When I’m not happily driving cars, I’m a grudging train passenger who’s regularly ripped off, let down or disillusioned by this much-hyped strike-prone public transport. The customer experience is so underwhelming that my confidence in, and respect for, Britain’s heavily subsidised rail industry has rarely – if ever – been lower.
I’m not sure if it’s me giving up on the train or the train giving up on me. Either way, the ‘alternative to the car’ is as implausible now as it was in the nineties, when notoriously hypocritical Transport Secretary John Prescott (a user of two Jaguars) told me to tell you, dear reader, that the train would soon take over as the preferred mode of transport for the average Brit. This was as blatantly untrue then as it is now, not least because the cost of rail travel is exorbitant.
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