Taken for a (free) ride

Let no-one tell you public transport is on the way out, caught in the nutcracker jaws of Government parsimony and the irresistible rise of the car.

A few days back, the number of buses available in the West Sussex market town in which I live doubled, at the very least. Possibly the increase was even larger. Better still, the fare level on the new buses was precisely zero.

True, the extra vehicles were on the street for one day only. Furthermore, they were driven and conducted by volunteers, bus preservation society members. And yet . . . so what? A bus is a bus, and as my wife noted, these 'preserved' vehicles were, for the most part, indistinguishable from those that ferried us round as children and teenagers in the Seventies. Possibly, they were the same machines.

Quite what the two commercial operators that run services out of our town made of it is hard to say. True, some of the free rides simply took passengers round a housing estate and back to the town centre. But one journey ran all the way to Godstone in Surrey and back again, the sort of trip for which the 'real' bus companies are presumably used to extracting coin of the realm from their customers.

It is 18 years since Graham Coster addressed the question of whether 'preserved' railways are actually railways or merely extravagant hobbies in his novel Train, Train ((Bloomsbury). If a bus or railway preservation society publishes a timetable and runs scheduled services, albeit for the enjoyment of its members, there is presumably nothing to stop the schoolchild or commuter from making use of those services, provided they go to the right destinations.

And if they do so, and - more importantly - come to rely on them, surely those services have become as 'real' as those operated by Transport for London or First Capital Connect? True, they are likely to be hopelessly uneconomic and subsidised by the free labour of enthusiasts. But plenty of public transport services are kept going by public subsidy, rather than solely by money taken in fares. What is the big difference?

Ultimately, we are sniffy with (in particular) preserved railways because many, perhaps most, are devoted not so much to the continuation of a particular line, but to the continuation of a particular form of locomotion - steam. The line is merely a means to this end.

Some years ago, my family and I were visiting a station on a preserved railway line. On the same day, the station was also visited by members of a Second World War society, resplendent in RAF uniforms and other period gear. Presumably, they were attracted by the prospect of striking poses next to steam engines of roughly the right period.

At the ticket barrier, one member - dressed as an Army officer - fell into an argument with a member of station staff as to whether his status allowed him on to the platform without paying. In other words, an Army officer (who was not one) debated with a ticket collector (who was not one) as to the privileges of his rank (which he did not possess).

This little incident doubtless tells us a lot about the way we live today.

Precisely what that may be, I have no idea.

- Dan Atkinson, Economics Editor, Mail on Sunday