Telegrammed by the Velopodist
Matthew Engel's assertion that other countries have avoided the ticket barrier is typical of the rosy-eyed view so many of the British middle classes have of other countries' railways.
And I suppose, given the slow or non-existent passenger growth on these railways and their extravagant spending on high-prestige, low-use high-speed trains, they are at least less crowded and busy than those on our own sceptred isles' fast-growing system.
But one does wonder whether Mr Engel has ever been to Paris?
The ticket barriers on the Paris metro are some of the most hostile to be found anywhere.
And, if one insists that the examples have to be from the mainline railways, the dreadful, dangerous, full-body height barriers on Paris's RER seem far, far more dangerous than the relatively timid, health-and-safety-compliant ones we have in this country.
I find it hard to think of any metro not equipped with some equivalent of the British ticket barriers, most of them far more dicey than ours.
Admittedly, most continental European countries do without barriers at their mainline termini - why bother when the taxpayer is paying most of the cost of the journey, after all?
But would the barrier-haters really prefer the ticket-cancelling system so prevalent in continental Europe? Once one's bought one's ticket, one normally has to find an obscure, hidden machine either on the platform or train to cancel it. Fail to locate such a box in time and one will be accosted by an angry, moustachioed man in a peaked cap demanding in no uncertain terms that one pay a fine five or six times the cost of the ticket one's already bought.
Of course, if the cancelling system were the normal British one and other countries preferred simple, automatic ticket barriers, a certain kind of person would simply change positions.
The cancelling system would be held up as an example of the officious, money-grubbing privatised British railway. The ticket barriers, meanwhile, would be seen as a paragon of continental efficiency that we should immediately import to our own, benighted country.
Given the way Lord Adonis has recently droned on about the wonders of the low-growth railways in Germany, France, Spain and Italy, perhaps we should name the affliction 'Adonitis'.
Mind you, if they can't tell the difference between a 57 and a 67 then a seat in The Commons surely awaits.
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