Nicholas Craig column

Sep 15 2006 By Nicholas Craig, The Journal

Trains are hitting the regional headlines this month.

It's a far from smooth journey for GNER - one minute celebrating the new East Coast franchise, the next facing a financial crisis and talk of a takeover. At the same time, Grand Central Railway is promising faster and cheaper journeys between Sunderland and London than ever before.

Travelling by train is part of business life, for long-haul meetings or daily commuting. With rail passenger satisfaction about ticket prices at an all-time low, many people are opting for other forms of transport. Cheap air travel is snapping up discontented business day-trippers and car drivers put up with parking problems rather than rising season ticket costs.

Yet railways can still capture the imagination as a great way to travel. The positives stack up strongly - trains pollute less, won't give you jet lag, allow you to sleep horizontally, read a book, see the landscape and enjoy well-prepared breakfasts and dinners. In short, they're much more fun. On the down side is the overcrowding, unreliability and, as the Transport Select Committee said, the "chaotic, impenetrable and costly system of train fares".

Grand Central Railway gives us reason to cheer. Topping its list of excellent incentives is a pledge to offer "simple and fair" tickets. If you have to stand for long journeys, you will be refunded half your fare - even if seats become available later in the journey.

It will not offer the confusing range of discounted tickets that bamboozle all of us scouring the internet for the cheapest journey. Instead it will charge £60 return, Sunderland to London, rather than the GNER £215 standard open return. Customers will be told the most expensive option - £60 - in the advertising rather than the elusive super-mega-advance-saver ticket price. Altogether a more straightforward and laudable policy.

The only caution is that we have yet to see this translated into rail reality. I hope the promises hold firm.

Trains have always been a great way to commute and communicate.

GNER faces hard decisions - push up prices, cut staff, renegotiate the franchise or go for a sale. The London-Newcastle-Edinburgh line is, however, key to our businesses: we need it to be run successfully and effectively.

Perhaps the "simple and fair" approach of the youthful Grand Central Railway should be copied by the long-established GNER.