What is your controversial railway opinion/idea?

[alistairlees]

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

I would completely agree. Though maybe for a different reason. Engineering works - focused as they are at weekends and at holiday times - essentially target those who are new to rail, or maybe very occasional travellers. And what does it do? Put them off, of course. So preventing growth by acquiring new customers. Which is what any business wants.

This is all because Network Rail has no idea about different types of customer - it simply equates them all (regular travellers and first time travellers) as being the same.

If I wanted a strategy to put off new customers, engineering works, bustitutions and general disruption on the days they are most likely to want to travel is exactly what I would do.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

The RMT should pay £10 compensation to every Northern Rail season ticket holder every time they call a strike day.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

The RMT DfT should pay £10 compensation to every Northern Rail season ticket holder every time a strike day is called by Trade Unions doing what they're supposed to do.

Fixed that for you.

 

[tbtc]

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

Fair enough

I just thought that it'd add a bit of jeopardy to the Here's My Wishlist For Reopening Some Long Abandoned Line Through The Middle Of Nowhere threads, if people had to cope with some Real World "opportunity cost"

 

[Mutant Lemming]

Re-nationalisation should occur with ASLEF being a major player in operations and policy.

 

[superalbs]

Operators who take too long playing around whilst trying to send off a Delay Repay claim should pay interest on the ticket cost as well as any compensation originally due.

 

[Camden]

Railway staff should receive part of their pay in the form of a bonus for on-time trains. Likewise, delay repay could be deducted from a portion of staff salaries.

Delay repay should operate on a sliding scale, starting from arriving 2 minutes late, and be automatically credited to passenger accounts.

 

[Bedpan]

Railway staff should receive part of their pay in the form of a bonus for on-time trains. Likewise, delay repay could be deducted from a portion of staff salaries.

Delay repay should operate on a sliding scale, starting from arriving 2 minutes late, and be automatically credited to passenger accounts.

I agree as far as senior management are concerned, but it is arguable that delays give staff extra work/more headaches than a service running to time

 

[johnnychips]

Posters to rail forum sites should check and edit their spelling (unless dyslexic or visually impaired) when they get home after making their contributions on a small screen on a bouncing train. (To be fair, this is one of the most articulate and correctly-spelt threads I’ve seen for ages).

Posters should not ask questions that have been posted and answered in the same thread within the last twenty posts.

 

[trainophile]

Scrotes who only know one adjective/adverb and it starts with F should be permanently banned from all public transport.

 

[DanDaDriver]

Delay relay should be harmonised with road travel for local services (Sweet FA) and airlines for long distance. (Hours rather than minutes)

 

[The Ham]

Delay relay should be harmonised with road travel for local services (Sweet FA) and airlines for long distance. (Hours rather than minutes)

Delay repay should be harmonised so that the operators of the vehicles repays those traveling with them the cost of their tickets after 30 minute delays regardless of mode of travel (note the reason for the delay may only be passed on to those causing the delay only where the operator of the vehicles pays to use the infrastructure for the whole distance traveled).

 

[PauloDavesi]

All contracts for industry operatives will be changed to allow for working on any of the seven days in a week.

Services should be run on Boxing day.

Ticketing issues should be decriminalised, it is a civil matter and should be resolved through civil not criminal law.

ALL industry operatives need to be trained so they fully understand they are in a service industry and they need to treat their customers properly, otherwise they don't have a job.

All industry operatives found to have breached legislation to be prosecuted.

Mandatory drug and alcohol testing for all "safety critical" operatives, with zero tolerance for any drugs, or alcohol above 15mg.

(THe OP did ask for contreversial!)

 

[Requeststop]

1. Scrap HS2. Put the money and effort into upgrading and electrifying other Cross Nations routes.
2. More money spent on services outside of London and the South East.
3. Regions that whinge more get less money spent on them.
4. Journeys longer than 2 hours or 150 miles have compulsory restaurant/catering supplied and not bloody trolleys.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Double the cost of train tickets in London and the South East and use the increased revenue to cut rail fares in Northern England.

Scrap the Network Railcard and replace it with one giving a third off tickets anywhere outside of London and the South East.

 

[yorksrob]

Any reasonable route should be permitted for all non-route specific tickets.

 

[Rail Blues]

Scrotes who only know one adjective/adverb and it starts with F should be permanently banned from all public transport.

Yes, more imaginative swearing please.

 

[Bishopstone]

If every penny of public spending was devoted to the railway, parts of it would still be run quite badly (whether private or public sector); passengers would still whine about trifling matters, and staff would still complain of ‘low morale’.

 

[Rail Blues]

Any thread on these boards that starts 'My idea for' will contain an idea of staggering impracticality and will reflect the tendency amongst a significant subset of posters to see the purpose of the railway network as a giant train set on which to run their favourites pieces of rolling stock, rather than a system of mass transportation which people rely on, whose hearts might not leap for joy should a class 37 sandwiched in the middle of a 442 turns up on their commuter route.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Scrap all automated ticket gates and replace them with human beings who have the intelligence to check whether a ticket is valid.

 

[GW43125]

Thameslink was a daft idea. You have five networks feeding a five mile stretch of twin track with 2 1/2 minute headways. One imported delay of two minutes and it’s game over.

On paper, it’s actually quite a good idea. But it doesn’t work that well in practice.

 

[B&I]

The RMT should pay £10 compensation to every Northern Rail season ticket holder every time they call a strike day.

Northern Rail / the DfT should pay £10 compensation to every single Northern passenger, every day

 

[transplanted]

a lot of people on here have completely different views to what the general public want from the railway because people on here tend to see a lot more long-distance services than the commuter that uses the train for journeys less than an hour.

 

[B&I]

Staffing all stations in urban areas, and installing ticket barriers controlled by said staff (either by positioning them alongside ticket offices, or using high quality cctv) would pay for itself by preventing fare evasion and encouraging more people to travel by train thanks to the safer environment it would create

 

[trainophile]

If you manage to find an Advance ticket that is cheaper for a longer journey than the one you want to make, and stops at your required destination en route, it should be permitted to use it. It's an anomalous rule that stopping short is so heavily frowned upon, when the alternative makes absolutely no sense to most people.

 

[backontrack]

Railways should be a major mode of transport in this country, with investment accordingly, rather than something to do on a spare Sunday when you're not using the Beemer. (This would appear to be a controversial opinion among many on this forum.)

+1

Some veteran members think they can just belittle people and employ straw man arguments too.

 

[xotGD]

People who are not railway enthusiasts should not be surprised when railway enthusiasts post on a railway discussion forum.

 

[Rail Blues]

a lot of people on here have completely different views to what the general public want from the railway because people on here tend to see a lot more long-distance services than the commuter that uses the train for journeys less than an hour.

Good point, easy to get rheumy eyed over antique and clapped out commuter rolling stock if you don't have to use it day in day out or suggest impractical 'solutions' that slow down a service or cut capacity when you're not spending two hours a day on a packed out 15x with your face jammed into someone else's armpit

 

[backontrack]

People are too busy to acquit Beeching for his hand in the Reshaping Report when he genuinely supported the mass closures (and wanted even more of them to close). He wasn't sure of how much he could realistically get closed, but - had he had his way - we would have seen even more lines shut.

 

[Rail Blues]

People who are not railway enthusiasts should not be surprised when railway enthusiasts post on a railway discussion forum.

People should realise that enthusiasm for modern railways and how they might be in the future, doesn't make you any less of an enthusiast than the 'never scrap anything ever' brigade pining for yesteryear 's rolling stock.