Why Commuters are Revolting!

Written by Vincent Cable MP and published in Informer on Mon 23rd Jul 2001

My postbag is full of letters describing the horrors of daily commuting from the eight rail stations in the Twickenham constituency or on the tube. Since I travel to Parliament by train and return, usually late at night, I experience at first hand the daily diet of late, overcrowded, dirty trains and frequent cancellations.

Our local train operator, Stagecoach – which owns South West Trains – has been awarded a new 20 year monopoly franchise by the rail regulator despite its poor record on punctuality and overcrowding (the second worst of ten operators in the South East) and despite some plausible alternatives like Dutch Railways. One consequence of privatisation is that these operators are no longer accountable to the public except through regulators who are themselves remote quangos far removed from the customers or their elected MPs.

The one lever we have is to shame and embarrass them and to demand that they are held to the franchise agreement they have signed. Locally this involves a firm promise to acquire, quickly, new rolling stock to reduce overcrowding and to increase train frequency on the Twickenham -Kingston loop and the spur to Hampton. I meet the Managing Director next week to press him on dates and service delivery.

One of the disasters of privatisation is the split responsibility between Railtrack and the train operators. There is hopeless confusion over responsibility for safety and punctuality. The lessons have not been learnt. The government is forcing a similar structure onto the Underground over the head of the Mayor and Mr. Kiley (now sacked).

Unless the government and the industry quickly deal with the crisis in public transport, its under funding and inefficiency, there will be a commuter revolt. Few of my fellow commuters understand why Britain lags so far behind the rest of Europe in providing safe and fast transport.