@PabloMartini @ChrisMayLA6 It's so foolish to try to treat railways as a profit centre. It should be treated as a strategic asset for the country, moving people around efficiently for work, leisure, tourism and business. Why would want sensible country want to make it hard and expensive for people to go places where they will spend money and earn money?
You know, the way the motorway network is treated.
Yes, but conservatives who treat everything as a vehicle for profit are fucking imbeciles!
Contrast that utter stupid policy with the enlightened policy implemented by the government of Luxembourg, where I live.
All public transport, buses, trams and trains, within Luxembourg is now completely free; it is paid for by the government! The idea was to try to reduce the traffic jams for which the capital city was justly famous. From where I live the capital city is about 20 - 25 minutes drive but in the rush hour, that used to turn into anything up to 90 minutes or more if there were accidents or vehicles broken down!
It was mostly paid for by increasing the tax on company cars both for individuals and for companies and by other motorist targetted fiscal measures.
It has been reasonably successful as proven by the fact that the trams in the city are packed out every day despite there being a very frequent service indeed.
The tram lines are being extended out to more far flung areas like Luxembourg's Findel international airport some distance outside the city and eventually to Esch-sur-Alzette; Luxembourg's 2nd city.
@beecycling @Paulos_the_fog @ChrisMayLA6 and even the motorway network and local roads have been left to deteriorate by UK government (I spent 6 hours on the motorways a couple of weeks ago as there was such a backlog of roadworks (also local roads are in a bad state, which is even more hazardous should you want to ride a bicycle on them)
@Paulos_the_fog @ChrisMayLA6 That's amazing. In the UK there are some grudging measures in place to try to get people out of cars. But the public transport in most places is so bad that it's hard to blame anyone for not wanting to use it. It's often unreliable, infrequent, old, and doesn't go to where they need to be.