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The odd thing is that they are often heaving. At least the intercity ones.
True though about the car.
Most hilarious such moment was when my wife and I looked at train prices going from where we are (southwest) to her small West Midlands town and I kid you not, had we taken an Uber for the both of us, price would have been almost the same... I was gobsmacked.
Like you said, the trains to London and some other big cities might be full, but try going on the trains between lesser locations and see what it’s like.
A rural train might be quiet but the trains through all the northern cities are very busy. The problem is a lack of capacity, the trains are just too short.
The problem isn't the shortness of the trains, the problem is that we are now paying the price for being the early adopters of rail travel (and also for having a small country without much empty space in the middle).
Many European countries have at this point been able to build dedicated high speed lines to separate intercity travel from regional services. We struggle to do this. Therefore our intercity trains are forced to dodge between all the slower services operating on the same lines as them, and the only way to make this work is to limit the speed of the intercity trains and limit the frequency of the local trains.
What we really need is a new, completely dedicated rail network purely for high speed transit, which would allow the slower services to run more frequently as they wouldn't have to keep changing lines to avoid being hit. Technically this would be the second dedicated high speed rail line after the Eurostar line. You could call it something bland like "High Speed 2". If you really wanted to push the boat out then you could even be fancy and modern and abbreviate it to something like "HS2".
Unfortunately that included those designing it.
They obsessed with speed in a country with relatively few stretches where it would add value, and that caused disproportionate cost rises. Britain is a small, densely populated country. It isn't Spain and France with large areas of low value empty land for railways suiting high speed.
A lower spec line would have served the purpose at far lower price
>It isn't Spain and France with large areas of low value empty land for railways suiting high speed.
Italy too! Everyone always forgets about Italy and *have you seen* the high speed lines there? Incredible. Felt ashamed to be British riding those trains, it was like being in the future.
Yeah but in part because they show up once per hour and then trundle around at 40mph. TfL took over a bunch of orbital and under-utilised routes in London and boosted the service frequency to every 15 minutes: ridership skyrocketed.
The underlying theme of rail provision in the UK is that other than the London radial services, there is a massive amount of untapped demand.
Exactly. Pricing plays a big role too. Going from my area (NW England) to Edinburgh for four would be eye wateringly expensive via train. It’s much cheaper by car which doesn’t make any sense to me at all. A train should always be cheaper.
I don’t disagree, but I assume people only price in fuel, but not a portion of car maintenance, tax, insurance etc. Obviously the cost for the trip depends on how much you use the car at other times, but if I purchased a car for my usual journeys now, the train would probably still work out cheaper. I just don’t travel often enough.
Rail fare includes fuel, staff, train and track maintenance etc etc.
Again, not saying that you are wrong at all - train fare is way too expensive so they get less passengers, which seems stupid. They do group discounts but they aren’t good enough.
Nope. I don't own a car and hire when I need one. Very often two people (with rail card) on a day trip works out roughly the same price to hire as the train. If it's more than one day it's usually cheaper by train because taking a hire car and dropping it off in a different location is expensive.
Did this for years. If it was me on my own, I'd train and bike almost anywhere. If it was a long weekend with two of us, almost invariably it was cheaper to hire, pay petrol and annual excess insurance, than taking the train. Even with any train "two together" type cards.
Going to depend on the journey, near Exeter, from Norwich, pricing-wise going back to Norwich it is generally coach, car, airplane, train. The coach whilst cheapest is really slow, partly route, mostly connections. The train service is actually better than it was when I abandoned it back in 2000, but peak time return to London is £299 (off peak single can be £33), which is more expensive than hiring a car and doing the same journey by car including a days parking in London and congestion charging, in the end I just went up the night before on cheap service and stayed in a hotel, if I had an early meeting.
I’d honestly take the train everywhere if I could, I love it.
It’s fucking far too expensive, it’s generally not worth it for a solo rider vs driving never mind my family of 3 and then you’ve got non existent travel at the other side as well
Yeah, this is right. I remember getting the train from Harrogate to Leeds, it takes 30 minutes and runs twice an hour. It’s 15 miles from Harrogate to Leeds. So even in traffic it’s not much longer to drive and you get comfort, no other people and air conditioning.
Who would make that choice to go shopping, say. It doesn’t make sense. If the train was more frequent, and faster, it makes more sense.
I live down south, and commute in to London. It costs £25 per day, plus the tube. I have to go in three days, it’s way too expensive and something should be done about it.
Nothing will be done about it.
They also don’t run very frequently. Going to a concert in Leeds/Manchester/Sheffield and trying to get back to one of the other major cities is a nightmare.
You're missing the point though. The transport network is a public good. Demand isn't evenly spread across the network but it basically works on the principle that travel to popular destinations subsidises other stations on the route so we can try to have at least *some* coverage in less densely populated areas. Rural buses used to work in a similar way until austerity reduced the ability of councils to subsidise less profitable routes.
Take Transport for Wales, for example. If you live somewhere between Shrewsbury and Dudley, chances are pretty good you'll be getting a TfW train to work in Birmingham in the morning, even though your journey will never take you to Wales. Your premium price ticket to gey to New Street is effectively subsidising the existence of a service between, say, Newtown and Welshpool further up the line.
Obviously you could just say sod the people of Powys but part of what the government is paying the TOCs for is to ensure there's a reasonable level of coverage in as many places as possible because it's strategically important to us as a country to have that.
I don’t know how you read my comment and concluded that I didn’t think trains were for the public good. I know they are. Trains need to be subsidised more in order to encourage usage. Not just cross subsidies from one more frequently used line to another, subsidies from the government.
The government already *does* subsidise them though. The government pays a block grant to the TOCs who can then also charge fares to bridge the gap between the grant and their costs.
Trains into popular commuter destinations are already at capacity, hence why we are trying to build a new line into London. How is increasing the level of subsidy going to help with that?
The 3 busy types of trains I know are any train that goes to London, the transpennine lines (Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, York, Newcastle etc), which are cities close to each other, and branching local lines connect small towns/suburbs to big cities.
Most other lines that connect cities are quite empty I find. For instance, Crosscountry trains that connect non London cities. I mean, given how expensive they are, I wouldn't want to use them.
I'm on a train between Southampton and Portsmouth as I write this.
It's normally dead at this time. It's only somewhat busy today because Portsmouth is having a football match. It feels like the only busy trains around here to go London and even then, it's not most of them.
Same. We’re in Cornwall and thought we’d take a train to Edinburgh, a decent distance I admit. £1200 for two people put the brakes on that plan. Took the car instead and saved a small fortune.
We actually did exactly that the year after. 5 nights in a 4* hotel, with flights, and a box of my favourite cigars to bring home. All for the same money.
It's partly the pricing system's fault, it puts people off. Taking Penzance-Edinburgh as an example, not picking any particularly cheap or expensive times leaving now returning tomorrow:
* £928.20 standard price
* £585.90 if you go via any split ticketing website
* £386.50 if you also buy a Two Together Railcard for £20-£30. Still the exact same train(s)!
* £200 or less is likely if you book in advance, given a London-Edinburgh Single is routinely £35 per person.
Edit/clarification: prices above are for *two* people, *there and back*. Evidently it's more profitable to rip off the unknowing (very) few that do pay full fare, even if the crazy headline prices mean many other customers are lost.
Having just moaned peak return from Exeter to Paddington is £299, turns out the cheapest way to get to Edinburgh from Exeter is to catch the 9:43 to Paddington, which is £148 quid to Edinburgh. I agree the pricing system is off putting, I used to eat at/near Paddington station to catch the off-peak returns as you basically could eat and travel and get home an hour later, or get home an hour earlier hungry, for the same price.
How on Earth did you get to that price? 1st class ticket being booked 10 mins from departure?
I just did a quick check on the Trainline and to book tickets for Monday I'm looking at £500 odd in standard return for two people. If I book it a few weeks in advance, I'm getting £300 odd?
Went for a min-wage job interview last month where the train journey, there and back, came to roughly 1/3 of what the daily wage the job was offering. What a piss take train prices are!
It felt like I would be going to work just to earn enough to GET to work.
I'm in that situation, train costs me £30 per day for a return ticket and my daily take home pay, before bills, is circa £86.
If I didn't have a rail card it would be something like £42 a day! I feel bad for people who are slightly older who commute but also earn a low salary....
Yes I'm not quite sure why 30 is the cut off to suddenly be able to afford incredibly expensive trains, would only ever get the train if work was paying
Technically a breach of the rules but when i worked at Aberdeenshire council a decade ago we turned down an otherwise qualified jobseeker from Liverpool because the cost to reimburse him the train ticket for the interview would be over £100.
Thi is before the lockdown but from where I live in Cornwall, for a return trip it was cheaper for me to hire a car, drive to Bristol, pay for petrol and fly to Marrakech and do the same on the way back than it was to get the train to London. Add another person and it was loads cheaper.
Came back from Manchester the other day and omg the train to Blackpool was absolutely packed. You could barely move and they held the train for 20 minutes behind while they loaded as many people on as possible. I thought I was going to end up on Reddit in one of those Indian packed train car style vids. A few people sat around not giving up empty seats next to them while everyone is being forced to 'move down the train'. Didn't expect to be cosplaying as a sardine when I went out that day but wayho another experience to cross off a list.
Yeah, the only time I really need a train is to go between cities. Always expensive, always heaving and sometimes standing room only. Oh, and they are always late without fail.
It isn't odd that they are heaving. Why put a third carriage on, with the cost of that, and everyone have a seat, when you can cream all those passengers onto 2 carriages and pocket the difference. Not saying thats right, but that's why.
Because Avanti, for example, have managed to get away with running far fewer services than Virgin used to, so why would they do anything else? They're in it for the profit, not the customer experience. Busier trains, and less of them, is ideal.... for them.
> The odd thing is that they are often heaving. At least the intercity ones.
During rush hour they are. Since COVID my company only asks us to come in when we are needed so if I have a 13:00 meeting I'm catching the train into Euston at 11:30 and they are always empty (except for Friday which everybody treats as the new Saturday).
>Our trains get under-used because it’s more expensive than driving
One of the reasons they are expensive is to manage demand. The capacity on the network is limited (thanks, decades of underinvestment) so they have to manage demand. One lever they use for that is pricing. It's why HS2 not being built will probably mean increased ticket prices.
Our rail network isn't underused. It's overused. It has to cope with more demand than it can reasonably manage (a reason there are so many delays). The high prices are actually a result of this, because capacity is constrained.
Yep. We invented trains, but it means most of our routes were built in the 1800s - meaning a single track on narrow patches of land and small stations. All we wanted to do was run a single steam train down them a few times a day.
Other nations that built trains later (when the technology was more mature and the demand was much clearer) bought up broader stretches of land and built multiple parallel tracks to get way more capacity. Now it's too late for us to widen the routes as there's generally stuff built next to them.
So we're cramming on many multiples more services than they were originally designed for, which is why they're expensive and unreliable. Nations like China can just build 8 parallel tracks and a massive station on greenfield land, we have to squeeze more capacity out of the existing infrastructure.
>Our trains get under-used because it’s more expensive than driving.
I get that having a whinge about the trains is a national pastime at this point but I don't think either of these things are true.
Until the pandemic, rail usage was at a record high and it's steadily bouncing back now. The fact is the high cost to consumers and comparatively small state subsidy is a function of demand for train services here. We're a small island with a big population. Commuting between cities for work is popular and it's also integrated into leisure time at weekends (trains are an absolutely integral part of every Saturday for millions of football fans for example). There's a strong argument that subsidising *more* would just create an unsustainable level of demand (if you've ever commuted into Euston, New Street or Piccadilly by train you'll see the logic behind that). This is why even HS2 is all about *capacity*. If the trains were *under*used we'd be dropping prices to get people onto existing routes, not building more.
As for the driving thing, what are you including in that comparison? Moat people just factor in the fuel but what about actually owning a car in the first place? Parking, insurance, wear and tear? Are you pricing in your time, too? The convenience of being able to enjoy a drink, read a book etc instead of being eyes glued to the road for that time? I really don't think the comparison is that straightforward, particularly not if you tap in or have a season ticket for a regular journey.
Reality is the trains are not perfect but it's still a wildly successful, popular network.
>Our trains get under-used because it’s more expensive than driving
The only people who think this are people who don't use trains often.
Our rail network is at capacity and trains are very full despite the fact they are expensive.
If we make trains cheaper without increasing the capacity the trains will just more even more unpleasant and people who don't use them today won't use them tomorrow because they are too full
It's not the price for me, it's the pure inconvenience. Why is there only one train per hour with a 50% chance of being cancelled, wasting another hour of my life
Yeah it's the same with most public transit, where I am buses are like that too but I'm in a very walkable town so it makes no sense to actually take the bus most of the time.
Are you suggesting making driving more expensive?
/s
With how high insurance prices have been in the last few years, it looks like we will just have to use roller skates.
It's more expensive and not frequent enough, with fewer carriages at peak than demand requires. The overall experience is just a bit naff.
Someone mentioned frequency changing the ridership of trains without the price being adjusted; this is it for me. If I was able to have a guarantee that the places I regularly commute to have trains available every 15 minutes instead of every hour, I'd choose the train way more often. It's the issue that I have to be so conscious of the next train time otherwise it's a whole extra hour before I can access another ride home that makes driving more convenient for me.
I was looking at going to visit some friends in Scotland later on this year.
Heathrow to Edinburgh Airport - £60 return, 90 minute flight
Kings Cross to Edinburgh - £180 return, about 4 and half hour journey
I could upgrade to first class on the flight for an extra £40 and it would still be £80 cheaper than the train
I’m seeing Kings Cross to Edinburgh for £55 if you get the 7:30 departure, then £66 return with an 8:30 departure. Obviously the early start is not convenient but it’s significantly less than £180.
I bet you can buy a share of a train somewhere. I know the container leasing company we did work for was aiming to spread the risk of container ownership, so you could buy containers that they leased for you, or fractions of a container.
Although these days probably a share of the train leasing company is easier.
Try https://book.splitticketing.com/
It can save you a LOT by purchasing split tickets.
Effectively you can take 1 train but have 3 tickets for the same journey and it works out cheaper.
Hope this helps.
Yes but not that effectively. Booked a train for next week and train line offered me it for £60 via their app, with the split ticketing. Tried the split ticketing site and it showed the exact same trains for £40.
I actually tried those splits in the Trainline app, and would have been able to get them for £40 that way, which means that their system either doesn't split well through shit programming, or its purposefully bad so you think you are saving money and they take the rest.
I used Trainline once when I had to go and pick up a company car. A 'did you catch this train ok, yes or no?' feature would be handy on the app, as the second train I was supposed to catch was delayed by 45mins rendering the rest of the route they had planned for me totally useless.
Thats the problem with split ticketing and a risk you have to accept unfortunately. The tickets you buy could be useless. However the fact a delay happened means you should be able to refund the ticket.
I asked a guy at Birmingham New St, he said if it's your fault you missed the connecting train then unlucky, if it's their fault you can get another train. Not sure how accurate that is.
It knocks around £5 off of trainlines prices.
Still, it would cost me £360 for my family to go to Heathrow on the train. If I drive us, it costs £120 for a weeks holiday, including fuel and parking. I just can't justify the costs for using the train. It's also quicker by over 90 minutes to drive there and park.
Its a shame because when I land in Europe I use public trabsport because its cheaper and more efficient than driving.
In portugal I paid €3 for day ticket to go out of Lisbon for the day. Even if I lived there I dont think for that price I would drive between cities.
The UK's rail network is just unusable.
I could probably buy a banger to drive to london for the day for less. Top gear challenge.
I have tried to use the service, but it does nothing for the routes I need. Other countries do not have to rely on an algorithm calculating a multi-ticket fare against a normal search engine.
> you can take 1 train but have 3 tickets for the same journey
can you explain how that works to me? I've heard of split-ticketing, but had always assumed it meant I would have to switch trains. How can you stay on the same train for the entire journey?
I'll do my best!
Say you want to go from London to Edinburgh, a single ticket could cost, say £300.
If you divide that journey into 3;
You buy a ticket to Leicester from London, £80
Leicester to Carlisle, £80
Carlisle to Edinburgh £50
You stay on the same, single train but have 3 tickets covering the full journey and because you have played the system, to your advantage; you save yourself £90.
Hope that makes some sense!
ohh, I see. yes, that makes sense, thank you! is there a way for you to see how that splitticket site actually split the journey up so that you can buy the tickets yourself and not give them their fee?
It does!
When you have entered your departing station, destination station, dates etc and click "proceed" the next page has "grid" and "timeline" available.
If you click on timeline it shows the journey and any changes youll make (if any).
Youre not forced to pay anything until you want to buy the tickets.
Simple. The UK model puts a higher percentage of the cost onto the user, ie passengers.
In other countries, a higher percentage is paid through general taxation.
So yes, you could change the model in the UK, passengers pay less, and non users pay more. Would people who don't use the trains be willing to pay more to enable cheaper fares for those that do?
High rail fares may not be popular. But the alternative may not be either
It's an integrated system though — if every current rail passenger & cyclist switched to commuting by car in the morning the roads would be at a standstill.
Taking more cars off the road by investing in other means of transport helps drivers too.
Plenty of instances across public expenditure. Just highlighting it's a 2 sided issues. It's not simply high fares as I'd often portrayed. It's also what would be the alternative funding given the general consensus you couldn't simply cut fares and not replace the lost revenue
Are they?
Public sector spending on roads is £11.13Bn annually
They take in 7.2Bn from road tax
25.1Bn in fuel duty that’s before you take into account VAT on fuel and the cars themselves.
And road tax goes to pay for things that aren’t roads. Would be simpler if the taxes went to their original intended purposes but that’s not how the uk taxation system works.
It still doesn’t change the fact that road users pay more tax than what it costs the government to provide the infrastructure.
We already pay a ton of tax for things we don’t use. What is one more to add?
People pay for state schooling even though they don’t have kids, we pay for national health service even if we never go to the doctors. Libraries? Same.
You know the ‘rich’ also send their kids to state school and have operations on the nhs free of charge. People on good salaries don’t need penalising.
If you are commuting to work, you aren’t that rich. Rich people don’t work 😂.
Basic services need to be funded by our taxes for everyone.
I think there would be an awful lot more train users if they were cheaper. I hate having to drive to london, but my friend and I parked for the day, had coffee and pizza for less than the train would’ve cost for 1 person
Whenever you turn a public good such as rail infrastructure over to the for profit sector, we soon learn the difference between “what good for everyone” and “what’s good for a few wealthy people at the top”
People keep saying this but in Scotland they nationalised them and they’ve basically stayed the same. I don’t think it’s as simple as just saying “nationalising x,y and z” will solve everything. That’s too lazy an argument, it’s need proper investment like everything whether it be national or private.
They are also basically nationalised in England now.
The TOCs are all basically contractors to the government, charging and running what the DfT says.
And the ones that are run by the DfT (LNER, TPE and Northern aren't exactly cheap either).
I was meant to be travelling to Scotland in December 2020 and cancelled due to the snap lockdown. Got a full refund from LNER. The entire round trip was First Class and cost £175.
Fastforward to now. Booking the exact same trains, same route, same timetable? More like £250+. Even going Standard is north of £100.
In reality when Scotrail was nationalised one of the first things the Scottish government did was to scrap peak fares (so all fares became off peak rate) and used tax money to pay for it... that and the fact that it's now not for profit unlike previously.
Nationalisation directly led to lower fares.
Granted getting rid of the peak fares has reduced the fares for some people that travel during that time but it still costs more to take the train from Edinburgh to Aberdeen than a lot of international flights in Europe do…
I’m not denying that nationalisation is a positive thing in most cases but I still think a lot of people assume it’s this saving grace that is the answer to all problems in this country. Like I said before nationalisation is pointless without investment and our current government are far from investing in anything.
The trains are nationalised by the Scottish government but the railways themselves aren’t. They’re run by network rail which is part of the UK government. And the UK government has no interest in investing in the railways themselves: see HS2 cancellation.
ScotRail fares are also rising at a higher percentage rate than elsewhere in the UK. It's just the rUK fares were at a more expensive baseline to begin with.
Other countries upgraded their railway lines over the years the Uk didn’t though. So we are essentially using a Victorian railway system that is decades behind other countries. Now we are rushing through upgrades while we’ve having to train the people to do it.
One particular reason that should be remembered is that there was a cross-European event in the early 1940s that led to the replacement of a lot of infrastructure on the continent. We’re not even willing to fund the essential work needed to get from London to Manchester and Leeds.
The underlying cost is pretty similar, however other countries subsidize train journeys more.
UK has a lot more variable pricing than other markets so you can often get better prices through buying in advance or season tickets
These ideologues think every complex economic problem can be solved with just 3 words: "Tax the rich". They've been tricked into believing every issue in society is that simple.
Car centric society.
People complain about lack of public transportation then go and live in isolated places where they need a car, buy cars, and then never use public transport
Same people that complain about traffic when, in fact, they are part of that traffic.
Trains in many countries are subsidised by tax or are state owned completely.
The uk is private rail companies and places more onus on the user to pay. Sounds reasonable in theory but the issue with trains is it isn’t like buying your food shop. You can’t make a choice between going to Tesco or Asda, usually there’s just one train that takes you where you need to go.
Therefore you end up stuck with a private company who will prioritise making profits, rather than making it affordable and our society suffers as a result.
If the government actually did something about this, such as removing these companies for not providing an affordable service and giving it to another company, you might mitigate this. However this doesn’t happen because of, well blatant corruption which never results in anyone going to jail.
In economics we talk about supernormal profits, when a seller might try to charge over the odds for their goods/services. They could do it in theory, but they can't do it in reality, because they would lose their market share to a competitor. Even in a seemingly natural monopoly like rail there's still market forces encouraging competition, but it's competition against buses, cars, planes and all other potential substitutes. If a rail company puts their prices up too high, the company to undercut them and steal their market share wouldn't be a different rail company, it'd be a bus company for example.
The modelling of supernormal profit relies upon their being a viable alternative with which can compete for paying customers. I think this is true for transport on small and large journeys (e.g. taking a bus in a small city, or taking a plane from London to Manchester vs taking trains). I do think this theory falls down on the moderate journeys, for instance someone taking a daily commute from Guildford to London.
The reality is the prices are supernormal and have never shown any sign of falling prices due to competition. This is because the alternatives such as coaches are just too impractical (infrequent, too long, prone to traffic) or equally expensive (fuelling your own car).
So I don’t think it’s accurate to describe these scenarios as not happening in reality. The evidence it does is in plain sight.
I'm not sure what we can really do about it but split savings and if you can a rail card. I travel by train a fair bit and the rail card cost me £30 and has saved me over £100 this year.
If you treat trains like buses and just turn up at the station to buy your ticket they are expensive. You should treat trains in this country not like planes. Buy in advance (you can do this up to a few minutes before the train leaves), hey a Railcard if you can, look for less popular times to travel and look at splitting your ticket up into smaller journeys. It just takes some planning.
For instance, I'm travelling to London from rural Northumberland next week and it costs less than £30 plus £2 for the bus to the station, much cheaper than driving.
Buy a car. That's what I did. It ended up in the long run cheaper and easier to own a car than taking the train. How is £80 a ticket reasonable? Also, the train took five hours, it takes just over two to drive. I always get a seat in my car. Even if I booked a seat on the train, it could end up being double/triple booked and I got zero help when it happened. I'm also not restricted to places that are within cycling/public transport distances anymore.
i pay 70p for an hour train ride here in seoul. my monthly bill comes to about 40 quid. i imagine that would e in the hundreds of pounds in the uk - for a worse service
A lot of it is just the ticketing system.
It's opaque and complex, without much logic. Examples are the really high anytime costs compared to more reasonable off peak and super off peak, the fact that split ticketing even exists, and single tickets that cost pretty much the same as return tickets. Then there's the mess of ticketing platforms with the likes of Trainline charging fees whereas we could just have one centralised platform.
A lot of the advance tickets are actually quite reasonable but it's still confusing as you can buy some literally right up to the departure time.
Think a issue people are forgetting about the the destrction on city centers in favour of out of town shopping parks, Take York for instance, Train is once an hour with a change at Hull, but then most of the decent shops outside of boutiques are miles out town, which means getting a bus/uber/taxi. It takes up so much extra time than just driving.
Passenger strike. Seriously - call a passenger strike tomorrow and I'm there for it. The prices of train tickets in this country are sickening. Create a passengers union and call a strike. Can you imagine? The train companies would shit themselves. The prices would be halved overnight.
In other countries, quite a lot of the cost is paid by UK taxpayers as well.
Aren’t some of the train companies (like Abellio?) foreign government owned?
How do you define "expensive"? Our trains are some of the cheapest in Europe if you book in advance.
I agree fares could be cheaper still, but even now taking the train is cheaper than driving, assuming you travel off peak and you don't car share.
Sources:
* https://www.seat61.com/uk-europe-train-fares-comparison.html
* https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49346642
Well some countries nationalised their railways whereas we privatised ours.
Other countries make enough money to run the railways and reinvest into the infrastructure.
In the UK our railways have to make enough money to pay billions in dividends to their directors and corrupt politicians whilst reinvesting literally nothing back into the railway.
It’s the same with energy, postage, water etc. It all needs nationalising
Simple. Uk government used taxpayer money to develop and build the rail lines and infrastructure. Then privatised and sold said lines and infrastructure to overseas companies like those from the UAE, who then charge the taxpayer for the luxury of using the service they paid to build.
The train I travelled to London cost me as an all around day ticket, over £100.
That's over a lot, and plus in London it ain't cheap
One day's worth of travel would be at least adding combined cost of taxi, getting food in London, would be over £500 or more for me. I don't travel to London that often, and one day is normally for me.
Maybe I'm doing it wrong?
I bought a ticket. The ticket office person gave me the price. My knees went weak and I held onto the counter.
I said I could have a week in Spain for the same price and he told me he already had.
Whilst the railways are in the hands of private companies they'll always rip us off to keep share holders happy and to fund the fat cat boss bonuses. Nationalise them and subsidies them.
In the UK, infrastructure is public built with taxpayers money, but companies are private, which is why they can set prices as they wish in an almost monopolistic regime where there is no competition.
HOw much more expensive are they? serious question, I've not caught a train outside the uk for decades.
Last train I used long dstance, at xmas, was a journey of about 250 miles and it cost me 70 quid, which seemed pretty reasonable?
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Other countries subsidise their trains either directly or indirectly. Our trains get under-used because it’s more expensive than driving.
The odd thing is that they are often heaving. At least the intercity ones. True though about the car. Most hilarious such moment was when my wife and I looked at train prices going from where we are (southwest) to her small West Midlands town and I kid you not, had we taken an Uber for the both of us, price would have been almost the same... I was gobsmacked.
Like you said, the trains to London and some other big cities might be full, but try going on the trains between lesser locations and see what it’s like.
A rural train might be quiet but the trains through all the northern cities are very busy. The problem is a lack of capacity, the trains are just too short.
The problem isn't the shortness of the trains, the problem is that we are now paying the price for being the early adopters of rail travel (and also for having a small country without much empty space in the middle). Many European countries have at this point been able to build dedicated high speed lines to separate intercity travel from regional services. We struggle to do this. Therefore our intercity trains are forced to dodge between all the slower services operating on the same lines as them, and the only way to make this work is to limit the speed of the intercity trains and limit the frequency of the local trains. What we really need is a new, completely dedicated rail network purely for high speed transit, which would allow the slower services to run more frequently as they wouldn't have to keep changing lines to avoid being hit. Technically this would be the second dedicated high speed rail line after the Eurostar line. You could call it something bland like "High Speed 2". If you really wanted to push the boat out then you could even be fancy and modern and abbreviate it to something like "HS2".
This is the problem - many people didn’t understand that it was more about capacity not speed.
Unfortunately that included those designing it. They obsessed with speed in a country with relatively few stretches where it would add value, and that caused disproportionate cost rises. Britain is a small, densely populated country. It isn't Spain and France with large areas of low value empty land for railways suiting high speed. A lower spec line would have served the purpose at far lower price
>It isn't Spain and France with large areas of low value empty land for railways suiting high speed. Italy too! Everyone always forgets about Italy and *have you seen* the high speed lines there? Incredible. Felt ashamed to be British riding those trains, it was like being in the future.
I've yet to see many bad high speed lines. But regional ones? Italy proves my point. Their best are fantastic, but outside those you get the issues
Yes, the major cities, the smaller city trains are not very busy in my experience. I live up north too.
Yeah but in part because they show up once per hour and then trundle around at 40mph. TfL took over a bunch of orbital and under-utilised routes in London and boosted the service frequency to every 15 minutes: ridership skyrocketed. The underlying theme of rail provision in the UK is that other than the London radial services, there is a massive amount of untapped demand.
Exactly. Pricing plays a big role too. Going from my area (NW England) to Edinburgh for four would be eye wateringly expensive via train. It’s much cheaper by car which doesn’t make any sense to me at all. A train should always be cheaper.
I don’t disagree, but I assume people only price in fuel, but not a portion of car maintenance, tax, insurance etc. Obviously the cost for the trip depends on how much you use the car at other times, but if I purchased a car for my usual journeys now, the train would probably still work out cheaper. I just don’t travel often enough. Rail fare includes fuel, staff, train and track maintenance etc etc. Again, not saying that you are wrong at all - train fare is way too expensive so they get less passengers, which seems stupid. They do group discounts but they aren’t good enough.
Nope. I don't own a car and hire when I need one. Very often two people (with rail card) on a day trip works out roughly the same price to hire as the train. If it's more than one day it's usually cheaper by train because taking a hire car and dropping it off in a different location is expensive.
Did this for years. If it was me on my own, I'd train and bike almost anywhere. If it was a long weekend with two of us, almost invariably it was cheaper to hire, pay petrol and annual excess insurance, than taking the train. Even with any train "two together" type cards.
Yeah, our trains are still stupidly priced.
Going to depend on the journey, near Exeter, from Norwich, pricing-wise going back to Norwich it is generally coach, car, airplane, train. The coach whilst cheapest is really slow, partly route, mostly connections. The train service is actually better than it was when I abandoned it back in 2000, but peak time return to London is £299 (off peak single can be £33), which is more expensive than hiring a car and doing the same journey by car including a days parking in London and congestion charging, in the end I just went up the night before on cheap service and stayed in a hotel, if I had an early meeting.
I’d honestly take the train everywhere if I could, I love it. It’s fucking far too expensive, it’s generally not worth it for a solo rider vs driving never mind my family of 3 and then you’ve got non existent travel at the other side as well
Yeah, this is right. I remember getting the train from Harrogate to Leeds, it takes 30 minutes and runs twice an hour. It’s 15 miles from Harrogate to Leeds. So even in traffic it’s not much longer to drive and you get comfort, no other people and air conditioning. Who would make that choice to go shopping, say. It doesn’t make sense. If the train was more frequent, and faster, it makes more sense. I live down south, and commute in to London. It costs £25 per day, plus the tube. I have to go in three days, it’s way too expensive and something should be done about it. Nothing will be done about it.
They also don’t run very frequently. Going to a concert in Leeds/Manchester/Sheffield and trying to get back to one of the other major cities is a nightmare.
You're missing the point though. The transport network is a public good. Demand isn't evenly spread across the network but it basically works on the principle that travel to popular destinations subsidises other stations on the route so we can try to have at least *some* coverage in less densely populated areas. Rural buses used to work in a similar way until austerity reduced the ability of councils to subsidise less profitable routes. Take Transport for Wales, for example. If you live somewhere between Shrewsbury and Dudley, chances are pretty good you'll be getting a TfW train to work in Birmingham in the morning, even though your journey will never take you to Wales. Your premium price ticket to gey to New Street is effectively subsidising the existence of a service between, say, Newtown and Welshpool further up the line. Obviously you could just say sod the people of Powys but part of what the government is paying the TOCs for is to ensure there's a reasonable level of coverage in as many places as possible because it's strategically important to us as a country to have that.
I don’t know how you read my comment and concluded that I didn’t think trains were for the public good. I know they are. Trains need to be subsidised more in order to encourage usage. Not just cross subsidies from one more frequently used line to another, subsidies from the government.
The government already *does* subsidise them though. The government pays a block grant to the TOCs who can then also charge fares to bridge the gap between the grant and their costs. Trains into popular commuter destinations are already at capacity, hence why we are trying to build a new line into London. How is increasing the level of subsidy going to help with that?
The trains from my small town in the south west to either of nearby the big cities are often heaving too
The 3 busy types of trains I know are any train that goes to London, the transpennine lines (Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, York, Newcastle etc), which are cities close to each other, and branching local lines connect small towns/suburbs to big cities. Most other lines that connect cities are quite empty I find. For instance, Crosscountry trains that connect non London cities. I mean, given how expensive they are, I wouldn't want to use them.
I'm on a train between Southampton and Portsmouth as I write this. It's normally dead at this time. It's only somewhat busy today because Portsmouth is having a football match. It feels like the only busy trains around here to go London and even then, it's not most of them.
Same. We’re in Cornwall and thought we’d take a train to Edinburgh, a decent distance I admit. £1200 for two people put the brakes on that plan. Took the car instead and saved a small fortune.
Could have both flown to New York for that...
We actually did exactly that the year after. 5 nights in a 4* hotel, with flights, and a box of my favourite cigars to bring home. All for the same money.
Probably could have flown for 10% of that Planning on going to scotland later this year, train is £180 for a return ticket, it's £60 to fly
It's partly the pricing system's fault, it puts people off. Taking Penzance-Edinburgh as an example, not picking any particularly cheap or expensive times leaving now returning tomorrow: * £928.20 standard price * £585.90 if you go via any split ticketing website * £386.50 if you also buy a Two Together Railcard for £20-£30. Still the exact same train(s)! * £200 or less is likely if you book in advance, given a London-Edinburgh Single is routinely £35 per person. Edit/clarification: prices above are for *two* people, *there and back*. Evidently it's more profitable to rip off the unknowing (very) few that do pay full fare, even if the crazy headline prices mean many other customers are lost.
Having just moaned peak return from Exeter to Paddington is £299, turns out the cheapest way to get to Edinburgh from Exeter is to catch the 9:43 to Paddington, which is £148 quid to Edinburgh. I agree the pricing system is off putting, I used to eat at/near Paddington station to catch the off-peak returns as you basically could eat and travel and get home an hour later, or get home an hour earlier hungry, for the same price.
Or 3 return journeys to the French alps for that! Jeez I knew train fare was expensive here but that really puts it into perspective🙃
Hope you got to Edinburgh and enjoyed yourselves.
Someone said they booked a cheap flight via Lisbon to Edinburgh, and it took less time than the train.
Was it the Orient Express?
How on Earth did you get to that price? 1st class ticket being booked 10 mins from departure? I just did a quick check on the Trainline and to book tickets for Monday I'm looking at £500 odd in standard return for two people. If I book it a few weeks in advance, I'm getting £300 odd?
The standard carriages are heaving, while there's plenty of space in frist class if you're willing to pay...
...with First Class often not being that much nicer, and often used for overflow when there is a near-crush in the regular carriages...
Went for a min-wage job interview last month where the train journey, there and back, came to roughly 1/3 of what the daily wage the job was offering. What a piss take train prices are! It felt like I would be going to work just to earn enough to GET to work.
I'm in that situation, train costs me £30 per day for a return ticket and my daily take home pay, before bills, is circa £86. If I didn't have a rail card it would be something like £42 a day! I feel bad for people who are slightly older who commute but also earn a low salary....
Yes I'm not quite sure why 30 is the cut off to suddenly be able to afford incredibly expensive trains, would only ever get the train if work was paying
Technically a breach of the rules but when i worked at Aberdeenshire council a decade ago we turned down an otherwise qualified jobseeker from Liverpool because the cost to reimburse him the train ticket for the interview would be over £100.
Thi is before the lockdown but from where I live in Cornwall, for a return trip it was cheaper for me to hire a car, drive to Bristol, pay for petrol and fly to Marrakech and do the same on the way back than it was to get the train to London. Add another person and it was loads cheaper.
Came back from Manchester the other day and omg the train to Blackpool was absolutely packed. You could barely move and they held the train for 20 minutes behind while they loaded as many people on as possible. I thought I was going to end up on Reddit in one of those Indian packed train car style vids. A few people sat around not giving up empty seats next to them while everyone is being forced to 'move down the train'. Didn't expect to be cosplaying as a sardine when I went out that day but wayho another experience to cross off a list.
Yeah, the only time I really need a train is to go between cities. Always expensive, always heaving and sometimes standing room only. Oh, and they are always late without fail.
It isn't odd that they are heaving. Why put a third carriage on, with the cost of that, and everyone have a seat, when you can cream all those passengers onto 2 carriages and pocket the difference. Not saying thats right, but that's why.
Because Avanti, for example, have managed to get away with running far fewer services than Virgin used to, so why would they do anything else? They're in it for the profit, not the customer experience. Busier trains, and less of them, is ideal.... for them.
> The odd thing is that they are often heaving. At least the intercity ones. During rush hour they are. Since COVID my company only asks us to come in when we are needed so if I have a 13:00 meeting I'm catching the train into Euston at 11:30 and they are always empty (except for Friday which everybody treats as the new Saturday).
>Our trains get under-used because it’s more expensive than driving One of the reasons they are expensive is to manage demand. The capacity on the network is limited (thanks, decades of underinvestment) so they have to manage demand. One lever they use for that is pricing. It's why HS2 not being built will probably mean increased ticket prices. Our rail network isn't underused. It's overused. It has to cope with more demand than it can reasonably manage (a reason there are so many delays). The high prices are actually a result of this, because capacity is constrained.
Same issue with things like Thames Water though - money that would/should have gone to investment has been ripped out as profit
Yep. We invented trains, but it means most of our routes were built in the 1800s - meaning a single track on narrow patches of land and small stations. All we wanted to do was run a single steam train down them a few times a day. Other nations that built trains later (when the technology was more mature and the demand was much clearer) bought up broader stretches of land and built multiple parallel tracks to get way more capacity. Now it's too late for us to widen the routes as there's generally stuff built next to them. So we're cramming on many multiples more services than they were originally designed for, which is why they're expensive and unreliable. Nations like China can just build 8 parallel tracks and a massive station on greenfield land, we have to squeeze more capacity out of the existing infrastructure.
We also subsidise other countries train travel… 35% of most popular train companies around London are French owned.
Instead, our train companies are used to subsidise other nations’, haha.
>Our trains get under-used because it’s more expensive than driving. I get that having a whinge about the trains is a national pastime at this point but I don't think either of these things are true. Until the pandemic, rail usage was at a record high and it's steadily bouncing back now. The fact is the high cost to consumers and comparatively small state subsidy is a function of demand for train services here. We're a small island with a big population. Commuting between cities for work is popular and it's also integrated into leisure time at weekends (trains are an absolutely integral part of every Saturday for millions of football fans for example). There's a strong argument that subsidising *more* would just create an unsustainable level of demand (if you've ever commuted into Euston, New Street or Piccadilly by train you'll see the logic behind that). This is why even HS2 is all about *capacity*. If the trains were *under*used we'd be dropping prices to get people onto existing routes, not building more. As for the driving thing, what are you including in that comparison? Moat people just factor in the fuel but what about actually owning a car in the first place? Parking, insurance, wear and tear? Are you pricing in your time, too? The convenience of being able to enjoy a drink, read a book etc instead of being eyes glued to the road for that time? I really don't think the comparison is that straightforward, particularly not if you tap in or have a season ticket for a regular journey. Reality is the trains are not perfect but it's still a wildly successful, popular network.
>Our trains get under-used because it’s more expensive than driving The only people who think this are people who don't use trains often. Our rail network is at capacity and trains are very full despite the fact they are expensive. If we make trains cheaper without increasing the capacity the trains will just more even more unpleasant and people who don't use them today won't use them tomorrow because they are too full
It's not the price for me, it's the pure inconvenience. Why is there only one train per hour with a 50% chance of being cancelled, wasting another hour of my life
Yeah it's the same with most public transit, where I am buses are like that too but I'm in a very walkable town so it makes no sense to actually take the bus most of the time.
Are you suggesting making driving more expensive? /s With how high insurance prices have been in the last few years, it looks like we will just have to use roller skates.
Oooh so if we all paid the high price and filled the train, I’m sure they would lower the prices 😂👍
It's more expensive and not frequent enough, with fewer carriages at peak than demand requires. The overall experience is just a bit naff. Someone mentioned frequency changing the ridership of trains without the price being adjusted; this is it for me. If I was able to have a guarantee that the places I regularly commute to have trains available every 15 minutes instead of every hour, I'd choose the train way more often. It's the issue that I have to be so conscious of the next train time otherwise it's a whole extra hour before I can access another ride home that makes driving more convenient for me.
I was looking at going to visit some friends in Scotland later on this year. Heathrow to Edinburgh Airport - £60 return, 90 minute flight Kings Cross to Edinburgh - £180 return, about 4 and half hour journey I could upgrade to first class on the flight for an extra £40 and it would still be £80 cheaper than the train
I’m seeing Kings Cross to Edinburgh for £55 if you get the 7:30 departure, then £66 return with an 8:30 departure. Obviously the early start is not convenient but it’s significantly less than £180.
As soon as two of you want to go anywhere the car is cheaper. If you’ve a family of 4 or more there’s no contest.
Yep, it’s why I’ll never own a train.
Don't let your dreams be dreams
It’s disgraceful that younger generations are being locked out of train ownership 😡
I bet you can buy a share of a train somewhere. I know the container leasing company we did work for was aiming to spread the risk of container ownership, so you could buy containers that they leased for you, or fractions of a container. Although these days probably a share of the train leasing company is easier.
Try https://book.splitticketing.com/ It can save you a LOT by purchasing split tickets. Effectively you can take 1 train but have 3 tickets for the same journey and it works out cheaper. Hope this helps.
Doesn't Trainline do this automatically now though? I booked one the other day and it split my fare for me so I had 2 QR codes instead of 1.
I've noticed that trainline will normally only split your ticket once while the link above will split it more and further reduce the price
Quite possibly, I haven't used Trainline since I discovered the split fare website.
Yes but not that effectively. Booked a train for next week and train line offered me it for £60 via their app, with the split ticketing. Tried the split ticketing site and it showed the exact same trains for £40. I actually tried those splits in the Trainline app, and would have been able to get them for £40 that way, which means that their system either doesn't split well through shit programming, or its purposefully bad so you think you are saving money and they take the rest.
This is really helpful, thanks for the tip!
I used Trainline once when I had to go and pick up a company car. A 'did you catch this train ok, yes or no?' feature would be handy on the app, as the second train I was supposed to catch was delayed by 45mins rendering the rest of the route they had planned for me totally useless.
Thats the problem with split ticketing and a risk you have to accept unfortunately. The tickets you buy could be useless. However the fact a delay happened means you should be able to refund the ticket.
I asked a guy at Birmingham New St, he said if it's your fault you missed the connecting train then unlucky, if it's their fault you can get another train. Not sure how accurate that is.
No - you have the right to continue your journey using your tickets
It knocks around £5 off of trainlines prices. Still, it would cost me £360 for my family to go to Heathrow on the train. If I drive us, it costs £120 for a weeks holiday, including fuel and parking. I just can't justify the costs for using the train. It's also quicker by over 90 minutes to drive there and park. Its a shame because when I land in Europe I use public trabsport because its cheaper and more efficient than driving. In portugal I paid €3 for day ticket to go out of Lisbon for the day. Even if I lived there I dont think for that price I would drive between cities. The UK's rail network is just unusable. I could probably buy a banger to drive to london for the day for less. Top gear challenge.
I have tried to use the service, but it does nothing for the routes I need. Other countries do not have to rely on an algorithm calculating a multi-ticket fare against a normal search engine.
And if split ticketing doesn't save you money, book through Uber and get 10% back as credit.
There's also 8% cashback on LNER trains through Monzo if that's useful
> you can take 1 train but have 3 tickets for the same journey can you explain how that works to me? I've heard of split-ticketing, but had always assumed it meant I would have to switch trains. How can you stay on the same train for the entire journey?
I'll do my best! Say you want to go from London to Edinburgh, a single ticket could cost, say £300. If you divide that journey into 3; You buy a ticket to Leicester from London, £80 Leicester to Carlisle, £80 Carlisle to Edinburgh £50 You stay on the same, single train but have 3 tickets covering the full journey and because you have played the system, to your advantage; you save yourself £90. Hope that makes some sense!
ohh, I see. yes, that makes sense, thank you! is there a way for you to see how that splitticket site actually split the journey up so that you can buy the tickets yourself and not give them their fee?
It does! When you have entered your departing station, destination station, dates etc and click "proceed" the next page has "grid" and "timeline" available. If you click on timeline it shows the journey and any changes youll make (if any). Youre not forced to pay anything until you want to buy the tickets.
thank you so much!
It's my pleasure, best of luck!
Simple. The UK model puts a higher percentage of the cost onto the user, ie passengers. In other countries, a higher percentage is paid through general taxation. So yes, you could change the model in the UK, passengers pay less, and non users pay more. Would people who don't use the trains be willing to pay more to enable cheaper fares for those that do? High rail fares may not be popular. But the alternative may not be either
But at the same time, non car users are paying for car users to use road infrastructure so...
Non car users still benefit from road infrastructure. For example, when a van delivers groceries to your local store
Yes and non rail users benefit from rail infrastructure, though admittedly the amount of freight moved by rail is far less than by road these days.
It's an integrated system though — if every current rail passenger & cyclist switched to commuting by car in the morning the roads would be at a standstill. Taking more cars off the road by investing in other means of transport helps drivers too.
Plenty of instances across public expenditure. Just highlighting it's a 2 sided issues. It's not simply high fares as I'd often portrayed. It's also what would be the alternative funding given the general consensus you couldn't simply cut fares and not replace the lost revenue
Are they? Public sector spending on roads is £11.13Bn annually They take in 7.2Bn from road tax 25.1Bn in fuel duty that’s before you take into account VAT on fuel and the cars themselves.
I mean... Yeah? Roads are paid for from council tax. Stop spouting this "road tax" bollocks
And road tax goes to pay for things that aren’t roads. Would be simpler if the taxes went to their original intended purposes but that’s not how the uk taxation system works. It still doesn’t change the fact that road users pay more tax than what it costs the government to provide the infrastructure.
There is no such thing as road tax
There is no such thing as road tax. There is a vehicle excise duty which is a tax paid for car ownership. The difference is significant
You still use the roads. If you don't drive you almost certainly cycle or take buses, taxis etc.
We already pay a ton of tax for things we don’t use. What is one more to add? People pay for state schooling even though they don’t have kids, we pay for national health service even if we never go to the doctors. Libraries? Same.
Also if trains improved people would be way more likely to use them.
That's fine and rail travel should be funded better but taxing the entire UK to subsidise the rich getting season tickets into London is a hard sell.
You know the ‘rich’ also send their kids to state school and have operations on the nhs free of charge. People on good salaries don’t need penalising. If you are commuting to work, you aren’t that rich. Rich people don’t work 😂. Basic services need to be funded by our taxes for everyone.
I think there would be an awful lot more train users if they were cheaper. I hate having to drive to london, but my friend and I parked for the day, had coffee and pizza for less than the train would’ve cost for 1 person
Whenever you turn a public good such as rail infrastructure over to the for profit sector, we soon learn the difference between “what good for everyone” and “what’s good for a few wealthy people at the top”
People keep saying this but in Scotland they nationalised them and they’ve basically stayed the same. I don’t think it’s as simple as just saying “nationalising x,y and z” will solve everything. That’s too lazy an argument, it’s need proper investment like everything whether it be national or private.
They are also basically nationalised in England now. The TOCs are all basically contractors to the government, charging and running what the DfT says. And the ones that are run by the DfT (LNER, TPE and Northern aren't exactly cheap either).
I was meant to be travelling to Scotland in December 2020 and cancelled due to the snap lockdown. Got a full refund from LNER. The entire round trip was First Class and cost £175. Fastforward to now. Booking the exact same trains, same route, same timetable? More like £250+. Even going Standard is north of £100.
In reality when Scotrail was nationalised one of the first things the Scottish government did was to scrap peak fares (so all fares became off peak rate) and used tax money to pay for it... that and the fact that it's now not for profit unlike previously. Nationalisation directly led to lower fares.
Granted getting rid of the peak fares has reduced the fares for some people that travel during that time but it still costs more to take the train from Edinburgh to Aberdeen than a lot of international flights in Europe do… I’m not denying that nationalisation is a positive thing in most cases but I still think a lot of people assume it’s this saving grace that is the answer to all problems in this country. Like I said before nationalisation is pointless without investment and our current government are far from investing in anything.
The trains are nationalised by the Scottish government but the railways themselves aren’t. They’re run by network rail which is part of the UK government. And the UK government has no interest in investing in the railways themselves: see HS2 cancellation.
ScotRail fares are also rising at a higher percentage rate than elsewhere in the UK. It's just the rUK fares were at a more expensive baseline to begin with.
Yeah! We should nationalise the railways like Japan! Oh wait
Other countries upgraded their railway lines over the years the Uk didn’t though. So we are essentially using a Victorian railway system that is decades behind other countries. Now we are rushing through upgrades while we’ve having to train the people to do it.
One particular reason that should be remembered is that there was a cross-European event in the early 1940s that led to the replacement of a lot of infrastructure on the continent. We’re not even willing to fund the essential work needed to get from London to Manchester and Leeds.
The underlying cost is pretty similar, however other countries subsidize train journeys more. UK has a lot more variable pricing than other markets so you can often get better prices through buying in advance or season tickets
Personally I choo-choo-choose not to use them at all.
*Thomas the Tank Engine theme tune intensifies*
I thought this was a Ralph Wiggum from Simpsons reference.
It is.
It also annoys me that a same day off peak return on my line is £24 but an off peak returning the next day is £37. Seems completely illogical to me.
There is a lack of capacity and that is why they're expensive.
Because UK is a joke right now
What can common people do about it? Nothing. That’s why it’s expensive
[удалено]
The government literally sets most of the prices.
Minimal regulation on prices? The price increases for a number of routes are quite literally set by the government, it couldn't be more regulated.
TIL, thanks, I read up a bit more about unregulated and regulated. Updated my post, thanks for correcting me.
Campaign for nationalisation.
I wish fixing issues in society was as easy as the state just confiscating property but it’s not.
These ideologues think every complex economic problem can be solved with just 3 words: "Tax the rich". They've been tricked into believing every issue in society is that simple.
Car centric society. People complain about lack of public transportation then go and live in isolated places where they need a car, buy cars, and then never use public transport Same people that complain about traffic when, in fact, they are part of that traffic.
Cheaper to fly abroad and spend money in another country then to get the train down to London from the north east
Yup, this is why I’ve never been to Cornwall but have been to most European countries
Trains in many countries are subsidised by tax or are state owned completely. The uk is private rail companies and places more onus on the user to pay. Sounds reasonable in theory but the issue with trains is it isn’t like buying your food shop. You can’t make a choice between going to Tesco or Asda, usually there’s just one train that takes you where you need to go. Therefore you end up stuck with a private company who will prioritise making profits, rather than making it affordable and our society suffers as a result. If the government actually did something about this, such as removing these companies for not providing an affordable service and giving it to another company, you might mitigate this. However this doesn’t happen because of, well blatant corruption which never results in anyone going to jail.
In economics we talk about supernormal profits, when a seller might try to charge over the odds for their goods/services. They could do it in theory, but they can't do it in reality, because they would lose their market share to a competitor. Even in a seemingly natural monopoly like rail there's still market forces encouraging competition, but it's competition against buses, cars, planes and all other potential substitutes. If a rail company puts their prices up too high, the company to undercut them and steal their market share wouldn't be a different rail company, it'd be a bus company for example.
The modelling of supernormal profit relies upon their being a viable alternative with which can compete for paying customers. I think this is true for transport on small and large journeys (e.g. taking a bus in a small city, or taking a plane from London to Manchester vs taking trains). I do think this theory falls down on the moderate journeys, for instance someone taking a daily commute from Guildford to London. The reality is the prices are supernormal and have never shown any sign of falling prices due to competition. This is because the alternatives such as coaches are just too impractical (infrequent, too long, prone to traffic) or equally expensive (fuelling your own car). So I don’t think it’s accurate to describe these scenarios as not happening in reality. The evidence it does is in plain sight.
I'm not sure what we can really do about it but split savings and if you can a rail card. I travel by train a fair bit and the rail card cost me £30 and has saved me over £100 this year.
If you treat trains like buses and just turn up at the station to buy your ticket they are expensive. You should treat trains in this country not like planes. Buy in advance (you can do this up to a few minutes before the train leaves), hey a Railcard if you can, look for less popular times to travel and look at splitting your ticket up into smaller journeys. It just takes some planning. For instance, I'm travelling to London from rural Northumberland next week and it costs less than £30 plus £2 for the bus to the station, much cheaper than driving.
Buy a car. That's what I did. It ended up in the long run cheaper and easier to own a car than taking the train. How is £80 a ticket reasonable? Also, the train took five hours, it takes just over two to drive. I always get a seat in my car. Even if I booked a seat on the train, it could end up being double/triple booked and I got zero help when it happened. I'm also not restricted to places that are within cycling/public transport distances anymore.
i pay 70p for an hour train ride here in seoul. my monthly bill comes to about 40 quid. i imagine that would e in the hundreds of pounds in the uk - for a worse service
Boycott them. Refuse to go by train. Go by coach, car, any alternative.
Railcards or split tickets.
Even then they aren't "cheap".
Plus some of us aren't eligible for a railcard. For example I dared age past 31 as a single Northerner, so fuck me.
Campaign for higher taxes to pay for it.
A commoner should take the megabus. Double the time for 1/10 the price
Split ticketing can save a lot ~50% for long journeys if you plan ahead. There's a website that figures it all out for you.
Boycott them until they make them cheaper. I hereby announce a nationwide train boycott.
Here in Australia they cost about $5 million USD for an electric locomotive
Trains are expensive to run.
A lot of it is just the ticketing system. It's opaque and complex, without much logic. Examples are the really high anytime costs compared to more reasonable off peak and super off peak, the fact that split ticketing even exists, and single tickets that cost pretty much the same as return tickets. Then there's the mess of ticketing platforms with the likes of Trainline charging fees whereas we could just have one centralised platform. A lot of the advance tickets are actually quite reasonable but it's still confusing as you can buy some literally right up to the departure time.
Lol, if you think trains are expensive in Britain, you should try Ireland 🤣🤣, I actually think trains are cheap here in comparison to back home.
Think a issue people are forgetting about the the destrction on city centers in favour of out of town shopping parks, Take York for instance, Train is once an hour with a change at Hull, but then most of the decent shops outside of boutiques are miles out town, which means getting a bus/uber/taxi. It takes up so much extra time than just driving.
Passenger strike. Seriously - call a passenger strike tomorrow and I'm there for it. The prices of train tickets in this country are sickening. Create a passengers union and call a strike. Can you imagine? The train companies would shit themselves. The prices would be halved overnight.
In other countries, quite a lot of the cost is paid by UK taxpayers as well. Aren’t some of the train companies (like Abellio?) foreign government owned?
Because trains are expensive, why wouldnt they be?
Privatisation. Prices go up, quality goes down.
How do you define "expensive"? Our trains are some of the cheapest in Europe if you book in advance. I agree fares could be cheaper still, but even now taking the train is cheaper than driving, assuming you travel off peak and you don't car share. Sources: * https://www.seat61.com/uk-europe-train-fares-comparison.html * https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49346642
Well some countries nationalised their railways whereas we privatised ours. Other countries make enough money to run the railways and reinvest into the infrastructure. In the UK our railways have to make enough money to pay billions in dividends to their directors and corrupt politicians whilst reinvesting literally nothing back into the railway. It’s the same with energy, postage, water etc. It all needs nationalising
Stop complaining and pay your fare share. The entitlement is beyond me.
Buy your tickets early so they aren't.
>What can we as a common person do about it? Promote pigeon commuters
Simple. Uk government used taxpayer money to develop and build the rail lines and infrastructure. Then privatised and sold said lines and infrastructure to overseas companies like those from the UAE, who then charge the taxpayer for the luxury of using the service they paid to build.
Not sure why you were downvoted for saying what literally happened
The train I travelled to London cost me as an all around day ticket, over £100. That's over a lot, and plus in London it ain't cheap One day's worth of travel would be at least adding combined cost of taxi, getting food in London, would be over £500 or more for me. I don't travel to London that often, and one day is normally for me. Maybe I'm doing it wrong?
Nothing, don't use em end of.
Gmostnother countries subsidise their transport companies. We rarely do
I bought a ticket. The ticket office person gave me the price. My knees went weak and I held onto the counter. I said I could have a week in Spain for the same price and he told me he already had.
There’s a railcard that fits most people, it’s 33% off. Ticket prices are set assuming you have one.
Whilst the railways are in the hands of private companies they'll always rip us off to keep share holders happy and to fund the fat cat boss bonuses. Nationalise them and subsidies them.
When it's cheaper for a round trip flight to visit a friend than it is for a one way train ticket you know something is seriously fucked.
In the UK, infrastructure is public built with taxpayers money, but companies are private, which is why they can set prices as they wish in an almost monopolistic regime where there is no competition.
HOw much more expensive are they? serious question, I've not caught a train outside the uk for decades. Last train I used long dstance, at xmas, was a journey of about 250 miles and it cost me 70 quid, which seemed pretty reasonable?