Christian Wolmar
Writes to the Prime Minister.
Permit me to set out how a key industry is being wrecked by the cowardice and failings of a series of its stakeholders.
I address you, Mr Johnson, because it is under your name that the railways are set to be more damaged than they were by Richard Beeching and the politicians who followed his recommendations.
Like Félix Faure, the president to whom Emile Zola addressed his J’Accuse… letter in 1898, you have been rather distracted by other considerations. He had just established an alliance with Russia, while you have just disengaged us from one with the rest of Europe.
Nevertheless, you need to pay some attention to an industry that accounts for more than 10% of the distance travelled by people during the year. Or at least it did… at the moment that figure is just 1-2% of modal share and there is little chance of this increasing greatly over the next few months, or even possibly years.
There are a lot of culprits in this scandal, Mr Johnson, and scandal it is. But let’s start with your involvement - after all, the buck stops with you.
Your key mistake, as we all know, was to order the lockdown far too late. This has greatly damaged the rail industry because it has extended the length of the lockdown and, far worse, meant that many transport workers were exposed to far greater risk than they needed to have been. There should have been protective measures in place for them straightaway.
Your second mistake is the incoherence of the message and the emphasis on car use. Why is it OK to make leisure trips in cars but not by train? Why have trains been singled out as risky, but not aeroplanes?
Therefore, of course, alongside you in the dock must be your Transport Secretary Grant Shapps.
A man with a greater understanding of the relationship between transport and the environment might just conceivably have worked out that since air pollution greatly exacerbates the effect of diseases such as COVID (and may, in fact, even be a contributory cause), then ensuring that a more sustainable transport system emerged out of this pandemic might have been sensible.
But no. It almost seems that there is a perverse encouragement of the most damaging modes. Road transport has been encouraged and aviation has not only been supported by loans, it has not even been required to pay fuel tax which would level the playing field between modes.
Next in the dock is Network Rail Chairman Sir Peter Hendy CBE. Sorry Peter, I do not buy your excuses published in RAIL 908’s Open Access that you had no choice but to recommend people to keep off the trains because it was “the most serious crisis of modern times”.
It could have been done very differently. You have acquiesced far too easily to the demands of government (Network Rail’s paymaster), rather than show the independent spirit so readily demonstrated by the likes of Ryanair Chief Executive Michael O’Leary, a man I thought I would never praise in this column.
He stated flatly that he could not run his airline with the middle seats unoccupied, as it was simply uneconomic. Actually, he probably could, but he stood up to the Government and
ministers wilted and simply acquiesced. We needed some strong figure in the industry to stand up to government, but there has been no one to knock on number 10’s door and argue the case.
I was not, Peter, suggesting that there should not have been an initial lockdown. But the messaging could have been more supportive of the railways. It could have encouraged rail use while ensuring right from the beginning that people wore face coverings and travelled at the least busy times.
I know from my conversations with senior people in the industry that there is no united front. Instead, to a man and woman they are aghast at what is happening to this industry.
The damage of messaging for three months (and continuing to do so even after pubs and churches have reopened) that railways are unsafe and that people should only use trains for ‘essential travel’ is incalculable.
One of my contacts suggested that after 9/11 people did return to taking planes, but that was partly because they often had no alternative (you cannot drive from London to Mumbai) and because the industry took radical steps to improve security at airports. Railways are in competition with other modes of transport and many people will have discovered that they no longer need to commute daily.
Then there are the unions. I was aghast when
TSSA General Secretary Manuel Cortes said on partial relaxation of the lockdown that people should not use it as an excuse to travel on the railways!
I don’t understand how he does not recognise that the longer people are asked not to use the trains, the fewer jobs are likely to be available to his members.
And as for threatening to go on strike if the two-metre social distancing rule was abandoned, that is the worst form of sabrerattling imaginable. This is not the ‘can do’ attitude that is needed. I recognise that there are risks for railway staff, but these risks can be mitigated with shields, masks and sanitation.
Last in the dock is the Rail Delivery Group. I know that you have being doing some work behind the scenes, but chaps… really… to call yourself the Rail Delivery Group and then tell everyone not to use your trains is a ridiculous contradiction.
The owning groups you represent are all too happy to pocket their 2% (not a fortune, I grant you) and run empty trains that - surprise, surprise - are all on time. You’ve got rid of the pesky passengers at last.
I am very proud to be working for which has consistently stood up for the railways in a way that seemingly no one else has.
Right from the beginning, we have argued that the industry is in a perilous state and facing an existential threat. All of you should have been batting for the railways, saying in public what you have expressed in private, arguing the case that the railways were safe to travel on with the right precautions. And avoiding any ‘don’t use the railways, you will die’ messaging, as the bus industry has done.
All of you have betrayed the railways. You should have emphasised throughout what we all know - that railways are incompatible with social distancing.
If this pandemic goes on without a vaccine or a cure, and continues at a low level for months (if not years), what will be left of the rail industry? Even I, as a train lover, would not be able to justify spending billions on a system that no one uses. What then?
So, when investment programmes are cut back, services reduced and timetables pared down, remember what you did in this ‘affaire’. Were you on the side of the railways? Or did you just bow your head - yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir?