Flying by rail

As I'm now clearly old enough to be having a midlife crisis (my dream is to get a tattoo, a motorbike or even better a tattooed motorbike), I'm also old enough to grumble about the good old days. So I won't apologise for an aggrieved feeling that things (apart from the catering) really were better under British Rail. Sure the trains could break down or not show up, but actually that still happens. What we've lost is simplicity in the ticketing system (as I remember it, you had your ticket checked on the way in to a station and on the way out again - if your left at your destination there weren't any questions about how you got there), not to mention 3 months rather than one to use the return portion.

And what have we got in return? For some time now, it's been clear that privitisation has been about rising prices and profits for shareholders, rather than value for passengers. And the operating companies haven't been above introducing as much complexity as possible into the ticketing system to turn a profit. The only thing they haven't taken from the airline industry is the idea of getting from one place to another with the slimmest margins possible.

Surely the whole point of a public transport system is to provide an alternative to private transportation. When it takes half an hour of planning to work out the cheapest way to get from one place to another and when even the station staff have to look up routing information before they can let you through a ticket barrier, jumping in a car begins to look much more attractive.

And that's before we even get onto brining your bike with you.