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

I agree. The lines into Euston are awful now - we have started getting the coach as more reliable.

God @InTheUpsideDownToday that's depressing as fuck.

This is a very good summary from 'We own it:
19 January 2023
30 years ago today, on 19th January 1993 the British Coal and British Rail (Transfer Proposals) Act 1993 was passed, paving the way for the Railways Act later that year that would privatise our railway.
In 1993, Margaret Thatcher had already sold off many of our public assets - energy, water, buses - but she thought the railway was ‘a privatisation too far’ and the public agreed. However the Conservative manifesto in 1992 promised to privatise the railway and Prime Minister John Major went for it.
We were told that British Rail’s natural monopoly was the problem and promised cheaper fares, better services and less cost for the taxpayer. Privatisation has failed on every front. Here are the top 30 failures of rail privatisation since 1993.
1 As early as 1997 Railtrack (the private company in charge of rail infrastructure) was being criticised for lack of investment.
2 In 2002 Railtrack was replaced with publicly owned Network Rail after fatal crashes (the Hatfield rail crash and the Potters Bar crash in the early 2000s).
3 In 2003 private company Connex lost the South Eastern franchise due to its poor financial management. It was run in public hands until 2006.
4 In 2006, the first East Coast line failure - the government removed the franchise from private company Sea Containers after it filed for bankruptcy.
5 In 2009, the second East Coast failure - the line was nationalised after the private operation defaulted on payments and left ministers with a hole in their budget. It became the most efficient franchise in the UK in public hands.
6 Also in 2009, the first £1000 rail fare was revealed.
7 The McNulty report of 2011 found that railway costs in the UK are about 30% higher than elsewhere - we would argue that privatisation with its accountants, lawyers and consultants made the railway less efficient..
8 In 2018, the third East Coast line failure - Richard Branson’s Virgin and Stagecoach walked away from the line (which had been reprivatised) after failing to make the profits they were expecting. Publicly owned London North Eastern Railway (LNER) took over.
9 In 2020, Northern Trains was brought into public ownership after years of unacceptable delays and cancellations from private company Arriva.
10 In 2021 the Welsh Government took the Welsh railway into public hands when the private franchise collapsed in the pandemic.
11 Also in 2021, Southeastern rail franchise was brought into public ownership after the private company attempted to defraud the taxpayer of £25 million.
12 In 2022 the Scottish Government took over running of the ScotRail franchise following years of delays and cancellations by Abellio.
13 Every year, we waste £1 billion because of our privatised railway - that’s because of the cost of dividends going to shareholders and the inefficiency of privatisation.
14 The state has been indirectly subsidising and propping up private rail companies to make them look successful, through Network Rail’s artificially low track access charges.
15 The private rolling stock companies which own the trains make the biggest profits. During the pandemic their shareholders received nearly £1 billion.
16 Yet neither the rolling stock companies nor the Train Operating Companies have much incentive to invest in new trains - the average age of trains rose after privatisation until 2019 and is only now beginning to drop back down to pre-privatisation levels.
17 Rail fares are rising twice as fast as wages.
18 UK commuters spend up to 5 times as much of their salary on rail fares as other Europeans.
19 The ticketing system is wildly complicated. In 2018, it was found that there are 55 million different tickets!
20 Timetabling is also a problem in our privatised system. Experts Jonathan Tyler and Lynn Sloman say “the entire public transport timetabling process is dysfunctional, hopelessly inefficient…It’s like trying to form a coherent picture from random pieces of different jigsaw puzzles”.
21 Christian Wolmar points out that in other countries like France and Germany, government owns the railway but it is managed by professionals who are given the freedom they need to attract passengers. Whereas in the UK we have the worst of all worlds.
22 The private sector takes the profit, the public sector picks up the pieces when things go wrong. The bidding process used to mean private companies would game the system by over-estimating their returns - taking high profits in the early years then walking away before making the payments to government they’d promised.
23 When the Covid pandemic led to falling passenger numbers, the government stepped in to prop up the railway with funding. Since then, the private sector has been given management contracts so companies are paid a fixed fee and don’t take any risk. What’s the point?
24 Rail franchising is generally recognised to have failed - the system is too fragmented and inefficient. ‘Great British Railways’ was the government’s latest attempt to sort out the problem but they seem to have given up on it.
25 The government is now creating a second class service on our railway, making drastic cuts and planning to close nearly 1000 ticket offices. The unions are fighting back, the government is fighting the unions - and passengers are suffering with the ongoing strikes.
26 British Rail was recorded as being 
40% more efficientt

than eight comparable rail systems in Europe used as benchmarks in 1989. 
It was however underfunded. Since privatisation, 
the government is spending around three times moree

on the railway.
We need BOTH public ownership AND proper funding to have a railway fit for the future.
27 Meanwhile, railways in other countries are powering ahead, enabling people to leave cars and planes behind - the best railway in Europe is in Switzerland and it’s in public ownership.
28 Ironically, many of the privately run franchises that still remain in our railway are run by state owned companies from other countries.
29 67% of the UK public want our railway in public ownership
30 63% of Conservative voters want our railway in public ownership

Agree. Where I live the service is so bad i actually resent paying for it sometimes!

They are so, SO shit and cost a fucking a fortune. Last time I caught one the journey was supposed to take 4.5 hours. It took 8 hours. I could have flown to the Caribbean in that time and it wouldn't have cost that much more.

I think it's more complicated than that. There are a lot of variables. There has definitely been a move towards a greater part of the cost being met through ticket prices over the past twenty odd years. However the government still pays out £26 bn in subsidies. Spanish government for eg has increased subsidies in recent years to €20 billion (was previously €9 billion ie way less than the UK government has put in for a long time) but that has covered things like travel cards to go for free on routes that saw a downturn in numbers after covid. It already has a high speed network so it doesn't need to invest in that but as I understand it the costs for that weren't subsidised by government there, unlike in the UK.

Better than lining the shareholders pockets

yeah i know op. Its shit. The train is what we need to use for school. There are often delays, cancellations, and lets not get started on the strikes.
It wasnt so bad when DS1 started 6 years ago, but DS2 is in his 3rd year of it now and is sadly used to it.
Im also used to having to do emergency school runs which take about an hour and a quarter out of my day for the round trip, or two if its a strike, as well as the fuel I use, which isnt covered by the amount we get back from delay repay, if that even works. Its a good job my manager is understanding because it makes me late for work.

Its complicated. There is no one easy target to blame. British rail was pretty crap as well. Privately operated ToCs are easy to criticise, buts let’s not forget some of them have they successful Japanese and German rail companies behind them, so it can’t simply be an issue of management. Network rail - which is often to blame for railway delays and cancellations is a public body, so we can’t blame private companies on their issues. One area that does seem a scam is the Rolling stock leasing companies. Finally - Covid and its aftermath. It had a massive impact on resourcing, financing, Govt investment cuts etc…

Damn, I hadn’t read the small print! Apologies.

Only just seen this thread, has anyone compared the amount of money that other countries put into their railway systems? My understanding is that like health care the total cost of running a railway in UK is lower.
That is other countries are willing to pay more tax, the money is passed to the operator who provides more trains and better services.
Am I right?

It's just bonkers. The times I've paid out a small fortune to travel by train and then had to spend 3 hours standing/sitting on the floor because the train is rammed, all seat reservations have been declared void. I can't think of anything else where I'd pay £150 for the privilege of being so uncomfortable for that long. And you can't even get a refund for those ones, because the train still ran on time. I just avoid it as much as possible now.

YANBU, trains are such a shitshow. I don’t understand how so many European countries can have such efficient, inexpensive rail travel and we can’t. Suppose someone could argue that the UK is probably one of the poorer countries now but it hasn’t always been, and trains have been shit for about as long as I can remember.

I had to travel from Sussex to Yorkshire and back last week with my teenage daughter. Would have liked to have gone by train so I could relax/get some work done/have a nap, but they wanted £300 for the journey. Fuck that. I drove, which is a shame as it was too far for my electric car so I had to drive my husband’s massive diesel car. I’d prefer to be able to make better decisions for the environment, but not at that price.

How much does it cost to be a shareholder in one of these companies? One share, can't be much shy of 10 x £170. Instead of buying tickets we should all buy shares, take the fuckers over and force them to run properly.

@MichelleMcBelle - thank you, I never knew that existed. But sadly can only be used after 10.00am Mon-Fri so no good for travelling for work (and I rarely go in to London for pleasure). Never mind, I will just have to continue with my finance team grumbling about how expensive my trains are when I need to go in to London!

I live in Tokyo. We have excellent train services, and if you live in the central area of a town or city you do not need to own a car. When you do drive (we sometimes hire a car), it's usually a good experience, as excellent public transit means that the roads do not usually get badly congested and are smooth and pothole-free due to not being crushed to death under too many cars.

British trains make me weep whenever I come back. I'm coming back this summer for a visit and am already dreading it, to be honest.

And the booking system! If you complain about the high prices of the UK's terrible trains, you just get some smartarse fucker saying things like "Oh, but don't you know, you could have got a much cheaper price if you'd booked eight years in advance, driven to a random station at 3AM in the morning to start your journey, split your ticket and changed in 11 different places after transferring in Yemen."

I just don't understand why British people stand for such mindblowingly complex systems and lack of certainty about how much your journey is going to cost you, and having to plan train trips with military precision to avoid being hellishly ripped off. No wonder people drive everywhere in this country, which is why the roads are congested and covered in potholes.

A huge problem is that hardly any progress has been made on electrification of the train network. Until that makes headway, British trains will be plagued by unreliability.

This would be the one for you, Network railcard in blue.

I was searching for tickets to see if I could catch a train to a port, and it work out cheaper and easier than driving then parking for the week.

Turns out I would need to leave the evening before and it would cost two of us EIGHT HUNDRED AND NINETY SIX POUNDS.

I'll do the four hour drive.

I mentioned Manchester and Crewe as a pp stated that Manchester to London can cost £170, I was showing cheaper options which aren’t direct but not too taxing.

I've had to make 3 trips on this route this week at £180 a pop to visit a relative in hospital.

but how on earth do they get away with charging such extortionate prices for such ridiculously unreliable services?

No clue - but it awful and getting more expensive and less reliable. Bus are similar - they'v just stripped a load of buses out here causing problem for DS and college and me and a course and prices have also just gone up.

We don't drive and I'm honestly wondering how much longer that's feasible for. Like PP 3 kids now teens - one at uni- never worried about not having a car before.

You can still have good journeys - but the constant worry is stressful all by itself.

Interesting I remember years ago reading in a paper a ex transport minister article where he said fed up of people complaining about privatised railways went back to BR stats convinced they'd be equally shit - only to completely shocked to find they were sustainably better. I feel like that with Welsh water so many complaints on here - it's a not for profit -but having dealt with and been billed under English water companies - they are miles better and cheaper than ones we paid.

I don't think nationalisation will solve rail travel problems - but at minute I don't think it would hurt.

Crewe to London can take as little as 1.5 hrs!

You can buy a Network rail travelcard which gives you a third off your journey. Have a look at the railcard app for different options. All cost £30 per year but the savings can be great.

At £170 I'm guessing it's the Bristol Temple Meads to London Paddington route.

Rail franchise holders don't really invest anything. Very little cash is required to run a TOC which is one of the appeals to investors. They don't own the stations merely operate them. They dont own or invest in the track or infrastructure. The trains are owned by the government and leased to the franchise.

I don't think the OP had specified that they were travelling from north to south had they? 1.5 hr journey, so unlikely tbh. So whilst you might be able to find a cheaper option for that specific route, many (many) other routes don't have that option.

You've mentioned a railcard a few times - what railcard could be used for this journey? My understanding is that you can only get one if you're a student, travelling as a family or a group, or a senior. But happy to hear if there is one that I could use when travelling on my own!