An announcement on the news today (bursting with that artificial enthusiasm the presenters always use when it is supposed to be a 'good news' story which I hate).... The government has decided to use the money it has fined Network Rail to improve WiFi on commuter trains. Yeah, you know, the money taken off them for failing to improve services and thus making them even less likely to be able to improve anything as they have no money.
Well, I'm pretty confident that the last thing on a commuters mind when they are packed into a 30 year old carriage like a sardine which is running late for the 3rd time this week is "hmmm... wish there was faster WiFi on this train". Call me old fashioned, but I'd have thought trains with the right capacity which run on time would be a priority, not being able to check twitter in case some celebrity has told the world what they had for breakfast.
No doubt this scheme will go ahead for the sake of Britain needing to be on the forefront of technology (or some other trite soundbite) - and of course will benefit no-one but London's commuter trains. And will it make any difference to the normal working person? Well I suppose it means they can upload the pic they've just taken to instagram quicker, but does that really matter? Do you really need WiFi on a commuter train? I'd have thought that if anything WiFi is more important on long distance trains so that people travelling are able to work while travelling - no chance of that on a commuter train when you have your nose shoved in someone's armpit!
Anyway, it's never going to have any impact on me... I live in the North East (the region where the first steam engines came from) - no chance of any sort of modernisation for us. The North apparently ends at Leeds as far as any transport scheme is concerned!
