Take the example journey from Duddeston to Glasgow - assuming they’re travelling to Glasgow city centre at best the train takes 4:42 station to station, or two thirds of a working day. If that means they would have to travel the previous day and stay in a hotel rather than take a flight I can see why the costs don’t stack up as well.
The real question is, why do they need to travel so much at all?
It takes about 1h 20m to fly from London to Glasgow and you generally need to be at the airport a few hours before plus there’s probably 30 minutes delay getting out of the airport on the other side. So you’re probably looking at only an hour shorter effective travel time for the plane.
Then if you consider how much of that time is stood in a queue compared to sat in a seat on a train where you can be working on a laptop and I think that rail travel is probably the best option for them a lot of the time.
It’s not just that when you add the time getting to and from airports, getting on and off the planes, and the time lost that could have been used to work, this argument does not stack up. These people are responsible for the rail services the rest of us have to put up with. There’s zero incentive for them to make the trains cheaper or more reliable if they’re allowed to fly whenever they feel like it.
Same for every politician. They should have to suffer what they put the rest of us through. Incentives, innit.
Add comment