To think train travel is too expensive?!

[MissDollyMix]

I'm just booking some travel for work. Recently had to book a return flight from Manchester to New York - cost £350. This morning booking a return train from Newcastle to London - cost (standard class) £390. How is it cheaper to fly to New York than it is to get a simple train down to London???? I mean, I know there are special offers available (I have a friends and family railcard for when I'm travelling for leisure) but still? Something is wrong here.

I find train travel far more relaxing, and no hassles with parking

I will never understand why there aren't standard fares, so it always would cost me the same to go from London to Birmingham?

I am aware of that, but I bought my car outright years ago and all other major costs are paid upfront annually; full service, MOT, insurance, odd repair etc. Therefore, on the day the question is, would I rather spend £12 in fuel and £4 for the tram from park and ride or spend £22 on a train ticket and have to deal with cancellations, changes, no seats etc. When there are two, three of four people going it becomes a no brainer in terms of cost even factoring in increased fuel consumption with additional passengers.

Similarly, with travelling to my nearest small city. Would I rather have the convenience of coming and going when I please and walk five minutes extra to use free parking or be reliant on the unreliable bus service and pay more on the day.

I'm all for public transport, but until trains and buses offer a competitively priced and reliable service, it's going to be a struggle to get many people out of their cars.

Quite a bit of that money went into Spain's high speed network. We could have applied for the same funding and built HS2 (and the rest) decades ago resulting in more capacity and therefore cheaper fares, but successive governments never took advantage of what was available.

It was privatisation that turned BR's monopoly (which permitted it to underpay its staff, just like the NHS) into a free market (which made the companies compete for skilled staff). The unions would have so much bargaining power if the railways were nationalised.

*wouldn't have so much bargaining power...

There isn't enough capacity on the trains so they make it expensive to dissuade people from using it. As well as profiteering what should be a not for profit public service. It is massively subsidised too, and yet still...

Please do me the courtesy of actually reading the words I write.

The pp stated "Unions do not set prices of tickets. They do not run stations, nor trains, nor pay staff, nor do the engineering work."

I at no point said they do those things, but that doesn't mean they don't affect the prices.

Feel free to give me your own solution, but you're not allowed to use profits and directors salaries because I already showed you how it makes no difference.

BR had a monopoly position over its staff. That meant that it could pay them very poorly and they couldn't leave for better wages in most cases (though S&T technicians were leaving to mend car park barriers which meant staff shortages). The remaining staff worked insane amounts of overtime in order to put food on the table (we're talking months on end without a single rest day in some cases). Inevitably this lead to accidents, the technician whose error caused the Clapham accident (35 fatalities) had worked circa 90 days without a day off.

Breaking up BR meant that staff could choose where they worked. Don't like working for First North Western? Virgin are offering better wages because it's cheaper than training their own crews. So FNW have to put their wages up in order to avoid losing too many staff, and it all leads to a spiral.

If you break up and privatise the NHS, exactly the same thing will happen and the nurses will end up earning as much as their American counterparts.

The unions were the same throughout, both when wages were low in the past, and when wages are higher now. It's the system which changed in between, not the unions.

In any case, the reason that rail fares are high in this country are that the government want them to be. They're the ones who spent years raising them above inflation while cutting APD and Fuel Tax. They're also the ones who blocked capital investment which would have resulted in cheaper operating costs (through electrification) and more capacity (HS2).

I don't need to provide my solution - I am criticising your claim that fares are high due to unions, that's all.
As many others have pointed out, other countries run fine with decent fares and unionised workforces, so you are basically talking arse.

Yeah if a journey is going to take 2/3/4 times as long by train including having to change trains you’d expect it to be significantly cheaper for it to be worth giving up your car . Especially if you’re carrying luggage.

I am currently a non-driver but I’m taking driving lessons. I think the day is coming when I’ll walk short journeys (less than 30 minutes to me ) and take the car for longer journeys And avoid trains.

I’m sick of the unreliability as well as the expense . I had a friend visiting London for 6 days from another country last year. I’d planned to go see her there on my day off, and on the morning of my planned visit I got a notification that the trains were cancelled that morning.

Long story short ended up just cancelling the whole trip as I wasn’t sure when I’d get there and didn’t want to mess her about so I didn’t get to see her!

Had another journey which ended up taking 4 hours back from London instead of 2 and they dropped us off in Stockport which is a good half hour from my station. The transfer bus was going to take an hour. Because it was midnight and I had work the next day I just chose to pay for an Uber to save a bit of time and avoid any potential further mishaps . It was worth the £20 but I shouldn’t have had to make that decision to begin with.

I lived and worked in a city in east Asia for one year and there was like maybe two or three occasions where I had problems on the trains! Plus they were cleaner and cheaper.

Hysterical

You're not wrong, but since Daddy Government can do no wrong (unless it's the Tories) and is always the best and the cheapest (unless it's the Tories), I thought I'd stay away from that particular nuance.

Just looked and using ticket splits, going on Fri at 6.55am and returning at 17.18 same day, total cost £127

By blaming the Unions, incorrectly.

So far from the truth, they may have been cheaper but the rolling stock was run down and in need of replacement, punctuality was actually worse than now and the safety record was a whole lot worse than nowadays.

And I'm certain that any minute now you'll provide more than a simple assertion to demonstrate that.

Hardly necessary when it's demonstrably true. Simply look at every other European country. It's not really rocket surgery...

My simple asserton matches yours perfectly.