Archie Wilson - Writer

Sorting Thameslink Needs to be a Key Campaign Point in St. Albans and the Rest of the Line

 

St. Albans’s heartbeat is the rush-hour commute to London. Every morning nearly twenty percent of the population pours out of the city and into London. The Thameslink train service is a vital part of this commute, ferrying workers into central London in less than 20 minutes, if they are on time. How MPs choose to deal with Thameslink and what promises they make concerning it can be a huge vote winner in St. Albans and other commuter towns.

 

The politics of who owns the tracks, who owns the trains and who runs the trains is vastly complicated and confusing: The tracks and stations are owned by Network Rail who are currently nationalised after going bust as a not-for-profit; the rolling stock (trains and carriages) is owned by a few large leasing companies who are themselves owned mostly by banks; the train operating companies (TOC) are granted rights to run the trains by winning bids for leases from the Government. This all ends up with a confusing cash flow, overbearing bureaucracy and negated responsibility.

 

It accounts for the tediously slow recoveries when things go wrong, like the recent Farringdon flooding [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-30978552] and the outrageously expensive fares. At £26.50 for a single journey into London with a travel card, St. Albans has one of the most expensive commutes in Europe [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16390608].

 

Since September last year the Thameslink service has been owned by Govia Thameslink Railway, the largest TOC in the country. They have not had a good start with the track flooding, delays and major disruption over Christmas. It really sums up the situation that the only place to have seen improved customer satisfaction was shops, eating and drinking facilities [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11371801/Rail-misery-hits-five-year-high-as-anger-grows-over-train-delays-and-lack-of-free-seats.html].

 

The issue really lies in Network Rail’s incompetence and the systems discouragement of competition. TOCs are not motivated to cut costs and see a healthy return on profit regardless of their success. The state then subsidises ticket prices that are still very expensive.

 

Essentially, the current system takes the worst features of a publicly owned organisation, poor management and excessive costs, and the worst features of privately owned organisation, greedily profit driven and neglect for the consumer.

 

To fix the train service the most obvious things to do would be to completely nationalise the railways, having the government set prices and ensure a quality of travel; or, to completely sell off what public assets there are and open the railways to the free market and competition, thus forcing only the best run organisations to survive.

 

For St. Albans a good transport policy could be a vote winner as the city becomes more and more dependent on its London links.

 

Despite St. Albans’s historical heritage its proximity to London causes the typical commuter town symptoms of a neglected infrastructure and the recession has made it only more obvious.

 

Shopping, leisure facilities and nightlife, beyond the mass of average pubs and a couple of terrible nightclubs, are sparse at best. The most obvious place to find these is London, but even at off-peak or weekend prices this is still an expensive cost to account for. This leads to a serious deprivation in the youth and leisure culture of St. Albans as teenagers lack the infrastructure for themselves and dreams centre on getting out of the town for good.

 

In running for election in St. Albans, candidate’s promises for the train line should be a key component of their campaign. They must represent St. Albans strongly to get the train line well run and, while commuters are unlikely to ever stop, the MP should attempt to get the price of fares to an affordable level to open up and revitalise the stagnant town.

 

For Labour repairing the train system would be through renationalising it. Shadow Transport Minister, Michael Dugher, is contradictory about to what extent and how soon this would happen, but it is clear he wants something drastic [http://www.stalbansreview.co.uk/news/national/11802323.Rail_privatisation__a_disaster_/]. Despite this, St. Albans Labour candidate, Kerry Pollard, has spoken little about what he will do and there is no mention of rail policies on the constituency party’s manifesto [http://www.stalbanslabour.org.uk/our-policies/].

 

The Liberal Democrats, as with most things, have kept quiet about their rail policies so far but candidate Sandy Walkington has said, “We are seeing a railway company in denial – with continuing failures to communicate and a compensation mechanism which still fails to recognise the grinding waste of time created by constant failure to deliver the timetable.” [http://www.stalbanslibdems.org.uk/govia_thameslink_bottom_of_the_class] His vocal disapproval is heartening but the questionable competency of his party maybe a hindrance if he is elected.

 

The Green Party like Labour want to see the railways renationalised but are much more clear in their goals [http://greenparty.org.uk/values/transport-2010/transport-detail.html]. They would also subsidise costs and improve public transport systems generally. In St. Albans they made a visible presence protesting rising fares at the city station [http://stalbans.greenparty.org.uk/news/198]. The Greens seem to show the most concern for the consumer and make big promises for their campaign. Their rapid rise though, and the reaction the economy may have to their success is worrying if they depend on public money to fund the vastly expensive rail system.

 

UKIP have no mention of rail policies beyond scrapping HS2 in their manifesto and their St. Albans campaign is even quieter.

 

One of current Conservative MP Anne Main’s most active areas is rail policy. She has recently met transport minister Clare Perry and played a strong part in improving the compensation system for Thameslink [http://www.annemain.com/content/anne-main-welcomes-new-compensation-scheme-commuters]. Despite being so active the little achieved by her shows just how hopeless being represented properly as a rail consumer is within the current system.

 

The Conservative party show a lack of interest with transport policies in the election, seemingly afraid to commit to more privatisation and back down from HS2. It maybe important for Main but without senior party support she is powerless against Network Rail.

 

If the Conservative Party were to make a policy of privatising the rail system entirely then the distinction between parties would be clearer. Support could be based on a personal ideology of whether privatisation or nationalisation is best for the country. As the Tories seem afraid to mention any more privatisation the option seems to be between keeping the current, wasteful, expensive system but having Main as an experienced and active spokesperson or adopting the extreme nationalisation of the Greens or Labour.