Politicians get it wrong

A news article in RAIL 869 states that rail passenger journeys rose by 1.9% in the period July-September 2018, compared with the same period in 2017.

It did say that the sale of season tickets was down and that fewer journeys were made using such tickets. However, the overall numbers were up - now standing at 434 million rail passenger journeys in a three-month period. Are we all clear so far?

So why does Shadow Transport Secretary Andrew McDonald say: “We should all be alarmed by the latest decline in the number of passengers using the railway.

“Our dysfunctional system of [franchising] depends on the revenue from fares continuing to grow, so with fewer passengers now using the railways there is a major risk of the taxpayer having to bail out even more train companies.”

Who thinks such people as McDonald should run a railway? How does he get simple facts so wrong?

I do not care who runs the railways, provided it is not politicians such as McDonald, but the politicians are always the people who collect our taxes and who will allocate the money to any railway system.

In the meantime, in the opening days of 2019 there was mounting criticism of the way the railways are run. Under Jeremy Corbyn it will be run for the benefit of the rail unions, and that is the reason we have the continuing strike action.

The strikes anger the passengers, and the rail unions hope that voters will vote Labour to get anything that is different from what has happened for the last two decades. A J Slatter, Reigate