Our weekly webinar will return on Thursday, 10th July 12.30-1pm
Grab a sandwich and settle in for an online lunch with us on zoom, to hear all about the action we're taking for public ownership this month and how you can be part of it.
What we'll be doing
- Introductions
- Campaign updates
- Recommended reads and actions
- Q&A
- To finish - solidarity song of the week!
Comments
Anthony 2 weeks ago
I really do wish your campaign every success. Compared to many other European countries, the UK public (and active) transport system is decidedly second rate. For far too long there has been little consistency or joined up thinking, and so little prospect of any real improvement.
The way rail was privatised, and buses deregulated, has been nothing short of scandalous, suiting only the operators but not the public who use the services. Contrast this to Switzerland and several other enlightened countries which employ railways akin to a hub, with other modes of transport feeding into and out of this system. Services are generally frequent (turn up and go in many urban areas with metro style systems) and connections very convenient. For example, in Switzerland, the average connection time between trains is only 6 minutes, and in the vast majority of cases, this is perfectly adequate. Now that is what any reasonable person would call public service, so why is it so difficult to provide anything close to this level of integration in the UK? (Yes, I know the answer, and it is all to do with making services convenient for the operators to run, and little to do with providing the public what they really want, all the while relying on the general public's apathy and low expectations to allow the industry to get away with it).
Will GBR be any better? I hope so, certainly it can't be any worse, surely? But I already fear it will be too much of a compromise (we like that word in the UK, it sounds like we're being fair and reasonable, when actually all we're doing is fudging the issue) to achieve the holy grail of true integration. For all its woes (a lot of them due to underfunding and too much government prevarication and interference), BR did at least offer a much more integrated rail service than privatisation has ever achieved at any time in UK history. So, the task is to restore that kind of integration and join it up with other public transport modes. We wait with bated breath🫤
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