Why can’t I book a train? How Avanti West Coast hit the buffers

theguardian.com:

Like England Test cricketers cowardly praying for rain, Avanti West Coast, the operator of trains on Britain’s main intercity artery, could well be thanking the heavens for the latest intervention to mask its failures.

A nationwide drivers’ strike coinciding with the Conservative conference in Birmingham in October will at least provide a handy excuse when thousands of London-based ministers, MPs, their political aides and other influential visitors are confronted with the extraordinary prospect of not being able to book a train between the UK’s two largest cities.

For long-suffering passengers wanting to take the fast service between the capital and hubs such as Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow, it won’t feel that different. Nevertheless, overshadowed by Britain’s seismic political upheavals of recent weeks, Avanti has largely dodged the political scrutiny and sanction that its astonishing collapse merited.

Six weeks have now elapsed since the operating company, a joint venture between FirstGroup and Italy’s state-owned Trenitalia, announced it was suspending ticket sales and cutting its schedules from seven to four trains an hour due to “severe staff shortages” – leaving just one train an hour on critical routes, and with plenty of those still being cancelled owing to lack of drivers and crew.

Regulars report a spiral of decline: overcrowded carriages, knock-on delays, understocked shops, unflushable toilets. The very fact of running a reduced timetable means that one additional cancellation piles on more and more disgruntled passengers into even worse conditions, multiplying the complaints and stress for the frontline crew.

While the rail industry reported it was doing everything it could last week to help people travel