The price of train tickets!

That should be yanbu!! Too late to edit.

Flying from Scotland to England is nearly always cheaper than the train.

Recent return flights Edinburgh to Birmingham = £60

Cheapest train = £290 and I would have required extra overnights in a hotel on top.

I flew.

An annual season would be £12.4k so @Roberta268 could save quite a bit that way. It's still expensive, but considering that she'd be doing more than 30,000 miles a year it's around 40p/mile - for peak travel.

Yabu.

I can fly to London for about £30. It costs 3 or 4 times that to go by train. Where's the incentive to reduce carbon emissions?

A nine coach intercity train which is completely full of passengers is cross-subsidising any empty off-peak intercity trains, plus loss-making regional routes. Just like a packed commuter train might be very profitable in isolation, but it's also helping to pay for the costs of having the same train run around empty between the peaks.

There should be a fixed price per kilometer of track regardless of time of day or when you book. It’s an essential public service.

Are season tickets still a thing?
My ex used to commute 5 days a week peak time from Swindon to London (same line as you, but is notoriously expensive), and a season ticket cost £8k a year. This was a few years back though, and it would probably be more now.

I'm not sure it's that simple, although agree that trains should be cheaper.

Oh, my bad. 😔😔😔

The train system is a joke in this country. How can a coach be cheaper? Think about it. Trains have their OWN road which is exclusively for them. Trains can carry 200, 300, sometimes even more people, whereas a coach is about 50. Trains don't need to pay to park, congestion charges, tolls, road tax, etc. Trains should be the cheapest form of transport going but no no no.

The funeral was in January. I hope she made it.

Trains are expensive to operate. But the biggest difference is that in the UK there is no longer any government subsidy of rail fares. Until about 15 years ago trains were subsidised to the tune of around 50% of fares. Essentially for every pound spent on a ticket the government contributed a similar amount. This was phased out by previous governments and now rail subsidy is practically zero.

Yes - I’ve concluded it’s not really feasible unfortunately, even if I were to go in two days a week. If the services were cheaper and more reliable, it might be different.

Sorry for your loss. Could you look into getting the bus?

Bath is more than 1hr 15 from London. I agree the prices are too high for standard tickets, but it does seem a bit mad to live approximately 2 hours away from somewhere you need to be half the week. It's not sustainable.

Re-Nationalise Rail

This is insane especially when we should be encouraging people to use public transport rather than cars.

It's ridiculous. We use to love getting the train to London for a show/shopping etc. if we booked well it would be around £30 (from up north) now even the 'cheap' seats are triple that.

Rail travel in the UK is ridiculously expensive, as compared to every other country I have ever been.

Why is this? Less governement subsidies? Inefficient business models? Greed? Can someone please explain and attempt to justify the outrageous cost?

An old thread, but I’ve been considering moving to Bath (1hr 15mins from London). I need to be in London 3 days a week. This would cost me £165 per day at peak time, or a grand total of £2,000 per month, or £24,000 per year (I’m not eligible for any railcards or other discounts that would help). This is absolute insanity!!

Same has happened with other public services. Just look at the state of the NHS now that it is so fragmented with multiple different trusts being responsible for the treatment of single patients if they have multiple health conditions, none of which communicate with eachother leaving the patient as a "piggy in the middle"!

Or local authorities arguing over which should be responsible for gritting roads on boundaries or fencing/road signs, litter picking etc. I.e. with litter, the "responsible" authority for motorways refusing to do litter picking on slip roads saying it's local council responsibility, but local council refusing saying it's the motorway authority, the end result being that litter remained unpicked for 20 years!!

I can't remember the last time I travelled long distance by train, apart from a brief spell in my 20s (over 30 years ago) when my employer was paying for it.

These days I travel by bus, just hand my suitcase over to the driver or assistant to put in the hold, climb aboard and sit back and relax. There's always either a usb port or 3 pin socket to charge my phone or tablet for a long journey. Even better if I can reserve the top deck front seat for the best views. I have an insulated lunch bag with shoulder strap which fits all my food and drink for the trip, and there's usually a pull down tray in front of the seat. I'd advise taking loo roll and hand sanitizer in case it's run out in the toilet, but it's not always needed.

Either way, it's usually around a third of the cost of rail - so bus it is for me.

So now we've got the worst of both worlds. Incompetent management with central government, but without the efficiencies of being a common organisation.

does anyone remember Ladies Days, bring back Ladies Days !

I’m not sure bringing them under government control ) especially this government) is the same as nationalising them,

Nothing works anymore in broken Britain.