The rail industry, the Government and regulators were engaged in a farcical blame game last night over who is responsible for Britain's annual 58-hour Christmas railway shut down, which begins tonight. Train operating companies said yesterday that they would be ready to introduce services from next year but blamed the Association of Train Operating Companies (Atoc) for not co-ordinating an agreement. Atoc, however, said it was prepared to take part in meetings with Network Rail and the Government to discuss a new Christmas timetable, but it blamed the Government for failing to co-ordinate talks. Meanwhile, the Government has laid the blame at the door of individual operators, which it says are the only ones who can act to introduce the services. The failure to act has led to another Christmas in which anyone wanting to travel on Boxing Day will be stranded. It comes a year after pledges from Iain Coucher, the chief executive of Network Rail, that action would be taken after an identical closure last year. "We now need to run railways every single day of the week. We need to run them on Christmas Days and Boxing Days," he said in January. Major train services will stop running at 8pm this evening and will not begin again until 6am on Saturday, despite a full programme of football fixtures on Boxing Day, as well as the high street sales. Football supporters alone will add tens of thousands of cars to the nation's roads on Boxing Day. However, the Government had been aiming to cut emissions from traffic severely to meet its target of cutting carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
The rail industry, the Government and regulators were engaged in a farcical blame game last night over who is responsible for Britain's annual 58-hour Christmas railway shut down, which begins tonight.
Train operating companies said yesterday that they would be ready to introduce services from next year but blamed the Association of Train Operating Companies (Atoc) for not co-ordinating an agreement. Atoc, however, said it was prepared to take part in meetings with Network Rail and the Government to discuss a new Christmas timetable, but it blamed the Government for failing to co-ordinate talks. Meanwhile, the Government has laid the blame at the door of individual operators, which it says are the only ones who can act to introduce the services.
The failure to act has led to another Christmas in which anyone wanting to travel on Boxing Day will be stranded. It comes a year after pledges from Iain Coucher, the chief executive of Network Rail, that action would be taken after an identical closure last year. "We now need to run railways every single day of the week. We need to run them on Christmas Days and Boxing Days," he said in January. Major train services will stop running at 8pm this evening and will not begin again until 6am on Saturday, despite a full programme of football fixtures on Boxing Day, as well as the high street sales. Football supporters alone will add tens of thousands of cars to the nation's roads on Boxing Day. However, the Government had been aiming to cut emissions from traffic severely to meet its target of cutting carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
Of course, the question as to why there are no trains over this period is a differnet thing entirely. The fact is that trains are not regarded as infrastructure, not regarded as an essential service. Government here is in the business of abdication of responsibility, so trains are run for profit and they don't run when profit is hard to realise. keep to the Fen Causeway
What's farcical here is the lack of responsibility for this. In the wonderful free market privatised railway no one is responsible for anything, least of all a NuLab government which promised renationalisation, or a civil service which doesn't like trains much.
Bad PR for rail is good news for Whitehall, if only because of default passive aggression.
Travellers barely count in this soap opera.
