Cheaper to fly to Europe than get a train 30 miles.

[handbraketurn]

What has happened to rail travel in this country?

I just checked cost of train from London to a coastal town in Kent and it's more expensive than flying to Spain and back!!?

[Webber3]

It's a fecking joke!

[anonymous-user]

fk off to Spain then.

[TorqueVR]

A few years ago me and Mrs Torque thought we'd go to Lille if a long weekend. Prices from £230pp for return Eurostar and 3 night B&B in a decent hotel. We knocked it in its head when we found that it would cost £175 for us to get a train from Bristol to London and back.

[creampuff]

handbraketurn said:

What has happened to rail travel in this country?

Did you watch the doco on the Chinese high speed line from Beijing to Shanghai last night? And the rolling stock? Took them only 6 years to build it.

Makes British trains look like the hopeless joke that they are.

[tight5]

what did you people think would happen under privatisation ?

[dirkgently]

creampuff said:

Did you watch the doco on the Chinese high speed line from Beijing to Shanghai last night? And the rolling stock? Took them only 6 years to build it.

Makes British trains look like the hopeless joke that they are.

I wonder how many public inquires they had.

[rs1952]

tight5 said:

what did you people think would happen under privatisation ?

I thought it would be a good thing as it would get the government out of the railway's hair.

Which only goes to show that we aren't always right in what we think.....

But to get back on topic, this is a major problem for the UK in general. On the one hand we have the government and the greenies bleating on about the need to reduce air travel, and especially domestic air travel when there are rail alternatives, and on the other the costs of using those alternatives are often stupidly greater then going by plane. Even when they are on a par then the railway cannot compete on time for the longer distances.

Just a quick f'rinstance. A couple of months ago I needed to make a business trip to Aberdeen. The BA flight cost me £214 from LHR. By the time I'd added the on-costs (diesel to LHR, parking there, bus from Dyce into Aberdeen), the total was in the region of £260. I left home at 0615 in the morning and got back at 2000 the same day.

I just checked the National rail Enquiries website. The best time they can offer from my local station (on the GWR main line) to Aberdeen is a couple of minutes over 9 hours northbound, a few minutes under 10 hours southbound, and the best price they can give me is £195.60 off peak. But to use the train would obviously also include a night's hotel in Aberdeen so there would be no overall saving. And of course it would be at least a two-day trip rather than the one day outing I had going by air.

Its BA for me on a trip like that

[TEKNOPUG]

Been to Lisbon recently; a 45min train journey up the coast, plus return, in an air-conditioned train was €3.50.....you'd struggle to get a cup of coffee on a UK train for €3.50!

I travel by train quite a lot for business and some of the prices and in particular, the pricing structures are eye-watering. The biggest issue I find though, is that if there is more than 1 of you travelling, it's always going to be cheaper to drive, regardless of your destination.

[squicky]

As far as I can tell though, cheap rail travel in europe is only down to their governments subsidising the prices.

I (just about) remember British Rail before privatisation, it was dirty, crap, expensive and unreliable.

So I honestly believe that we'd be in just a similar state of affairs with rail travel in this country if they hadn't privatised. It would still be expensive compared to Europe due to our government (regardless of being Labour or Conservative) not funding/subsidising it enough.

(Anyway, rail travel in Europe isn't always spectacularly cheap, on the few times I've used the French railways it's been equally as expensive for distance travel).

[rs1952]

squicky said:

I (just about) remember British Rail before privatisation, it was dirty, crap, expensive and unreliable.

So I honestly believe that we'd be in just a similar state of affairs with rail travel in this country if they hadn't privatised. It would still be expensive compared to Europe due to our government (regardless of being Labour or Conservative) not funding/subsidising it enough.

I can do a litle more than just remember BR in nationalisation days because I worked for them from leaving school in 1969 until 1976 and again briefly in 1979.

The problem in those days was that any funding of the railways appeared in the governments accounts as part of the public spending borrowing requirement. As governments are always wanting to save money so that they can waste it elsewhere on new fads and crap computer programmes etc, the railways didn't get the money they needed.

But can we just deal with your opening remark: it was dirty, crap, expensive and unreliable.

"Dirty" is in the eye of the beholder. There were certainly enough cleaners and carriage washing plants in my neck of the woods (Bristol at that time, BTW).

Define "crap" - I obviously know what it is ( ) but they didn't build trains out of the stuff as far as I remember

The service is actually more expensive these days than it was under BR - perhaps you've forgotten all those above inflation price rises we've been getting every January for the last umpteen years?

"Unreliable" - an interesting one. Back in my days on the railways, if an engine failed there was always another one kicking about not too far away in a siding or on a freight train, that could be requisitioned to shift a failed passenger train. There was an example in the railway press fairly recently of a locomotive-hauled special that failed at Weymouth and the nearest "spare" engine was in fecking Basingtoke

Edited by rs1952 on Friday 2nd August 21:03

[Rick101]

Travel is expensive. Railways are expensive. Do you really want Ryanair running the railways?

[IroningMan]

Rick101 said:

Travel is expensive. Railways are expensive. Do you really want Ryanair running the railways?

I'd like Ryanair's clarity of vision brought to running the railways. Whether their approach would work for passengers in the absence of direct competition is a different matter.

[GrahamG]

There are plenty of pretty reasonable fares around IF you can book early.

There are also plenty of examples of comparisons being drawn between air fares and rail fares though, almost inevitably, the comparison is done between a 'walk-up' fare for the train and a web fare for the plane (when was the last time you bought a plane ticket at the airport and weren't charged quite a bit more than that?)

Oh and as for how wonderful the Chinese railways are - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14262...

[rs1952]

GrahamG said:

There are also plenty of examples of comparisons being drawn between air fares and rail fares though, almost inevitably, the comparison is done between a 'walk-up' fare for the train and a web fare for the plane (when was the last time you bought a plane ticket at the airport and weren't charged quite a bit more than that?)

My comparison a few posts up were like-for-like fares (ie booking a few days in advance) for Wiltshire to Aberdeen. By air, plus on-costs, £260. By rail (off peak) £195.60, to which needs to be added at least one, probably two, nights hotel bill, so you'd be looking at at least £300 plus at least a day wasted in extra travelling time.

[GrahamG]

And there will always be journeys where an alternative is more sensible (your Wiltshire to Aberdeen example is certainly one of them)

[GrahamG]

IroningMan said:

I'd like Ryanair's clarity of vision brought to running the railways. Whether their approach would work for passengers in the absence of direct competition is a different matter.

Since their 'clarity of vision' appears to involve a distinct lack of clarity over the actual costs for their customers I'll beg to differ.

The only airline I specifically refuse to travel with.

[rs1952]

GrahamG said:

IroningMan said:

I'd like Ryanair's clarity of vision brought to running the railways. Whether their approach would work for passengers in the absence of direct competition is a different matter.

Since their 'clarity of vision' appears to involve a distinct lack of clarity over the actual costs for their customers I'll beg to differ.

The only airline I specifically refuse to travel with.

So its not just me then

[Hackney]

IroningMan said:

I'd like Ryanair's clarity of vision brought to running the railways. Whether their approach would work for passengers in the absence of direct competition is a different matter.

But as has been pointed out in several posts there is competition, from airlines.

When the rail network was privatised this was the one thing Thatcher couldn't get into her head. Rail wasn't a monopoly, people had alternatives in air, coach and car.

We were and are the only country that sees public transport as a business rather than a service. Until we change that mentality we'll always have the high prices.

And am I right in thinking subsidies to private rail companies are higher than they ever were in the BR days?

[Hackney]

rs1952 said:

I thought it would be a good thing as it would get the government out of the railway's hair.

Which only goes to show that we aren't always right in what we think.....

But to get back on topic, this is a major problem for the UK in general. On the one hand we have the government and the greenies bleating on about the need to reduce air travel, and especially domestic air travel when there are rail alternatives, and on the other the costs of using those alternatives are often stupidly greater then going by plane. Even when they are on a par then the railway cannot compete on time for the longer distances.

Just a quick f'rinstance. A couple of months ago I needed to make a business trip to Aberdeen. The BA flight cost me £214 from LHR. By the time I'd added the on-costs (diesel to LHR, parking there, bus from Dyce into Aberdeen), the total was in the region of £260. I left home at 0615 in the morning and got back at 2000 the same day.

I just checked the National rail Enquiries website. The best time they can offer from my local station (on the GWR main line) to Aberdeen is a couple of minutes over 9 hours northbound, a few minutes under 10 hours southbound, and the best price they can give me is £195.60 off peak. But to use the train would obviously also include a night's hotel in Aberdeen so there would be no overall saving. And of course it would be at least a two-day trip rather than the one day outing I had going by air.

Its BA for me on a trip like that

Well done for realising an aeroplane is quicker than a train.
Also as the train was cheaper in is instance, rail wins!