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

[Medschoolmum]

I paid £170 for an advance ticket for a trip into London this morning. Journey of around 1.5 hours. Booked a seat with a table so that I can work on the train. Got up 45 mins earlier than usual to get to the station on time. Parked at the station for an exorbitant sum. Arrive to be told that train is delayed by 22 mins. Annoying, but OK, I have built in additional time. Not a massive issue.

After waiting for 10 mins, they announce that the train is cancelled. Not stopping at my station because they are running late. (This is not some tiny village station with one person on the platform BTW- it is a substantial sized station with loads of people waiting for that train.

We are informed that the next train will depart half an hour after the original scheduled train. This will mean that I'm a bit tight on time but should just about make it to my meeting on time. This is why you build in a buffer zone, right?

So now the next train is delayed as well, who knows when or if it will arrive. When I finally manage to get on the train, it's clearly going to be heaving. No chance I'll get a seat. And in the meantime, I'm still sitting here in a dingy waiting room drinking crap coffee.

The last time I took a train was around 10 days ago. That one was also cancelled for a different reason. I was delayed by around 40 mins.

I know I can claim back the ticket cost etc, but how on earth do they get away with charging such extortionate prices for such ridiculously unreliable services? I used to live overseas in a country where the trains were much cheaper, cleaner and ran like clockwork. Why are we so incapable of doing the same?

I'm not convinced that nationalising them is going to fix the problem either... the days of British Rail weren't exactly much better.

I am so fed up of this shit show.

Oh, and my phone's autocorrect apparently doesn't even want to let me swear about the trains to express my frustration!

It is shockingly bad. other half was up early to get a direct long distance train to an event. Train was cancelled. Following service involves two changes. He's fuming. It's a never-ending saga of refund claims.

Labour's plan to re-nationalise them won't fix the problem completely, but it will help.

Things have got a lot worse since private companies took over.

The NHS is going the same way under the Tories.

Exactly. It's just extra admin having to claim refunds virtually every time I travel. And as someone who has adhd and struggles with this kind of task, that's an extra stress that I could do without.

I agree, it's a rubbish service which we pay handsomely for. Sadly with all the talk of nationalisation under Labour, there's no incentive for the rail operators to improve. I suspect the service will deteriorate further until the franchises come to an end.

£170 for a relatively short journey is shocking.
I took a 5 hour car journey yesterday which cost around £45 in fuel. I dread to think what it would have been by train.

Labour's plan may start to stop the rot, and possibly make fares simpler, or at least one place to buy a ticket.

Margaret Thatcher would not privatise railways, though in part the failure is the nature of the privatisation

I’ve given up on rail travel due to the regular strikes!

Yeah, I really hope that nationalising them will help.

And yes, the Tories have destroyed most of our public services.

Labour's plan is to bring the companies into public ownership when the franchises end, so it's not going to be a quick process.

They will be bringing in automatic delay repay so that you won't have to claim. As this could cause more delay repays it'll hit the current companies bottom line and may be an incentive to improve.

When I used to use trains daily (pre-Covid) it was never ending delays and cancellations. Every time I complained it was the same excuses - staffing issues, not enough carriages. Funnily enough they could fix all these things by reinvesting their profits. But instead they can report a nice bottom line to their shareholders and not give a shit, I guess.

I’ve turned down a couple of job opportunities because even though we are only an hour by train from Euston (and every estate agent makes a massive selling point of this) the trains are so crowded, expensive and unreliable that I genuinely don’t think I’d be able to fulfil a two day per week in London contract.
Apparently HS2 will fix all this….

There was a program the other day about the state of the railways. Really very interesting.

Essentially, measuring how much more expensive and shit they have become since privatisation. It's much worse than you'd think!

It's crazy, isn't it. Especially as this is one of the "cheaper" tickets where you can only travel on the train that you've booked. If I wanted the privilege of being able to travel on any train at any time, it would have cost in the region of £250.

Of course, I paid a premium for travelling at "peak" time so that I could get into London in time for my meeting. Oh wait...

Good luck with nationalisation. The Welsh Labour Government took over management of trains a few years back. The service has actually got a lot worse.

I live in NW we have 3 different train companies.

You hear complaints nationally about Avanti, that's our best provider 😂

They all charge different fares and to have to pay a higher price to travel on any train which you are forced to do because of all the delays and cancellations.

No one dares get the "last train home" so you go for the 3rd last train home which means you can't go to any concerts or similar without driving so they reduce the late services further 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️

You know how government debt is over 100% of GDP, the deficit is 15% of GDP, councils are going bankrupt, rising tax burden per capita, public services are deteriorating due to mismanagement and underfunding, and you get less and less for your rising council taxes.

What makes you think that applying these people to your trains will make anything better?

There are 4 ways of spending money:
Your money on you.
Your money on other people.
Other people's money on you.
Other people's money on other people.

The last one is the way that government spending works, and it is by far the worst.

I remember the days of British Rail before nationalisation.

It was bad, and renationalisation won't be a magic bullet this time round.

I was wondering if being outside the EU will be the key point in this. There were rules about what sort of subsidies were permitted. Now we are free of them, perhaps well-targeted subsidy might be part of a more enduring and sustainable solution.

Dh and I already get our money back for about 1 in 3 journeys so if that’s not an incentive to improve I don’t know what would be.

I don’t think I’ve traveled by train in years where there hasn’t been some sort of delay or cancellation. One particularly memorable journey was in the middle of the heat wave a couple of years ago when the train was cancelled one stop from my destination. We were all herded out into the platform to wait for the next one which wasn’t due for 90 minutes. No shelter and the only cafe was closed. Great!

I now drive everywhere if at all possible. It’s cheaper, more convenient and at least I get a seat!

And they want people to stop working remotely and work from the office instead...

The trains are definitely shit, you are most definitely not being unreasonable. My son's train is cancelled all the bloody time.

Labour is planning to renationalise which will hopefully improve things as more money will be put back in instead of going to shareholders.

And to all the 'What about British Rail' people who will no doubt comment, well it was starved of money so of course it was going to fail.

Agree OP they are useless.

My regular train has 10 coaches and at least once a week there’s some issue which means it’s replaced with a 5 coach one at peak evening commuter time (think 6pm).

Which means it’s rammed, people can’t get on, there’s always people shouting at each other etc.

It's awful!
I avoid public transport like the plague in this country despite the fact that it is against my principles to do so, but I can't rely on getting where I'm going on time if I do!

Our train companies are largely owned (largest shareholders) by European train companies.
The shareholders always get their payout so there is a steady flow of money flowing out of the UK (from train passengers) directly into the pockets of European train companies.

This increases the financial health of their train companies and limits ours, meaning we don't get the investment we need because the shareholders want their dividends and those dividends directly uphold their wealth...

Net effect is that our extortionate ticket prices and crap service subsidises European reasonable ticket prices and reliable services.

Yay.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davekeating/2019/08/15/almost-all-british-train-lines-are-now-owned-by-other-eu-countries/?sh=6f6db086208f

We seem to have the worst of all worlds atm - shit services, high prices and costing more public money than ever.

I can't remember the last time I caught a train that ran on time.

Driving isn't the answer either because there's potholes everywhere and if you go into a city it's all bloody car free zones and nowhere to park. But public transport is shit!

I swear to god it feels like some kind of plot to make us all stay at home forever, chatting all our secrets to Alexa and tiktok ready for the day when our glorious new Chinese-Russian megacorp overlords take over completely.

My last trip they ended up paying me to travel, all £78 refunded and £20 extra! Last month I had £200 refunded. It’s ridiculous