The airlines can hardly believe their luck. British Airways, easyJet and Ryanair have seen sales for their links between London and Edinburgh thrive over the past three summers since regular rail strikes began in 2022.
More passengers were encouraged to move from trains to planes when former prime minister Rishi Sunak halved the tax on domestic flights – making rail relatively more expensive.
Airline bosses may have expected the tide to change following the rail pay deal on Wednesday between the transport secretary, Louise Haigh, and the train drivers’ union, Aslef. Union members are expected to vote overwhelmingly in favour of a 15 per cent wage rise, covering three years.
Yet less than 48 hours after that national agreement was reached, Aslef announced 22 more strike dates. Train drivers will walk out on LNER, the main operator on the flagship East Coast main line, every weekend from 31 August to 10 November 2024, in a separate dispute said to be in response to “bullying by management and persistent breaking of agreements by the company”.
Anyone travelling on LNER routes who needs certainty on strike days must either try to find seats on the budget rail operator Lumo or the slower West Coast route; go by road; or head for the airport.
Rail is enduring an existential crisis – as the new transport secretary, Louise Haigh, acknowledged when she talked to The Independent in July.
“Our transport system is broken,” she said. But Ms Haigh insisted that re-nationalising train operators would create “a publicly owned railway that works for everyone and puts passengers first”.
Yet to find out what is going wrong at LNER, she need look no further than her own officials.
LNER is one of several train operators that are run by the Department for Transport (DfT). Other state-owned rail firms include TransPennine Express, which is running a reduced service for a full year, and Northern, which repeatedly warns passengers about the risks of trying to travel by rail in northwest England on a Sunday. Its train drivers are not compelled to work on the Sabbath.
Rail is in a spiral of decline. Revenue has failed to recover since the pandemic. Many former commuters are enjoying much-improved lifestyles with no need to board the 8.08am from Woking to London Waterloo five days a week. Season ticket revenue has collapsed. Yet what the rail industry desperately needs is new passengers, lured from road or air by the prospect of reliable and affordable trains.
On ticket prices: Labour has promised “a best fare guarantee for passengers”.
Ensuring nobody pays more than they should is essential to restore confidence. But to achieve it, the transport secretary must reform the currently ludicrous fares “system” – and take the political heat that results when some prices rise sharply while others fall.
Perceptions of reliability, meanwhile, are dismal. A very senior member of the travel industry told me this week that she would never risk making intercity journeys to and from London by rail.
Many of us who depend on trains are accustomed to delays caused by rotten rail infrastructure and perennial staff shortages (the latter causing many cancellations on LNER on Friday).
Yet for at least 36 hours after the peace deal emerged, we fondly imagined that years of strikes by train drivers belonging to Aslef were at an end.
But on Friday morning, the union’s general secretary, Mick Whelan, announced 11 weekends of walk-outs by train drivers belonging to Aslef and working for LNER. He blamed “the continued failure of the company to resolve long-standing industrial relations issues”.
Emboldened by that no-strings pay deal, the rail unions are reassured that the railway is, indeed, too important to fail. They will take heart at the haste shown by ministers in settling with the train drivers without extracting any concessions to improve productivity.
The passenger, meanwhile, will probably not invest time figuring out the rights and wrongs of the latest dispute – and instead book with British Airways from Edinburgh to London, which is selling tickets for £64. Much cheaper than LNER.
The railway may not be allowed to self-destruct completely, but slow shrivelling looks increasingly inevitable.
Simon Calder, also known as The Man Who Pays His Way, has been writing about travel for The Independent since 1994. In his weekly opinion column, he explores a key travel issue – and what it means for you.