Tony, could you spare a minute?

Congratulations on your statesmanlike tour of Egypt, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Now is it too much to ask that you give five minutes' attention to the desperate plight of millions of your own people?

Sweeping in from the airport behind the motorcycle outriders, have you even a smidgen of a clue what life is like for the commuters of this city? Today, as every day, Tube trains and rail stations will be jammed with bodies; squalor will rule the coaches and services will be cancelled willy-nilly. You are too busy to give a second glance to the discredited scheme for the public-private partnership. Your hapless Transport Secretary has lost all credibility, even when he is not on holiday.

After five years of New Labour, not a single useful step has yet been taken to modernise the Underground. The Government has devoted its big transport effort not to helping passengers, but to shafting Ken Livingstone and Bob Kiley. On the railways, union militants of the kind we have not seen since the Seventies are wrecking journeys with impunity.

Every prime minister enjoys launching the SAS against international foes, undoing the Taliban and being f?ted at the high tables of Washington. But the real test of your premiership will be whether you can save Britain's public services. So far, if you take a look down the platform, you will see why most Londoners think you are failing miserably. The railways - and passengers - appear to have been abandoned to their fate.

Every Evening Standard reader knows that London passengers are treated worse than cattle - more like criminals. They have few rights, low expectations and no chance of remission for good behaviour.

Tube and commuter rail managers exploit every opportunity to cash in on their monopolies. Last week it was reported that Connex has applied to the Strategic Rail Authority to introduce trains with no lavatories and fewer seats in an attempt to cram in more passengers. Only a state-backed monopolist could do this. Meanwhile, the RMT and Aslef strike at will.

Ministers are spared the misery and indignity of London commuter travel, whisked to their offices by chauffeurs. Presumably your deputy "Honest John" Prescott, the man who was responsible for Britain's declining transport system for most of the past five years, has two of those as well.

"Security considerations" give New Labour's commissars free passage on our bus lanes. Tube travel for ministers means the odd photo-call on a specially-cleaned train for a single-stop mid-morning journey from Westminster to St James's Park.

You ought to try peak-hour commuting one day. Then you might understand just how much rage there is towards the politicians who created this shambles. It is not just uncomfortable, it is degrading.

The Tube and the overground commuter services have become a disgrace to a great city, a great nation. And just what is your government doing about it?

For the overwhelming majority of London commuters, the car is not an option. Half of all railway journeys made in Britain each day are on the Underground. Many of the other half - on the national railways - involve London commuters. This enforced commitment to public transport makes the capital massively different to the rest of the country. Because Londoners cannot switch to an alternative mode of transport, your government has been able to ignore the plight of the capital's travelling public.

Londoners do the right thing by the environment. They also do their best to achieve the Government's transport policy objective of getting people out of their cars and on to public transport. Eighty per cent of central London commuters arrive by public transport. In the City, the figure is over 90 per cent. Bus, Tube and rail travel have been on the increase in the capital. Each time your ministers boast public transport use has been increasing, it is London that allows them to do so.

Recently, your PR machine has been making glowing claims about increases in bus and rail use in Britain. The reality is that bus passenger numbers only rose in 2000-01 because of a four per cent jump in London. In the rest of the country, patronage actually fell by one per cent. If I were your old friend Ken Livingstone I would make hay about this - 2000-01 was his first year in charge of London's buses. Awkwardly, in your own home region - the North-East - bus use dropped by four per cent. Red Ken has saved your political skin.

The same is true on the railways. Nationally your Government has highlighted a "three per cent rise" in rail passenger numbers in 2000-01. However, most of this increase was accounted for by a four per cent jump in London commuters.

Inter-city rail use plunged by three per cent, while ridership on provincial systems such as the Glasgow Underground and Tyne & Wear Metro also fell. Outside London, rail and bus use was declining in 2000-01, despite strong economic growth.

Yet despite doing the right thing, London commuters have been abandoned. Your ministers and officials have failed to get to grips with the rail commuter system and Underground upon which so many of them depend. Doubtless, Treasury advisers cynically tell the Chancellor that simply by making life hell for road users, commuters will be forced on to the capital's public transport system, however dire it is. This would be old-fashioned, old Labour, levelling-down equality. It is not exactly the high-quality public service ethos of which you so often speak.

There can be no way of evading this responsibility. Your government has now been in charge for almost five years. Whatever mess you inherited from the Tories, it is no longer possible simply to point backwards and blame the ghosts of Conservative transport ministers. Your government appointed the members of the Strategic Rail Authority, which was set up to sort out the railways. So far, things have only got worse. Your ministerial colleagues must also take responsibility for the appalling decline in London Underground's service quality since 1997.

The Tube last year failed to achieve any of the seven of the service targets set for it. These targets were less demanding than those set for earlier years. Measures of overcrowding, punctuality and cancellations on both the Underground and commuter lines show an utterly miserable picture. So much for a government committed to public service excellence.

Londoners are simply fed up with being told the much-delayed public-private partnership will solve the Tube's problems. PPP contracts are still not signed, despite strong Treasury support and the fact your government has a massive Parliamentary majority. Even if the PPP is finalised in April (which is very unlikely), it will take ages before the decline in service quality can be halted. Your government will fight the next general election with the Tube in a worse condition than it is in today, with the PPP (and thus the Government) blamed by Mayor Ken Livingstone for every breakdown and failure.

In your New Year's message, you stated: "It will take sustained investment and a constructive long-term partnership between the public and private sectors" to improve the railways. The trouble is, we have been reading this kind of platitude for five years. Either the government really wants to improve the railways and the Tube, or it should admit the task is beyond it. The many months it has taken to appoint a handful of new managers to the SRA and to start re-constructing Railtrack is breathtakingly languid.

Everyone knows extra public money isn't everything. But surely you are just a little embarrassed that average investment in the core Underground in the five years since 1997 has been lower than the figure for the six years of John Major's premiership?

For many commuters, New Labour means a daily liaison with filthy, slam-door, Southern Region trains. I doubt this is what you really want. Years of waiting for the PPP and months of dithering over the future of Railtrack suggest the Transport Department now needs the intervention and surgery you meted out to the Ministry of Agriculture during the foot and mouth outbreak. The capital, more than any other part of the country, depends on an effective and efficient rail system.

International political considerations cannot wholly replace domestic ones. Surely the time has come to take personal action to sort out London's railways.

Yours sincerely, Tony Travers

Tony Travers is director of the Greater London group at the London School of Economics

Comment: Blame Labour
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