Civil servants lack an understanding of the region’s rail needs - Yorkshire Post Letters

Re: Letter from Dave Ellis - Rail Delivery Group, The Yorkshire Post, August 4.

While the Rail Delivery Group may well deserve the opprobrium heaped on it by Dave Ellis, the Group are not their own masters.

The Department for Transport (DfT) has obtained more and more control over the rail network and services. There is still no Great British Railways body, which is supposed to be the guiding mind for rail services.

Instead Civil Servants of the DfT micromanage details of rail services without the expertise that career railway people could bring.

For example the Department came up with the daft idea of ending wi-fi access on trains, even though it is vital to most business users.

The shambles over ticket office closures results from their desperate attempts to cut costs.

Ludicrously, if closures go ahead Harrogate will (just about) keep a ticket office but Euston will shut.

Unfortunately Lord Peter Hendy, so much admired by Dave Ellis, is a leading proponent of ticket office closures taking the blinkered view that what worked in London (debatable) would work across the UK.

No wonder there was so much opposition. Were ticket office closure plans a factor in Labour's win at Goole I wonder?

As most Conservative MPs are looking for the exit they seem to have no interest in sorting out railways problems.

Unlike his predecessor Boris Johnson, who showed interest in public transport, Rishi Sunak seems to regard trains as an expensive nuisance.

No doubt he'll be happy to leave a load of problems for Labour to sort out if they win the General Election.

Rail users deserve far better than the lack of leadership at the top but whatever the Rail Delivery Group's faults they are just one set of actors among many.

As the Japanese say, fish rots from the head and Ministerial apathy causes failures lower down.