Why is train travel so bloody expensive?

[icantgetnopeace]

I’m going away in a couple of weeks with some friends and nobody fancies driving into the city so we are looking at trains.
A one hour journey (return next day) is around £50 😳 It’s no bloody wonder people don’t bother. Am I missing something? Are there ways of getting discounts that I’m not aware of? I looked at a friends and family railcard to see if that would make any difference but when I added one to the potential booking it didn’t give a discount (maybe cross country don’t accept them 🤷🏼‍♀️)

Sadly trainsplit doesn’t work on all routes, Thameslink for example don’t split into cheaper fares. Those trains are also completely unmanned with no facilities sometimes and never any catering.

I ruled out visiting my niece in Cardiff as it was over £100 by train. This was after I'd just flown to Tenerife for £125 each way.

I think it might be because every return journey I've done in the last couple of months has had a bad delay on the way there or the way back or sometimes both ways. My bank statement has a list of delay replay payments. I think they are paying me to travel.

Sorry if it's costing everyone else.

I do use split tickets whenever possible. It can be a pain if they decide to reserve different seats for each leg of the journey so I end up moving up and down the train but can make a big saving.

Have you looked at the group save mentioned OP?

Agree! It costs me six times as much to get from London to Edinburgh as it takes to travel the same distance in France.

The money being spent on HS2 should have been spent on improving the capacity of the existing network nationwide. That way the whole country would have benefitted rather than the select few who want to save 20 minutes getting from London to Birmingham.

Like much in this country the train system is not fit for purpose . Expensive , unreliable and overcrowded.
If any government was truly committed to climate change and getting people to use public transport then it would have to be renationalised, scrap the variable pricing structures and pay enough people to work at stations , onboard etc
Never going to happen .
So we are left with a third rate system - whereas all around the world rail travel is cheap , clean and efficient.

Just checking that you're looking at the off peak price- usually after 9.30am?

And yy to GroupSave. To be fair, if you actually visit a ticket window they usually tell you about it....but then we're all being railroaded* into buying advance tickets online nowadays aren't we?

*see what I did there? 😆

I’ve no idea why it’s so expensive.
You’re going that way anyway just drop
me off

This isn't strictly true. It all goes to the government and the private operators are paid a management fee for running the services.

The government also set the fares, not the train companies.

Inept government. Greedy/lazy train drivers. Unions. Train travel is ridiculous. I can get a weeks travel card on buses, trains, ferries and trams for the price of a travel card here.

Oh, another couple of things that may or may not help. Is there a slower route with another rail operator? For example, if you go from Exeter to London with South West Trains it costs significantly less than if you go with GWR (and takes about 20% longer). To find these routes on a ticket selling site you need to select the option to go via one of the stations on the slower route.

The other one is a bit obscure and hit and miss, and hopefully somebody else might be able to enlighten us further. You don't say what city you're going to, but here's an example I was given involving Truro to London. Say the cheapest ticket you can get from Truro to London is £80. Now look up the prices from Truro to Wellingborough, for which your journey takes you through London (and nobody's going to care if you don't use your ticket from London to Wellingborough, are they?) Well blow me, it's £60!! I read about this in a travel forum on Facebook and did a dummy search, and it is indeed true. So perhaps try experimenting a bit with less popular destinations on the other side of the city you're going to?

South West trains has a fleet of super duper new trains..... For years sat in sidings..... Because the unions won't accept self closing doors. Nice, big, new trains, extra capacity, clean, air conditioned, etc etc

Same for track monitoring, won't use remote because, you know, you need five people to check the tracks. One in front with a flag, three chatting in the middle to keep each other company, and one at the end to protect the four in front.

I'm exaggerating (a bit, not much) for effect but we really don't help ourselves.

The last trip I had to Scotland was by plane as that was cheaper.

Groupsave or two together railcards (bought with Tesco club card points).

Different routes can vary though. From our station to the coast is £36. If we drive 20 minutes to the next county it is £16. For 3 of us it's worth driving.

Disclaimer, i have never tried this, but there is a combined sail rail ticket Ireland-Uk (or vice versa) that seems to be a pretty standard price of about £60 each way which includes the boat ticket to or from Ireland and the train. (used to be about £50 20 years ago so its gone up a tiny bit) Which is cheaper than a last minute ticket to holyhead.

So lets say you wanted to travel to holyhead or Bangor tonight from London, buying a ticket to Dublin would actually be cheaper, depending on the time. Not sure if you can use the ticket and if they can tell you haven't taken the ferry, say you bought a ticket from Dublin to London but actually only got on the train at Bangor.

I have taken sail and rail journeys many times but only including taking the ferry.

Edited to add, you can buy sail rail tickets in the train station/ferryport or on thetrainline.com

Yeah - never understood that?!

@LittlleMy yeah it doesn't make much sense to me either!

Government policy, put fares up when not increasing fuel duty or an alternative increase say for SUVs and high performance cars.

It's shocking. We need public ownership. And this whole issue of your open ticket only being valid on certain train lines. It should all be one organisation.

How many of you are travelling?
If there’s more than four you get a third off.

Fares shot up after staff wages increased exponentially, especially train drivers' which tripled in 10 yrs. The money had to be raised somehow.

The fares are not subsidised as heavily as in other European countries. The subsidy isn't inconsiderable though. I worked out once that my commute from zone 4 into Central London was subsidised about 10p a mile.

Rail has high fixed and maintenance costs and is hard to make a profit at, especially as passenger numbers haven't recovered to where they were pre pandemic.

Hence they charge the disorganised what the market will bear (within constraints set by the regulator).

Network Rail isn't privatised, who own and run the railway lines and other real estate.

A few of the train operating firms are now state owned. No obvious improvement in services nor reduction in fares! Including Northern, Transpennine, LNER, Southeastern, Transport for Wales, Scotrail, London Overground and Underground.