both a pre-booked service AND a "turn-up-and-go" one as well.

Of course, the rail industry seems to get a 'sick-note' when it comes to the Disability Discrimination Act. I've travelled on East Coast trains so crowded with standing passengers that they haven't run the trolley service. But if it's that crowded, how do people who are 'not so good on their pins' get by all the standing passengers to get to the loo or the buffet car?

What's the point of more train lines or super-fast trains if the industry is still going to transport people around like they're bean bags, or tins of baked beans, rather than human beings? What really is the gain of high-speed cattle trucks?

Sadly, the industry seems to have sacrificed quality standards for profits and, in so doing, in my view, has sacrficed their longer-term viability and profits.

Oh and the baked beans bit is kind of crucial to the problem. The industry argues that you can not overload a train because the only measure of overloading is the weight on the bogies which are the same as on freight trains, so you really are never going to overload a passenger train ... ever. Not even if every passenger had another three or four sitting on his/her lap!

So the fundamental approach of transporting people is all based on a basic criteria of transporting freight.

But tins of baked beans don't book into hotels, or have holidays in the Highlands, or invest in regeneration projects, or employ people, or do anything of any significant use to the Scottish economy. Equally tins of beans don't decide to hire a car instead, or get the Megabus, or drive because its more comfortable and pleasant.

Which is why Scotland needs a rail industry which serves its end-users. We actually DO want people to use the rail network and take traffic off the roads for a whole range of economic and environmental reasons.

But, much as is the case in the banking industry, customers and customer-outcomes just do not seem to be the focus of the rail industry's planning and thinking. Sadly, the politicians and regulators seem more interested in protecting the financial interests of existing stakeholders in the industry rather than creating a better quality one.

I don't agree with much of what David Begg says but he is right that transport is overly concentrated on London's "challenges"....

However - I personally wonder whether what we really need to do in Scotland is to take another look at the railway technology we use. In particular we should look at how we make it cheaper, quicker to build and less intrusive.

Douglas,
The very fact that neither Network Rail nor the individual rail franchisee鈥檚 do not wish to sort out this problem regarding the passengers, is at the heart of the matter.
Transporting cattle was supposed to be finished by 1960鈥檚 when the cattle trucks were destroyed, but since that date air travel allowed rail travel to sit on it鈥檚 hands and still use passengers as cattle.
We the passenger cannot get our heads round the fact that to travel on public transport you have to plan ahead, in this day and age, we have rail transport made up of fixed seating capacities and multiples there off, therefore it is not beyond the ability to book seats and not sell tickets, just like the Eurostar service and the air industry.
To quote a well known advert 鈥渋t鈥檚 simple鈥� sell seats not tickets no such thing as an open return ticket but a planned ticket that entitles one to a seat, no standing allowed what so ever.

Unless railways are predominantly freight carrying,they are expensive, uneconomic and for passenger use are overpriced and inefficient. If it was otherwise there would be a queue of rail companies wanting to build railways . As it is railways are built by governments at the expense of all taxpayers and benefit a tiny minority who happen to live in the vicinity of a station. To make railways profitable, they must carry freight and huge passenger numbers and alas in Britain neither is possible ; this mode of travel is too expensive for the majority to use. It may be fashionable to see rail as a green option, but the enormous amount of resources required must far outweigh any " green " benefit. Even if freight became rail borne, the same amount of lorries would still be required to distribute the freight from the rail termini; though the motorways might be less congested, towns and cities would remain in the same congested state.As far as rail in Scotland is concerned , unless you live in one of the larger cities , getting to a station would probably take longer than driving to your destination.

Way beyond the point of no return to re-instate British Rail! Best make do with the shambles we have now!

Douglas, what about Dundee, Stirling, Perth & Aberdeen - a line to Edinburgh and Glasgow from south of the border, that's great, but Scotland doesn't end in the central belt. You can drive from Edinburgh to Aberdeen quicker than taking the train, as the train meanders its way through the bendy track in Fife. It was a real pleasure travelling on trains in France last year - they were clean, quiet, electric and modern. A new fast line linking Scotland's capital with Aberdeen would be great. Why do we always compare ourselves with what's happening down in London? Why not compare ourselves to France and wonder why they have a great railway and Scotland's railways are left struggling for investment? The French get nice grants from the central funds doled out for investment in European infrastructure, but we see hardly any of that because it has to filter its way through London first.

3. oldmack

I completely agree, at minimum on longer journeys, train operators should be selling seats not tickets.

Is it not a farce that you can have standing passengers blocking aisles and doorways on a train hurtling along at 100+ mph on a railway track, but not have them on a coach/bus doing no more than 70 mph on a motorway?

Isn't it ridiculous that you can buy a ticket on a web-site for a train, irrespective of how many other tickets have been sold for that same train? And if you do end up standing, perhaps because you bought a ticket after the seat reservations had all gone, you could seemingly end up standing all the way, say, from Aberdeen or Inverness to London. And even then, someone could still show up at any station along the route and STILL buy a ticket and not even be told the train was packed solid.

(Where's the 'fair trading' in that?)

4. kaybraes

Disagreed. That might classically be the case in the past with 'heavy rail' but DLR has been VERY successful and delivers high levels of customer satisfaction. A bit of thinking outside the box is what is needed.

(I don't suppose DLR / Serco would be up for buying the East Coast franchise by any chance?)

The main problems with our railways are:

*Everything is run by different companies.

*Too few small stations and branchlines (Small to medium sized towns and city suburbs aren't served thanks to one Dr Beeching. Why? because his wife owned a stake in Pickfords. 卢_卢).

*Shambolic infrastructure.

What should we do to remedy this? Well first have one company that operated the trains and tracks (like DB in Germany) and private enterprises if desired with greater co-ordination with the 'main' company. Then separate the local and Express services where we can. Have the Express services just go between major towns and cities and have S-Bahn ( style services which would run Tram-like trains (like the trams in Manchester, British mainline rail height platforms) between small halts in the inner cities and the countryside. We had something like this before Beeching closed the railways (why? Because his wife owned a stake in Pickford's road haulage, how sweet of him 卢__卢).

Secondly, INTEGRATE INTEGRATE INTEGRATE! Place (some) stations next to places where people would go, next to subway, tram, metro or bus stops AND have regular services from said stop so people could continue their journeys if they can't get their by train alone. We could even introduce integrated tickets so you could go from your local subway/bus/tram/port/metro stop to any other stop regardless of what mode of transport it is. Imagine being able to go from your local bus stop, with /some/ changing of buses and trains, to London Kings Cross with one ticket!

Seriously people, we need to get our railways in order. If we get it right we could have an efficient public transport system that we lack and be able to get from point A to B quickly and efficiently without having to wait 30 minutes in a traffic jam because someone didn't give way for a bus.

It's simple, we lack the imagination, drive, innovation and strategic 20-30 year plan from the government and on top of that a planning system that wants to keep the UK as an Industrial Museum.

kaybraes #4 is wrong. Why can we not have a working railway network, when so many of our immediate neighbours do? If it works in Germany, France, Scandinavia, Holland, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, why not here? It's like saying we can't have broadband in the UK because of some uniquely British quality that stops us. It's nonsense. We can have a decent rail network just like we used to, and just like other countries have. There is no need for all the traffic congestion and transport problems in this country.

A railway system can only be viable if it addresses all the customers needs. A high speed line north from London is obviously only a positive if it indeed fulfills a profitable need today or as part of a future business plan. To just build it because it sounds nice is completely mad. It makes sense therefore, for it to be built by private enterprise because that way we will at least get something that isn't a burden to the taxpayer and if no-one wants to build it it means there was no viable need.
Of course banks and other financial institutions would need to have a more long term investment approach rather than their normal myopic 3-5 year ROI expectations.
The other stipulation should be that all technology should be of UK source - maybe we can build some pride back into our engineering and technology and even innovate and sell to the rest of the world.
Government can remove the swathes of planning red tape and vested interest delaying tactics that would take 15 years to overcome and cause vast overbudget financial problems.
In terms of rail regulation it should now be incumbent on all operators to be selling seat ticketing only - thereby removing the cattle truck operations that many use as their business model. Capacity not enough - investment required in rolling stock and track infrastructure - again government intervention to stop the NIMBY syndrome in and around London.
Freight operations to be geared to take all trunk route lorry traffic onto the railways. Introduction of Rail Freight hubs with local electric or fuel celled vehicles for store delivery.
By starting a visionary process it could benefit the whole country in terms of jobs,exports,environmental impact etc. I believe this is what government was supposed to be for - creating the environment for national benefit.

Journey times are far from being top of the list when it comes to "things we need to fix about our railways". I've complained to ScotRail many times about their services, and they just couldn't care less. Here's an average journey from Glasgow to Aberdeen on a Friday evening:

1. Spend almost 拢50 on a ticket because you didn't know three weeks in advance that you needed to make this journey (you used to be able to get 拢10 advance singles maybe a fortnight before, but last time I tried it was three weeks minimum)

2. Arrive at station to find that the train is 10 minutes late (which I believe counts as "on time" for the official figures)

3. Get on train, and find that there are no seat reservations, because the staff didn't have time to put the tickets on the seats due to the train being late (so what was the point in reserving a seat?)

4. Go to the toilet, only to find that something about it isn't working (one time we were even told we'd have to wait until Stirling, get off the train and go back on further up because the only carriage with a working toilet was unaccessible from the rear carriages), or that it's just plain filthy.

5. Arrive at Aberdeen at least 20 minutes late, due not so much to the train being late in the first place, but because there was another late train in front or some rubbish like that, so whoever is waiting to pick you up has been waiting there for 20 minutes longer than they needed.

Oh, and chances are the journey will be pretty rough, the train will be too warm/cold, and there will be empty drinks bottles and crisp packets all over the place. There's also the obligatory group of slightly drunk idiots making a nuisance of themselves, but I don't suppose that can really be blamed on ScotRail.

That's not even a joke or an exaggeration, which is why I stopped using the trains and went back to my car. There are four main factors in play when it comes to deciding your transport: travel time, convenience, comfort and price.

You would think trains would be quicker than cars, and to be fair there's no way I could drive to London in the 4 and a half hours it takes the train to get there from Glasgow. But in Scotland, you can always arrive somewhere at least as quick as the train would, and usually quicker. So, trains lose there.

Trains will never be as convenient as cars, simply because driving allows you to leave when you want and go directly from A to B, whereas taking the train requires extra transport to and from the stations. So, trains lose there too.

Certain train operators seem to have gotten the comfort thing almost nailed - I actually find train trips to London on Virgin trains to be pretty pleasant - but not ScotRail. As mentioned before, the trains are generally grubby, litter-strewn, and rarely have fully-functioning toilets. The seats themselves are hardly thrones, and are both less comfortable and spacious as on other trains. So, trains lose here as well, or at least in Scotland. Oh, and while Virgin and National Express have internet connectivity on their trains, I believe ScotRail came up with the brilliant idea of concentrating on getting WiFi in stations, because obviously it's before and after a train journey that people want to get online, rather than during it, when they're actually sitting down with nothing to do...

So, we're left with one final way for trains to give you a reason to use them: price. That's not happening, though - I can drive from Glasgow to Aberdeen and back (twice) for the same cost as one return ticket. When I got a job in Livingston a few years ago, I actually ended up buying a car to get there from Glasgow, because buying a car and paying for petrol was cheaper (and far, far quicker) than a season ticket would have been. I've heard that Glasgow to Edinburgh - surely Scotland's most popular route - is the most expensive in Europe in terms of cost per mile. The train operators treat us as mere cash cows, and the UK Government are complicit.

The fact is, the trains need to be brought back under public ownership. Running public services for private profit will NEVER work, but it's especially bad for rail. Railways are not a free market because there is only one company running each route, so they don't have to compete for customers. Once they've got the contract, they can just sit back, ignore the needs of their customers, and just rake in the profits from rising ticket prices commuters are forced to pay.

Everything about our railways is wrong. Everything. But if you knew the cost of your ticket was all being used to cover operating costs and invest in infrastructure, rather than to pay big profits to shareholders, you would forgive a multitude of sins.

We spent 2&1/2 years looking to downsize to the perfect village where the only disturbance are the birds at dawn. Due to the secrecy of the plans for the HS2 there was absolutely no way that lawyers conducting "Searches" would be aware of the proposed HS2 Now our gorgeous village has been blighted and any properties on the market are now unsaleable. Lord Adonis has chosen the cheapest route for the HS2 without any consideration for the consequences to those living in these blighted areas. There are two other routes, which I am not saying are ideal, but I seriously think that there should be more discussions for a more favourable route for all parties concerned not too mention the enormous cost of the entire project - that is if the route from Birmingham to Scotland will ever be completed.