Letting off steam

But it wasn’t always like this. My love affair with trains began as soon as I had somewhere to go. As a child, I fell in love with Swiss trains: the cleanliness, the punctuality, the multi-lingual announcements, the... size – in a nutshell, they were everything I was looking for. I somehow knew, just knew, that the Swiss would never let me down.

When I transferred my affection to the British Rail System, I was sorely dismayed. Here was the paradigm of unsuitability. Apply the characteristics to a man and you get the kind of person our mothers warn us away from. The affair is doomed from the very beginning to be a failure.

In principle train is the best way to travel. Fairly quick, fairly eco-friendly and with the potential to be fairly comfortable, in theory, there's no way I'd rather travel. But those are the key words “in theory”. Rail travel is far from quick when the trains are delayed. Rail travel is, albeit indirectly, far from eco-friendly when as a result of every train someone is trying to catch being cancelled, they have to take a taxi from a station they in no way intended to be stranded at.

A small and relatively timid person, I hate having to push past person after person stood in the aisles of the carriages. The concept of seat allocations is completely mocked when the reservations fail to show up on the little electronic screens, or even when they do, it's too difficult to get to your seat, so you sit in somebody else's, sparking a whole train (if you'll excuse the pun) of seat switching that would be farcical if it wasn't so frustrating – often I rather like sitting in the seat I picked, because it's near the luggage rack or power socket for my laptop.

After a disastrous journey back to York after Easter, where I not only ended up sat in someone else's seat, but also had to leave my bag in the next carriage up (with my laptop cable in, so working became a tad difficult), I decided I really, really wanted something to change.

This is why, as sad as it may be, in this General Election, trains are very important to me. To this end, I tore through every manifesto with a fine-tooth comb, determined to find the party that would in some way placate my anger against the railway.

But all parties are pretty much promising the same thing: some kind of vague “high-speed rail network”. Their emphasis seems to be on speed and efficiency, rather than conditions on the trains. Only the Liberal Democrats have offered to subsidise fares, but as no one really seemed to take the Lib Dem's that seriously until “Cleggmania” hit, bets are they thought they’d never have to think about delivering their manifesto pledges anyway.

Then I realised it didn't matter anyway. Whatever changes the parties were rooting for, however long it would take them to do whatever their bland and generally worded policies meant, they would have no affect whatsoever. The problem in the British rail system cannot be fixed by changes in legislation or business. Yes, they might be able to make the trains run on time, make the stations nicer places, even lower fares by subsidising with money the government won't have: but they won't be able to make me trust rail travel again until something else is changed.

Attitudes. Until the rail companies stop thinking only of making money, there will be no stop to overcrowded trains. There will be no stop to that living hell of trying to find your seat with two huge bags, no space to put them and no space to move. There will be no stop to that awkward moment of ousting someone from your seat, knowing full well that there is nowhere else for them to sit. The worst train journey I ever took was York to Birmingham when there was literally no room to move. The announcer freely admitted that they had overbooked the train, meaning there were almost twice as many passengers than there were seats. Result? You guessed it: not good. But why would they do this? Answer: because it gets them lots of money. It brings up the greatest profit and, let's be honest, that's pretty much what every businessman is concerned with these days. Actually, I’ll change that; it’s pretty much what every businessman's been concerned with – ever. After all, it's the point of business, isn’t it?

But surely the railways are a service? And surely the point of a service is to provide a service? Therefore, not to mess things up for those they're supposed to be serving.

Without this change in attitude, whatever the next government does, or tries to do, will be pointless.

I'd like to say that until the system improves, I’ll stay away. But that would be a blatant lie. As a student, it’s the only way I want to go home. And anyway, when have students stopped doing the things we’re know are bad?

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