I'm a bit conflicted about the future of railways, in the UK at least. I should probably preface this by saying I really like railways. As I don't drive I've traditionally used trains a couple of times a week for decades, I like travelling by train (usually!) and I even used to help volunteer at local heritage railways, doing all sorts of things from helping to lay track to fixing some of their back ground IT systems. In the last year I also volunteered to "adopt" a couple National Rail stations to make them look nicer and more inviting to passengers. So I'm definitely not an anti-train petrol head.
I'm also really interested in, and concerned about, climate change. It's the biggest long term challenge we face as a species, and is likely to cause all sort of societal issues and changes over the coming years and decades. I've always felt railways should have a part to play in helping to tackle that, as getting people out of large, single occupancy SUV-style cars and into trains would be a very helpful way to decarbonise transport. Trains are often held up as an example of "green transport", especially if they are electrified.
But the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020/21 has added a new twist. As the virus raged around the world, many of us were told to "stay home, stay safe". I was one of the lucky ones who not only hasn't (yet) caught Covid but had a job (in IT) that meant I was already well adjusted to remote working, video conferencing, etc and so I could work from home just fine. I have worked from home for nearly a year now, and I'm just one of thousands who have swapped the office desk for the dining room table.
Now whilst some people are itching to get back into their old offices, I, and many people in a similar situation I've spoken to, have found we've adjusted quite well to working from home. We're just as productive, video conferencing tools means we can still see and talk to our co-workers and it fits more flexibly into our lifestyles. We've found we don't need to travel to and from offices so often, if at all.
If management in general accept this change after the pandemic subsides, we hit the issue for the railways: so much of the railway infrastructure in the UK is funded for passenger trains, and many of the passenger train companies have got much of their income by catering to needs of the commuters in the morning and evening weekday peaks. We have large, very expensive projects like HS2 and Crossrail that are aiming to increase capacity in the network so that these commuter trains are less overcrowded. Now we'll probably always need to make some longer trips, for example for leisure or visiting relatives, and some people will still have to travel to/from work because they aren't blessed with a job you can do from your sofa. But what happens if the commuter trains never become as crowded as they once were?
And indeed why should these peak trains be as crowded, if a relatively large percentage of traditional city centre office jobs turn out to be able to be done at home or in small town or village based facilities? But the flows may well be different, and that may be a big climate change win. But that lack of regular, day in, day out commuters is going to be a big headache for the railways and Governments that fund them. The regular, large income from a huge body of commuters funds much of the railway and helps keep ticket prices down for the people not travelling to work and "off peak".
Will major capital projects like HS2 and Crossrail turn out to be unnecessary, in much the same way as some of the "Modernisation Plan" projects from the 1950s turned to be? Will this result in the railways becoming uneconomical and societally less necessary again, as they did with the rise of the car, lorry and motorways in 1960s? Will we get a "Beeching 2" set of cutbacks with a decade?
So I'm conflicted. On the one hand I'm volunteering to help make my local stations more attractive so that more people use the trains. I want to see new local lines and stations (re)opened so there are more opportunities to choose rail rather than cars for travelling. On the other hand, I can see the value in fewer people using the trains and not travelling as much or as far, but then how will the railways be funded and why?
I don't have an answer to this, and I suspect I'm not alone.
