Great Western Coffee Shop

Minister to cross Britain by rail 
 
Frustrated commuters will get direct access to Transport Minister Lord Adonis when he embarks upon a six-day rail voyage across Britain. The minister will board the Paddington to Truro sleeper on Easter Monday - armed with his laptop and a ^375 standard class Rail Rover ticket.

On Saturday he will reach York after a 2,200-mile trip taking him as far north as Inverness. Lord Adonis says he wants "first-hand experience" of the rail service.
 
more ...

BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7996255.stm)

the route ...

THE ADONIS EXPRESS
Monday night: London to Truro
Tuesday: Truro to Newquay via Par. On to Exeter, Yeovil, Wareham, Bournemouth and Brighton
Wednesday: Brighton, Ashford International, Margate, Gillingham, Gravesend, Tilbury, Upminster, Romford, Ipswich and Norwich
Thursday: Norwich to Peterborough, Birmingham, Chester, Crewe, Manchester, Preston and Carlisle
Friday: Carlisle to Newcastle via Middlesbrough and Darlington. Then on to Inverness via Edinburgh and Falkirk
Saturday: Inverness to Edinburgh via Aberdeen before ending the tour with a visit to the National Railway Museum in York

Who is paying. Tax payer

Well, of course the taxpayer is picking up the (very moderate) bill.

Would you want a Minister who is ignorant of the far reaches of the railway system like many I could name?

If you had to take a journey in order to do your job properly, would you expect to have to pay for it yourself?

Come on, now

What a great idea. I'm starting to be VERY impressed with this guy.

Very moderate train fare bill, although I just can't believe he is doing this on his own - at the very least there are almost bound to be civil service PR minders along, they can't allow him to accidentally announce 1300 carriages when he meant 1000 for instance...

Maybe not quite so moderate 'ministerial standard' overnight hotel accomodation for him and the team, when he isn't within overnight reach of London though?

Nonetheless - a well intended and hopefully useful exercise, whatever it costs is trivial in comparison to the overall DfT budget.

As an aside - has anyone else noticed that the BBC seem to find it impossible to use the word 'passenger' nowadays? Call me a traditionalist, but 'commuter' is a subset of passenger isn't it?


Paul

Article says


so perhaps "commuter" v "passenger" came from the DfT. Could it be that he's looking to learn about the lot of the regular traveller rather than travellers in general, and the BBC simply mirrored this.

I'm delighted that he's travelling around to see some services - great in principle; I suppose we could pick around the edges and question some elements of his route, such as a lot of distance in Scotland when (as I understand it) it's the Scottish Parliament not the DfT that hold prime responsibility there.

Same here, but usually when someone decent is in some form of power then they get rid of them!

I shared small bit of tube carriage with LU's Chief Operating Officer a couple of weeks ago.  It's nice to see these people do actually get out and use the services for themselves.

My mistake Grahame, I was generalising really, it isn't just this story.  Over a period of years, I have found normal BBC usage has been 'commuter' when they should be using passenger.  This sort of thing: "Delays at Rugby on Saturday caused misery [1] for Glasgow to London commuters"...   :(

[1] another overused word nowadays...

Paul

'Misery', 'Chaos' and 'Commuter' - if anyone can find a negative rail story that doesn't use at least two out of those three words then they're doing well. Triple word scores are all too common too!

In one of Gerry Fiennes' books he mentions that when he was the General Manager of Eastern Region (i.e. a long time ago - 1950s, 60s) the London evening press used the stock headline "Chaos at Liverpool Street" whenever there was a slow news day on!

Adonis does seem to be doing an excellent job so far: he seems to be a rail minister with a real interest, enthusiasm and flair for his job, not to mention knowledge which has been sadly lacking in previous incumbents. I read yesterday that in his youth he was involved in the campaign to keep the Cotswold line open (by conducting passenger counts on BR's trains to contradict their falsely low figures) which doesn't surprise me.

Interesting.... anything coming up from PNZ-EXD today has been rammed packed!

Yes, it's interesting that Lord Adonis' extended excursion is taking place in the school holidays: that may perhaps skew the impression he gains of the train service as experienced by 'regular commuters', as distinct from 'passengers' generally?

Indeed, on my local train from Nailsea into Bristol this morning, and on the return journey this evening, there were a lot of teenagers who were obviously not frequent travellers on that particular part of the line.

(I've no problem with that, by the way: they were all well behaved! ;) )

I doubt that it was deliberately scheduled around holiday periods - there must have been few options available when the Minister wasn't required for a whole week in some capacity or other.

My only criticism is that the schedule has been circulated (and presumably the TOC's have had access to what trains he is scheduled to catch?). If that's the case then strings might be pulled to make sure those trains are given special treatment by management - no short forms, a well stocked buffet, a good clean, a fitter on-board just in case of problems - the standard stuff whenever a high profile passenger travels.

But if they didn't know, I'm sure there are some TOCs out there that would throw their toys out of the pram if he went unannounced - not that they would admit it in public - even if he does have a valid All-Line Rover.

I'm sure you're right about the scheduling - the only other times he would realistically get the chance to be out and about for a week would be around Christmas and over the summer - and this week is a lot more normal for rail travel than those times. A lot of people only take a long weekend off for Easter (or not in my case :'( :'(), so he will meet lots of regular commuters and business passengers, as well as occasional travellers, who may only use rail for a family day out in the holidays.

he joined the 1000 Pnz-Pad at Par which was full and standing and he had to stand apparently! he was on the late running 1018 nqy par for which they held the London service for 8 mins, that wouldn't have happened normally!  ;)

Note that the BBC story says that he is traveling STANDARD class.  A typo? or this man is a hero. 

One late running and then he has to stand, excellent.

He is indeed travelling standard class. I think this week's excursion reflects very well on Adonis - can anyone else recall a rail minister doing anything similar in living memory?

He's also writing a series of articles as he goes which are on the Times website: latest instalment at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/news/article6098034.ece (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/news/article6098034.ece).

Apparently the HST arrived 4 minutes late and the unit only 2 minutes late?

Lets be honest though..... will anything change??  EVen though hes had to change.... is there really that much money for any more extra carriages?!

Well what you rather have? Someone who sits in an office at Westminster and relies on what he's told by the civil servants? People who clearly never get out outside London, judging by some of the brilliant ideas they have come up with for the railways in recent years.

Well, the clear thing is - it's a "Cameron-esque" publicity stunt!

But I think it is a good idea, even if it just removes some barriers, and gets peoples' attention.

And you never know - it may bring benefits.

I don't think David Cameron was the first politician to use publicity stunts...

At last we agree on something, pass the smelling salts !!!!

Heard him on the today programme this am after he got back. Said he enjoyed the trip good percentage of trains on time. They interviewed passengers on a train on which he travelled from Birmingham New Street to Chester Arriva train Wales. most people liked the unit (170?)

Thought weeks freedom ticket good value at ^234?.

In answer to Lib Dems spokesman he did repeat 1300 new carriges! So he got away from his minders.

From The Times (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6355277.ece):


 ::)