By Ian Kelly
If there’s one industry which has weathered the coronavirus crisis, it would be the railways. Far from weakening them, COVID-19 has strengthened Britain’s railways and proved just how important they are – not just to our daily lives but also to our resilience as a country. Yet we seem to have fallen out of favour with railways, so the pandemic offers us a great opportunity to re-imagine our relationship with them, at both a local and national level.
Let’s first address the current climate of opinion. As the pandemic took hold, many of us suddenly became terrified at the thought of using public transport, preferring instead to work from home using remote means of communication such as video calls and messaging services to stay in touch with our colleagues. This practice also extended into our social lives. The idea of meeting up at the pub or at a restaurant with friends or family was replaced by multi-person Zoom calls, and soon it became impossible to ignore our social media feeds filling up with screenshots framing this new pastime.
This new lifestyle has now morphed into a pervasive attitude of hostility towards public transport, with many questioning the need for railways at all. They claim that, with video conferencing now the backbone for hundreds of thousands of businesses up and down the country, there’s no point in taking the train, let alone building new ones.
This fundamentally misses the point of what railways are for. Britain’s railways are the backbone of our economy, enabling millions of people to reach work and school, as well as moving millions of tonnes of freight not just domestically but also to and from Europe. They keep us connected to our friends and loved ones; a function needed now more than ever. They bring communities together and promote a strong sense of stability and security for the people they serve. From young people to the elderly, railways remain a lifeline and fulfil the need for personal freedom and exploration.
Britain’s railways have also been essential in our national response to COVID-19. They’ve enabled key workers to continue their jobs day and night, facilitating the delivery of life-saving equipment, and allowing businesses to restart after the period of national lockdown earlier this year. As industry after industry shut down in late March, the national railway network and London’s transport network remained open, keeping essential businesses running and hundreds of thousands of people employed.
We must now channel this recognition and spirit of unity into our future relationship with railways. The Government has made a good start with the Restoring Your Railway Fund, which allows local authorities and community groups to bid for financial packages aimed at reinstating mothballed lines. The first successful bids were announced in early September. With further rounds of funding available next year, it is hoped that this scheme will revitalise investment from the private sector in local railway projects, and in turn help deliver the grand plan of ‘levelling up’ the national economy.
Our transport network, with railways as the centrepiece, will also be key to a successful Brexit. Railways are the perfect showcase for British ingenuity and skill, from engineering and design to data management and alternative technologies, all of which make the UK an attractive place to invest in as we forge new alliances and partnerships around the world. Railways also represent a key element in achieving our Net-Zero emissions target by 2050, most notably through growing interest in hydrogen technology as well as the introduction of tri-mode trains with Great Western Railway next year.
Railways represent a key part of our economy, society and national identity. We invented them and championed them, grew rich off them, went into war with them and now celebrate them in the form of heritage lines scattered across the land. It is ridiculous to think that we can somehow abandon railways as one would abandon their car in favour of walking everywhere. We need to recognise not only how much our railways contribute to today’s Britain, but how much potential they offer for future growth and prosperity at both a national level and local level.
It’s time to fall back in love with our railways.
