and nothing will change,
will we go back to the "old days" of when all services waited for a late running connections,within reason?
and accountability for delay minutes will be done away with.
Who knows? We are in a different world.
Over half a lifetime ago, when I was in my first youth, I travelled a lot by train, including on a number of lines (but far too few) that closed soon thereafter. Trains were infrequent and slow and sometimes perverse and I can't remember there being the problems we have / here about these days with overcrowding on them, nor with missing connections. Stations like Slaggyford and Tumby Woodside come to mind - intermediate calls on quiet trains with few passengers getting on or off. Chasing sheep with a
DMU▸ in the first case; people just groaning at all the stops from Firsby to Lincoln on a summer Saturday train taking holiday makers home from Skeggy. And the train when it got back into Haltwhistle just sitting idle waiting for its next run a number of hours later.
In our different world, these lines have gone. Other lines and stations, though, have broadened their services whilst at the same time slimming down the infrastructure sometimes too much and making staff and rolling stock utilisation so much more "efficient" that all too often there is no longer the capacity to cope with events out of the ordinary. And so things like trains waiting for connections don't simply leave the arrival at a branch terminal a bit late - these days they bounce back on the return service too. And service frequency increases mean that in many cases the wait for the next train in any case is far shorter than it used to be.
There ARE times that services wait, but they are few and far between. The frustration we feel in coming home from London to Melksham and waiting for the next of 9 trains per day (i.e. onto a service that remains a poor frequency) is - well - frustrating (!!) but thank goodness that the 22:30 last train does wait a few minutes if the London express that connects with it is a few minutes late. And it can do do because there are no onward connections or next duties to be covered. In contrast, a delayed service Melksham to London is no problem - sure, if the connection fails at Swindon there is going to be another train a few minutes later.
Not sure how much this is changed by who runs the trains and how delays are analysed. Perhaps what's needed is a modern vision that invests in making the service reliable rather than stretching resources to their extreme, and providing the resource to handle the resulting confidence in rail and its further growth as an integrated service which is environementally good and a pleasure for its customers to use. Who manages that modern railway, who runs the trains, who sets the strategy from where the tactics become clear is irrelevant provided that the are committed to the public transport network as something that's a natural and loved part of everyday life.
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