"The UK has the most expensive train fares in Europe"
- Thread starter teuchter
- Start date
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Because Portsmouth is en route to Fareham, a return to Fareham would have been valid for you to take the train back from Portsmouth.
The fares I mentioned were not advance fares; they are the fares you pay if you buy on the day.
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
teuchter
je suis teuchter
My advice is never buy a ticket at the station unless you already understand your ticket options and what you want. Ticket machines don't let you see choices properly, and advice at ticket desks is not always reliable. Use an online journey planner. On a mobile don't use the national rail app but one of the train company apps. Many now allow you to have your ticket on your phone so no faffing around with collecting paper tickets.
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
If you can't afford it then it definitely is all about the price. There's something really wrong if owning or hiring a car is cheaper than getting on a train.
Riklet
procrastinación
We need a train boycott post-covid when the grubbing train companies are at their most weak and vulnerable. They are never going to reform or be reformed until they're terrified.
Lol researching online about which ticket to buy like teuchter to avoid being ripped off hundreds of pounds. Fuck that. I've done it (and got some great deals) but i'm never going to defend the shit train system in this country. If a train ticket is more expensive than the petrol of a car journey, it's clearly a rip off. Why shouldn't London to Inverness be like 35 quid for example?
Lol researching online about which ticket to buy like teuchter to avoid being ripped off hundreds of pounds. Fuck that. I've done it (and got some great deals) but i'm never going to defend the shit train system in this country. If a train ticket is more expensive than the petrol of a car journey, it's clearly a rip off. Why shouldn't London to Inverness be like 35 quid for example?
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Of course it should be. Decades of car-focused transport policy has created this. It can only be changed through policy, which means more funding for public transport and less support for private car ownership. Conveniently for the government, everyone is angry at the private train companies thinking that they are the cause of the situation. They aren't - they operate within the framework determined and regulated by transport policy.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
The train line to Inverness is single track and could be doubled in many places to provide a quicker and better service. But it sees sparse investment whilst the parallel A9, much of which is already dual carriageway, is getting a very expensive and not really necessary widening scheme.
Why's that? Absolutely nothing to do with the transient train companies. It's to do with political priorities. Road improvements are seen as view winners so that's where the money goes.
Trying to make out that the big issues are caused by the rail franchisees is attractive for people who want easy targets. It's also easy for those who want to have their cake and eat it - they don't want to change the balance of transport priorities, they don't want disincentives to private transport and they also don't want expensive train fares. The basic level of train fares is set by central government policy about how and to what extent the rail system is funded by public money Vs farebox revenue. It's been stated policy of the current government to shift that burden towards passengers for several years now.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Sure. Now persuade people to vote for funding that.
And note that this is a decision that the government would need to make. Not private rail franchisees.
Supine
Newt Member
Not sure why, it only costs £24!
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yep. It's an absurd situation when the ability to buy a train ticket is a significant acquired skill. Teuchter's advice is all sound, and I'd add that there can also be a further way to save money, which is to research into the possibility of split tickets - sometimes works, sometimes doesn't; there are websites dedicated to them. That such a thing is possible is totally bonkers.
dessiato
🇪🇸 españa te quiero
I like to take the train from time to time, it’s easy and relaxing.
In the U.K. I avoid it as much as possible. It’s ok if you can plan and book sufficiently in advance, but turning up, needing to get on a train and go ASAP is often too complicated and expensive to be cost effective. I will, therefore, always choose my car over a train, in the U.K.
The system needs to be much simpler and less expensive to get people to use it more. At least the comfort and cleanliness has improved over the years. Modern trains are quite pleasant now. If the price was right I’d use them more.
In the U.K. I avoid it as much as possible. It’s ok if you can plan and book sufficiently in advance, but turning up, needing to get on a train and go ASAP is often too complicated and expensive to be cost effective. I will, therefore, always choose my car over a train, in the U.K.
The system needs to be much simpler and less expensive to get people to use it more. At least the comfort and cleanliness has improved over the years. Modern trains are quite pleasant now. If the price was right I’d use them more.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
It's not the whole story at all but part of what's behind the UK's complicated fares structure is an attempt to shift demand away from the busiest times of day. This is why it can genuinely be extremely expensive to travel at peak time on some routes, while often incredibly cheap to travel at quiet times on an advance ticket. It's also partly responsible for creating all the split ticket anomalies.
There's nothing inherently wrong with this kind of demand pricing - it should let you make more efficient use of the system, instead of having to build it to cope with the peak level of traffic that would occur without any of these pricing incentives.
But we don't really do that with the road network. If we had road pricing, then it would allow a fairer competition between the modes. Instead (apart from the deterrent of congestion), people are incentivised to use their car for journeys at times of peak, expensive rail travel. And road networks end up getting built to cope with this peak demand - adding capacity that encourages people to use their cars for other journeys as well. It's a totally inefficient use of the network overall, because rail works really well for shifting large numbers of people at high density and roads work really badly for that.
This is why we should be adding capacity to the rail network instead of adding more and more to the road network. This in fact is what HS2 is supposed to help with, but the same people who bang on about trains being too expensive are very often the same people who bang on about too much public investment going into HS2. Can't have your cake and eat it.
There's nothing inherently wrong with this kind of demand pricing - it should let you make more efficient use of the system, instead of having to build it to cope with the peak level of traffic that would occur without any of these pricing incentives.
But we don't really do that with the road network. If we had road pricing, then it would allow a fairer competition between the modes. Instead (apart from the deterrent of congestion), people are incentivised to use their car for journeys at times of peak, expensive rail travel. And road networks end up getting built to cope with this peak demand - adding capacity that encourages people to use their cars for other journeys as well. It's a totally inefficient use of the network overall, because rail works really well for shifting large numbers of people at high density and roads work really badly for that.
This is why we should be adding capacity to the rail network instead of adding more and more to the road network. This in fact is what HS2 is supposed to help with, but the same people who bang on about trains being too expensive are very often the same people who bang on about too much public investment going into HS2. Can't have your cake and eat it.
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
Absolute nonsense. Its gouging, nothing more or less. People aren't going to travel to work the evening before and pitch a tent outside, they're going to travel at a time that gets them to work on time. That's what creates peak times.
StoneRoad
heckling from the back!
About 30 years ago (pre-BR-priviatisation), I worked for a while at a narrow-gauge railway. It had the facility to book BR tickets. Part of my training was to be able to plan journeys and book the tickets to / from anywhere. [And eventually, that included the nearer European cities]
part of the regular "test" was Somewhere in the extreme North of Scotland to Lympstone Commando, to arrive before 0600 on a Wednesday ...
Another was Devil's Bridge to Cromer (or the return) ...
At the time, my now late father was well known for his trips to the Universal Esperanto Congress each summer (held somewhere different every year), and he went to Beijing via the Trans-Siberian Railway at least twice ...
part of the regular "test" was Somewhere in the extreme North of Scotland to Lympstone Commando, to arrive before 0600 on a Wednesday ...
Another was Devil's Bridge to Cromer (or the return) ...
At the time, my now late father was well known for his trips to the Universal Esperanto Congress each summer (held somewhere different every year), and he went to Beijing via the Trans-Siberian Railway at least twice ...
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Yup, many of the current differentials are too great and are effectively gouging, via the motorist lobby, who resist proper funding for the railways and are happy for such methods as a means of extracting revenue. Same people who pushed for rail privatisation and the franchising/financing structure that has operated until recently.Absolute nonsense. Its gouging, nothing more or less. People aren't going to travel to work the evening before and pitch a tent outside, they're going to travel at a time that gets them to work on time. That's what creates peak times.
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
Why do you think motorists would resist a better rail network? It would mean the roads were less congested.
Look at Ireland, one of the most expensive places to live in Europe. £30 to travel by train from Dublin to Galway, which is a 200km trip. Dublin to Cork is around £16. You're being fleeced by greedy capitalists.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
I expect that more public money is put into Ireland's railways than is put into the UK's railways. A look at Wikipedia suggests I'm right, with each passenger-km on Irish trains recieving about 10 times as much subsidy as the equivalent in the UK:
teuchter
je suis teuchter
No doubt you'd support measures to address this imbalance, so long as it didn't raise the amount of tax you need to pay, for example on petrol or VED.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
The imbalance is very great. Yet I bet that train had hundreds of empty seats.
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
Wikiwanker... What do EU subsidies in 2008 for Ireland and 2016 for the UK have to do with actual subsidies per journey today? The UK and Irish rail networks receive roughly the same subsidy (just over £2) per passenger journey.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Would that make trains affordable for working folk?
Riklet
procrastinación
This subsidy thing is total nonsense.
We all know none of that money is going into the railways. It's going to the investors in the various train groups. Thats why we spend billions to get fuck all... lots of the train network hasnt changed much for 100 years.
teuchter your own post shows that Ireland is putting 5 times less in than the UK but the average train ticket is still far cheaper....
There is no need for more money to be put in or even more lines to be built (hs2 etc) they could run a fast and cheap service with what we have and still save a few billion quid. If there was the political will...
We all know none of that money is going into the railways. It's going to the investors in the various train groups. Thats why we spend billions to get fuck all... lots of the train network hasnt changed much for 100 years.
teuchter your own post shows that Ireland is putting 5 times less in than the UK but the average train ticket is still far cheaper....
There is no need for more money to be put in or even more lines to be built (hs2 etc) they could run a fast and cheap service with what we have and still save a few billion quid. If there was the political will...
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