That is exactly what I am saying. It's not that modern technology is incapable of producing high ride quality, it's that the DfT gave no consideration to it.
I just believe that there are more important things that need to be sorted out with the IET fleet first.
I understood you to mean that a better ride would mean costs would increase as you wrote:
it's just that a higher standard would drive up fares
That is what I disagree with - BR showed that a good ride could be achieved without undue and excessive expenditure.
Certainly the DfT was a badly informed purchaser for the IEP contracts getting involved in an area where it had no skills, knowledge or experience - but as far as it was concerned it didn't matter how the trains turned out, they neither operated them, nor maintained them nor had to answer to the passengers.
I agree that making changes to improve the ride should take a back seat at the moment. In the first instance the bizarre contractual arrangments have to be simplified so that the operators can have changes made to the trains and their usage without requiring the DfT's prior approval and all the paperwork that is necessary before anything can be done[1] and secondly to get the reliability sorted out. The data published in
Modern Railways show that the Moving Annual Average (MAA) for the Miles per Technical Incident (MTIN) for the Class 800 on the Western was 3892 at the end of Financial Year 2017-18 and two years later this had only increased to 12673 at the end of Financial Year 2019-20. By any standards these are pretty miserable figures.
[1] Hitachi/Agility Trains' key contracts are with the DfT and the trains are essentially issued to the operators.
