Why can’t I book a train ticket to Liverpool?
Assuming nothing goes wrong, on April 12th, British people will be able to go and stay away from home for the first time in months.
The Ableman family will be going and staying in Liverpool so we can go and visit the in-laws in their garden.
But, my God, the railway really doesn’t want our custom.
This is what happens when we try to book the train:
I don’t mean to sound petulant, but it’s two weeks away!
The railway is financially on its knees. Each passenger journey is being subsidised by the Treasury to the tune of something like £100 per person.
Rail travel is currently 80% down on the pre-Covid norm; car travel just 30% down. Not for a single day in the last year has rail demand exceeded 50% of the previous norm: even between lockdown 1 and lockdown 2 when travel was virtually unrestricted.
So this is a crisis, right?
As in, if we don’t get this moment right, the railway’s finances could be undermined forever, right?
So how on earth can it be the case that we’ve got to the position where the economy is scheduled to open up in a fortnight, and Britain’s most important rail line has opted out?
It’s currently impossible to book rail travel from London to Liverpool, the Lake District, Manchester or anywhere else served by Avanti West Coast.
For comparison, here’s what happens if I attempt to book a Eurostar, a flight or a coach:
They work fine despite two of them being barely legal!
And, of course, you don’t need to book a car journey at all.
The entire British public transport industry should be laser-focused on getting customers back.
I’m not in the room, so I’ve no idea how it is that the West Coast Mainline (of all routes) has opted out of this existential necessity.
I suspect that something somewhere has fallen into a hole between the operator, Network Rail and the DfT. Probably something to do with money. I’m also aware that it’s probably no one individual’s fault, that lots of people will be working very late nights trying to fix it and that no-one will have wanted to end up in this situation.
But something about the way the industry works has gone very badly wrong to allow this to occur.
I’m a persistent blighter (and pretty loyal to public transport), and I’ve accepted having to check for tickets day after bloody day (I’ve been doing it for weeks now…) but right now millions of people all round the country are forming the habits that are going sustain post-pandemic.
And if the railway tells them to F off, they probably will. For good.
