Not a joke, but an example of how your money is wasted by some trade unions. The answer depends on which part of the country you are in. In some areas, the RMT have restrictive trade union practices which mean a fixed gang of four people must respond to any job. So even if very minor work involving one person is required, a fixed gang of four people still have to be sent. Elsewhere flexible work gangs are permitted. So two people can be sent to minor jobs, one to do the work and one to act as a train look out for safety.
Likewise trade union restrictions means that Network Rail must have stand-by emergency crews at Kings Cross station and also at Euston, even though they are less than one mile apart. It would make more sense to have emergency crews located where they could respond most quickly to problems. These were just two of the issues highlighted at a meeting this morning with Iain Coucher, Chief Executive of Network Rail. I was also struck at how little incentive there is for Network Rail to get more freight on the railways - they receive just £48 million in revenue from freight against £3.6 billion revenue from passengers.
An issue we discussed was Network Rail’s plans for rural lines, including how people now commute further by train. In the 1990s, the majority of commuters were not prepared to commute more than 45 minutes by train, when adding on the rest of their journey at either end. Now that train element of the journey has increased up to 1 hour 15 minutes, after which there is a significant drop off in commuters. This is not a surprise, as the increased number of travellers from Littleport, Manea and those driving from the constituency to King’s Lynn or Peterborough highlights the willingness now to commute further.
It was positive to hear of Network Rail’s plans for Peterborough and Cambridge, but also frustrating that the focus seems to be almost exclusively on city to city journeys with little investment in rural areas where significant house building has taken place. Whilst Network Rail have access to cheap capital, rural lines take time to pay and so there is little short term incentive for them to open up more rural lines. Cambridgeshire is the fastest growing county, and it is telling that Network Rail have no plans to spend any money in North East Cambridgeshire at all. I raised the issue of extending Whittlesea station, and connecting Wisbech and Chatteris, and Iain Councher’s team kindly agreed to follow this up. Improvements to the journey from Cambridge and Peterborough will help locally, but we need to be able to get to these stations in the first place.
Overall it was a interesting and positive meeting, and hopefully the start of a constructive dialogue on how we improve train transport to and from the constituency.
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