The state of our railway

It really doesn’t surprise me that Britain’s railways nearly always generate bad news. After all, is it not the golden rule of hack journalism that bad news sells better?

Therefore, whatever is going right on our railways will always get little or no credit, except from titles such as RAIL or from local news. Nevertheless, we must acknowledge that there is a lot going on in the rail industry.

However, in order to understand the many and varied issues, we need to state the nature of the problem as simply as we can:

Britain’s Railways are being asked to transport a far greater number of passengers than at any point in their existence, and to

carry a greater burden of our nation’s freight traffic - and to do so with a reduced network, fewer staff, a depleted national skills base, and within the constraints of multi-dimensional, multi-player, public-private partnerships, and the socio-economic framework.

This means we have multilateral issues, and therefore need to find multilateral solutions. Not an easy task, but one we must embark upon as part of a far greater project, which is: to re-grow our rail, bus and tram networks; to make them accessible, reliable, safe and affordable; to make them mutually interactive and cooperative; and to offer individuals and families a sustained, trustworthy and economic alternative to mass car ownership.

Again, not an easy task. But the alternative is perpetual gridlock on our roads, with all of the ensuing chaos that that would bring. And we need to start yesterday. Don Broad, Dartford