What is your controversial railway opinion/idea?

[Camden]

I think this thread needed to include a definition of "controversial".

 

[njamescouk]

diesels are better than steam and electric.

 

[Daz28]

Lets go the whole hog:

All standard class travel to be free. Huge savings to be made by eliminating ticket retailing, gatelines, revenue protection, delay attribution, fare setting etc. Has the additional benefit of putting TheTrainLine out of business.
Funded by increase in tax revenues generated by improved economy due to more mobile workforce and the VAT generated by having more disposable income to spend.

 

[AlterEgo]

There should be a week-long amnesty for TOCs from employment law do they can finally fire the 25% of customer-facing staff who shouldn’t be there.

(Not entirely serious but the sentiment is sincere)

That is not a controversial thought, try again.

You must be fun at parties.

 

[EM2]

That is not a controversial thought, try again.

No debating!

 

[EM2]

I think this thread needed to include a definition of "controversial".

Ahem...

.. a straightforward statement of what you think about something railway-related, that is probably not widely shared by others.

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

There should be a nationwide smartcard system rolled out within 5 years, usable either with smartcards or contactless. Those who make journeys they can't pay for must clean train/station toilets until they've paid off the fare. Smartcard buying/topup machines to be installed at all stations. Advances/season tickets etc. can be loaded to the smartcard at these machines, or via NFC on a phone app like the Scotrail smartcard. Paper tickets to be abolished when the system has finished rolling out.

Private prosecutions of all kinds should be outlawed and Byelaw 18 repealed. The BTP should take on RoRA prosecutions, having a duty to prosecute all viable cases (as this way it would be bribery and illegal for them to offer to settle out of Court). Penalty Fares to be rolled out nationwide (remember the smartcard thing!) and enforced at County Court if unpaid.

All fares to be reset to NFM64 (1996) levels, plus inflation. Adjustments to be made in accordance with changes in service frequency and journey speed. Annual rises of all fares (including Advances) to be capped at CPI other than when service frequency/journey speed changes, when adjustments can be made.

15-minute minimum automatic delay repay to be credited to bank/smartcards on all routes/franchises. For every 30 days after a 30 day initial period, failure to pay the appropriate delay repay (where all the required journey information is available) results in the amount payable doubling.

All stations trains to be fitted with free, fast WiFi within 5 years. All platforms and non-quiet zone carriages to be fitted with mobile repeaters, quiet zone carriages to be fitted with signal-blocking window film.

British Rail to be reinstated as a private government-owned company which can bid for all franchises.

Service-critical staff (drivers, guards etc.) to be banned from striking.

 

[Calthrop]

(Purely my own sentiments; I'm not seeking to convert anyone else.) A fairly large majority of the rail preservation movement's doings -- particularly, those concerned with active steam -- are sterile and worthless. I would be just as happy if the activities as aforesaid, were not happening at all.

 

[Lucan]

VED on HGVs should be increased to at least the same in pence-per-mile as I am paying for my car. (That would be around x10).

Relevant for getting freight back on rails.

 

[anti-pacer]

Railcards offering a third off rail travel should be available to ALL and not certain, mainly age demographics.

Rail enthusiasts who think it's acceptable to go 'lineside' just to take a photo of a train should be prosecuted.

Pacers should NEVER have been built.

Passengers should actually use the bins on trains and not expect the cleaning fairy to clear away their mess.

Chris Grayling should resign.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Scrap ALL announcements on trains. 99% of passengers don't need to know all the nonsense and health&safety bollocks and the 1% that do could simply ask the guard. As he won't need to worry about opening the doors, he'll have plenty of time to assist!

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Instead of under 5s travelling for free, charge them ( or rather their parents) twice the adult fare to reflect the annoyance their running around and screaming causes to other passengers.

 

[507021]

• The Class 507s and 508s should be retained, with Class 313s joining them to boost capacity.
• First Class should be scrapped. Based on my experiences of it, I don't think it's worth the extra money.
• I liked Northern Rail.

 

[tbtc]

We should fit TVMs at the front and rear of each train (i.e. behind the cabs).

If anyone boards without a ticket they should be able to buy on at the on-board TVM before they go to their seat.

Any passenger seated without a ticket therefore has no excuse (as the machines are on the train, the Guard can easily tell if one has been vandalised or broken down).

 

[B&I]

In aesthetic terms, the first generation DMUs were design classics

 

[godfreycomplex]

Virgin Trains East Coast is/was an excellent brand that attracted the consumer, and finally shook off the staid, boring trappings of GNER.
The South Wales Metro is just what the region needs.
Split ticketing should be banned.
Rail staff should operate under the same union and collective bargaining agreement, and if one strikes, we all strike. Ideally all under one employer as well.
The system of delay minutes and PPM should be immediately abolished as unfit for purpose.
Mirrors, monitors and body side cameras to be removed from the list of safe dispatch methods.
There should be as stringent punishment for abusive passengers in the morning peak as at other times of day.
That should be just about everyone annoyed

 

[Ianno87]

Instead of under 5s travelling for free, charge them ( or rather their parents) twice the adult fare to reflect the annoyance their running around and screaming causes to other passengers.

I'd have a special carriage for people that can't grasp the concept of "public" transport. Could call it the 'quiet' carriage, or something like that.

 

[lyndhurst25]

Compared to development of self-driving cars, it would be a trivial engineering task to automate the job of driving trains. In less than a decade, the job of train driver will not exist.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

• I don’t care about “metals”. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest whether my local line in Yorkshire was built by the North British or the Great Western, I’m not fussed whether a modern route stays wholly on tracks that were once LNER or strays onto ex-LMS territory. Rails look shiny silver or rusty bronze to me; I don’t picture them in the variety of reds and blues and greens of a 1920s Track Atlas.

• If you are the kind of person who moans about “noisy” underfloor engines on modern DMUs then you look a bit silly when you eulogise about how wonderful “thrash” is and how much you enjoyed sitting in the front coach of a train with a loud diesel locomotive pulling it. Sorry!

• We’ve got enough stations. If your plan is to re-open some long abandoned ones then you should do so at the price of closing an equivalent number of ones currently open. It’d put some jeopardy into the “My Idea For…” threads.

• 1980/1990s BR were much better at design and aesthetics than they were at actually running trains. Their liveries and patterns were ahead of their time and many still work well today. Simple clear branding, easy to understand colour schemes. But at the same time as having such marvellous Advertising Agency stuff, they were inflicting Pacers on passengers. Fur coat and no knickers.

• 153s should all have a Quiet Coach.

• (with the obvious exception of London services) Virtually any journey over two hundred miles and most journeys over one hundred miles will have such insignificant numbers of daily passengers to be irrelevant. Such through services exist more as happy coincidences rather than any significant number of passengers. For example, it makes sense for Plymouth/ Exeter to have through trains to Bristol and Birmingham. It makes sense for Bournemouth/ Southampton to have through trains to Oxford and Birmingham. But the numbers of people travelling from the south coast to places north of Birmingham are so small that it doesn’t really matter whether one route has a direct service to Liverpool/ Manchester/ Edinburgh (via Leeds) or Newcastle (via Doncaster). Same with arguments about whether the service from Manchester along the Welsh coast should go to Llandudno or Holyhead (with the other Welsh town getting a service from Birmingham/ Cardiff instead) or whether Scarborough or Middlesbrough are more deserving of a through service to Manchester Airport or Liverpool. Most of these through services exist just because it balances out the service patterns on XC/TPE etc (where most passengers are concentrated on the middle of the journey) rather than any huge demand to get from coast to coast. Some people will benefit but not enough for it to be worth trying to give everywhere a direct service to everywhere else or for it to be unforgivable to remove a direct service between two places hundreds of miles apart. See also Norwich – Liverpool, Brighton to Cheltenham etc (and proposals for Nottingham – Carlisle and the like). I'm not arguing against long distance services, I'm just saying that people on here get far too fixated with the tiny number of people going from end to end and it wouldn't be the end of the world if termini were swapped around for whatever reason.

• The future for branch lines should be more like Falmouth (frequent shuttle service to the main line, catering for local passengers who use the line daily, giving connections to longer distance services) and less like Newquay (irregular service on the branch, relatively useless for locals, but a few Birmingham/ London services providing a direct service for longer distance passengers).

• Once the longer trains are introduced (and the conflicts caused by Northern’s well documented problems resolved), the new TPE timetable from Leeds to Manchester will be a big success, giving more services between the cities, providing faster journeys from some intermediate stations to Leeds/ Manchester (e.g. Marsden to Manchester, Batley to Leeds) and providing direct services from some intermediate stations to Leeds/ Manchester (e.g. Marsden to Leeds, Batley to Manchester). But introducing it with three coach 185s at the same time that Northern are struggling was always going to be a baptism of fire.

• We should rename the West Coast Main Line. I know that this is what it was called hundreds of years ago but the name just sounds silly, given the geography of the route.

Agree with every one of these apart from the "station swap" thing. +1 for the 153s and the WCML renaming especially!

 

[Bertie the bus]

I’ve got two.

1. Northern are doing such a good job a new version of the SRA should be created and the Northern management team put in charge of strategy for the whole industry.
2. DMUs aren’t bad. They are no worse as a passenger than travelling on either an EMU or LHCS.

 

[B&I]

Compared to development of self-driving cars, it would be a trivial engineering task to automate the job of driving trains. In less than a decade, the job of train driver will not exist.

The notion that many safety critical tasks can be successfully automated is a hubristic fantasy, which will lead to a lot of people being injured and killed in order to maintain the profits of the companies selling the technology, and will also see many people who do vital jobs being sacked in order to appease other people who enjoy that kind of thing

 

[vlad]

We could probably also save a packet there by the lower build costs generally, and being able to run the line down the hard shoulder of the M6.

The hard shoulder of the M6 is being abolished. It's already gone between Cannock and Stafford.

 

[deltic]

Bus replacement services should be scrapped - if you cant run a rail service you dont operate anything to replace it

 

[underbank]

The notion that many safety critical tasks can be successfully automated is a hubristic fantasy, which will lead to a lot of people being injured and killed in order to maintain the profits of the companies selling the technology, and will also see many people who do vital jobs being sacked in order to appease other people who enjoy that kind of thing

Are you talking about self driving cars or driverless trains?

 

[deltic]

As night time working is bad for people's health no train services should start before 6am or finish after 10pm. Sunday train services should only start after 2pm to allow track maintenance to take place on Sunday morning.

 

[deltic]

A normal Saturday service should operate on Boxing Day

 

[deltic]

All Christmas, Easter and other bank holiday engineering works should be scrapped. Major engineering works should take place during the normal week and lines shut as necessary - cost savings would be enormous

 

[Indigo Soup]

A normal Saturday service should operate on Boxing Day

A normal service should operate 365 days of the year, 366 in leap years.

 

[godfreycomplex]

Oh, and one more, taktfahrpläne are overrated

 

[Minilad]

Delay repay should be scrapped and any compensation dealt with on a case by case basis if genuine hardship has ensued.
The railway should not be liable for delays outside of it's control