In Munich by contrast the S-bahn (the equivalent of e.g. South-West trains) and the underground run a reduced service throughout the night which makes a big difference to the night-life of that city.

Wouldn't it make better sense to share the last few miles of track with light-rail rolling stock? Or halve the number of mainline formations entering Zone 4 and provide 4x the light-rail capacity? Reserving our existing narrow rail corridors into central London for heavy steel-on-steel rolling stock doesn't make much sense any more.

And I wouldn't knock the canals, either. Adaptation strategies that take into account the increase in the number of days in London forecast to be over 25 deg. by 2030 should take into account the potential for cooler and less crowded water transport as an alternative to the suffocating heat of the tube.

Today my son came up from London quite happily and on time. It took under an hour to cover 80 miles. My wife is going North to Leeds on Wednesday and we often use the route from Harrogate to March, Cambs even with children. The staff are courteous and nice.
Mind you, I am not a commuter.
Some local people want, very much, to reopen a (Beeching) closed line between Wisbech and March. So far, they have got absolutely nowhere, even though the rails are still there.

If the Germans can do it so well – an intergrated transport system – is that the technical name Prescott gave it? – why cannot we Brits?

Not only has Milton Keynes lost its inter-city service to London in the peak since 2004, the commuter service is now slower (and obviously more overcrowded) as there are less slots available on the fast lines which are now saturated by high-speed services. This is far from desirable in an area earmarked for huge swathes of (unwanted) additional housing. Government dithering over lengthening the Pendolino trains used on inter-city services means that they have to be more frequent to offer the required number of seats per hour – hardly efficient use of line capacity when the platforms can accommodate 2 or 3 extra carriages. Perhaps the government has forgotten that commuters are also voters.

Whilst in principle dedicated high-speed routes look fantastic, and release capacity on existing inter-city routes, I believe there is much that can be done by more intelligent use of our current network. Your comments on adapting the existing railway to handle rail freight make sense – throughout the first half of the 20th century the railways coped with vast tonnages through intelligent operating and suitable infrastructure – all achieved on a ‘conventional’ railway shared with stopping and express passenger services. Providing ‘lay-by’ loops to allow heavy freight trains to be overtaken was both simple and effective.

Regarding commuter capacity, having lightweight, closely-spaced trains works well on say the Docklands Light Railway, but this relies on the comparatively low speeds on a purely urban railway to enable trains to stop within their short spacing. On the main line, investment in moving-block signalling would allow some reduction in headways in safety – an opportunity missed by the present government during the West Coast Main Line upgrade. The latest generation of aluminium- rather than steel-bodied commuter trains helps, but only if signalling can liberate their enhanced acceleration and braking characteristics.

I wonder whether a broader look at commuter capacity might be needed, given the difficulty and expense of providing a peak capacity which is only utilised for a few hours each day. For example, can we encourage more flexible working to flatten out demand from the high peak into the shoulder peaks? I suspect we have many thousands of workers who travel daily to an office only to sit at a computer and communicate with their colleagues by e-mail or phone – indeed I have done this myself. Can we encourage employers to endorse more home working? What is not the answer is the government’s ‘demand management’ suggestions for the West Midlands (see their franchise spec) to flatten out demand by pricing commuters out of the high peak who have no choice regarding their working hours. This smacks of wielding the stick rather than dangling the carrot.

Regarding adhesion, I’m not sure rubber would give adequate strength at the higher speeds attained by many outer suburban and main line commuter services. A bit more attention to line-side vegetation by Network Rail in the autumn might help, as might a return to brakes operating on wheel treads to supplement today’s disc brakes – these tended to clear the wheel treads of accumulated slime.

I entirely agree that we need to move more freight and commuters onto rail – a challenge I am sure the industry would be delighted to meet with a more supportive DfT less concerned with unhelpful micromanagement of the rail system to suit their own agenda.

If we could do bumper to bumper & if we can do it already on road it is clearly possible, then the capacity of railways could be improved, perhaps by orders of magnitude. If we fully automated it, which is easily feasible on rail but not roads, the cost would drop substantially.
The potential for a very inexpensive mass passenger & goods transit system clearly exists.

The safety worries are a function of our media. By any real measure trains are far safer per passenger mile than cars. Indeed they are so much more newsworthy because they are rare (& more spectacular).

Great article.

Andrew