I have a reputation as a blogger that gets things done – I don’t just have opinions on things, I try to transform my thoughts into practical action. Campaigns such as Gender Balanced Commission and the Atheist Bus Campaign have grown from posts on this blog.
So when @kattebel stated in a tweet that it was time for a campaign to do with Europe’s railways it got me thinking… for essentially I have been doing plenty of ranting about the state of train travel, but have not turned any of this into practical action. I also know quite a bit about railways, which should help.
But what should I actually do?
That’s where it gets really complex. No immediate, one-off, amusing or populist web initiative springs to mind here. For this is much more difficult. There needs to be a coherent voice for Europe’s rail passengers, an organisation that can stand up for passengers on international routes when things go wrong, and can advocate pro-passenger policies. There is the need for an organisation that can make the case for cross-border passenger transport from a citizen perspective and – importantly – not from the perspective of the rail companies (who want to defend their market positions) or from the trade unions or member state governments (who want to defend the numbers of people employed on the railways). The failure of Railteam is surely enough to demonstrate that company led approaches don’t work – a single booking system would aid passengers, but who actually argued for that forcefully?
