Getting around and, especially, across, our rural area can be frustrating at the best of times.
In normal times, with the exception of the rail line to Windermere, if you want to go east to west or north to south by rail, you have to skirt the outer edges of the county. Kendal to Workington will take the best part of 2 hours while Barrow to Carlisle will be two-and-a-half hours at best.
But these aren’t normal times. Traditionally, the rail companies relied on staff working overtime to fulfil their timetable. This has always caused issues. After all, if you worked for Northern, would you want to volunteer for a Saturday evening stint on the Carlisle to Whitehaven service?
Most of the passenger facing staff are great. Those with the flags and whistles on the platforms at Carlisle are invariably helpful and this cat wouldn’t be a train manager checking tickets for a train load of Dreamies.
And it isn’t just the railways. Tried to catch a bus recently? Anyone who follows Stagecoach Cumbria and North Lancashire on Twitter will dread their tweets that begin, “due to staff sickness”!
Today, we have several rail unions taking industrial action with, separately, strikes and ‘work to contract’ by drivers, train managers and all manner of other staff who keep the trains running. And the part that is really challenging is the working to rule which means no overtime.
So, if staff aren’t working overtime, something not required by their contracts, the rail companies have had to significantly reduce their services even on days where there is no strike.
On the West Coast Mainline this means that where there were usually two Edinburgh/Glasgow to London services per hour, one direct from Warrington and another via Birmingham New Street, this is now reduced to one per hour weekday.
There is, for the long suffering Cumbrian rail users, a further complication: the London to Scotland route uses two crews with a crew change at Preston. Avanti, the route operator, seems to have enough staff south of Preston to sustain this but has little leeway north which means that trains either terminate at Preston or are delayed northwards. The knock-on effect can last all day.
And it isn’t just Avanti. TransPennine Express started a direct Glasgow to Liverpool service via Carlisle and in recent months it has been, more often than not, cancelled. Again, lack of staff.
How can all this be overcome? Well, let’s start with the lack of any meaningful negotiation. The companies that run the trains are dictated to by a Government that really does not want to see wages rise by anywhere near the rate of inflation so Ministers are holding back.
This does seem rather strange. Rail workers are not public employees and it should be for the rail companies to decide how much they pay their staff. But this is where the complex becomes ever more confusing.
In an ideal, free market world, that would mean balancing the costs of providing the service with the cost of tickets to ensure that there was some profit for shareholders. Trouble is, ticket prices are split between ‘regulated’ fares – ones where the Government has much influence especially with season tickets and commuter services – and ‘unregulated’ fares – all the others, including advance tickets and first class where the rail companies, together within the Association of Train Operating Companies, set a commercial fare.
The next complication is that in the modern era train companies have never employed enough staff to fulfil the timetable. They have relied on voluntary overtime, especially on Sundays, to run the service and as rail franchises are for a limited time, no company has really had any incentive to employ more staff.
Maybe it is time to rethink the rail franchising system, especially when many rail companies are part owned by state owned European rail companies who use the profits from the UK operations to keep fare prices down for their own passengers.
And what better time to do it than when Network Rail, the state owned company that looks after the rail infrastructure, is to become Great British Railways in 2023. And while we are at it, take into state control the ownership of the companies that own the carriages. As it stands, Network Rail looks after tracks and signalling, train companies run services but they have to lease the carriages from private companies have owned them since British rail was privatised.
So, just like the NHS reforms under Health Minister Andrew Lansley in 2012, some sort of internal market has been created within the railways that simply diverts money and profit to shareholders and accountancy firms. First Group’s CEO copped over £1.6 million in salary and bonuses last year and they are not alone in milking the corporate trough while the railway are badly run.
For example, Avanti are owned by First Group in partnership with Italian state owned railways Trenitalia and when you buy a ticket you are paying to subsidise a passenger travelling from Milan to Rome for £50 first class. That is a similar distance to Carlisle to London Euston where a first class ticket will cost you £185! Avanti has to pay Network Rail to run the service while paying a rolling stock company for the lease of their carriages.
No wonder the system is financially bankrupt with corporate noses in the trough alongside ministers who would fail running a corner shop. It is not fit for purpose. Nationalise it now.
About Cumbria Cat
Born in Cumberland and, from 2023, will be back living in Cumberland, having spent most of the past 50 years in some place called Cumbria, this cat has used up all nine lives as well as a few others.
Always happy to curl up on a friendly lap, the preference is for a local lap and not a lap that wants to descend on the county to change it into something it isn’t. After all, you might think Cumbria/Cumberland/Westmorland is a land forged by nature – the glaciers, the rivers, breaking down the volcanic rocks or the sedimentary layers – but, in reality, the Cumbria we know today was forged by generations of local people, farmers, miners, quarriers, and foresters.
This cat is a local moggy, not a Burmese, Ocicat or Persian, and although I have been around the block a few times, whenever I jump, I end up on my feet back in my home county. I am passionate about the area, its people, past, present and future, and those who come to admire what we hold dear, be it lakes and mountains, wild sea shores, vibrant communities or the history as rich and diverse as anywhere in the world.
