I’ve learnt that it takes years to change travel behaviours and only a split second for folk to revert back into their cars.

Regrettably it wasn’t a late ‘April Fools’ when on 2^nd April 2024 the UK media and Liberal Democrats announced that on average 130 – 150 morning rush hour trains are cancelled at short notice every day across the UK.

Data, obtained under Freedom of Information, from Network Rail revealed that 2023 saw 55,829 morning rush hour train services either fully or partly cancelled, a 10% rise on the previous year (2022). It came as prices rose by 5%, new rail strikes were announced, and as more and more people were ‘returning to normal’ office-based working.

On Good Friday the travel chaos continued, and hit a crescendo, when train lines were shut due to flooding leaving hundreds of people stranded.

I was lucky. I had travelled the day prior to Good Friday. However, my seemingly simple 1 hour 50-minute British train trip becomes a 9-hour expedition. Here’s how.

• My train left London full. Bursting at the seams with people young and old, dogs of all shapes and sizes, surfboards, touring bikes, mountain bikes, guitars, mountains of luggage and even a choir. Regular travellers knew that they’d be standing in an aisle or vestibule for all or some of the way to Penzance.
• All was grand and enjoyable until we met flooding and it was deemed unsafe for the train to continue. No one complained. We’ve learnt new behaviours over the last 4 years; that safety must always come first.
• The train manager announced that the train had been given authority to travel backwards. So, we started going backwards, literally, very slowly to London. Railway officials had closed the train line to enable us to ‘reverse’ safely on a forward railway track.
• 15 minutes into our ‘backwards voyage’ we met worse flooding – the consequence of a rainstorm on already saturated ground.
• It was there that we spent some considerable time stuck between two floods.
• Trees are often used on floodplains and near rail corridors to act as a drag on flood waters, holding back water and slowing the flow at times of flooding. On this day, and as a result of a large volume of rain and stagnant water, a tree had fallen – the ends of its branches partially across the railway line. Luckily the Signals team said we could continue backwards, but at a much slower speed.
• Going backwards on the wrong train line results in inoperable facilities. The toilet doors would neither open nor lock which meant that many passengers were bursting, literally, to reach a station.
• We spent some time stationed just outside a remote rural train station whilst Controllers decided how to resurrect a broken rail system on the busiest train travel day of the year.
• I will say this, the train manager was fantastic. An ordinary man with extraordinary communication skills. He made regular announcements even if they were mostly “I’m sorry I have nothing to announce”. Communication is key in unplanned disruptive circumstances.
• We’d originally passed through Reading at 3pm. At 8pm we were back there!
• We spent some time stationed at Reading station whilst ‘Officials’ searched for a new train crew. “Sorry mate, there’s no train because there’s no staff” is now a regular UK phrase. Where are all the staff?
• Luckily the people who’d spent 5 hours standing in aisles or vestibules were allowed off the train to ‘stretch their legs’, whilst the people who’d not seen the refreshments trolley were allowed to ‘run to the shop’.
• Then we all spent some time stationed on a platform waiting to be told what to do.
• With less than five minutes to spare we (around 600 of us) were told to get to another platform ready to board a potentially already full train. The train arrived full. Hearts sank and anxiety rose. It’s fair to say there was a lot of pushing, shoving, shouting, and screaming and that was just the train and station staff!
• We all watched as the train pulled away – some families separated and many holidays now heavily disrupted.
• We spent some time stationed at Reading station until it was decided by the “Powers that be in Rail” that all 600 of us should get on an already full train to a station on a completely different rail line.
• By now we’d tossed aside 1st class tickets, happily standing in the toilets, but moving in a forward direction.
• Now we were stuck in a different station, on a different train line, operated by a different service provider.
• The final scenes were chaotic. In the dark, late at night, tired, hungry, and dehydrated with tensions and anxiety running high the ‘mass’ stampeded the ‘last train’ (an already full train) with the unspoken policy of ‘this time no one gets left behind’.

Hilarity, new friendships, and an annual reunion (!) aside, on days like this the UK travelling public are left wondering, perhaps even demanding to know the reasons behind the terrible state of our transport system and that’s even before we add in the predicted future impacts of climate change.

Early this year I joined the Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation (CIHT) ‘Resilience and Adaptation to extreme weather conditions in the highways/transport sector’ task force because like other professions I want to ensure that our public transport networks are in demand, not disrupted or in decline.

Why? Because I know it takes years to change travel behaviours and only a split second for people to choose to get back into their cars.

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