"The UK has the most expensive train fares in Europe"
- Thread starter teuchter
- Start date
teuchter
je suis teuchter
It certainly seems that a few people would benefit from posting on this thread before buying tickets.
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
Are you going on the shore service to Waterloo or the nice GWR one?
Elpenor
a clown’s heart and a mandolin
Not the GWR one - I gave 5 years of my life to those trains one way or another.
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
The SWR one is quite noisy and stops at every lamppost between Exeter and Waterloo. Make sure your phone’s well charged or you have a book…
pinkmonkey
2.4 hour party person
thats amazing, I looked into getting a train from the Thames Valley to Yorkshire booking about 5 weeks in advance and the train fares offered were astronomical, no chance of my usual cheap £20-£40 ticket - the super saver was about £200. Don't particulalry want to use the car, but at that price, when the petrol for the same trip is £30, I'll have to. I've just checked again and the prices are more normal - is that because social distancing has ended?
Elpenor
a clown’s heart and a mandolin
I guess I will find out. It’s a good 80 minutes slower than the GWR so I may regret my decision. The GWR is so expensive I may as well drive
teuchter
je suis teuchter
There are usually quiet a lot of advance fares on LNER but I think there have been many fewer available than usual due to their social distancing policy - so yes that might have changed. Or it might just be that they haven't been releasing them very far in advance due to general uncertainty.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
A super off peak return Exeter to Paddington valid on GWR is about £60 with a railcard, so £30 each direction which is not a lot more than the ticket you seem to have bought, unless that's a return fare.
Elpenor
a clown’s heart and a mandolin
It’s a single. What railcard would get this ticket?
As ever, the headline price may be low, but I booked this ticket 10 days before travel and prices were far in excess of £60
I am quite price sensitive but I also don’t make plans until the last minute. I have a car so I also need to consider the cost of Petrol, and the freedom a car gives to break the journey, dictate when I start it, vs parking, traffic, and having to put in the effort myself.
The train only really works when going into London due to the hassle of parking and congestion, and if I’m only going to one place.
cyberfairy
http://unicycle-emptiness.co.uk/
Trying to get return ticket to Weston Super Mare from Lancaster (for about a week )for me and kid after August 14th with a railcard and not finding any deals at all :-(
teuchter
je suis teuchter
The prices I gave are not advance tickets. They are tickets you can buy 5 minutes before the train leaves.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Most railcards would get that price; I mentioned the railcard because your previous post implied you had one. Without a railcard it's £95 return. It's not an advance ticket, it's what you buy on the day. It's available for a train leaving less than an hour from now.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
It looks like this is because the Avanti west coast timetables are all up in the air for weekends in august at the moment. I think you might have to just wait and try again in a week or so.
Train Timetables | Train Schedule | Avanti West Coast
Plan your journey with our train timetables for services in the UK. Download train schedules at Avanti West Coast to check times & special services.
www.avantiwestcoast.co.uk
Elpenor
a clown’s heart and a mandolin
Ok, but I thought the only railcard I could get was Network Railcard which this route doesn’t cover as not in the area - but it does cover the slow train to Waterloo
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Ah, I see. Yes, network railcard covers the SW route all the way to exeter, but it only covers the great western route as far as Didcot.
T & P
|-o-| (-o-) |-o-|
In answer to your reply to my previous post teuchter , as I had said the wedding took place in a small town not far from Arundel, and I can’t remember what train station we were trying to buy tickets for. If you say one can buy return tickets to Arundel for £30 then it must have been another station.
Bottom line is that I was working on that day and didn’t have much spare time, and the station closest to the venue was the one we really needed. And I can assure you that it really was just under £50 per head- probably £60 now.
That is simply nothing short of a disgrace for such as mundane distance, and at off peak times to boot. It’s a blatant rip-off that simply doesn’t happen elsewhere.
Bottom line is that I was working on that day and didn’t have much spare time, and the station closest to the venue was the one we really needed. And I can assure you that it really was just under £50 per head- probably £60 now.
That is simply nothing short of a disgrace for such as mundane distance, and at off peak times to boot. It’s a blatant rip-off that simply doesn’t happen elsewhere.
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teuchter
je suis teuchter
Nope, like I said, I regularly do day trips to places all along the coast and all the stations around there will have a cheap day return for about £30 (or £20 with a railcard). That's how the pricing works; there's nothing special about the Arundel fare.
The reason you thought it was £50 was because you failed to identify the cheapest ticket. That's not just your failure though; it's a failure of the system. My bet is that you looked up the price of a single ticket and then doubled it, in which case it's quite possible that you came to a total of £50 return. That's a feature of the UK walk-up fare pricing: off peak returns are usually only slightly more expensive than singles. This is a stupid system and one of the things that needs to be changed. Pricing should be based on single legs, to make things as transparent as possible and also to make journey options as flexible as possible.
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
Proof, if any more were needed, that trains are by far the worst option.
T & P
|-o-| (-o-) |-o-|
At the end of the day it is still a massive failure. I am no tech guru but sure as fuck fairly computer literate, and far more so than millions of older would-be passengers. National Rain Enquiries or Trainline couldn’t suggest a return trip useful to our needs for less than £50-odd each.
At this point whether a cheaper ticket can be obtained becomes irrelevant anyway. It’s still an abject failure of the British rail system if anyone using the official rail app or the most commercially successful alternative is not automatically offered an alternative to the laughably expensive routes suggested by those apps/ websites.
The fact that significantly more expensive journeys for stations in the same area happen in the first place depending on which company is exploiting the line is of course another massive failing of the privatised, multi-franchise shitshow of a railway network we run in this country.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Having a few options that trainspotters and other assorted geeks can take advantage of is a handy way of pretending that you don’t have rip-off train fares.
Apple should get in on that.
“Ok, this phone may be £1,300 but we gave it to these 3 Youtubers for FREE!!!”.
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
Michael Sams was a train geek.
Just saying.
Just saying.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
I do agree with most of this.
That said, in the meantime there's some satisfaction to be gained from the fact that your ticket buying incompetence helps to subsidise the cheaper fares that I take advantage of.
T & P
|-o-| (-o-) |-o-|
For ‘your ticket buying incompetence’, everyone else please read ‘anyone who is not a train enthusiast with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the intricate British rail network conglomerate of franchises, and multiple and complex fares that don’t even suggest themselves at all in the official train buying websites’.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
It is absurd that buying a train ticket is now a significant acquired skill.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
We also have incredibly low taxes for “those with the right skills”.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
While that might be the case when you are doing split tickets or the like, 90% of non necessary expensive tickets are a result of people not knowing a few things about walk-up fares. Essentially you just need to know:
1. Travelling after about 9.30am will very often be very significantly cheaper, because you can then get an off peak return.
2. An off peak return is about the same price as a single - so never buy two singles when a return will do the job.
Now you go to National Rail Enquiries, and put in the days/times you want to travel, remembering to tick the 'return' box.
eg:
Now, press Go, and in most cases the results will come straight up:
There it is, straight away, the off peak return of which I spoke.
For most of the examples in this thread, following the above process will get you what you need, no special tricks. The prior knowledge required is not that advanced.
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