The mystery bus.

Or rather the mystery of the empty coach.

The Times has uncovered the fact that an executive coach leaves Ealing Broadway station in West London every Tuesday morning promptly at 9.45 a.m. (Where it has come from is not clear, but evidently from its garage somewhere. ) No one gets on or off, and it leaves on a 70 minute trip to Wandsworth Road in South London. The coach has 48 seats, but occasionally when it is unavailable a split level 100-seat "megadecker" is used, again running empty.

There it waits for 2 hours and and quarter, before returning, again empty of passengers. No timetables are published, staff generally do not know about the service, although there is written detail, entitled "Rail replacement bus. Internal document not for display or distribution."

The service costs the Department for Transport £500 for each return journey, although a Times reporter and a photographer did manage to catch it at a cost of £5.10 each.

In fact when a passenger complained that the DfT was withdrawing a service, without going through legal process, public consultation or investigation by the Office of Rail Regulation, he received a replay from DfT that a replacement bus service was operating between stations close to the sections of track, which were not being closed!

According to the Times, until 14th December 2008 Crosscountry ran two trains in each direction between Birmingham and Brighton, using these sections of track in West London, each train used by about 80 passengers. DfT claims that the carriages were needed to relieve overcrowding between Birmingham and Leeds, as orders for the delivery of new rolling stock had been delayed. The DfT has no immediate plans to reinstate the Birmingham/Brighton service, and it is likely to remain suspended indefinitely.

When the Birmingham/Brighton service is a distant memory and its removal has lost some of its political sting, it is possible that it will be wound up with some kind of public consultation and proper legal process. In the meantime, the whole issue is being "buried" at the cost of £500 per week.

What is worrying is that a government which is currently taking its cabinet meetings into the provinces, and talks regularly about consulting the public, engages in subterfuge and duplicity, and in the process subverts democracy.

The cost may be only £25,000 or so a year, but it is highly likely that similar amounts are being spent in other places in order to conceal and prevent the public from using processes which are laid down. Perhaps the words mendacity and cynicism are appropriate?