The price of train tickets!

[PopNotPolitics]

The cost of train tickets is rising AGAIN! We seem to get this every single year!

I earn okay, but I almost always take the coach when I travel between cities as I just can't justify the cost of the trains anymore as they are.

Surely they will just be unaffordable to most people soon, and what will happen then?

Are season tickets still a thing?
My ex used to commute 5 days a week peak time from Swindon to London (same line as you, but is notoriously expensive), and a season ticket cost £8k a year. This was a few years back though, and it would probably be more now.

There should be a fixed price per kilometer of track regardless of time of day or when you book. It’s an essential public service.

A nine coach intercity train which is completely full of passengers is cross-subsidising any empty off-peak intercity trains, plus loss-making regional routes. Just like a packed commuter train might be very profitable in isolation, but it's also helping to pay for the costs of having the same train run around empty between the peaks.

Yabu.

I can fly to London for about £30. It costs 3 or 4 times that to go by train. Where's the incentive to reduce carbon emissions?

An annual season would be £12.4k so @Roberta268 could save quite a bit that way. It's still expensive, but considering that she'd be doing more than 30,000 miles a year it's around 40p/mile - for peak travel.

Flying from Scotland to England is nearly always cheaper than the train.

Recent return flights Edinburgh to Birmingham = £60

Cheapest train = £290 and I would have required extra overnights in a hotel on top.

I flew.

That should be yanbu!! Too late to edit.