To think our public transport system needs a complete overhaul?

[creatorofthecoastguard]

I’m currently on holiday in southern Europe, and on an intercity train.

So far I’ve encountered trams that are a flat rate of €1.70 a journey, buses that are €1.50 a journey, trains that are actually affordable (£9 for a 45 minute journey across the border!), it’s all been amazing. Every train has been clean, spacious, yes busy in places but only when it’s to be expected (going to popular destinations). The intercity train I’m on now isn’t oversold, isn’t rammed full of people, there’s enough luggage space.

It’s really eye opening to how poor our public transport actually is. Expensive, poorly maintained, and poor conditions.

AIBU to think it needs an overhaul, and soon? I know it wouldn’t be cheap, and that a lot of our issues stem from post-WW2 when we didn’t upgrade our risks compared to most of Europe, but it needs doing!

BTM is vile. I consider flying these days. Easier and cheaper!

Agree with this. Rural public transport in particular is basically in a death spiral. Hardly anyone uses it because the services are sparse and unreliable. But there are no funds to improve the frequency or reliability because no one is using it.

@CatzaYes, I know there is government money but it’s enough and guess what, we are paying for HS2. The stupid voters wanted it so other services are not improved. The North wanted easy access to London and look how well that went.

I do not believe we need to spend more on this. My DD travels all over the country at peak times. Yes, it costs but she’s got court deadlines and gets there! Plus striking is the bigger issue.

Of course season tickets cost more - peak time travel. If you all wanted more trains you should have lobbied for no HS2 and improvements to the existing network but no one did. It’s just another addition to the long list of things we want improved but in many cases, aren’t that bad. It’s not obligatory to live where the rail service is not the best. Most of us take a view in that before buying. Services to Cornwall have always been crap but it’s not obligatory to live there!

We have not invested enough in railways since the mid 1950s. The corrupt decisions of the Beeching Report was the first of many that has led to where we are now with rail. There is a lot that could be done, Scotland has shown some success and there are a few other examples.

HS2 was a bad decision, should have been up the east coast then Leeds to Manchester, which would have achieved far more and cost a lot less I expect.

This is what reason growth has been shit since the 0& crash, no investment in infrastructure.

The whole bloody country needs an overhaul!!!!

@LlynTegidThey could have extended platforms to run longer trains on busy lines. But no. All the northern cities like Manchester were gagging for HS2. Burnham wanted HS2 and had said as PM he wants it to go to Manchester! Of course Manchester. Nowhere else counts does it? Look at the destruction where hs2 is going and you would not wish it on your worst enemy. The destruction is immense but we have monumentally foolish politicians who never looked at the alternatives. Burnham is going to spend money like water on his pet project! Manchester! Could he maybe go back there?

I don't want more trains. There is no point having more of something I already can't afford to use. I want reasonably priced trains and until the trains are in hands of private companies, this is never going to be a possibility (with or without HS2).
I am not saying your points aren't valid. I just disagree with your original statement that the mysterious taxpayer can't subsidise me. Which is something we are hearing a lot of when it comes to any financing of public services. As if the taxpayer is some entity completely separate from the rest of British public.

Driving is subsidised though - very few tolls, roads have been expanded repeatedly over previous decades, free car parks amongst other things.

It’s a political choice - we could pay for more rail if we diverted money from new road projects. Personally, I’d be happy with that as new rail (such as the Elizabeth & Northumberland Lines) have been really successful, whereas bigger roads just lead to more people driving (so will never reduce road pollution) and more air pollution & CO2. Collisions on roads are far higher than on rail too.

One thing that people can do if they want better public transport is to join / support their local rail / public transport user group.

Longer trains have been done on a number of lines- though you could argue not long enough. Eleven car trains to Liverpool and Manchester, 12 car Thameslink trains.

It is the 2 car local trains that probably need longer ones more.

The West Coast mainline does need more capacity though (as do other lines). That’s a key problem with the network that we have & it makes it expensive to run. It also means a lack of resilience in areas that don’t have alternative routes.

It costs me £40 to get to work on the train every day. I can’t do anything to reduce the price as I’m only eligible for (and have) the friends and family railcard to use with DC but can’t use when alone. This is transpennine and is an hour journey. Absolutely abominable. The only city where PT is reliably on time and reasonably priced is London, the rest of the UK is shocking.

Northern trains need to be longer, it’s crazy how packed the two carriage ones get in rush hour.

Totally agree. Transport in London and other big cities is obviously better than it in rural areas, but better than nothing or very poor doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement.

I paid 40 euros for 2 x first class seats in the extra quiet carriage of an intercity train in a European country. I regularly travel by train there. Trains are clean, announcements are clear and easily understood (in several languages) and, most importantly, trains leave and arrive on time. Track work is done every summer, to ensure smooth running for the rest of the year. It's not impossible, they provide plenty of advance notice and arrange alternative forms of transport.

Trains also run all year round (excluding lines where tracks are being improved/maintained) - there's none of the "leaves on the line", "too wet", "too dry" that you get in the UK.

Definitely need improvement.
I travelled to Spain yesterday. I bought my £48 return ticket on Friday.
When I checked the train times, not a single train was running all day.
I had to book car parking at the airport, £101.40 and drive for 2 hours. I am not happy

I don't know anyone who really wanted HS2. My priorities would be to make existing services reliable, affordable, clean and safe. Increase east-west train services and bus routes in underserved areas. I travel mostly in London so have more frequent services and alternatives. Nonetheless every journey I hear about an escalator or lift out of order, unexpected signal failure, over running engineering work etc etc. And some stations and trains look as if they have not been properly cleaned for years. I think a functioning public transport system available to all is as vital a need for society as health, education and utilities.

The DC wanted to go on the train to our nearest big town which is a 20 minute journey, it was £14 for three of us. We usually drive (25 minutes) and it's £4 to park all day. Bus would have been £4 (with the summer kids discount) but there's only a bus every half hour and it takes nearly an hour to get there. Going on public transport is the day trip instead of how you get on the day trip! It's much more reasonable and easy to use across all the parts of Europe we've visited.

Which "stupid voters" wanted HS2? I can't remember a referendum nor any political manifesto promises about it in a general election. It was politicians who wanted it, I don't know anyone who thought it was a good idea - in fact most people I know in the railway industry knew it was a dead duck. Lots of people actively campaigned against it as it would make some journeys longer and less convenient (i.e. from the North who currently have fast express trains to London which would be cancelled and they'd have to get a slower connecting train to one of the few stations where HS2 trains stopped).

Unfortunately a lot of the stations were shortened back in the 70s so that's not easy to do, plus length of sidings is also a limiting factor. Not to mention the sheer cost of an extra carriage - you're talking millions per carriage. But yes, you're quite right, 2 or 3 coach trains in Northern-land are utterly unsuitable for the sheer volume of passengers expected to be shoe-horned into them, especially for the longer rural routes where you can crammed into a sardine-special for 1-2 hours with no facilities.

Before everyone thinks that nationalisation is the key, remember that productivity in the public sector is way lower than the private sector. So the instant a train company becomes nationalised it becomes more expensive to produce the same level of service.
I worked for years in investment banks where they would typically cull the worst 5-10% of workers every year. Can you imagine that in the public sector where no-one has ever been fired for poor performance ever!!!
it costs so much to build new track in the UK, nimbys, conservationists, the price of land,etc. so no-one really bothers any more

Privatisation has created all sorts of problems though eg fares are confusing & aren’t integrated between different services, bus & rail compete & aren’t integrated, some areas have an over supply of services & some an undersupply. We’ve tried letting the market run public transport & it has failed.

The places with the best public transport - London, Manchester, Nottingham - have some sort of public control over routes so services go where people need them. Those cities also have expanded rail successfully.

HS2 has been problematic, but we are building rail very successfully as projects such as the Elizabeth Line show. We could build more.

Yes we really need full public transport, vast swathes of the country are not touched by public transport and trains and buses are hugely expensive, dangerous and feel unsafe quite a lot, no toilets, no shelters at bus stops, no seats.

But, travelling around Spain, Italy and France, there are pockets of fantastic routes and the prices are much much cheaper, but there are also huge areas where you really cant get around without a car, buying tickets is sometimes clumsy and clunky, different operators not doing the same processes as each other, ticket offices nowhere near the actual stations or stops.

Don't get me started.
I had to attend an important medical appointment yesterday in Manchester. I live on the south side of Bradford. I can't drive currently due to a recent epileptic seizure so had to take public transport which consisted of...
2x buses
2x trains
2x trams
And the luxury of an Uber for the final leg of my journey as I'd bloody well had quite enough.
Buses are filthy, trains were overcrowded and full of litter and selfish people using whole tables on their own like a miniature hot-desks
Trams actually good, easy to pay on and off, clean, punctual and well ordered.
I long for the relative luxury of my ancient Honda Jazz

I’m Manchester. Our Bee network is fab. Trains trams buses .. unless you are in the stix. Very easy to live without a car day to day. Not ever route is every few mins but a lot of key ones are.

I've travelled a lot around Europe. In no particular order:

Deutsche Bahn [Germany] (as you hinted) is considered a national embarassment to the Germans, and its neighbours are weary of its poor punctuality. €63 for unlimited monthly travel on regional transport is a nice perk though, even if the intercity service is falling apart.

SNCF [France] is often highly rated by tourists for the performance of its TGVs. However the insistence on booking a specific train rather than just being able to turn up and go makes TGVs a poor choice compared to travel in Switzerland, or using a flexible ticket in the UK. In the regions its a bit more variable. Taking tourists between Nice and Monaco (the sort of line that OP appears to be using) is big business, so they put on a mixture of four and eight car trains (the four car ones really struggle with crowding). Regional trains out of cities like Lyon and Strasbourg however use ancient equipment, older than virtually anything used in the UK (the only real exceptions being the Inter7City sets in Scotland). Live down a rural branch line? In the UK, you probably have a few trains per day. In France there might be a morning commuter train to town and one back in the evening, no more.

NS [Netherlands] provides a pretty decent, regular service to most of the country. Contactless payments nationwide, integration between transport modes, walkable and bikeable infrastructure. Not much to complain about.

SNCB [Belgium] a reasonably decent service, if not quite as good as the Netherlands. They really need to get a grip on their graffiti problem though.

CfL [Luxemburg] has free transport nationwide. It's a perk of being a tax haven. Our trains would be swamped if we tried that. Not a bad network of trains and buses connecting what is a fairly rural country.

SBB/CFF/FFS [Switzerland] is the gold standard. Not the fastest (it's not the easiest terrain to work with), but regular interval services nationwide, connections that work, exemplary punctuality, impressive infrastructure investment, and for 3995F you can buy a GA card, giving you a year's unlimited travel on all modes of public transport.

Trenitalia [Italy] has a decent high speed network if you're going between major cities in the north. Anything south of Naples will be dreadfully slow.

CFR [Romania] uses ancient equipment, routes are very slow.

BDZ [Bulgaria] like Romania, but worse.

MAV [Hungary] good in patches.

Malta no longer has trains or trams. The buses meanwhile are dreadfully crowded and get caught in the dire congestion. Cycling infrastructure is nonexistent and the pedestrian path sometimes just narrows to nothing and you have to walk in the street. You'd think that a small island microstate would be one of the best, wouldn't you? But no...

PKP [Poland] has a reasonable network and prices are cheap. Not the most modern in many places, but still comfortable.

OBB [Austria] is somewhere between Switzerland and Germany. It's reliable, but coverage could be better, especially in rural areas.

Istanbul - I can't judge the rest of Turkish railways as the only external train was the sleeper from Sofia (comfortable, cheap, you have to get up in the small hours for customs checks). In Istanbul itself, the metro and trams are modern, but i've never seen overcrowding like it.

Elron [Estonia] very modern trains and trams around Tallinn. The service towards the Latvian border is very slow, under the USSR the lines to Moscow were the important ones. It's reasonably priced though, like €35 for a single from Tallinn to Riga. An EU project is ongoing to build a new line.

LDZ [Latvia] beginning to modernise, but still dreadfully slow

LTG [Lithuania] had quite old equipment when I visited, but I think those have been replaced since. Again, slow. When going to Poland you have to change trains because the Soviets built their track to a different gauge. Earthworks for Rail Baltica are making good progress.

IE [Ireland] do at least put on long enough trains for the demand. Frequencies are a bit lacking, especially towards the west. Outside of the DART, everything is diesel-powered and not necessarily that modern. If you want to go between any two places, you'll probably have to go via Dublin as most cross-country lines got closed.

NIR [Northern Ireland] modern, plenty of capacity. I'd like to see better frequencies though, especially towards Derry/Londonderry.

So what about the UK? We do have significant problems with crowding. On London commuter flows, that's because our economy is heavily geared towards London and it's got to the stage that we can't really add much more capacity. Put some investment into cities with room like Manchester and Leeds, and businesses will relocate and spread the load. Might do something about the insanse house prices in the South East too. Unfortunately previous governments have neglected the need to improve the connectivity of those northern cities, otherwise we'd have had HS2 years ago. And yes, we need it. Other routes like Crosscountry are easier to solve - the government could order longer trains tomorrow if it wanted to, and the infrastructure work required would be minimal. An effect of the lack of capacity on our network and the refusal to invest is that the answer to overcrowding has long been to hike fares to price people off.

On the other hand, we provide a far better service on rural routes than you'd get in most other countries. With the Pacers gone, the average age of our trains is reasonably low. Punctuality-wise, even Avanti isn't any worse than Deutsche Bahn.