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 🤷🏼‍♀️)

It was all privatised for over 100 years prior to 1947. Fares were reasonable and services were good until WW2 brought the railways to their knees.

The difference between then and now is that the railway companies then not only ran the trains but they also owned the infrastructure. Track, stations, everything.

I’ve just put four travellers into the train line app and searched for tickets and it hasn’t knocked a third off (it says online it’s automatically applied)

Uff, how ridiculous.
Can you buy the tickets in person?
Last time I was travelling in a group there was no advantage to buying in advance, just buy on the day with discount. You do need a manned station though 🤔

I use the coaches, cheap, reliable and sometimes as quick or even quicker than the train eg to the airport

I think you might need to book directly with the relevant train company.

Because they're well paid and always on strike for more pay. I've been trying to plan a journey by train and it keeps saying strikes until October and therefore suggesting ridiculously long rail journeys by train due to this. It's just not feasible.

Seem to always be on strike, where I want to go anyway. That's a militant, male industry for you!

It's bananas. I live in the Algarve and I can take the train to Lisbon (3 hours), first class, for less than 30€ at peak time. Even cheaper in the evening. No faffing around with railcards or anything, those are just the prices.

You said you ticked "Family and Friends" as the Railcard.
At least one of your 4 has to be a child.
Do you have a child travelling with you?

That's because most countries subsidise rail travel. In the UK we used to but the last 2-3 governments took a decision to stop that.

The government (i.e. taxpayers) subsidise the railways to the tune of £12.5 BILLION per year which works out at something like £1300 per person per year. The total is actually higher than the fare revenue earned from passengers! I really don't know how you can say that the UK doesn't subsidise rail travel. We subsidise at similar or higher levels than some other European countries who have cheaper fares and a better service!

Group Save tickets aren't valid on CrossCountry, so they're correct to not offer you that discount, given it sounds like you plan to use CrossCountry. CrossCountry trains are often/usually very busy, so they don't need to "entice" people with special offers or low prices.

To get the best advice on tickets, you need to tell us the exact journey being made.

The OP said she tried it with a Family and Friends Railcard - not Group Save.
But if there were no children tickets being bought it wouldn't give the discount.

Book direct with a train company. Train line add booking fees

Yes - I don't see the point of Trainline.
It's just a middle man service (that often has train times wrong).
Just go to the CrossCountry website directly.

you can get a railcard if you are aged 30-60 and travel alone as long as you live and travel in London and the south East. It's not age discrimination, it's geographical discrimination.....
Network Railcard | London and South East |

Did a 90min journey on an air conditioned train from a lake into a major city in Italy yesterday. 10 euros one way.

One of my friends has invited me to stay with her for a few days soon. It’s quite a long journey so I looked at the cost for a train and it’s £175 plus £10 a day parking or £30 on taxis to and from the station. Two changes with a total travel time of just under 6 hours. Or I can drive it in 4 hours for the cost of a tank of fuel which will be £35 or thereabouts. Bit of no brainer really.

Europe isn't much better. We also subsidise road travel to a degree not seen in other countries - we don't have toll motorways, for example. The motoring lobby is far too powerful.

It's so depressing seeing how much of a once great train network we ripped up. How shortsighted :(

https://www.seat61.com/uk-europe-train-fares-comparison.html

Yes it’s ridiculous! I travel reasonably often basically from one end of the country to the other to visit family and friends and it costs an absolute fortune on the train. To the point that most of the time it works out significantly cheaper to fly than take the train, although I’d rather take the train in terms of environmental friendliness and I usually have the slightly extra time needed to do so. If this country was serious about the environment it would make sure to change that sort of ridiculousness. I did once manage it by booking well in advance (but I’m generally a reasonably spontaneous/last minute sort of person as are most of my family and friends, I understand you pay a premium for that but there is a limit to what is affordable!) and by travelling with my son on a two together railcard but now he’s moving away to uni we won’t be able to travel together most of the time anymore.

Parts of Europe are so much better and so much cheaper.

A ‘price’ to travel, no ‘dynamic’ pricing. Turn up, pay, go!

Here the ‘lets travel to…this weekend’ always becomes ‘absolutely not at £250 return!’

It was certainly political to rip up so many lines almost immediately after they were closed down. It was as if the politicians deliberately didn't want any chance of them being re-opened. I believe some lines had tracks ripped up as soon as a week after closure! Then bits of those track beds were sold off meaning they could never be reinstated as many have now been built on, or roads laid over them, etc. Any sane person without an agenda would have left them in situ, or at least not sold off the land insanely quickly, so that they could have been re-opened in the future had demand increased. We had the World's best and most comprehensive railway system and just threw it down the pan!

Tories and privatisation. Years of under-investment that we need to make up for now.

We use a variety of railcards, travel off-peak, split train fares, and make sure that I can work while I’m travelling so I can get paid for my journey to offset the cost of the tickets.

Have you seen what train drivers earn!

I think you've misunderstood.

The OP initially said she tried it with a Friends and Family railcard. As you say, this wouldn't work without a child.

Then the OP tried to get a Group Save discount by just inputting four adults and hoping the website would automatically apply the Group Save discount, as advised by several posters. My post was explaining why this didn't work.

I don't think she did try the group save option.
She never came back to the thread so we never did find out where she was going to and from.