To be really funking fed up of the shit train services in this country

@IDoNotConsentToAstonResearch or they put on short trains. The last time I took TPE to Manchester it was only a two coach train, and loads of passengers were left standing on the platform at Sheffield.

DD lives in the north east, and the best way for her to get home used to be TPE to Huddersfield then another to our local station. She has given up and now gets the more reliable Cross Country to Wakefield from where I have to pick her up.

British Rail was nowhere near as bad as the nationalised rail companies are now. And ticket prices were nowhere near as expensive.

I agree.

British Rail was nowhere near as bad as the nationalised rail companies are now. And ticket prices were nowhere near as expensive.

Best of all, you just rocked up at the station and bought a ticket, secure in the knowledge that they had told you the best price you could have for your journey, with far fewer restrictions.

YANBU it’s absolutely diabolical. I changed jobs six months ago and now go up once a week on the train. There have been many more weeks with issues in those six months than without. Cancellations, strikes and the oh dear we’ve only got 5 coaches instead of 9 nearly every bloody week at peak going home time. It’s outrageously expensive and utterly shit. This week I arrived at the station to find the car park mainly closed and otherwise rammed. Nowhere anywhere close to legally park. The issue with the car park was due to needing space for the replacement bus service from another station. Shit.

Bloody TPE.
They are hourly from my station. Still , you could go to a lot of places across the north without changing. Before COVID there was a brief moment of hope when they were going to make them half hourly as part of levelling up. Then COVID happened and now they are less frequent than hourly much of the time, often two in a row are cancelled, and the timetables are changed so I have to change to get almost anywhere. But honestly I have given up due to the unreliability. A 45 minute bus ride versus 25 minute train is preferable when there’s a 1 in 3 chance of an hour wait and sometimes even more or being stranded. If trains are every 20 minutes then fine, cancel one or two, but if they’re every hour you really need them to turn up.

Conservatives support SUVs not train travel. They have a userpays philosophy so train tickets prices went up. At least trains still exist unlike NHS dentistry for a lot of places.

@RampantIvy Trans Pennine Express? Is that really a suburban train that self identifies as an Express?

I'll raise you - Trans Pennine always cancelled or delayed Express

Yes... It's partly that and partly the infrastructure is all Victorian and has had minimal investment. Similar to lots of other areas such as water and sewerage.

The only thing governments in this country don't mind spending on is roads. For some reason they have an unlimited pot for huge subsidising of private car journeys. (Of course there's no money for adding a cycle way at a fraction of the cost though.)

Just look at the hideous amount of money being redirected from HS2 to potholes. It was too much to justify on railways but fine to spend on roads. I mean even if they decided HS2 was a goer (due to inability to complete due to corruption) they could at least have spent it on other urgently needed railway upgrades

The last 3 trains I have taken have either been in over an hour late (so I got my money back) and one just didn't show up. No announcement, nothing. Just people bemused standing on the platform waiting for a ghost train. Utterly rubbish.
My husband goes to London once a fortnight from Newcastle. He can't rely on the local train to Newcastle so has to drive in an ditch the car somewhere. The train is so often late that his annual commuting costs are roughly half what they would have been. While it's frustrating that he's often late, he just factors late trains into his schedule now and the fact he gets so much money back makes commuting more affordable (but it's still very expensive).
On another note - we are an environmental conscious family, both earning good money. But it's just too expensive to take our family of four any long distance on the train in this country. Much more affordable in a car. We'd much rather be on the train. It's madness.

We went to Barcelona last year and it was quicker to fly to Barcelona than the train journey home - and we lived in Surrey, literally 45 minutes by road from Gatwick but I thought I’d “save money” and go on the train.
Train was delayed, then we had to take a stopping route, it only went as far as Guildford and then we had to get a taxi the rest of the way which cost more than it would have done to park for the 3 days we were away.

And I actually LIKE the train! But I’d only take it if I really had to in the U.K. because the cost and the chance of it being cancelled/diverted are too high.

Well given that almost every other EU country has a fast, cheap, reliable train service that runs even on Sundays, this seems highly unlikely. Also lots of their rail services are nationalised.

The thing of not stopping at a station because the train is late is ludicrous. It's showing the effect of the wrong kind of targets. The targets should look at passenger journey times from door to door, not the percentage of trains arriving within 10 minutes of the advertised time.

In other countries they will do things like hold a connecting train if the first one is slightly delayed. Here they don't even plan long distance journeys with connecting trains - it's pot luck whether you wait half an hour or 5 minutes.

It’s appalling. I live in a very congested and busy area outside London near to one of the world’s busiest airports and it’s still cheaper and quicker to drive everywhere than rely on public transport.

Agree the faults are with the companies/ management but I feel for them trying to instil any kind of pride or customer service into the staff they have. There always seems to be clumps of people standing around chatting. Rude and unhelpful staff. Go slow maintenance workers. Oblivious barrier staff.

Ooooo, that sounds good! Which railway are you using?

PS: Avanti are as much use as a chocolate teapot though. Fancy trains and no drivers. I’m glad I don’t have to commute with them. For Birmingham-London get the LNWR, way cheaper, and for “off peak” you arrive in London at the same time anyway.

Contrary to other answers. I commute by rail 90% of the time and usually arrive on time or maybe 5 minutes late. I had a bad couple of weeks in the winter with storm-related delays, but weather can affect the roads too. The last month the only problem was no trains on the strike day.

Cost, well that’s still a bit shit, it shouldn’t cost one person more to get the train than to buy fuel to drive, and it does. But if I factored in the increased maintenance and insurance cost from the extra mileage that would close the gap. Anyway I don’t like driving at 730 am.

I believe that the AVE network was funded largely with EU money. Money that would have been available to us at the time, except successive administrations were too incompetent to get the most back from our contributions while we were a member.

Other than AVE, I'd generally use RENFE as an example of how NOT to run a railway.

So we are paying for private companies doing crap while the shareholders are pocketing billions.
That needs to be stopped when the next government get in.

It's also no use outside the home counties.

I work in railway ticketing myself so I'm well aware of all the ways that one can reduce the fare. That's no comfort to the person aged between 31 and 59, who has no disability, who is travelling on their own, isn't travelling within the South East, has never been a member of HM Forces and who has just had a call from their sick mother in Edinburgh resulting in a last-minute journey North.

That person used to be able to get change from £90 as long as they avoided the weekday peaks, which was a reasonable price to pay for a single ticket from London to Edinburgh. Thanks to the government's recent "simpler fares trial" they'll have little change from £200 for a single ticket if all of the Advances have been sold out (forget travelling around the Edinburgh Fringe or the Tattoo).

Our shit train services is why I end up driving more than ever these days.

Any sanctimonious idiot who dares to challenge me on this can do one. I don't dare book any train travel in advance these days because the train will either be cancelled or they will go on strike.

I looked a few years ago, the UK subsidised its railways by the same gross amount as the Swiss did. Except the UK has a population of 67 million, more than seven times the Swiss population, so that money goes an awful lot further there.

We often need a rail replacement. It is essentially £9 for the train ticket bus, £2 for the council bus.
They literally follow each other down the same road. Not even a route that many people get on and off.

I pay £60 a day to commute on a train to London which is often delayed, sometimes cancelled.

When it does come it is always horribly over crowded and I usually have to stand for an hour.

I too am absolutely sick of this shit!

Even if the service wasn’t absolutly shocking £170 for an hour and a half on the train is an an utter disgrace. It’s no wonder everyone drives everywhere!

They are getting away with it because the government is funding the cost of the delay repay. They don’t have any incentive to run them on time. Why they are allowed to renew their contracts is another matter. I’m all for renationalisation.

I have a journey I regularly make, it's cheaper to get a taxi to a station 10 miles away then it is to get the train from my local station.

Small station - destination is £80
Further station - destination is £30

The taxi is £30 return and less hassle.