Frigging hell! The price of train tickets to London!!

[Hellotoallmyfans]

Why have train tickets become so expensive? (I don't use public transport usually so not very aware of fluctuating prices)

Every couple of years or so I book for us to go to London as a family (2 adults, 3 dcs) to go see a show and take in some sights - the theatre tickets were £600(!) but I was expecting that as I know that's what it costs for decent seats, ditto the hotel which is £500 for two rooms for one night. But what I wasn't expecting was to then have to pay another £340 on top for train tickets from Manchester to get there! Last time we went, before covid, the train was £90 for a family ticket! There doesn't seem to be any options for family tickets and all the websites I've looked at are showing the same price.

I don't know what I'm looking for here, just having a moan really! Or maybe the name of a secret website that does cheap train tickets?

Everything is so bloody expensive isn't it? I guess I will have to suck it up and pay as I've booked the theatre tickets now which I'm sure will non-refundable. It's just gutting that I am looking at close to a grand just to get there and stay for one night. We could literally have flights/hotel for a week in Europe for that! Not taking into account the theatre tickets and the £££+ we will probably end up spending on food/drink and other attractions (wanted to maybe do a boat ride and some museums).

It's going to be at least £2k+ spent on one night in London! I don't know if it's even worth it? Grrr.

Sorry I don't agree. We regularly holiday in London, as so much is free when you get there or massively reduced with a railcard. We live in a national park so being in a city is itself a novelty. Maybe we're easily pleased.

Buy the tickets well advance with a Family and Friends Railcard - £30 for a year and gives a third off travel. My daughter, who is 12, usually gets a ticket for £5ish each way, which is so cheap it's funny. For us it's cheaper than getting the bus into town.

Travelodge circa £60 per night per room. Or a better hotel with breakfast around £100.

Theatre tickets - unless it's a blockbuster new show, there are always bargains.

By far the biggest cost, if staying in a hotel, is food.

@Invasionofthegutsnatchers

Book way in advance and it's cheaper

Look at @BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz’s post, six posts above yours, to see why this isn’t the case.

I look forward to seeing many many more posts saying, ‘book in advance!’ or ‘what about split ticketing?’ from posters who haven’t bothered to read the thread.

Book in advance, it is usually a lot cheaper.

But you are moaning about the train tickets when you are happy spending 600+500 which are both crazy amounts to me.

*Buy the tickets well advance with a Family and Friends Railcard - £30 for a year and gives a third off travel. My daughter, who is 12, usually gets a ticket for £5ish each way, which is so cheap it's funny. For us it's cheaper than getting the bus into town.

Travelodge circa £60 per night per room*.

So much nonsense in that post. The OP lives is Manchester, clearly at £5 per ticket you are much closer. I am also in Manchester and have just paid over £80 return for me and my 10 year old to go to London for the weekend (booked well in advance and with the friends and family railcard).

It's also not £60 a night for a travelodge in London. You are dreaming.

I’ve just booked a return to Durham from kings cross in 2 weeks and it was £30.

I'm sure it's been said but you only need one travel card

@Mamainthemaking

We often flew from London to Scotland because of the extortionate train rates. £40 flight and a 30 minute journey or £150 on the train over six hours; it was the obvious choice!

The prices are permitted to increase above inflation every year and yet the service is dire. Cannot remember ever being on a train that wasn’t a least a couple minutes late and I commuted via train for 8 years.

How can they charge so much for the train, a terrible service and then lecture people about the environment? They’re pricing people off the trains as well as putting people off as the service is so unreliable.

I also object to paying the full price for a train ticket and having to get a rail replacement bus the whole way.

Sorry guys, rant over. Years of pent up train-rage!

You remember that Gordon Brown (when he was Chancellor) set up a fuel tax escalator, which made the nation's lorry drivers kick off and he had to abandon it? Well at the same time he set up a rail fare escalator which increased rail fares annually by RPI+1%. So it's Gordon's fault.

Not that his successors have done anything to change it. In fact, under George Osborne he briefly changed it to RPI+3%.

Even so, I'm laughing at all of these "you could fly for that much" comments. I've just looked on Google flights and the cheapest return fare for this weekend is 2 adults, 3 kids is £1478. Compared with a rail fare of £110.

You're thinking "so what? Airlines are much cheaper in advance". End of October is £573 by air, £97 by rail.

Personally I'd drive.

Do you have to change at Birmingham? Would it be cheaper to buy split tickets?

I guess they have to recoup some costs but it will just push people to drive instead.

In fact I've now found a flexible return fare on a slow train (changing at Crewe) which totals £66.15 for all of you.

@NotDavidTennant

It's been very apparent since the govt took over that the usual cheap advance fares are no longer available as often or as cheaply.

I think it's more the case that the cheap fares are being made available later than usual due to covid uncertainty. My local operator is only releasing advance fares 6 weeks ahead at the moment. I'm sure this is leading to a lot of people assuming that the cheap fares have gone because they're booking too early.

This is the other thing, covid has played havoc with the timetable and really messed around with demand projections. Some operators may also still have their social distancing-based quotas in place. With all the uncertainty, advances aren't as widely available as they would otherwise be.

Yeah. Even for one person driving is often cheaper. For a family driving is way cheaper.

And the byzantine complexity for saving money on train tickets is ridiculous.

YABU. public transport has been decimated during Covid (not that you sound like you usually use it). I think it’s wholly unreasonable you’ll spend a premium to stay in one of the most expensive bits of London but not realise how important public transport continuing to operate is!

Have you actually checked the theatre tickets are non refundable? No way would I be paying that.

@ouchmyfeet It's also not £60 a night for a travelodge in London. You are dreaming

Look on the Travelodge website. It's easy to get a room for about £60 if you book well in advance.

We went to London for the day last month - booked the tickets 2 days before we wanted to travel - 2 adults and 3 kids - was about £62 and that included unlimited travel in London zones on tube/bus etc. We do have a friends and family travel card but it made no difference to the cost of that type of ticket anyway.

How far in advance are you looking? If it's too far, the advance single tickets might not have been released yet, but if too soon, you might have missed out on the best deals. But I hear you - I looked at some tickets a week ago, went to book the other say and they'd rocketed. It's now about the same price for us to fly which is ridiculous.

Definitely look at family railcard though it makes quite a difference and can be worthwhile even for one journey. And try booking.com for a two bed apartment to see if that is cheaper than a hotel.

It's depressing.

Standard return tickets for the end of September cost £300 for the two of us for a long weekend in DP's home village/the nearest town using the discount websites - and then we'd be using the local buses which aren't cheap even with buying multiple passes for the different companies, along with cab fares to get to his home village if we stay out past 8pm, which would take public transport costs up to around £400+.

We can rent a Volvo XC60 for the period, avoid having to cross London altogether, take about the same length of time to get there, be able to use it throughout the weekend to go places whenever we like, never risk getting stranded and even with fuel or parking costs, we're looking at about an extra £40. If we went for the cheapest vehicle, rather than one with aircon, fancy everything and I ignored what it would do to my back or how you'd deal with dirt tracks and sheep shite on the moor , the rental would be just over half of the train tickets at £163.

They really don't actually want anyone using public transport, do they?

@LoopyLouLawson

We went to London for the day last month - booked the tickets 2 days before we wanted to travel - 2 adults and 3 kids - was about £62 and that included unlimited travel in London zones on tube/bus etc. We do have a friends and family travel card but it made no difference to the cost of that type of ticket anyway.

Ivan get that ticket from the Midlands- I think it's only available on Saturdays and off peak. Is it also available from Manchester to London?

I've just booked from about as far north as Manchester but further east and it was £22 return. I was thinking how much cheaper it's got as pre Covid it was about £70

You're not wrong. Prices have become outrageous, especially on the West Coast main line. I was told this was due to very few Advance tickets being released to dissuade travel during Covid. We have a family railcard. I'm paying over twice as much for the tickets I need as I did in Dec 2019.

Travelling similar distances in the UK on other franchises has cost me about 2/3 the price as on Avanti.

“It's also not £60 a night for a travelodge in London. You are dreaming.”

I’ve had a very very central London premier inn family room for a fair bit under £60 a night over a weekend this summer. I could have had even cheaper if I was very slightly less central. There are definitely hotel bargains out there.

The prices in summer were very different to the prices now. Back then just a tiny handful of theatres were open and those that were ran the risk of being closed with no notice (happened to dd). People were very wary to book.

Now the rest are opening up and isolation rules are changing.

It's also not £60 a night for a travelodge in London. You are dreaming

The week before Christmas is £179 for three nights in the Covent Garden Travelodge. 🤷‍♀️

Whilst I don't agree hotel prices are that cheap 250 a room per night is pricey, and 600 for tickets is rediclous. But the least expensive part of trip is bit she is complaining about