To think there's no point in complaining at people about the environment when the trains are ridiculously priced?

[NoHolidaysforyou]

I'm oldish and I'm going back to uni to be a nurse. This is great but the uni that has accepted me is 30 odd miles away.

I am in my 30s and will not qualify for a rail discount. I will get a maintenance loan but the commute on a train would take more than half of it (£280 per month for a season ticket). Luckily I do not need the maintenance loan to pay the mortgage or anything, just to pay for the remainder of childcare and my commute.

I would love to take the train but £280 per month for a 50 minute journey is ridiculous. Why are people trying to make others feel bad about grocery bags and kids when we haven't even got the biggest fundamental of rail down?

I will have to get a car. It will be so much cheaper to drive than take the train. I will be able to afford a car payment, tax, insurance, petrol and childcare with my maintenance loan. That's it. For me to buy and maintain a car, is the way forward and I couldn't do childcare as well as a season ticket on the train financially. It's the worst option for the environment though.

I just don't get it, I feel like a lot of these arguments made for being green are in bad faith (or for profit) if they don't make train prices the biggest focus. It's just asinine to me.

AIBU to think there's no point in complaining at people about the environment when the trains are ridiculously priced?

Yes. My job has just moved to a city 40 miles away. I can....

Go on the train. Drive 10 mins to station, free parking (for now)1.5 hours each way if on time and my connection works. £31
Go on the bus. 10 mins to bus hub. 2 hours each way, £15
Go in my car. 1 hr 10, £10 petrol, £5 parking so £15

Which do you think I’m choosing? Environment or not, I’m going in my car.

£7 for each journey.

But £14 per day. I'd struggle to pay that to get to work.

Again, I think you can only compare costs if you are driving a car that is as environmental (and thus expensive) as a train (or bus, if your buses are good).

Otherwise you are comparing apples and pears. Factor in the cost for a hybrid and suddenly the train isn't quite so expensive. (Obviously I'm specifically talking cost, not time here.)

Yanbu

I work 8 miles from where I live. The train takes half an hour, standing room only and is £9 a day, bus takes an hour, again often bus is full and costs £8
If I drive, takes 15 minutes and it's free parking.
Sod public transport.

I work 8 miles from where I live. The train takes half an hour, standing room only and is £9 a day, bus takes an hour, again often bus is full and costs £8
If I drive, takes 15 minutes and it's free parking.
Sod public transport.

But, if it were £5.00 by train, £2.50 by bus and it cost you £20 to park would you evaluate your options?

I was a mature student and qualified for a 16-25 rail card. It didn't give me a discount on season ticket - but it did on advance fares so I saved a lot of money with that. You could also use it before 9am (which wasn't the case the last time I had one 20 years ago).

But I am afraid I agree up to a point - my current commute is £15 by car and would be £70ish per day by train (which I would much rather do)

Yes, I completely agree! There is no way it should be cheaper for one person to drive than to get the train. I really like getting trains (I like the method of transport and would prefer to get the train for environmental reasons where possible), but they are just too expensive. Then you need to factor in transport to and from the train stations, taking car seats for children where needed etc.

DH gets the train for work (where they are paying) rather than drive when he can- the costs to his employer must be huge with the train station parking at £7.50 a day or a £10 taxi each way (buses to the local station only go every hour or so, or it's a really long journey to the city centre station), plus the train fare.

And it's not just trains- buses are expensive too. We got buses into the city a lot when the DC were under 5 and free, but once you add on the cost of paying for the children it's too expensive. It would cost £8 for me to take the DC on the bus for the day (and that's with the discount for paying on the app, otherwise it's £10). Unless it's going to be a whole day in the city centre it's much cheaper to park. Plus the bus stops are really inconvenient for lots of the main areas in the city. And you frequently have to wait over 20 minutes for the 'every 10 minutes' buses.

Until public transport is financially viable, people won't give up their cars.

Why are people trying to make others feel bad about grocery bags and kids when we haven't even got the biggest fundamental of rail down?

That literally makes no sense. Yes we should encourage rail travel but we can still reduce plastic, have fewer children and stop unnecessary car journeys too. I live in a medium sized village and see able bodied people driving from one side to the other (it's a 10 minute walk).

YANBU. I would love to commute by train but it would cost over twice as much as it does by car (and I'd still have to drive to the station). I'm on a fixed term contract so it makes no sense for me to move house. Fortunately the town I work in has a subsidised park and ride which I use - but I do that because it's significantly cheaper than parking in the centre, not because of my commitment to the environment.

I do my best in other ways eg cutting down on plastic usage, holidays in the UK, being a vegetarian, my electric supplier only buys its energy from renewable sources etc etc, but I'm not going to pay £120 a month more than I need to to get to work.

I think that some people ignore the fact that whilst there are undoubtedly inefficiencies and improvements that can be made, running trains and maintaining, renewing and upgrading the associated infrastructure is seriously expensive. Many countries choose to subsidise public transportation through general taxation so the price can seem comparably low but I do think that travelling by train isn't necessarily a cheap form of transport even if it is managed efficiently.

I think other than tackling inefficiencies we also need to have a serious debate about the benefits of public transport (environmental, economical etc) and whether we should be looking to the general population to subside public transport more to incentivise people to take this option. Of course there is also the option of penalising car usage so that the benefit:cost ratio of driving is weighted towards public transport.

What is unrealistic is expecting public transport to be cheaper just because it is the more environmentally friendly option. Sometimes luckily the greenest option is also the cheapest and easiest but often this simply isn't the case unless we as a society intervene.

We also need to consider the purpose of public transport. Is it to be super efficient and to offer the lowest prices or is it also needed to provide a service to communities where the most vulnerable might otherwise struggle to get to places. If it is the latter then that is a very different proposition than the former and this needs to be taken into account when calculating subsides.

Yup, totally agree. A train from the southwest to pretty much anywhere is ridiculously expensive.
It's cheaper to fly or drive which makes me so angry. I actually love taking the train but I can't afford it anymore.

Not sure if your area does this, but as a mature full time student I qualified for a 16-25 metro card (in West Yorkshire) which gives me unlimited travel on bus and train throughout the county. I just needed a letter from uni proving I was studying full time there. I pay each term, but it works out at about £20-£25 per week.

The car is still king, so much of our habitat is given over to motor vehicles, our wages are channeled into maintaining cars and purchasing cars, we are killed and maimed by them, they pollute the air we breathe
sometimes it feels as if the main function of humans is to service the automobile industry

Of course there is also the option of penalising car usage so that the benefit:cost ratio of driving is weighted towards public transport.

How does this work for those of us who can't use public transport for the majority of our journeys? Call me fussy, but I don't want to spend 10 hours every day commuting (and that doesn't account for delays and cancellations). I could find a job more locally but it would mean a significant pay cut - and by significant, I mean 'not able to pay my mortgage'.

And the number of threads on here where disabled people have not been able to travel because the bus has been full, or have been left stuck on the train because their promised assistance did not materialise at their station...

Doing the journey to my parents house by public transport takes an entire day and involves 4 trains, a bus and the use of a taxi for the final leg simply because it's too far to walk with luggage and their one local bus goes twice daily. It also costs in excess of £300. In the car it takes me four hours and costs about £100 in fuel.

That said, I'm more than happy to ditch the car for shorter journeys if the cost, cleanliness and reliability could be sorted out. But there are parts of the country where the public transport links are so dire it's not even funny. For people living and working there cars are their only way of being able to get about.

@ControversialFerret
It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation in a way because there will always be a reluctance to invest in public transport for as long as the vast majority of journeys are undertaken in the car. If more people had to use public transport then I imagine the network would expand and this would lead to more routes and therefore a more comprehensive public transport system. Penalising car usage would obviously have to be done very carefully hand in hand with improving public transport otherwise as you point out lots of people would be stranded and this would be hugely detrimental to our economy. Increasing parking charges and implementing congestion charges could allow for car usage to be penalised in a reasonably targeted way.

I think penalising car usage would generally be very unpopular because people have come to expect that a journey from A to B should cost. Suggesting that maybe that journey is too cheap when you account for the environmental impact it will have and that transportation in general should maybe be more expensive is controversial. As you point out many people have long commutes and have come to rely on transport at a certain price point. That doesn't change the fact that these journeys undertaken everyday are terrible for our environment, have a horrible effect on our health through impacting our air quality and are congesting our roads.

Agree OP that we need to see actual large scale systemic infrastructure changes if we want to be serious about helping the environment as opposed putting the main onus on the individual.

I think we are waaaay behind on this and I'm not entirely sure why. A previous poster mentioned Capitalism, (which may conservative America's reticence to acknowlege global warming as a thing), but that cannot account for all of it. After all I went to school in the 80s and even then the environment, deforestation, and species extinction were sizable issues. There was a lot of talk made about about the sci-fi of the future and we would have homes running 100% on green energy and cars that used hydrogen or water etc etc.

So why has the pace of change despite upteempth world green summits been so slow?. Are we just hostages to capitalism? Or is that we keep electing politicians from patrician backgrounds who benefit from keeping things the same?

Politicians with no new forward thinking, fresh ideas?

Another thing, why does no one vote for the Green party in any really meaningful numbers if the environment is such a big issue? I do agree some of their policies are not always great, but why are not a atleast the 3rd alternative party?

Why is the UK which has been one of the foremost countries in researching and raising awareness of climate change been behind countries like China and cities like Singapore in installing green technologies here?

Sorry bad grammar missing words Having a Fibro fog day.

Yes, I think most arguments for environmentally positive consumer choices are just unrealistic. Trains are just very expensive and unreliable (I am a train commuter because I have no other option and it’s very expensive and ridiculously slow). The rebellion extinction people are terrible for this. They tell people they have to be environmentally friendly or else meanwhile using loads of resources on their publicity stunts. Unless you are living off the grid it’s not possible to live a sustainable life because we are so dependent on fossil fuels. The only way to overcome the issue is to find a better energy source quickly. I used to be massively antinuclear but the lack of traction in renewables hasconvienced me that everyone needs to go nuclear if they want to fix pollution problems.

As you point out many people have long commutes and have come to rely on transport at a certain price point. That doesn't change the fact that these journeys undertaken everyday are terrible for our environment, have a horrible effect on our health through impacting our air quality and are congesting our roads.

People generally live where they do because they can't afford to live closer. A ten minute commute by public transport is most people's holy grail. It's a vicious circle.

Oh, and telecommuting. I currently commute for a law degree. Absolute fucking lutely no reason why in need to be physically present 🤷‍♀️

I travelled to a wedding near Glasgow from my home in Norfolk a couple of years ago. It was far cheaper for me and my husband to fly from Stansted than to get the train! That says something about the cost of the trains! (plus it was lovely to be there in under an hour)

That doesn't surprise me, MrFlibbles. Back in the 90s, a colleague made regular trips from Brighton to Yorkshire to visit family.

It worked out cheaper, and far quicker, for him and his wife to fly from Gatwick to Leeds/Bradford than to get the train.

Problem is if you make using cars prohibitively expensive, but you don't make sure public transport is accessible both financially and reasonably convenient then people will simply be forced to stop working as not only they'll face increased prices from their commute, but also childcare as it takes longer. Not to mention that if the nursery or whatever is only available until 6 and you finish at 5 there's hardly any leeway as it is.

I get that demand usually equals supply, but in the case of my local train service into the city centre, the trains between 7-8.30am are so packed that people are usually left behind on the platform because it's too full to get on.

In the case of my office, they would literally have to build a connecting line that doesn't exist for it to be feasible for me to get there by train.

As for living closer to where I work - an average family home there is in excess of £500,000, which is completely unaffordable for me!