I looked at the Avanti revised timetable, and it struck me, how low the service had dropped now, with just 4 trains an hour. From the 9 trains an hour off peak, and 11 an hour peak, which is as bad or worse then BR ran, before virgin came along and revitalised the WCML, Avanti should hang their head in shame, it a sad enticement to drop service levels so low. Virgin weren’t perfect, and had flaws, but personally I like them, as they had a forward thinking attitude, and revitalised a some what overlooked main artery for the UK, How i bet, the DFT, regret getting rid of virgin Trains on the WCML.
It makes me so bloody angry. The WCML had huge amounts spent on it, taxpayer money. For years it worked well. Yes there were some things that were ridiculous under Virgin. The peak pricing and the Euston stampede being the main 2 for me, but generally, it worked. Every day thousands of people travelling at speed for work, to see family and friends, for holidays, not using cars. Massive increase in passenger numbers.
The whole thing has fallen apart because an idiot DfT appointed the wrong party, even though we all know exactly how bad Worst tend to be. Horrible little company. The DfT has then compounded the problem by focussing on completely the wrong oversight. Treasury has then compounded the issue by not understanding how important the line is to economic activity and prioritising getting involved in what it does not know about.
Now that heavily invested in infrastructure is running a pathetic turn up and hope shambles that, let’s be clear about this, wouldn’t have been allowed to happen in 99% of other countries. Give me one other example of a prime national infrastructure being allowed to slip so far so fast, anywhere in the world.
Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow are 4 of our biggest cities. Yet they are effectively without a functioning railway. The Government couldn’t give a toss, because it itself is just a bunch of absolute amateurs with zero skill and a lot of vacuous hot air. It does not even cross their tiny little minds that they should shut up and do some actual work for the people that elected them. They are too busy having some sort of freak show beauty parade in what is meant to be a politics free August.
Let’s face it, this is not the only area of total breakdown in public services. The country has got the country it asked for by prioritising entirely the wrong things over the last 5 years. Whilst being completely distracted by splitting the country down the middle, loads of really important stuff has fallen down the cracks.
The worst generation of leadership this country has ever been subject to. They say an era gets the leadership it deserves….
