Our transport system is not even ‘Third World’

Christopher Broxholme

What a tale. Funny, but just the other week I vaguely recall you dismissed most of the country as 'flyover'.Now it is flyover -with delays and cancellations.
How inconvenient for you. Still you found something to write about with all that hanging around. Perhaps you could buy your own jet and fly away on it.

Another BA Gold cardholder

So you arrived 25mins before departure flight and expected to get onboard?

I'm sure it makes an interesting addition to your story but it isn't really a sign of BA's or T5's incompetence, just a sign you aren't punctual.

David Short

Usually it's only those dimwit chavs flying Easyjet that you see on 'Airline' who expect to board a plane having turned up less than half an hour before.

Perhaps dimwit chavs also fly BA!

Ray

Sadly, under New Labour, our railways appear to be reverting to the old British Rail policy of 'managing demand' - in other words, raising fares in order price all those extra people off the train. It's somehow easier than stumping up the cash to build new high-speed lines, to say nothing of the political will required to actually get them built any time soon.

Iain

"Wee Willie Walsh ... seems to have populated Terminal 5 with a tribe of spectacularly sour and ignorant teenage trolls."

Our education system should share the blame for this. The answer, of course, is to employ older people.

David Short

"Wee Willie Walsh ... seems to have populated Terminal 5 with a tribe of spectacularly sour and ignorant teenage trolls."

They've probably been watching dreary daytime and late night political shows and have become permanently depressed and lacking in social skills.

Garth

Ah yes, BA flights to and from Edinburgh...you are correct, Mr.Neil, they are *always* delayed. Perhaps the Customer-First success story that is British Airways should re-publish their timetable to show that the "5.30 flight" is now to be known as the "6.30 flight". This will then afford them the opportunity to delay it until 7.30...

Chingford Man

It took me a minute to find this on BA's site:

"Please note - if you are travelling from London Heathrow Terminal 5 you must pass through check-in and security at least 35 minutes before your flight departs."

I agree with the premise of this article but Mr Neil is the agent of his own misfortune here.

The last time I flew to Scotland on BA from Heathrow was the day that the Queen opened T5. Sadly BA could not get its Terminal 1 domestic flights to run remotely to time on that day. Thanks to Her Maj's visit, all the crews were "delayed" getting around the airport.

Armando Gascon

Do people actually pay money to read this?

B.Crompton

A freind travelling from Belarus to Italy, travelling by train from Minsk to Warsaw and thence by train was astonished when I said to allow an extra 4 hours to transfer from Warsaw railway station to warsaw airport in case of delays. She told me we don't have delays; all our trains are on time.
If a third rate country with a tin pot dictator can run its trains on time, it says something about the UK that punctuality on public transport is non exixitent.
As the government is lurching ever onwards to a totalitarian stae, at least get the trains to run on time!

Hugh Morison

If Andrew Neil had any experience of rail travel he would know that nobody makes a long distance journey on a sunday if their time of arrival is important. This has been so for at least the last twenty years.

Siamdave

I don't know what you people are complaining about, you have imposed unbridled capitalism on the masses, and now you are dealing with the completely inevitable and predictable fallout - max prices, minimal services, all in the name of maxing investor profits, and to hell with everyone else. You can have a society that works for people, or a society that works for investors - you cannot have both.

robert

Actually, the spiteful comments here help to explain the problem more then the article does. The usual British puritan attitude that 'if you expect to pay for a service, it's your own fault (or 'capitalism's') if it doesn't work'. The usual 'mustn't grumble'. The usual 'it's no better anywhere else'. As a matter of fact, it IS a lot better just about EVERYWHERE else (& cheaper, too). Just confirms yet another cliche - that of the 'little Englander/Scotcher', who's never dreamt that there exists an alternative, superior lifestyle in just about every other country...

Chris Holmes

For someone who likes to be thought of as Mr Urbane, Andrew Neil seems more like Mr Sub-urban. He seems to have little awareness of how the world actually is.

I travelled first class from London to Liverpool last week on Virgin. £40 one way and £45 the other way. A decent breakfast and endless tea as we sped through Milton Keynes, and a refreshing afternoon nosh and some reasonable wine returning on the afternoon train the next day. All served by Liverpool’s finest young lasses.

Mr Neil used to employ a private secretary – He is a busy man. I’m sure the Conference date must have been in the diary some time and it wouldn’t have taken much wit or organisation to book the train tickets a week in advance to get some bargain first class fares.

As the WineSpectator.com reported last year “Champagne protects brain cells from injury” – I fear your correspondent may have been on some cheap cider instead.

He mentions he though he would “burnish his green credentials”….the only greenness on display was from Mr Neil paying so much for a ticket - ”we saw you coming” – though I'm sure it ended up on an expenses somewhere.

David Short

robert, you are being simplistic. Trains work much better in other countries. I once travelled by train from Bucharest to Cannes, and it was a pleasure and hugely interesting. But they are either national (I don't mean nationalised) services and/or heavily subsidised to be so.

We no longer have a national service, but 'competing' train companies, nor a subsidised service. We have the worst of both worlds, and it shows.

Go to a ticket counter and buy a return for Brighton, for instance, at London Bridge. Get on the first train to Brighton, and you might have to pay again. Why? You may have bought a First Capital Connect ticket but be on a Southern Railways train! Absurd.

When people say the author should know it's impossible to travel reliably by train on a Sunday, and has been for many years, they are stating a simple fact of general knowledge, not condoning the system.

The people who do condone the current system by implication, are those who supported the Thatcher revolution and its dogmatic, ruthless pursuit of privatisation.

And that includes Andrew Neil.

Anthony Owen

I live in Morocco and the trains and flights are much better than in the UK, MUCH cheaper and 99% punctual (except during Ramadan, when it all goes to pot) - tho' to be fair the network is much smaller.
But we are getting our first TGV lines coming into service in a couple of years - I'm not sure if the UK is even planning any!

John Fitzgerald

The tale you tell is all too familiar. I believe part of the problem is that ministers rarely experience the chaos at airports or railway stations first hand. Special arrangements are made for senior government figures so that they can avoid the crush and delays. T5 wouldn't be such a disaster if Gorgon (sic) Brown had to use it like the rest of us.

Phil Landry

Personally I thought this was an interesting article. Of course, living in Texas where we don't have much rail service, but we do have airlines and they have a habit of being on time unless the weather presents a problem. Still, it was good reading.. I really like the Spectator..

john

Andrew, we all know it is that bad. It is surely not worth the time of a calibre journalist to fill up space with not very illuminating anecdotes. It would however be worth your time to investigate in some depth the unwillingness to fix. But I am afraid your piece has too much of the esprit du departure lounge.

Thomas Rai

A tragic tale - the first class travel, the Gold Cards, the drivers waiting at airports...

Roger Inkpen

The most depressing conclusion I can draw from this familiar tale is that absolutely nothing will done about fixing our awful transport systems. As Andrew says, it is ten years now since [the useless] Prescott’s transport plan. And what have we? Overcrowded roads, trains and airports. Not only is travel by public or private means an exorbitant cost, but little has been done to make it easier to transfer from one to another, to maximise efficiency of the transport mode.

Surely one of the biggest factors in stimulating and increasing economic growth is the provision of adequate transport systems. Anyone visiting Germany, the Netherlands or many other Northern European countries would see how, by keeping people moving, they move their economies. It is not just public transport which is years ahead, but they actually have sufficient roadspace for their populations, unlike here.

And yet, where are the policies for transport in Britain? It is barely mentioned on political programmes, which concentrate on schools, hospitals, crime, even immigration. However, if you listen to Radios 2 or 5, or any local radio station, at least twice an hour you’ll hear reports on how awful the traffic is. After the weather, I would guess it is the favourite topic of conversation.

So why has transport become the last great taboo in politics?