We’re now six weeks into my new Podcast, The Pod Delusion, and I’ve finally got around to recording my second proper contributions (I present the links between reports every week, mainly). I put together a report on the question of “What is music?” – which you can hear fourth on the player below:
Also on this week’s show are:
The Ethics of Formula 1 by Duncan Stephen
Ubuntu and open source by Owen Duffy
The problem with conventional medicine by Simon Howard
It’s a bit of a cliché to moan about the railways – the arguments and moans are always the same: “Cuh! The train is always late!”, “The trains are so expensive”, “The staff of East Midlands Trains are like the Stasi”. Clichéd though it may be, this isn’t going to stop me from having a lengthy moan about the,
Maybe that last complaint is uniquely mine – a few years ago I upset the Midland Mainline press office by writing a newspaper column when I likened their attitude to that of the Stasi. I got a rather frosty reaction from the people at my local station too. “Maybe I was a bit harsh”, I thought at the time, though once again I now feel fully justified, self righteous, and I’m about to mount my high-horse.
The other day I had to go down to London on business, as part of my new job (that’s right, I’m basically Don Draper now), so thinking it was the sensible thing to do I booked tickets online like I have done many times before. I went down to London, did the sort of jet-setting important business you’d expect someone of my stature to do, before heading back to St Pancras to catch the train home.
Because I’d booked online, I’d ended up with “Advance” tickets, assuming they worked like they always have – whilst the return train isn’t tied to any particular time, the seat reservation is, but that I could catch any off-peak train back with the ticket I’d paid for.
If any train spotters are reading, you can probably predict the horror that was about to unfold as I boarded the train. I put my advance ticket into the ticket-gates, they swung open, seemingly verifying my preconception, I boarded the train, found a seat and tried to decide whether reading New Humanist or The Guardian would make me look more important to the other passengers.
The ticket inspector came along the carriage checking tickets, I presented mine expecting no problems only to be told that my ticket wasn’t valid. I calmly explained that this had never happened before, but the ticket inspector wouldn’t budge – he insisted that I had to buy a whole new ticket. “Oh, fair enough, it’ll only be something like £11 as it’s a single in the middle of the day”, I thought. Then he dropped a bombshell: the ticket would cost me FIFTY-ONE POUNDS. I think I looked visibly shocked – and the woman sitting opposite me looked as horrified as I did. The ticket man explained that if I’d changed my tickets at the station it’d have been somewhere in the region of £14… but because I’d got on the train he was going to charge me £51 – this despite the ticket machine he was holding clearly being able to issue a variety of suitable fares. I asked him about railcards and the like, but he said it was “company policy” to charge the full fare.
I was furious, but remained calm as I handed over my card – before asking, in a sort of passive-aggressive way what the complaints procedure was, hoping that he’d let me off.
What enrages me about this whole experience is that East Midlands Trains were technically in the right, their small-print and “policy” had got me… but morally, I don’t know how Ian Dobbs, chief executive of Stagecoach’s rail arm can sleep at night. How can a company so ruthlessly enforce such arbitrary rules and metaphorically shit all over their customers?
At risk of sounding like a left-winger who’s much older than I am, the problem seems to be linked to nationalisation of the railways. Not the de-linking of infrastructure from train operation, or the impenetrable topography of who-owns-what, which has de-incentivised train operators from improving their service, but the complete removal of any accountability of the companies operating the trains. Because of the way the trains are operated, the commuters rage – our rage – is completely impotent.
One of the key ideas in capitalism is that it empowers the consumer by allowing them to “vote” with their money – if they don’t like a product or service, they can stop buying it and force the companies to change to win them back… that’s basic economics. The problem is that there is no competition for trains. Don’t be a smart-arse and say “what about national express?” or “what about walking?”, I mean actually plausible alternatives – and besides, bus and train operators are all eventually owned by a small handful of bastard parent companies anyway.
So basically East Midlands Trains have a free hand in treating their (whether they like it or not) loyal customers like shit, wringing as much cash as they can out of them for providing such a basic service. I feel completely powerless.
At least if we had a nationalised railway there’d be some political responsibility, and more crucially the whole ethos of the “business” would be about providing an affordable service and getting people to their destinations, not about maximising profits. Hell, a nationalised railway might even run services over night at a loss – something that they’re going to have to start doing for me to give up driving and enable us to achieve the “low-carbon future” that we so desperately need to do something about.
I wouldn’t even mind paying the penalty fare if the prices were not so wildly taking the piss – the ludicrous disparity in peak and off-peak ticket pricing, and the high prices in general create essentially an apartheid system, where if I want to catch a train earlier in the morning, I probably need to be earning a six-figure salary or I should forget about it.
I think essentially what I’m trying to say is that trains are very frustrating. And I loath East Midlands Trains with a passion.
