I had to catch the train yesterday morning for a meeting in London. This cost me £30.90 for the privilege of standing between Reading and Paddington. Thankfully it’s not often that I have to catch the train nowadays but there was a time some seven years ago when I did the journey daily. In that time nothing much has changed I stood then and I stood yerterday. The need to stand was, perhaps, less acceptable yesterday as this was a journey at just gone 9am when I would have thought that most commuters would be long gone. I could have driven but I don’t enjoy driving into London and trying to find parking and anyway I would prefer to “go green” and use public transport.
So the government wants us all to use public transport more and the roads less. Now to my way of thinking overcrowded, expensive trains are not the way of encouraging us onto the trains. Nor is having a private, profit making organisation running the service. No, if the government wants better public transport usage then they had better be prepared to pay for it – but of course they are not because that would mean we would have to pay for it through the taxes and no-one wants higher taxes for that sort of thing, or do they?
There is a problem which I don’t know how any government is going to address it: namely that the UK people want world class services but don’t seem to want to pay for them.