More Workers, Less Bureaucracy (Railway crisis)

Member Name: jpegington

Product:	Railway crisis
Date:	01/12/06 (75 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Repairs done at Night means less disruption

Disadvantages: More workers on the repairs

British Railways:

Now then, where do you begin when you consider the railways.

Firstly I would say, that since I started commuting into London this year, I have been surprised at how good the service actually seems to be for me. Having said that, I get on a single train and do not have to use the underground, which makes a difference.

So what can be done to improve Britain's railways?

Firstly I would say that we should start to consider how we can introduce double level trains like they have on the continent. Now I know we have a slight problem with this as our bridges are in parts to low, however the first stage of planning has to be to make certain all future railway bridges are built so they can take these trains in future while at the same time, looking at some key lines as to where these trains can be started. This would reduce the overcrowding etc that does occur.

Secondly I would introduce many more guards and conductors onto our trains. From what I gather, there must be a high amount of people who never pay to use our train service, which all impacts on the future level of investment, etc. Bring more conductors on the train, you will notice an immediate amount of fines for people who have not bought a ticket and more revenue as people will have to buy a ticket or get fined. This money should then be used to reinvest into the railways.

I do not think that they current problem is one of lack of investment however. I think there is a fairly large amount of money being invested into the railways, but I suspect, like most of what this government does, this is being wasted on bureaucracy and other pointless measures, rather than where it is needed, infrastructure and staff.

The key area for me when I consider whether to take a train is also the amount of time it takes. When you consider the continent and the fact that they have fast trains that seem to get from A - B at 180 mph (or some high number like that) and then you consider a number of our UK trains who can only go at 60 mph and you can see there is a lot of improvement that can be done.

Why do we not use some of our 80,000 prisoners to repair the railways at night, doing a certain small stretch of the line each night so that there is minimal interruption to upgrade and improve our train services.

I suspect some of these prisoners (and I mean those who are not a danger for escape or to society) might actually want to work on the railways to A learn some new skills and B to reduce their sentence. Just an idea, although I suspect an unpopular one, but why not use criminals to better the society and towns that they have helped to ruin by their life of crime.

Taking aside the issue of criminals, I think that we can learn again from the continent in regards to improvements and repairs on our railways (and roads for that matter). Rather than sealing off a large segment of a line and then have 5 people work on it, why do we not do a simular style like the continent and get 100 people working on a small stretch and finish that part off in one night so that there is less disruption.

I must admit that the only trains I usually use are the commute to London and that has pleasantly surprised me, but I am sure that parts of the service are terrible, so please start to consider other options.

Summary: Use Double Level Trains and repair the tracks more