Good day my good friend.
This last (long) weekend, I got to experience quite how significantly the demand on the UK rail network has significantly changed. I travelled with a good friend for a day out in Rye. And the trains, despite it being off-peak travelling away from London, were full and standing. A stark contrast to the peak hour trains into London, which are now barely filling their seats. There is much for the rail industry to ponder from such a big change.
If you have any suggestions for interesting news items or bits of research to include in this newsletter, you can email me.
James
Network Rail in the red
Rejoice, good people, for the time of the great and glorious Great British Railways (which definitely isn’t renationalisation of course) is nearly upon us. Small problem though. Network Rail – whose job GBR is taking over – has no money left according to a leaked report. The impact will be a focus on ‘make do and mend’ repairs. While the veracity of the leaked presentation cannot be verified (and the Department for Transport have not commented on it), those of us in the transport industry will not be shocked at it.
The problem comes down to this. Rampant inflation. Its been running at 10%+ for new construction for a year, and at 5% for maintenance. And with public budgets not shifting to deal with this inflationary pressure, plus the increasing cost of maintaining old infrastructure, hard decisions need making. So any headroom in budgets is now being rapidly erased, and the old project managers saying (price, time, specification – pick two) is coming into play. There will be tough times for some years ahead.
There is a way out
We don’t like to talk about death that much in Western society. We like to talk about suicide even less. I read a research paper that puts focus on ‘vehicular suicide’ (pedestrians walking out in traffic) and considers its implications in the context of other deliberate road traffic collisions. There is a lot of literature on the determinants of suicide on railways, that comes to few overall conclusions as to the causes of railway suicides specifically. Regardless, they really are problems that we need to talk about.
But I would like to talk about the other side. I have been there. Really, I have. Its a dark, awful place to be, and the way out you often think of is really, really tempting. But what I learned from the experience is this. By choosing to live, you already make the hardest choice. Every other thing that you do after that point is a much easier choice than the one you just made to keep living. So if you are struggling and have thought about this in the past, you have already made the hard choice and its amazing that you have. Oh, and if you are struggling now but are not quite at that point yet, take care of yourself. Make time every day to have fun, talk to friends and family, or even just a walk. Anything you can do helps. Oh, and if you do want to talk, there are always people willing to listen. Me included.
Random things
These links are meant to make you think about the things that affect our world in transport, and not just think about transport itself. I hope that you enjoy them.
In Defense of the Landline Telephone (Lifehacker)
How Finland Virtually Ended Homelessness—and We Can Too (Common Dreams)
The World Wide Web turns 30 (Deutsch Welle)
Will the extraordinary boom in luxury goods ever end? (Financial Times)
Something interesting
Tesla is still a leading electric car brand. But other vehicle manufacturers are now steaming up on the rails behind it. Beside their CEO spending more of his time playing a teenage edge lord on his personal social media platform, why has this happened?
If you do nothing else today, then do this
Read this excellent paper in Nature on the effect of sustainable mobility transition policies on cumulative urban transport emissions and energy demand. It says the standard stuff (sustainable transport = good), but it comes from non-transport experts. So its insight is useful!
Mobility Matters 