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2024-11-28 08:41:50 UTC
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David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*) on Nostr: There are some short term things you can do. For example, there are two trains every ...

There are some short term things you can do. For example, there are two trains every hour from Cambridge to Stansted Airport. Great, you might think, aim for one and if there’s another in half an hour if it has problems, so you can safely plan them for airport trips. Only they’re operated by different franchises (no idea how this happened) and so they don’t coordinate schedules. This means that, each hour, there are two trains 15 minutes apart and then none for 45 minutes.

This kind of stupid uncoordinated scheduling can be fixed by removing the franchises.

Similarly, making National Rail able to sell tickets, rather than sending you to one of a load of rail franchises (so you need to find one of the ones that doesn’t charge fees and provides electronic tickets in a standard format, rather than only via their buggy app) or to a grifter like TheTrainLine, would be a big improvement.

Longer term, I’d love to see them upgrade all rolling stock so every seat is equivalent to GWR’s first class, but that’s a much larger investment.