Originally from The Times -
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article4944652.ece-- Quote --
Among the passengers crushed into the corridors of commuter trains,
the Department for Transport's latest solution for rail overcrowding
is unlikely to provoke spontaneous applause.
Officials have found a way of reducing the number of trains deemed to
be overcrowded without requiring any passengers to get off and without
adding a single seat.
They have achieved this by changing the definition of the "acceptable
loading of passengers on trains".
Under the old standard, used in the West Midlands and some other parts
of the country, it was considered acceptable to have ten people
standing for every hundred seats. The new national standard, which
will apply to all routes, has tripled the acceptable number of
standing passengers to 30 per 100 seats.
The department said that its loading standard assumed that each
standing passenger would have 0.45 sq m of floor space: any less and
the train would be officially overcrowded.
Centro, the public transport authority in the West Midlands, has
complained to the National Audit Office (NAO) that the new definition
would result in even worse conditions on trains in the region and
encourage people to travel by car.
Despite being easier to meet, the revised standard is being breached
on hundreds of trains each day. According to the
DfT» , the most
overcrowded service is First Capital Connect's 7.15am service from
Cambridge to King's Cross, which has 76 people standing for every 100
seats.
In a report published today, the NAO said that overcrowding would
continue to get worse until the Government fulfilled its pledge, made
18 months ago, to introduce 1,300 extra carriages. To date, only 423
of the carriages have been ordered from manufacturers and none has
been delivered.
The department said that it was unable to give details of when the
carriages would arrive except to say that they should all be in place
by 2014. It was also unable to say to which lines the carriages would
be allocated.
Demand for rail travel has been outstripping the supply of extra
capacity for the past decade. Passenger numbers have grown by 50 per
cent and the amount of freight carried by trains has grown by 60 per
cent. But the number of trains has risen by only about 20 per cent.
The Government announced last year that it would in- crease capacity
by 22.5 per cent in the seven years to 2014. Network Rail has said
that this would be inadequate if passenger numbers continued to grow
at the present rate of 7 per cent a year.
The NAO, which investigated the value for money of eight train
franchises signed by the Government since 2005, said that they all
faced "severe capacity pressures on a number of routes, with
increasing levels of crowding on peak commuter services, notably to
London". It said that the train companies, encouraged by the
Department for Transport, were increasingly opting for "airline-style
pricing techniques" to deter passengers from travelling on the most
crowded trains.
Virgin charges ^215 for an open single in standard class from London
to Warrington, but as little as ^13 for passengers able to book
several weeks in advance.
The NAO said that the Government's approach of encouraging train
companies to maximise income from passengers meant that fares would
continue to rise above inflation. It concluded: "Most passengers can
expect to pay higher regulated and unregulated fares in the future."
Edward Leigh, chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, said:
"The news that fares are likely to rise above inflation in these
difficult times will infuriate many passengers who have no alternative
but to travel day after day on packed trains."
Theresa Villiers, the Shadow Transport Secretary, said: "Excessive
government micromanagement of our railways is delaying the delivery of
vitally needed capacity enhancements, which means passengers suffer."
Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat transport spokesman, said: "People
are being forced off the trains and into their cars by unacceptable
ticket prices."
-- End quote --
Nice to see that the Transport Authority in the area I'm now living in
is taking things seriously and putting a bit of pressure on them.
Couldn't imagine it happenning in Bristol (and there's little talk of
crackpot bus schemes here also!)
Click on the map to explore geographics
