Why is it so hard to leave the country?

This should have been the year when we could finally put Covid behind us and return to normal. But as far as public transport is concerned it has instead turned out to herald the realisation that paralysis has become the normal condition, not a product of the pandemic.

Any Eurostar passengers who thought they had escaped the wildcat strike that brought pre-Christmas services to a premature halt on Saturday 23^rd December by travelling a week later have found themselves at the receiving end of one of the cross-Channel service’s worst days in its near 30-year history. All 41 services from St Pancras through the Channel Tunnel were cancelled, thanks to a leaking fire control system which flooded one of the two tunnels where the high speed line crosses the Thames near Ebbsfleet. What is so remarkable is the seeming lack of any back up plan to deal with such an eventuality. There are, in fact, two tunnels beneath the Thames at that point, so why couldn’t the other, unflooded tunnel, be used with two way working? Failing that, why couldn’t Eurostar temporarily reopen its mothballed station at Ebbsfleet and terminate trains there, bussing passengers from St Pancras? High speed trains are supposed to be the environmentally-friendly way to travel – indeed, France has banned short haul air routes where it is possible to travel by train (at least theoretically) in less than two and a half hours. But the latest incident shows just how vulnerable services are to complete collapse.    

But it isn’t just Eurostar. The whole rail system now seems to operate in a constant state of dysfunction. True, there was a storm this week – an event against that our overhead electrification infrastructure seems to have little resilience. A fallen cable outside Paddington left passengers stranded on trains for several hours earlier this month. But the weather was hardly the whole story while travelling by train has become so miserable over the holiday period. Hundreds of trains have been cancelled not because of the weather but thanks to ‘staff shortages’ – which usually means that rail companies have been unable to persuade sufficient numbers of staff to volunteer for overtime. Unbelievably, the railways still operate on a system which relies utterly on staff volunteering to work particular services, especially at the weekend, rather than them simply being rostered to work certain hours. High rates of pay in the rail industry – median full-time earnings in the rail industry are £47,419, a third as high again as median earnings in the UK economy as a whole – have exacerbated the problem.   It seems that many rail workers do not see the need for overtime and would rather extend their holidays.

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Ross Clark

Britain is living beyond its means

That is before we even get to the strikes, which are still not over. While the RMT has settled its 18 month dispute, agreeing not to go on strike again until, er, April, Aslef held several strikes earlier this month and is still holding out for higher pay – even though train drivers, who have been offered a basic salary of £65,000, which some bump up to £90,000 or more. Train drivers are now among the ‘rich’ whom Jeremy Corbyn wanted to tax at a marginal rate of 45 percent (his threshold would have begun at £80,000).   

Then there was the air traffic control meltdown in August, which saw 1,600 flights cancelled in a single day, thanks to a software error. That came on top of strikes by baggage handlers, which are continuing into the New Year. 

There is one big lesson to be learned from the almost constant chaos. Firstly, we should never, ever make ourselves over-reliant on one form of transport – especially if there are unions involved. In particular, it is a reminder of why we still need private cars, and why the dream of cities where everyone uses public transport nearly all the time is just pie in the sky. Even if we don’t use them all the time, we need cars as a defence against union militancy and technological failure. And preferably cars which carry significant quantities of their own fuel rather than electric cars which have to be charged from the grid every hundred miles.  

There is another lesson, too. Every time rail services and air services break down it is a reminder to malign forces of just how easy it is to cause chaos with our transport system. We haven’t yet experienced the long-forecast cyber attack which would target our electricity supply and transport system. But sooner or later it will happen. And on current showing it bring absolute mayhem, even if the damage can be put right in a few hours.