Johnbosco Nwogbo has had enough of train travel in the UK. Speaking to Metro a day after his journey from Oxford to Bournemouth was abruptly cancelled, meaning he could make a conference he was due to speak at, he’s not a happy passenger.
‘Rail is the engine of the economy and it’s simply not working,’ Johnbosco, 35, tells Metro.
‘There are millions of people across the UK who commute in some way. And if they can’t get to work because it’s too expensive or there’s no guarantee you’ll actually get where you need to go, the economy doesn’t do well, right?’
He’s not alone in feeling let down by the UK rail service as less than half of Brits say they are satisfied with it, according to a YouGov poll.
And it’s no surprise. With someone’s armpit inches from your nose, bulky luggage digging into your legs or even commuters working on the floor because there’s no seats left, it can be easy to become more than a little uncomfortable on a busy train in Britain.
And that’s not even taking the cost or reliability into consideration.
Johnbosco, who is originally from Awka, Nigeria, works with the We Own It, a group which campaigns for public services to be ‘for people not profit’.
‘I hear the argument “oh, we shouldn’t complain. We’re lucky to have X, Y or Z.”,’ he says. ‘But no, we should be raising the bar everywhere. We should be demanding improvements instead of accepting what we have.
‘Poor rail services impact peoples’ work, elderly people who rely on trains and students at university who struggle to visit family at weekends or holidays. Rail users have had enough.’
Extortionate fares
Another weary passenger is Chris Sedgwick. He spent 17 years working in the Big Smoke, before returning to Gloucester for personal reasons. However, running his own PR agency requires trips into London.
‘It’s beyond frustrating’, Chris, 37, tells Metro. ‘It’s like commuters are being demonised or victimised for living outside of London. The cost, with the delays and cancellations, is unjustifiable in my opinion. I’m lucky that I am picked by companies despite living in Gloucester, as clients hire me based on my ability not my location. But it’s so unfair that train prices can be so extortionate they’re almost pricing people out of the roles they want.
‘Commuters are prepared to get up earlier and have longer days, but they shouldn’t have to pay through the nose as well. I’ve got friends in Europe who pay about 18 EURO (£15) to travel through an entire country.’
For Chris, and other Great Western Railway users in Gloucester, it could cost up to £265.20 for an ‘anytime return’ ticket for the 1 hour 40 minute journey into London – although this can be reduced potentially if you are the right age to have a Railcard or can book in advance.
‘In a previous job, my commute worked out to be around £30,000 a year,’ Chris,who runs Sedg Creative says.
‘I got my contract changed so I could come in slightly later [off peak times] which brought the cost down to £90 a day. The journey was such an issue that it made my relationship with my boss feel fraught. Ultimately, the whole travel situation was why that job ended – it wasn’t sustainable.
‘Even when I reduced my number of days in the office and managed to change the timings slightly, I was still spending about £13,000 of my salary on transport.’
Commuting is now rising 3% faster than inflation, costing the average worker a whopping £2,616 every year. Yet despite the eye-watering price tag, according to the Office of Rail and Road Travel, between April 1 and June 30 2023 there were 5.7 million late trains and 74,494 cancellations.
Passengers ‘herded like cattle’
On longer and even more costly train journeys, we’ve seen children stuffed into baggage compartments, angry passengers on the tracks after delays and protest signs stuck to chairs in carriages.
‘The railways have de-humanised people,’ says Lesley Thomas, a money and mindset coach. She says she has seen passengers ‘herded like cattle’ onto ‘dangerously’ overcrowded services between her home in Salisbury and London.
One incident, in September 2023, stands out for Lesley.
‘I saw an older man fall to the ground after he had to stand,’ she tells Metro. ‘He was disabled and people were literally clambering past him. It was heartbreaking.’
Through her years of travelling, Lesley, who runs the Money Confidence Academy, has arrived ‘late and frazzled’ to meetings due to disrupted trains. The mum-of-two also has plantar fasciitis, a condition which causes pain in heels, which makes standing even harder.
Lesley, 56, adds: ‘I’ve been travelling on trains for 34 years and they used to be cleaner, more reliable and far more comfortable. I’ve been in situations now where I’ve had to stand on a busy train and have had men rubbing up against me. It might be accidental, it might not – but either way the situation is really uncomfortable.
‘Privatisation was meant to make things better for customers and it hasn’t. It’s made it substantially worse.’
Will a Labour government improve things?
Ten years ago, the Trades Union Congress, in their 2014 report, dubbed the wider rail situation in Britain as ‘The Great Train Robbery’. Today, Labour’s new Transport Secretary Louise Haigh has vowed her party will turn the tide and bring the UK’s rail network into public ownership.
The Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill, introduced to Parliament on July 18, will set a legal framework for transferring passenger rail service operations into public ownership.
One politician who will be keeping a close eye on Labour’s promise is Daisy Cooper, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats and MP for St Albans. She’s been a commuter for 12 years and faced delays, cancellations and strikes galore in that time. Things reached a head in May 2018, she explains, when a ‘chaotic’ new train timetable was rolled-out by train operator Thameslink.
‘We heard stories of nurses who were late for their shifts unavoidably leaving patients and colleagues in the lurch, carers were late to providing domiciliary care, and students were late for GCSE exams,’ Daisy tells Metro.
‘Parents were being charged by their schools if they were late for picking up their children: in many cases, a £10 charge was levied for every 15 mins delay for every child, meaning that an hour’s delay in picking up two children cost £80 a day, or an extra £400 a week.’
As a result of the carnage, Daisy set up the St Albans Commuter and Passenger Action to demand an end to the ‘turmoil, disruption and extra expense.’ The group collected stories from commuters and submitted an 80-page dossier to a cross-party Transport Select Committee inquiry into Thameslink’s controversial timetable.
‘Ticket prices are often too confusing, with the best offers only available from the ticket staff – not the ticket machines,’ adds Daisy. ‘The ticket machines themselves are often out of order causing delays. Announcements are not always communicated clearly on station platforms and across travel apps and, fundamentally, tickets are just incredibly expensive.
‘We [the Liberal Democrats] want to urgently establish a new Railway Agency: a public body which would help to join up the industry – from track to train – putting commuters first, holding train companies to account and bringing in wholesale reform of the broken fare system.’
A vital lifeline
While commuters on the younger side may be most vocal about train chaos thanks to social media, campaigners also hope the older generation are not forgotten. For many of Britain’s pensioners, trains – and wider access to good quality public transport – is a lifeline.
Joel Kosminsky is a member of the National Pensioners Convention’s (NPC) Transport Working Party; a group which looks to improve rights for the elderly in the UK.
‘In terms of travelling by rail, the main barriers older people face are access to information and affordable fares,’ Joel tells Metro. ‘We also frequently face physical obstacles, not just in getting to stations, but also in our ability to get on and off trains, never mind moving around them once we are on board. This is especially true for wheelchair and motorised scooter users. Accessing toilets – when they’re there and working – can be another major problem.
‘The low frequency of some train services can be a barrier to travel – it might be possible to go out for an afternoon, but impossible to return in the evening because services are either less frequent or simply stop earlier.’
(Picture: Paul/Ellis/AFP/Getty Images)
Joel says many pensioners do not use the Internet when they’re out and about, which means having station staff visible is key at stations is vital; especially if services are cancelled without warning and train passengers left in the lurch.
Currently, a Senior Citizen Railcard costs £30 a year. But Joel says the cost of living crisis is putting off several older people he’s spoken to, and that making train travel free – like we see on buses – could make a huge impact.
A poll by Survation suggests that 67% of Britons believe the solution to the crisis in the railway is public ownership, Campaigner Johnbosco also points out.
‘People ask “well, how do you know things will get better if we take public ownership?”,’ he tells Metro. ‘I always point to Switzerland. They have the best railway system in the world. It’s fully publicly owned and much cheaper than ours.
‘If you control it, if you own it, and you can simply make it work as opposed to working for profit.’
A brief history of government promises
In 2017, a spokesperson from the DfT told Metro: ‘We know some passengers have not received the service they deserve, and we continue to work with the industry to cut journey times and crowding, improve reliability and deliver more frequent services.’
In 2019, a spokesperson from the DfT told Metro: ‘Our investment in new projects like HS2 and East-West Rail is also creating the space our rail network needs for the future.’
In 2023, a spokesperson from the DfT told Metro: ‘Our railways are currently not financially sustainable, and it is unfair to continue asking taxpayers to foot the bill, which is why reform of all aspects of the railways is essential.’
In July 2024, a spokesperson told Metro: ‘We know our railways aren’t fit for purpose, which is why we’re undertaking the biggest overhaul in a generation by bringing passenger rail into public ownership. Publicly-owned Great British Railways will end years of waste and fragmentation – bringing together track and train to deliver for passengers with more reliable, better quality services and simpler ticketing and fares.’
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