London Briefing/Chris Johns: I first became a regular train traveller when I left Cardiff for college in London. That was 28 years ago and coincided with the introduction of high-speed trains that cut the journey time between the two cities to an hour and 42 minutes.
Today, the quickest rail journey over the same route takes just over two hours. Even then, chances that the train will achieve the advertised journey time are quite low.
As I write this the "train manager" (something that we inexplicably lacked in my student days) is announcing over the PA system that the reason we have stopped is that they have discovered a cracked rail on the line. Current estimate of the time to go from London to Cardiff on this particular journey is just short of three hours. Almost as one, everybody in the carriage reaches for a mobile phone to inform the office and to re-arrange meetings. At least technology has done that much for us: we can let people know that we are going to be late instead of them finding out the hard way.
Inevitably, the focus of Britain's hopeless transport infrastructure focuses on the delay itself and the misery of the traveller. Rarely do we see estimates of what it actually costs businesses. The reason why business people carry laptops on trains is not to play games but to try and defray some of the costs of being late by getting on with some work. If we could estimate just how much all of this ends up costing the economy, I suspect we would all be happy to throw a lot more money at the problem, or at least to insist that somebody who knows what they are doing is put in charge.
Ironically, we are stopped next to a billboard advertisement declaring that Network Rail (which used to be called Railtrack) - the agency responsible for maintaining the system - is proudly spending £4 million (€6 million) a day on track repairs. If I remember the sequence of events correctly, Railtrack's privatisation enriched a small number of people rather quickly; it then, just as quickly, went bust and is now back in the public domain. So that's £4 million per day of taxpayers' money. That the system is still deteriorating suggests that the money is being wasted or that it simply isn't enough. Or both.
There is a world of difference between reading about problems and experiencing them first hand. It goes some way in explaining why some things never change. If the people capable of making the necessary decisions ever used a train, I suspect that Britain's rail networks would suddenly acquire French-style speed and punctuality. One of the reasons why Londoners - even Tories - think Ken Livingstone is wonderful, if a little flaky, is that he uses the city's roads, buses and underground systems. The success of London's congestion charge is likely to lead to the charging zone being doubled in size before very long. And most Londoners will applaud. But the view from a chauffeur-driven limo offers a rather different perspective and is less likely to inject any urgency into poorly understood issues; all the politicians get to see is the motorcycle outrider clearing traffic out of the way.
If Tony Blair is destined to lose the next general election, it will be the electorate's despair at the state of public sector services rather than anger over Iraq that will prompt them to vote Tory. It is now very clear that taxes will rise again after the next general election, if Labour is re-elected. Voters would, on the whole, be prepared to stomach this if they thought it was likely to do any good. Despite Labour's best efforts to persuade us that things are getting better, most people believe that all of the money thrown at health, education and transport has just disappeared into a black hole.
The official watchdog for the rail industry, the Rail Passengers Council, this week reported that passengers are "in despair" over the condition of the network. Their comments came in a submission to the Transport Secretary, Mr Alistair Darling, who is conducting yet another review of the UK railways. Every rail user knows what another "review" means; it means nobody will make a decision, that inaction remains the order of the day.
