News & Opinion - September 2011
Here you will find all our latest news, views and events.
August 2011 September 2011 October 2011
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Thu 22nd Sep 11 Transport policy is off the rails
I have a client meeting in London next Tuesday at 9am, and especially as I haven't caught the train in a while, I thought that it would be the obvious choice.
Think again!
At £181.00 return (peasant class not first, I might add), it is just a ridiculous price — even though my client will be paying for our travel costs. In these post- (or should that be pre-) recessionary times, I simply cannot justify such an expense claim. So, I will be in the car, as usual, in which I will drive to Luton and then hop on a commuter train from there. Yes, I'll lose a couple of hours of productivity, but at 5am I'm not worried.
Interestingly, train travel is on the up and up, which in some ways in good, but at these prices we won't be part of the rail renaissance, which is a shame because I would prefer to be on a train and not stuck in slow-moving traffic.
The problem is that the rail companies have moved to the same pricing policy as airlines, which is all very well if you can plan 3 months ahead; in business you need flexibilty, which is why we will continue to be in the car unless or until the government makes rail travel cheaper so that it is a genuinely affordable alternative to car travel.
The communications message in all this is: that there is no clear message when it comes to caring for the environment. On the one hand we have so-called green taxes and on the other we have a government still wedded to the oil-derived tax receipts. If rail travel was cheaper the government would lose tax revenues, which it is unlikely to do. Until then we have a transport policy that is nothing short of a car smash.