One of my few hobbies during the lockdown days of Covid was train-spotting. Not actual number taking or anything as sophisticated as that, but just watching them go by. I’ve always loved trains and during those dark days they gave me strange comfort. Yet those trains were largely empty and it cost you and I, the taxpayer, some £16 billion to keep them going, for no obvious reason. If we are over the worst of Covid, we aren’t over the collapse in the use of rail transport, since rail use has now stabilised at two-thirds to three-quarters what it was before Covid. Maybe it’s time to fear for the future of the railways?
Train travel has a high profile yet supplies just 6% of passenger journeys and only 8% of long distance journeys. 84% of us go by road. It’s far cheaper, more convenient, more comfortable and more flexible to drive. Last year, my partner and I went to the Lake District for a late autumn break. Even with my Old Codger Railcard, it would have set us back around £230 between us, with as many as five changes on the train. That doesn’t even allow for public transport from the station to our accommodation and anything we did during our five days away, five days which soon turn into three when you take the train. My guess it would have been four or five times more expensive to use public transport all the way through our break. Why would you do that? We didn’t.
The Christmas RMT strikes will affect hardly anyone. It will inconvenience some folk, for sure, but not that many. Most people will be driving or taking the bus. Mick Lynch, the hard left RMT leader, has been a highly effective communicator since his members starting taking action, but for what? 94% of us are not inconvenienced at all. In fact, with strike dates being announced weeks in advance, hardly anyone is inconvenienced at all. However this strike action ends, either with the government caving in or with the unions giving up, it won’t change a thing. Those of us who love trains won’t pay the extortionate fares to use them, fares that are increased massively every single year. We will drive. And I’ll continue to show my love for trains by watching them, not riding on them.
So now, the railways are in impossible position. The vast majority of people never use the train at all, never mind regularly, yet the vast majority of people are subsidising that minority who do. Does the government cut subsidies and so make train fares even more expensive, which in turn will make them less attractive to travellers, or does it subsidise them even more in the hope that cheaper fares will entice more passengers when there is no guarantee that will work. A 10% cut in fares would make no difference to me, I doubt whether 25% would. What about nationalising the railways? Okay, some money would not end up being syphoned to wealthy shareholders, but enough to make a difference? I doubt it.
Are trains essential? I’m not so sure now. They cost a fortune to run and maintain and the vast majority of us never use them. Obviously, we need a long term plan but British politics isn’t about long term plans. The Conservatives have been in power for well over 12 years and apart from the Elizabeth line and the start of HS2, your average punter feels no obvious benefit, sees no improvement.
Good luck to Mick Lynch and his union. He’s chosen to plough a lonely furrow, standing apart obviously from the Conservative Party, but also Labour which will never be left wing enough for them. Lynch has the gift of the gab, sounds authentic and runs rings around the deadbeat politicians who run the country, but who is he talking to? Social media is full of praise for the RMT’s hard left, pro Brexit leader and many respect him for his skilful oratory but beyond that, what?
I still love trains and spend far too long watching them thunder through stations and watch them via webcams on sites like Railcam. But riding them? Hardly ever. Maybe soon, the rail network will be run down and what’s left can be used as a heritage novelty for enthusiasts and anoraks like me? Whatever the merits of the RMT strikes, we’ve been reminded that hardly anyone travels by train these days and tragically Mick Lynch could be doing his bit to run services down for good.
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