Great Western Coffee Shop

An long opinion piece from Lucy Mangan in i-News (https://inews.co.uk/opinion/we-cant-get-from-a-to-b-in-britain-and-it-might-just-be-the-governments-downfall-2983919) starts


Lucy argues that everyone with the possible exception of her uncle is travelling for a purpose and the cost of the disruption on people's lives is phenomenal.  Will this be an election issue that will lead to or help the downfall of the government?

A fairly typical morning - amongst the 33 GWR reports ...

I must admit I missed the article, I assumed it was a usual Lucy Mangan whingeathon.

Behind a paywall so couldn't read it properly.

We're on the eighth consecutive day of relative operational chaos across various parts of the GWR network with a week of disruption thanks to the latest round of ASLEF strikes and overtime bans to come, you might think that it would have become a political issue by now but given that only 2% of trips in the UK are made by rail (compared to almost 60% by road) it simply isn't high enough on the agenda or influential enough to move the needle either way.

I suspect if you asked most people for the 5 issues that would influence their vote whenever Rishi decides to press go, rail travel would feature in vanishingly few...................but potholes on the other hand!.........  ;)

People are largely mitigating/avoiding the disruption by adapting their plans/behaviour.

Obviously higher up the ratings in a niche group such as this Forum.

Someone has already archived it on a free-to-read site (always worth checking!)

https://archive.ph/x8m46

Out of interest, where do these figures come from? What is a 'trip'? Does 'by road' include trips made by bus, bicycle or walking?

From the Government. See Figure 4 specifically.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rail-factsheet-2023/rail-factsheet-2023#rail-statistics-overview

Rather than the 2% figure which will be difficult to shift much as it's generally not possible to do the school run or pop to the shops on the train, the 8% of total mileage by rail is the interesting one to me (I think it's 8.65% to be exact).

As a percentage it is only just over 1% below the pre-covid peak of 9.92%.  Higher than as recent as 2010.  Way higher than the mid-90s when it was just over 5%, but looking further back to pre-Beeching it was up at 17% back in the 1950s.

Interesting that it is so high against a backdrop of covid recovery and a lack of commuters and business travelers, no doubt bouyed by new infrastructure such as the Elizabeth Line.  Encouraging stuff!

Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/482670/tsgb0101.xls

Presumably - 60% was thought to be  by private car. Buses, cycles (mostly) and quite a substantial proportion of walking is on roads.

However - using II's table - private car accounts for 86% of all passenger miles, rail, 8.64%, all "road", 90.8% - air just 0.54%.

I am not sure though that it is enough to be a major political factor.  Any pro-rail feeling that the current government has not funded rail adequately is probably outweighed by widely-held (but mistaken?) belief that too much money was being/had been spent on HS2 and Crossrail. I would not be surprised if someone did some polling on this issue before HS2 was severely pruned.

What would be is if one of the major parties were to include road pricing in their manifesto....unfortunately, an instand vote loser, I feel.

Interesting stats!

If you wanted to make an argument that rail travel doesn't matter very much, you would of course choose the 'trips' figure in isolation, because trains tend to used for longer journeys. If you wanted to show trains in the best light, you'd choose the distance stats.

Which, presumably, is why they give three measures (trips, distance and time) because none of the stats are very meaningful on their own.

Or even increase the duty on road fuel which achieves almost the same thing but avoids the considerable logistical challenges of tracking every vehicle.

...but is only feasible for a few more years until electric cars become the majority.

Road pricing has to come in due course - either that or shift the entirety of the roads bill onto general taxation (no thanks!).

Tax & duty on fuel at the pump already represents over 50% of the cost of a litre of fuel.

By how much more do you think it should be raised, and what implications does this have for people in areas which aren't sufficiently well served by suitable public transport and/or are on lower incomes?

I would like to see fuel duty increased so as to raise the retail price by 10% initially, and then subsequent increases by about 5% a year.

Fuel is too cheap, and is about the same price now as it was 10 years ago. I wish that bus and train fares had been had been kept down to a similar extent.

My bus journey costs about 50% less than it did 10 years ago thanks to the £2 cap.

Before they do that, my vote would go to the party proposing to tax jet fuel....

Do I recall that there is some sort of international agreement not to tax jet fuel? Or is it just that they would fill up where it was cheapest?

AFAIK there is some such agreement, time in my view to abolish it.
Aircraft generally fill up before each flight, carrying enough for a return trip is normally uneconomic due to the weight. Carrying extra fuel reduces the number of passengers and/or the weight of cargo that can be carried and also increases the fuel consumption.