As fewer and fewer people use them, it seems railways are regarded as no longer essential – especially in the north
Of all Britain’s looming strikes, ministers seem least worried by the trains. When last week the Treasury and the transport secretary, Mark Harper, reportedly stopped the rail companies from upping their pay offer to the unions, they would have known the strike was on. They would have known that demanding new work practices alongside a fall in real-terms pay was never going to work.
The pandemic devastated the railways, despite the government strangely paying to keep them running throughout. Taxpayers spent £16bn and goodness knows how much carbon transporting air round Britain. Latest figures suggest that rail use has stabilised at two-thirds to three-quarters what it was before the pandemic, a huge fall. The fact is that train travel has a high profile but supplies barely 6% of passenger journeys and 8% even of long-distance ones. The vast majority of Britons – 84% – go by road. Talk of a Christmas “lockdown” through rail strikes would apply only to a small minority. For most people, private cars and coaches are the realistic, and cheaper, norm.
