The government has announced a plan to equip hundreds of British trains with improved WiFi, part of a broader connectivity push. For the commuting classes, this is the kind of news that lands somewhere between a sigh of relief and a quiet groan. On the one hand, yes: the prospect of actually getting work done between Paddington and Bristol without buffering icons haunting your screen. On the other, it feels like another inch of public life surrendered to the inbox.
Let's be honest: the WiFi on trains has long been a national joke. Patchier than a teenager's essay, slower than a Sunday service. I have seen hardened business travellers weep into their lattes as that little spinning wheel refused to load a PDF. So the promise of 'seamless connectivity' is not just a convenience. It is a psychological salve. We are, after all, a nation that measures its self-worth by productivity. Every minute spent offline is a minute of guilt. This plan, then, is less about technology and more about collective anxiety relief.
But consider the secondary effect. Trains are one of the last liminal spaces where you are allowed to be silent, to stare out a window, to have a quiet conversation with a stranger. Better WiFi ensures that even that brief, bounded journey is colonised by the demands of work. The laptop lid will stay open. The notifications will stream in. The carriage will hum not with chatter, but with the quiet click of keyboards. It is efficiency. It is also a loss.
Then there is the class angle. Who benefits? The commuter in First Class with a power socket and a table. The zero-hours contractor on the regional line still hunched over a phone with 3G? Not so much. The plan targets 'hundreds of trains' but not all. The geography of connectivity is a map of privilege: better WiFi on the London-Brighton line than on the Manchester-Blackpool. The government's push is framed as national, but the reality will be splintered.
What the announcement really signals is a cultural shift: the end of the train as a sanctuary. We are moving from a world where you caught up on life to one where you catch up on email. The 'human cost' here is subtle. It is the lost daydream, the forgotten novel, the conversation not had. But we will not mourn them. We will celebrate being able to stream a film in 4K while hurtling past the Cotswolds. And that, perhaps, is the greatest loss of all: we no longer treasure the moments when we are unreachable.
For now, the plan is a promise of progress. But observe the carriage in twelve months. Look at the bowed heads, the glowing screens, the silent rows. The WiFi will be better. And something else will be gone.
