Public control of railways brings high expectations, but limited prospects of them being met
Another stoppage on the railways highlights the battle over pay, waged most ferociously by those with the most leverage, but also with most to lose as efficiency and changing travel patterns threaten employment conditions.
Members moved from a vision of a greener, smooth-running Scotland in the P&J Arena to the city centre, and a clunking re-engagement with a very different reality on the rails. If Aberdeen is to become, as the First Minister ambitiously claimed, "the net zero capital of the world", it is going to need some greener rail options. It won't get electric trains linking to Dundee until 2030, and there's a case being made for reinstatement of a rail link with Peterhead.
The other notable, current problem is that the pandemic has upended the market for passenger travel. And while most other markets are re-conforming to roughly their previous shape, rail seems to have changed permanently. Travel for leisure has picked up significantly since coming out of Covid restrictions. But commuting has not. Use of season tickets across the network during spring were at only 34% of pre-pandemic levels.
You'll know what I mean if you use Lothian Buses, but you won't find much that joins up. A seemingly simple journey requires not only different tickets but different apps. They include the replacement of diesel on lines running north of Perth and Dundee. Options are currently being considered for how to put an overhead cable on tracks between Inverness and Perth. It might be possible as far north as Tain in Easter Ross.
Wider gauge trains on the continent, along with bigger bridge and tunnel spaces, allow for designers to put hydrogen in the roof space above passengers heads. British trains may have to tow hydrogen tanks in an extra carriage. That's a big improvement on the late and over-budget electrification of the main Glasgow-Edinburgh line through Linlithgow.
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