Travel is too difficult thanks to bad government

By Sir John Redwood on July 13, 2025

The UK was short of transport capacity as the new century dawned. The pathetic failure to build much in the last 25 years has compounded the shortages. Hundreds of thousands of new people each year have been invited in with no thought of the need for roads and trains for them to use.

I am writing a couple of pieces about the difficulties of getting about. I am taking as an example three speeches I have made by coincidence this year in the Tonbridge/Tonbridge Wells area. The first was an Investment lunch in Tonbridge Wells, where I was setting out the prospects for world economies and markets. The second was this week's guest speech to the Freedom Association meeting . The third was on the following evening when I was being questioned on my experiences of government and the UK economy at a meeting in a village to the east of Tonbridge.

My computer told me the journey should take around 1 hour 30 to 40 minutes by car from my home to the venue, and about 2 hours 30 minutes by train from my local station with a 20 minute walk to the station and a 30 minute taxi ride from the destination station. That made it a total time of 3 hours 30 minutes door to door by train allowing a few minutes to find the platform and train at the stations.

Despite this obvious drawback of the train , allied to the fact that it would work out considerably dearer than driving my own car, I decided to undertake the train journey for the Investment lunch. To make it easier I planned a train journey from London where I had meetings before setting out for Tonbridge Wells.

Even though I was starting in London, it would take two changes of tube train and a longish walk from the station to the venue. I allowed extra time for the possible delays on the tube and for a possible late mainline train.

All went unusually smoothly until we neared Tonbridge. The train stopped in a station and we were told there was an incident on the line ahead. The train would wait for as long as it took and there was no indication of how long it would take to clear. I made a dash for the taxi queue, got a cab and sat in traffic jams on my way to the hotel in Tonbridge Wells. All my allowed time for delays and more was used up and I only just made it to the time of my speech. There was a nice big taxi bill on top of the train fare.

This week I had no need to be in London Wednesday or Thursday. The train seemed a very unappealing option for either journey, with several changes of train and the need to find taxis I could rely on to do the last few miles. I resolved to drive there and back each evening, covering a distance there of around 70 miles. See tomorrow what happened.

Summary of train issues

You need to look at door to door time. Often getting to and from the station is expensive and subject to delays. The Councils who want us all to go by train try to stop us getting to stations.

The train is never early but is often late. Trains are subject to cancellation or unacceptable delays, making them difficult to trust for important meetings unless you go hours in advance of need leaving open the option of an expensive taxi to rescue you. Government owns the track and signals which often cause delay, and runs bad timetables.