No more pay as you go

50p?! You're really taking the piss...

Some things in life are deeply inconvenient.

Like having to scrabble around to try and find some change, so you can queue up and pay, just to use the loo at a railway station. Especially if your need is of the pressing variety.

For a long time, the pay to pee fee has applied at some Network Rail-managed stations – in some cases, spending a penny actually cost 50 pence, which is taking the... well, you get the idea.

Mercifully, free loos are set to return next year, after outgoing chief exec, Marc Carne, decided it was time to “treat people with dignity and respect”. Good call. Shame it’s taken so long to do.

Network Rail will be caught short to the tune of millions of pounds per year, although it must be possible for costs from exorbitantly-priced train fares to be re-directed to flow towards toilet provision and upkeep in some way.

Quite why it will take until next year, in some cases, to sort out is harder to fathom. Surely taking out some barriers can’t be that difficult, can it? They must be round the u-bend if they can’t just leave them open, or set to operate without desperate commuters having to shovel coins into a slot.

Credit to Carne, though. As he correctly states, “I think it is quite wrong to penalise people when they are in discomfort. Our job should be to make their life easier, not more difficult.”

I’m relieved to hear that.

This post first appeared as the third piece in my column/page in The Mail and the News & Star, on the 9th of March 2018. They added "at stations" to the end, and included a picture of a concourse somewhere and another of train tracks. OK...

(CD A-Z: Stevie Wonder's "The Definitive Collection".)

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