Worse than CityRail

["David Bennetts" <davibenn@ozemail.com.au>]

Posting lifted from uk.railway

Perhaps the Luftwaffe could have done a more thorough job on the
Underground - oops
"Don't mention the war" - Basil Fawlty

Regards

David Bennetts


In German magazine, Stern last week, Bernd Dörler's made an assessment of
Britain that included what appears to be a very accurate view of the London
Underground:
In the country that invented the railway, a journey by train or by
Underground often has the same effect as a visit to a dominatrix. One is
tortured, humiliated and abused - and all at the kind of prices you would
expect in a red light district, but with the difference that the experience
provides no pleasure at all.

The London Underground is the most expensive in the world. A one-way ticket
costs an average of £2.50. The Tube, with its 275 stations and 255 miles of
track, dates in large part from the 19th century. Each year it carries
almost a billion people. The workers have already gone on strike twice this
year. They are not demanding more money or shorter hours, but rather more
safety both for themselves and for their passengers.

Just as with the Millennium Dome, again it is a foreigner, Bob Kiley, who is
meant to come to the rescue. The American has already sorted out the Boston
and New York subways. At least he got off to a fragrant start. In future,
the smell in the stations will be alleviated by a specially created perfume
called Madeleine.

It will take more than a few cans of perfume to improve the crumbling
infrastructure. In Notting Hill, for example, one of the stations most
visited by tourists, the escalators have not been working for 18 months.
They date from before the war and still have wooden steps. There are no more
spare parts and no money to build a new one. "It's a mystery to me that the
people have put up with this for so long," Kiley said. "In New York they
would have long since killed the staff."

You might think voters would try to get their revenge at the election. Far
from it. New Labour's lead is so great that Blair's re-election seems
certain.