The price of train tickets!

Unless you can get a cheap deal, e.g. Seatfrog, First Class tickets are obscenely priced. Of course, you can bet the policy makers travel First Class and, relaxing in their oasis of privilege, have no idea what the trains are really like.

It costs me €9 for a 2hr train to nearest airport here.

We fly to uk. Then it cost me £110 to take a 2hr train from uk airport to my parents. A single journey costs more than my return flight often.

We often train to airport here, fly, then usually hire car in uk as even the extortionate car hire is cheaper than trains for 3 of us.

I think that sums it up. The Tories ruin everything and we just keep voting for them. I honestly don't understand it.

I looked at a last minute trip to London after NY. Best part of a £1,000 for both of us 1st class, return.

We will travel by car, to somewhere more local.

I’d much prefer a standard fare, easy. It costs this much, any day, to get a train., no matter when it is booked. It costs more to go to somewhere further and less if it is closer. Easy.

This is a consequence of two key things.

A few years ago Chris Graying decided train passengers should bear much more of the cost of running the railways rather than tax payers. This was based on the thinking at the time that the heaviest users (and therefore benficiaries) of trains were commuters from mostly well off professionals from London suburbs and SE England home counties. Obviously covid and subsequent growth of WFH in the same well off professions has blown a hole in that assumption.

Furthermore covid restrictions pretty much bankrupted public transport so fares have had to go up to address the huge black hole.

For a regular journey we make to see my family, standard rail tickets are £142 per person.

Advance tickets, which would send us round the houses with two extra changes, are £92 each.

Driving, we use at most £40 in petrol for the round trip, that's for two of us with car fully laden with luggage.

Even assuming the trains ran smoothly, which they hardly ever do, from the cost perspective it is a no-brainer.

Coach tickets are from £18 - £23 per person, but the downside of that is that it's 10 hours each way on the coach, compared to (traffic willing) 4 hours in the car and (trains running smoothly) 5 hours on the train. 20 hours is a lot of time to 'write off' if you only have a week off work!

The thing is, trains are always packed, despite the prices. The rail infrastructure is not able to support the ridiculous overpopulation in this country. If trains were cheaper, then they would be even more packed. It would be like Mumbai with people hanging off the back of the carriage!

Used to be a regular train traveller. Like others have defected to national express. £30 return instead of £120. I don't mind paying a bit more for a train but 4x the price is a piss take

I don't normally moan about the UK but my God, we could do with a better and more affordable public transport system. We live on a small island for god's sake, how hard can it be.

Sorry haven't RTFT but is everyone aware of TrainSplit? Tickets often massively cheaper!

That's not a real consumer cost though
You pay £200 for the train or £60 for petrol is the real cost that means anything
Nobody's Car costs them 45p a mile to run in real life unless you are really unfortunate and have a gas guzzler.
My figure is half that including service MOT insurance etc but other cars will vary.

It makes zero sense that they are pushing environmental initiatives to discourage car use while actively discouraging people from using public transport by making it so expensive. Despot what some well meaning quango thinks we can't get everywhere by bicycle.

I looked at trains when we were visiting Leeds uni. For two of us, it was around £180. Petrol was around £30.

We used to often travel to Manchester by train but it's now cheaper to drive and park, even with the ridiculous parking charges in the centre.

…and The Mail wonders why people want to continue WFH ..

www.euronews.com/travel/2023/01/09/rail-fares-across-europe-the-countries-with-the-most-expensive-train-tickets

Whenever I visit the UK I'm gobsmacked at the cost of train travel. You are all getting well and truly ripped off left right and centre. Its an outrage.

Does anyone have a comparison chart of costs between countries? I'd wonder if on average per mile travelled, the cost in the UK is the highest in the world. I can't think of anywhere else which would come close, and I'm relatively well travelled.

Until earlier this year I was commuting to work by train. I've started driving in - it costs slightly less, is quicker and more convenient. But it feels like a huge step backwards. I believe in public transport, I've previously chosen to use it even when more inconvenient. But after nearly two decades of commuting to work by it, I can no longer justify the personal sacrifice of time and cost especially with caring responsibilities that require reliable and quick access to home.

It's crazy. I live 5 miles from my work (WFH now thankfully!)

To get a bus I would have to get one from my home, the opposite way, into town to the bus station. Then from the bus station back out past my house to near work, then a 15 min walk. I looked at it once and with bus changes/times it would be about 2.5hrs
Or I could drive in 15 mins

Trains are very expensive to run. The government over the past 10 years or so cut the subsidy they used to pay to the train operating companies so you are now seeing the true cost of travelling by rail.

Should the government subsidise trains again? I don't know. There are large areas of the UK with virtually no access to trains.

My maths is fine. 45p/mile is what HMRC consider a reasonable expense claim for driving (drops to 25p/mile after 10k miles/year though). HMRC aren't likely to inflate this as it's in their interests to minimise this as much as possible. On that basis I consider it a reasonable approximation of the full cost of driving. Fuel isn't the only expense after all.

Round trip of 310 miles, HMRC mileage rate of 45p/mile. That'll cover not only fuel but all of the other costs involved too.

Yep, they clearly don’t want us to travel and want town centres to become derelict!

I think your maths is off 🤔 when we do that journey it costs £45 max for a round trip

My best friend moved 150 or so miles away. A train to visit her costs over £220. It is madness.

Deleted - Double posted.