Modern rail travel is a slow-grinding nightmare of too many people and too little space
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Version 0 of 1. I have seen the face of the devil. I prised open his slippery mandible, and peered into his gaping maw as the acrid talons of his breath tore away at my flesh and hair until I was left quivering against the wind, having glimpsed cruelty in its rawest form. Which is to say that I got a Great Western train from Paddington to Cornwall on a bank holiday once. But, you know, that’s basically the same thing. Maybe you have, too. Maybe you also thought it would be fun to have a nice weekend in the West Country. Maybe you still gather together in tiny groups to recount the violent tangle of teeth and elbows you had to endure in order to board the train, or how you slowly lost all feeling in your cheek after spending three hours having it pressed flat against a grubby window by a gang of tutting backpackers. Perhaps you like to remind each other of the time you tried sitting on the floor, or leaning against a wall, or cupping yourself foetally around the base of the toilet, just so you could fleetingly feel human again. And then, always, the bitter punchline: £135 return. That the police were needed to help clear 150 people from a dangerously overcrowded train travelling to Penzance from Paddington on Good Friday should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever attempted this abject horrorshow of a journey. The images tweeted by passengers on that trip – of limbs and torsos crammed haphazardly into every available pocket of oxygen – should be damning, but in truth, they have become so routine that they barely even make an impression. This is what modern rail travel has become. It is a slow-grinding nightmare of too many people and too little space, and you have to be prepared to sell your children just to pay for a ticket. Modern rail travel turns people ugly. It makes them petty and territorial. It transforms them into the sort of people who compulsively put a full stop at the start of their tweets, so the rest of the world can see just how angry the train companies have made them. And this reality is reflected nowhere in the wider culture. I wish it was. I have a dream that one day Michael Portillo will make a BBC 2 series entitled Great British Commuter Railway Journeys, where he will attempt to wax lyrical about Bradshaw’s description of the 7.46 Haywards Heath to St Pancras while being nudged and shoved and repeatedly smacked in the goolies by the handlebars of an unfolded bike until all his teeth turn yellow and fall out from stress. At least in Europe, they know how to treat people like cattle. A new train called Izy is due to go into operation between Paris and Brussels on Sunday, and it has already set the gold standard for deliberately miserable treatment. Yes, there are the usual first and standard classes, but passengers can also pay less to spend the trip perched on a fold-down plastic seat. Or, for even less than that, no seat at all. Izy’s cheapest option – essentially fourth-class travel – involves standing up against the bar in the buffet carriage for the entire duration of the journey. Which, by the way, takes an hour and a half longer than every other train journey between Paris and Brussels, because screw you. Izy sounds legitimately horrible. It sounds as if you’d have a better time if you were slung into the back of a pickup truck, covered with a tarp and driven over cobbles for four hours. But at least it’s honest. At least you know upfront that you won’t get a seat. Buy the cheapest possible Izy ticket, and you’ll board the train already hardened to the misery of mass transit. You’ll be bracing yourself for the worst, because you’ll have paid for the worst. It’s barbarism, but it’s refreshing barbarism. Compare that with the Good Friday travellers, who had their dreams of a blissful, bucolic yomp across the English countryside forcibly ripped out of them through their wallets. Even before the police were involved, you know exactly what those poor souls must have gone through. The day-drinkers. The crying children. The series of tense standoffs with the idiots who refused to move their bags from the empty seats next to them. The people who wouldn’t stop texting with their keytones switched on. The increasingly belligerent stag party. The sighs. The muffled pleas from the doorwell to move further down the carriage. The quiet-carriage Nazis, silently seething because someone dared to puncture their precious safe space by involuntarily coughing. The slow realisation that they were standing in a tinderbox, and that even the slightest provocation could turn the whole train into a bloodbath. And all for the most insane amount of money possible. Clearly, something needs to change. Longer trains would be nice. More frequent trains would be even better. Trains that don’t prematurely turf out hundreds of passengers on to the brutalist platforms of Plymouth station seem a magical pipe dream, but that doesn’t mean we can’t wish for it. Hopefully, within a few years, driverless cars will come along and solve everything. Because, frankly, putting the lives of your family into the hands of an unthinking metal box sounds preferable to ever using Great Western again. |