h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's time to do away with all the train operating companies, renationalise the network, simplify and standardise the ticketing and price structure and bring back Mark I coaching stock, you know, the ones with compartments with little individual reading lights and luggage racks.

Get the buffet cars to stop using plastic cups and bring back pottery ones! I love the fact that one of the first acts by the Minister for Railways in India was to ban plastic cups, thus providing rural employment for thousands of potters


While we're at it, re-open some of the smaller lines closed by Dr. Beeching, there's a station a mile from my house, i'd love to see it reopened.

Lx

There is a ridiculous duplication of effort in the multiple rail franchises.

We need old lines re-opening - we need an integrated transport system. We need buses that meet trains, and roads closed to cars to allow speedy bus transport.

We could pay for some of this by taxing more for each extra car registered to a household, and by scrapping plans to build and expand airports and building more new motorways. Some bypasses will have to go ahead because some villages can't cope with the number of cars on the road nowadays.

We should also ban all lorries over 20 tons from the roads, and use rail for freight transport. Possibly canals could be used to move stuff into some city centres.

I can't agree with the Mk I coaching stock thing I'm afraid. They freeze in winter and are stifling in Summer - far more than current stock is. When I'm commuting I'll take ever small comfort I can get!

However, on the point of a unified national railway, I'm far more in your camp. I think that public transport is a public service, and that this is proved by the subsidies given to train/bus operators to keep the fares down. If without government help providing public transport is not economically viable and yet people want public transport then that is a service to be provided by government.

The problem with this, however, is that people do not have equal access to public transport. When I am in London, for example, I am overwhelmed by the buses, tubes, DLR, Thameslink line and all the other public transport options. Conversely when I visit my parents there is a bus service about 4 times a day (which is amazing for a non urbanised area), the last one returning at 5.30pm - meaning one cannot commute using public transport, even for a relatively mundane (in terms of hours) job. There used to be a train station which was on the mainline from Birmingham to Southampton docks and was quadruple tracked. That station, and indeed the track, is now gone. Given that I believe that if you want to nationalise/unify the rail system you have to expand its coverage first so as to include as many tax payers as possible.

"...we need an integrated transport system".

I've been watching 'Yes Minister' recently and that was one of the 'hot potato' ideas that had been flung around. It'll never happen.

<< can't agree with the Mk I coaching stock thing I'm afraid. They freeze in winter and are stifling in Summer - far more than current stock is. When I'm commuting I'll take ever small comfort I can get!>>

That was mostly a nostalgia trip for me, I used to love getting a compartment to myself. Mind you, I do long for the days when you had plenty of legroom and carriage decor which was rather less jarring on the senses, unlike some of todays, which seem best viewed through sunglasses. And why can't they get all the windows to line up with where the seats are??

Lx

That's a good point about the seats and the windows...I think that every day on my way home! Apart from the fact that the trains all seem to be suffocatingly hot.

Aw I miss British Rail though...trains with bits of wood stuck all over the place, and the North Sea Sky dull grey livery.