VT day (Victory on the Trains)

Everyone in East Anglia pour themselves a cold one... National Express will be losing their rail franchise for the region in 2011. This is as a result of their default on their East Coast franchise. National Express thought they could give up on loss-making franchises while continuing to milk the profitable routes. Sorry guys, you is dead wrong. Congratulations to Transport Secretary Andrew Adonis for sticking to his guns on this one.

I won't be sorry to see the back of National Express management. They are a bunch of shysters committed to screwing the customer in exchange for ever-deteriorating levels of service. They are the most wretched hive of scum and villainy this side of Mos Eisley spaceport. If you see one of them... put him/her in the bin.

Would be even better if the franchise were being returned to the public sector in 2011, though.

National Express East Anglia: towards competence? Tell 'em what you think

Previous mentions of the National Express East Anglia train company on this blog have ranged between pissed off and incendiary - but they may be about to turn over a new leaf in some ways. Their new consultation on train service capacity enhancements is a good read.

The big proposed improvements are:

• additional train service capacity into London Liverpool St of 11,000 seats between 7am and 10am (unfortunately they don't say what percentage increase that is but the overall percentage increase in the size of the train fleet would be 17%)
• additional peak hours stops at Stratford
• half-hourly off-peak stops at Kelvedon in Essex. This would get the service back to the levels that the old British Rail were able to provide prior to 1995 - which doesn't sound that spectacular in itself, but in the context of privatisation, is something of a miracle.
• a Harwich-Manningtree shuttle service to connect with intercity trains at Manningtree (not everyone will like this)

A lot of this would be facilitated by the replacement of the (in my view fairly daft) direct Peterborough-London and Lowestoft-London trains with services that connect with Intercity services at Ipswich.

It's the way the whole timetable should have been organised in the first place - it's taken these guys 5 years and a lot of pain inflicted on commuters to get there, but better late than never. (As British Rail might have said).

I will certainly be writing to NXEA to endorse these proposals - the first positive feedback I have ever given them (apart from when they introduced the 0815 morning service into Liverpool Street) and I recommend that you do the same if you live on this line or even if you don't live there but still occasionally use it. The more support there is for the proposals, the more likelihood there is that this thing will actually happen. The timetable changes are scheduled for the end of 2010 if they decide to go ahead, so you wouldn't have long to wait to experience the benefits.

The consultation ends 11 September so get your views in while you can.

And a final thought - this may just be a desperate move by NXEA to try to stop Andrew Adonis clawing back their franchise as collateral damage after the collapse of their East Coast franchise. Which would expose them as cynical bastards, but would also prove that, given the right regulatory framework, maybe even cynical bastards can be made to toe the line. Carry on Andrew...

Hello darling, I'm on the *nationalised* train

Writing this on the, for want of a better word, British Rail - formerly National Express East Coast - train on the way from London to Newcastle, and I must say it's great to be back on the nationalised trains after all this time. Look, even the wi-fi's working.

You'll probably have seen this already if you're based in the UK as it's been all over the news, but yesterday talks between NXEC and the Department of Transport over a possible renegotiation of the East Coast rail franchise broke down. NXEC were meant to be paying the DfT £1.4bn over the 10 years' duration of the franchise but this was based on passenger forecasts that were optimistic to begin with, and as the recession bit, it became clear that NXEC was going to run a massive loss. Hence, the government had to step in to keep those goddamn trains running.

Whose fault is this? Well, really a combination of National Express (for making a reckless franchise bid) and the Government (for accepting that reckless bid in the first place). As a monopoly operator of the East Coast rail route, NXEC could expect to make substantial profits under normal economic conditions, but even so, £1.4bn is a hell of a lot for the govt to cream off from the railway. And environmentally it makes no sense whatsover - we should be subsidising the railways to get more people out of their cars and reduce overall CO2 emissions. (Network Rail, the infrastructure operator, does receive a subsidy but this is not enough to offset the East Coast franchise premium payments.

Of course, National Express have tried to weasel out of their liabilities for defaulting on the contract by claiming that NXEC is a separate company to the rest of the National Express group and so their liability should not extend into the rest of the company. For example, they argue that the Government shouldn't be able to take over the other 2 franchises that National Express runs (National Express East Anglia and C2C, which runs the Southend to London Fenchurch St line) as compensation for NXEC's failure. This is blatant financial engineering by National Express to try to swindle money out of the taxpayer by any means possible, and if necessary the Government should make retrospective changes to corporate law to make parent companies liable for losses incurred by fully owned subsidiaries so that National Express can't get away with this.

I'd be very happy to see the back of National Express on the East Anglia rail service as well. They deliberately run trains with fewer carriages despite overcrowding to save money on fuel costs. They have imposed progressively more ludicrous evening ticket restrictions to stop people travelling on cheap tickets in the evening rush hour - again to save money instead of running longer trains, which is what people really want. And they deliberately fail to advertise the Network Railcard, which provides 1/3 off off-peak fares, in case people find out about it and save money. F*** them.

And full marks to Transport Secretary Andrew Adonis - not my favourite politician at all most days - for standing firm in the face of National Express's attempts to renegotiate their franchise just because of the recession. Adonis reasoned - correctly - that if he gave way on this franchise it would open the floodgates and every other two-bit rail operator would be hammering on the door for the soft treatment. He did The Right Thing.

But he plans to re-franchise to a private operator as soon as possible, which is a pain. There have been some improvements to the rail rolling stock under private ownership, it's true (although that was partly the result of a dreadful lack of investment under British Rail, which was starved of cash from its inception in the 1940s). The crappy old slam-door trains are long gone, which we can all be grateful for. But in most other respects, privatisation has been a disastrous failure. Lack of maintenance caused a sequence of dreadful crashes and disasters - Hatfield, Potters Bar, Ealing, etc. - and forced the nationalisation of Railtrack (Steve Byers's finest hour!) Fares have rocketed sky-high, especially for people who want to buy their ticket on the day of travel. And investment in new lines and tracks - Eurostar excluded - has been piecemeal. The recession presents an ideal opportunity to bring public enterprise back to the railways and Labour would be best advised to grab it with both hands. At the very least, a pledge to renationalise would provide a clear dividing line with the Tories at the next election (unless Cameron copies it, which is very possible.)

Train companies love to crowd us into corporate fascism

The latest wanker train boss to suggest that as they are extorting ludicrous sums of money from commuters, it's OK for them to stand up all the way, is Keith "Rude Boy" Ludeman of Go-Ahead group. Suck on this quote:

"It is not unreasonable to expect some one to stand, this is a mass transit system. If you're coming up from the coast you might expect to get a seat, but your chances are reduced closer to London."

And why are your chances reduced closer to London? Because Go-Ahead doesn't run enough trains to cope with demand, that's why. Because it can make more profit by running less trains while charging people the same fares.

These are the sort of people who would presumably say it's OK for people to stand up in hospital when they're waiting for operations. Why not have them standing up on short-haul flights as well? I'm surprised Ryanair hasn't thought of that one.

I've even seen loads of people standing up going in from Chelmsford to Liverpool Street on Saturdays - which is nobody's idea of peak time. It's all because the companies want to put less and less trains on.

I think if people have to stand up on journeys they should get a fare or season ticket discount. Easy to police (given the number of CCTV cameras) and would provide an incentive for train companies to actually run enough trains to stop giving out discounts to standing passengers.

Meanwhile, Keith "Rude Boy" (who no doubt gets a chauffeur-driven limo with plenty of legroom) should be forced to spend his whole life standing up. No seats at home or work, made to commute on a cattle truck train, even his bed should be one of those Japanese upright "pod" thingies. Let's see how he likes it. It's time to make a stand. (Dreadful, I know.)