LIB DEMS PROMISE BETTER DEAL FOR LOCAL RAIL COMMUTERS

2.21.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Wed 23rd Sep 2009

Sandy Walkington, Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for St Albans, led a wide-ranging debate at Liberal Democrat conference on rail fares and rail franchises. After he and other speakers highlighted the problems faced by rail commuters, the conference approved his motion calling for new rail franchise conditions to focus far more on passenger service and a guarantee that no fares should rise by more than inflation and where possible they should fall.

"This was a Hertfordshire-led initiative," Sandy said. "There are over six million rail journeys a year starting or finishing at St Albans City station alone. Commuters from St Albans City already pay more per mile than for any equivalent rail journey. There is the Abbey Flyer line to Watford. And Kings Langley station, served (if it can be called that) by the truly terrible London Midland famous for cancelling trains for a whole day because their drivers could not be bothered to turn up, is also in the St Albans parliamentary area."

A number of local Lib Dems including Nigel Quinton, candidate for Hitchin and Harpenden, Paul Zukowskyj, candidate for Welwyn Hatfield, and Cllr Malcolm Cowan, Liberal Democrat spokesman on transport at County Hall, joined Sandy in submitting the motion to Lib Dem LibDem conference.

"I had been particularly concerned by the way that St Albans fares had been arbitrarily raised by more than average this year when they were already so expensive," Sandy said. "In the debate I listed all the mean little ways that extra charges have been extracted from passengers - what I described as 'a Ryanair approach except that's being unfair to Ryanair'.

"I was delighted to get support from the party's shadow Secretary of State for Transport Norman Baker MP, and also by the huge interest in the debate with Lembit Opik Lib Dem other LibDem MPs also speaking. I am a passionate believer in railways as the greenest mode of transport - but they should not be used by Gordon Brown as a way of stealth taxing hard pressed local commuters who have almost no choice in how they get to work."