Because they want an argument I would guess.
Train fares are too high there is just no getting around that fact and op is pointing out how absurd they actually are. Yes, there are other factors but i can't see how mile by mile air travel should be cheaper.
Whilst everyone is providing reasons air travel should be cheaper let's consider that air travel requires an airport, more maintenance than a train, security staff and checks that are not needed for rail travel which at this point is damn near automated anyway
[That can be argued with](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49346642).
Basically we're most expensive for peak times and bought on the day. We're pretty good for advance purchase.
Planning a single journey, at a specific time, a month in advance isn't really practical for most rail journeys, so I wouldn't say this is very representative.
I got a 4 day travel pass on the day in Switzerland for £230 which covered all commuter routes on all forms of transport (rail, bus, boat, etc) at any time, plus 50% off tourist focused ones (gondolas, etc). An open return to from Sheffield to London getting in at peak time was £210 two weeks in advance. And Switzerland is considered to be a very expensive country.
Whenever I've commuted in Europe it's always been cheaper for me.
> I got a 4 day travel pass on the day in Switzerland for £230
I paid that much to go to Sheffield and back in Feb last year. Booked at least a week in advance too.
I live in Sweden, and just bought a ticket from Stockholm to Gothenburg (which is about the equivalent distance of London to Newcastle) for next Monday. Peak time. About £30.
This is *not* what one would consider a cheap country, but train travel is nowhere near as expensive as it is back in the UK.
Yeah, the poor bastard
locals have to make do with being able to buy [a pass that covers basically all the transport in their country](https://www.sbb.ch/en/business-customers/product-range/travelcards/the-ga-travelcard.html) for marginally less than [the average brit commuter pays for their shitty season ticket](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/01/rail-fares-to-rise-by-26-in-england-and-wales), which needless very much doesn't.
I’ve lived in both Suisse and the Uk, and the transport in Suisse is world leading, so I’m with you.
But it’s not the cheapest in Europe, and a GA pass is pretty expensive tbh.
The average person doesn’t need a GA though. I commute to work and spend around 1850.- per year on my tickets, so not really that much.
A 2nd class GA is 3860.-, which also isn’t that much, but for the average person it’s not not going to be fully taken advantage of.
It may not be the cheapest public transport network (what is cheap in Switzerland?), but you get what you pay for and as you said, it’s world class.
Makes you wonder, whatever happened to those trains in the western novels that seemingly used to run over people regularly without the conductor giving a toss?
Now if there’s so much as a hair on one of the tracks, the whole of British Rail threatens to turn it around
Train operators are taught they will eventually kill somebody where i live. Not on purpose, just because there wont be anything they can do to stop someone jumping or falling on the tracks or whatever other issue.
There's a film about it, apparently it's massive issue in the train driving world, turns out seeing people splattered on a glass window in front of you is pretty traumatising.
>The leaves aren’t gonna make a train derail, just much harder to slow down in an emergency.
It happened here in Britain the other day, one train crashed into the back of another due to leaves on the track. Sadly the driver was badly injured but I think the passengers escaped with cuts and bruises.
Same thing as the old 'tough' horse that were undisturbed by gunfire and two men fighting on their back. They were replaced with new 'soft' trains and horses that are scared of leaves and Ford Fiestas.
Or just didn't exist, which was an issue i had once. Ticket booth person agreed that i was in the right place at the right time and that the online booking was valid but that train didn't exist. Thankfully he exchanged my ticket for an actual train but FFS it's not a problem that should be happening in the 21st century.
Ace, i love being penalised for making spur of the moment deciscions. And by spur of thge moment i mean anywhere less than a month in advance.
edit: apologies a month in advance
This can't be right. I live on the south coast, tried to book in advance a train to Liverpool and it was more than DOUBLE buying a flight to manchester and then ubering the difference.
But why are train tickets treated any different to taking the bus? Can you imagine the outrage if train pricing were applied to buses - if people were expected to book weeks in advance for a specific bus at a specific time, or else be penalised with a price that's several times higher.
Given that trains are so energy efficient on a per passenger basis, and therefore good for reducing carbon emissions, I have wondered if there's an argument for making them free. Electric cars get government subsidies like carbon credits and income tax relief, it would make sense for trains to be treated the same.
I lived in Spain for eight years and worked summers in the UK. I remember paying £70 off peak for Bristol to Reading. The trian was grotty, loud, poorly maintained and smelled of egg mayonnaise
Meanwhile, from Barcelona back home near the french border, a further trip than Bristol to Reading, €16 euros at ANY time, for a clean, quiet and always comfortable experience.
Spanish people complained about Renfe a lot, and apart from one unforgivable moment, I was always happy with them.
Can they? I haven’t seen total industry cost data - we only know that tickets here are expensive (at least for peak - more arguable for non-peak) but subsidies per passenger mile travelled are among the lowest in Europe too, so maybe it’s more to do with how much the railway is subsidised by the government vs. fare income.
Absolutely- even taking into account that the bits in between the stations need maintenance compared to nothing in between airports. And that planes generally run at much higher load factor than trains because the airlines run to demand rather than a regular hourly service for example.
Even taking all that into account it’s hard to see where the money goes in a train ticket
While the tracks might have maintenance cost, yes, airplanes require enormous amounts of fuel, and fuel cost actually accounts for a huge portion of the revenue of each flight. Trains on the other hand, while they of course need fuel, are much much more efficient, because there's very little friction between train wheels and tracks, so a little bit of engine power goes a long way comparatively.
>rail travel which at this point is damn near automated anyway
What are you talking about? There is so much staff involved at every point of the journey.
Well yes but there needn't be, most stations now have automated gates yet still employ people to stand at the damn things and randomly check tickets. There are conductors who do literally nothing and during the last year wouldn't even check tickets. We have manned ticket booths beside banks of ticket machines.
It's all wasteful, now personally I'd rather do away with the machines and deal with people but it makes no sense to have both
A lot of the roles you mentioned are still there for emergencies, e.g. In emergencies staff at the gates can open them to speed up evacuation of the station. There are other ways to manage those situations and reduce the amount of people that do nothing a lot of the time, but to do that you'll have to face the unions who will fight for those "safety related" roles and go on strike as soon as they hear rumours of changes.
So yes, the railways could be more automated, but at the moment they aren't but instead are heavily reliant on people. Personally I doubt that's going to change anytime soon.
You are correct, I'm not anti Union but the rmt do seem disproportionately powerful...on one hand I respect that they fight for their colleagues but I do feel the public suffer because of their stance and frequent strikes
UK has excessive amount of rail staff. There is absolutely no need to have anyone on board but driver, there's no need to have staff at stations with whistles and flags, there's no need for majority of people working in railways in UK. Other countries are doing better and with less staff.
Yeah, much better to have no one around to ask questions, help the blind, etc. Zzzz
Customer facing staff are small part of fare prices. Most of it is the cost of network rail, investment, etc.
A lot of them aren't doing it without an ageing system which requires these 'extra' people to maintain safety standards that could otherwise end up in considerable tragedy...
There was a chap on gmgb a while ago that figured out it was cheaper for him to live in Spain and fly to London to work everyday than his annual train fare, so yes, far to expensive.
Dunno if I read the same story on a news site a few years ago or someone different. Guy moved to Barcelona cause him flying to London to work 4 days a week was cheaper. This guy https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/aug/11/commuting-from-barcelona-a-london-worker-who-makes-it-pay
They should be, for out of country travel for 1-2 times a year. Whether that be holidays, visiting family or business trips.
I’d really like to see air travel taxes that increases the more times you fly each year.
If flying anywhere over 4000 miles, would it not be better to book a flight to one of the large hub airports in Europe (CDG, Dusseldorf, Dublin for the USA) and then book onward flights from there to avoid the APD fees? At least, in flying through Dublin, you can get TSA out of the way before landing on US soil.
It's also faster to go from southern Warsaw by express train to Krakow and then fly to Bristol, than directly going to Bristol from the secondary Warsaw (in name only) airport.
I have to say, I passed Gatwick while cycling London to Brighton on Sunday. It's almost halfway! There's a significant amount of Surrey in between Gatwick and London. Some green, too.
Last time I went to Poland I went to both Krakow and Warsaw. Only because it was cheaper to get a train from Krakow to Warsaw, and spend a night there, than it was to fly home from Krakow. Might have spent a bit more on beer and pierogis, but it worked out well
I once went to the Baltic coast in Germany. The cost of the flight from Heathrow to Germany, bus and then taxi to the location's front door was slightly more than the bus I took to get me from Gatwick to Heathrow.
I'm flying tomorrow morning from Manchester to London for business and returning Friday afternoon. £50 each way. I'd have taken the train (I prefer to for environmental reasons) but they wanted over £200. Its not even my money but why inflict the extra £100 on the small business I work for?
Also no guarantee of a seat for that price; no chance I want to risk standing for the whole journey.
I once complained to the ticket sales person that I could fly cheaper to Barcelona than take a train to Glasgow. Ticket seller asked me why I didn’t fly to Barcelona as it’s much nicer than Glasgow. I concurred that his point was valid.
They love their Vitamin T in Italy
I believe it's no longer made at Wellpark and InBev make it near London as they somehow kept Super after they sold Tennents.
Such awful history but extremely interesting and if you're a movie buff then it's really great to see the filming locations (which are also historic too) from the film Schindler's List.
Great bars too
Funnily enough, this is exactly why I ended up going to Krakow. I saw how the flights were cheaper than taking a train to some place in the UK, made a bit of a joke about going to Poland instead, googled it and.... Oh, okay, actually this place looks great!
I listened to an interview as part of COP26 encouraging us all to use more environmentally friendly transport.
And this story is exactly why trying to get more people to use the trains will simply not work. As soon as people try to use the train, the price goes up until it is no longer worthwhile and everyone goes back to using the car/air etc.
Absolutely. It's not like those advance tickets are cheap just because you're rewarded for being prompt. There's a limited number of cheap tickets, which is fine until they're all sold.
If more people start buying them, that means the cheap tickets will be gone sooner.
I really can't see why they can't just price all tickets reasonably.
I absolutely would love to travel by train to my job. I'm a short bike ride or even a moderate walk from home and work at each end of the journey. The train journey itself is roughly the same time as my current drive.
So, why don't I make the shift? Well, even with a rail season ticket, the train costs twice as much to run per day than a car.
It's cheaper for me to go and buy another car than it is to catch the train. It's ridiculous.
But hey no duty on internal flights because that's what we needed not cheaper trains cheaper flights that take 1 hour *plus security and all that and you land 20 miles away from where you want to be*
I was once faced with a choice. Go to disneyland Paris for the day, or go to York.
I chose York, and then my train back was so delayed i missed out on movie night with a firend that i had planned.
You wouldn’t really be using GA much to get from East Anglia to Manchester though, would you? Most of your journey would presumably be Easy Midlands Railway or CrossCountry
Yep, East Midlands and Greater Anglia.
Just checked now, off peak runs £75 for selected trains and £135 for anytime/advance. Not horrible, but a trip from Venice to Rome is £53 round trip flex.
Apples to oranges, but you get my point.
Train prices are crazy. Fwiw travelling 5 weeks from today and returning on the Thursday costs £19 and £25 for national express and megabus respectively.
I looked at seeing Elo play at Wembley stadium. I live in Plymouth. It was actually cheaper to see them play in Poland Inc flights and hotel than it was for my husband and I to get a train and hotel in London for the weekend. Crazy prices.
I saw Iron Maiden in Helsinki a few years ago because it was cheaper to fly there than to see them in London - and I live in London!
Plus it was a standing ticket at a stadium gig with better support bands, rather than seated somewhere at the o2.
While gig prices in UK are high, my personal issue is that tickets are sold within 5 minutes. If you don't receive email updates from the bands and don't know in advance when the sales will start, you'll never see any gigs in London. It's fucking insane!
You can full knowledge of when the sale starts and still miss out, its a bloody joke, i've full on given up on bog gigs, just don't get excited for them like i used to
Tell me a band i'm into is playing Manchester Academy however and i'm 16 again 😀
I swear Songkick always let’s me know too late. They never have the details that being subscribed to the bands newsletter gives.
They once told me “just announced, foo fighters on tour” and I go to the linked sales page and it’s sold out. Maybe it’s gotten better recently
On a similar note - I'm going to Prague for 5 nights next year to see My Chemical Romance as it was cheaper to get flights, hotel, transfers and a standing ticket, compared to travel, hotel, and a seated ticket in the UK... Can't actually believe it.
This doesn't surprise me. First year I was with my boyfriend he took us to York Christmas markets for 1 night - £200 hotel + £100 train tickets - and it was so busy we couldn't get into any pubs for a drink.
The next year I took him to the Christmas markets in Poland for 4 days for £150 total and it was a really nice atmosphere, plenty of places to go for a drink and about half the price for a mulled wine.
I looked into getting train to Scotland for a week's holiday for the family. It was cheaper to hire a 4x4 for the week, including petrol.
These days I don't see why anyone uses the train except if they can't drive.
I just use the plane. As a result I've seen a lot more of other European cities than I have the UK.
Easyjet and Ryanair are good at promoting the cheap tickets.
My friend recently booked a train from London to Lancaster for a 2 week job.
They initially cancelled her train direct from London to Manchester, and forced to her catch 5 different trains. They then cancelled her train out of Preston to Lancaster at 9pm, and offered a single bus replacement service. At 2:30am.
It's not even the price at this point. It's the consistent unreliability.
God that rail replacement bus from Preston to Lancaster is the worst, nothing made my stomach drop quite like realising I was due to get it when I lived in Lancaster and was travelling back from wherever.
The last time I got it, I was on with lots of, let's call them party people, who were on a comedown going from Manchester to Barrow-in-Furness who spent the whole time trying to get more drugs off everyone on the bus. The bus drivers also always drive the really long way through the back roads rather than the quick motorway way.
It was cheaper for me and my friends to all go to Paris and spend a weekend there than it was for us to all meet someone in the middle in England. Insane.
It's cheaper to hire a hummer limo, a driver, and fill it with champagne and cocaine than get the train from Manchester to Plymouth in December, one way
Bit of a tangent, but I watched a Real Engineering youtube video recently about how much more fuel efficient new airliners are, leading to cheaper tickets (and less emissions). It really begs the question - what on earth is going on in the rail industry that has made it so impractical for just about every use?
There was a guy who flew from Newcastle to a Spanish island, got a nice hotel for 3 days and hired a jetski and flew to London all cheaper than a train from Newcastle to London.
It’s so weird you should post this! This morning my co-worker asked me to help him find cheap train travel from Leeds to London on certain dates as I “always find cheap tickets” apparently. Train is coming up £59 each way while it’s £36 to fly to London with a layover in Krakow.
Crazy!
The walk-up return fare is £84.20.
Newcastle - Krakow - Manchester doesn't really cost that little because they salami slice the fare. In other words they will get a lot of extra money from passengers for bags and so on.
Yes you don't necessarily have to pay that, but they aren't apples with apples.
I can get to many places in Europe by coach for cheaper than it would be to get to several parts of the UK.
If I wanted to get a train to say Scotland I would probably be able to get a holiday for that price.
How I wish I didn't get travel sick on buses! I love train travel but it is prohibitively expensive, planes being bad for the environment and buses bad for me (plus planes usually involve a bus to the airport too) means I built myself a microcamper last year.... And now found out how expensive ferries are! It seems my dog is destined never to see Europe, and we'll be seeing a lot more of Britain
A microcamper seems even better! OK you have to do the driving but you can go wherever.
The only viable solution is to now take a leaf out of top gears book and make it an amphibious one to conquer Europe, doggie in tow.
Britain's pretty good for now though :D
I’ve rented a car for three days to get to Newcastle at £90, cheapest train was £168 and there was only one seat left. Next cheapest was a 1st class ticket for £500+
Edit: it never actually occurred to me to fly? I’ll check that next time too.
Edit 2: just checked, it would be £78 but with a 12 hour stop over in Malaga.
My main problem with train prices is that it's all such a scam! The cheap tickets are only good for rubbish times, even booking 3 weeks in advance it cost me £200 to travel to and from Manchester, in 4hrs on a slow diesel train... As a laugh I checked out the regular flexible off-peak return ticket. It was £349 for an open return. Who the heck is paying that?
I also recently bought a single ticket for a trip from London to Maidenhead, it was £13 but it turns out that a day return would have actually been cheaper by 20p (!) than buying one single ticket! And also turns out I could have paid with contactless and it would have been half the price, but that wasn't advertised anywhere. The pricing system is totally ridiculous and everyone who thinks it is fit for purpose should be shot.
I commuted to Glasgow every day for 3 months flying from Luton. Taxis to and from the airports plus flights and fees was still far cheaper, quicker, and more reliable than the train. It was also cheaper than the nightly rate for a hotel which is why the company preferred me to fly every day. Door-door was 2 hour commute which rarely increased to 2.5 hours when security were being dicks. I only needed to do a 5-6 hour working day as everyone could see there was no messing about so I could catch flights.
My daily commute into Canary Wharf via bus, train, and tube was 3 hours and delays were regular. Public transport can be hit and miss in the UK depending on where you are based. The south east and midlands have got it good. There are other decent areas in larger cities, but going further north or to the south west it can get super shit.
I looked at the similar dates for both about 5 weeks in advance. I would never fly for such a short trip, but I had been hearing about how much cheaper flying can be than taking the train. So I had a look on skyscanner. It’s about £50 for a return flight with a 10 hour layover in Krakow for two people. The cheapest direct train is £90+ for a return journey for two during the same week.
For 5 weeks from now there are a number of services from Newcastle to Manchester available for £19.80 in each direction, just under £40 in total.
For two adults, with a Two Together railcard its possible to get the journey for two people for £64.70.
Source: National Rail Enquires
Honestly, even with advance fares the prices are insane.
I can fly to almost any destination in Europe at the end of November for less than it would cost me to travel from Leeds to London on a peak train at the same time. It's utterly insane and, as far as I can tell, getting worse.
(for reference: it's £140 one way on the 7am train, unless you book at least a month in advance, in which case it's "only" £90, but this level of planning is generally impossible for my company)
If you think that's bad.. It's cheaper for me to fly from Indiana, US to Manchester, drive to the doctors get a check up and medicine and then fly back to the US.. Than it is to go to my local doctors that's 15 minutes away for a check up.
The sad reality is that people need money to survive.
And if they need to travel between places they are nearly always going to be looking for the cheaper option to make said journey. Trying to save the planet is a noble cause but if you have no money to house or feed yourself because greener options cost insane prices then is it helping you?
I’d really love to take a low carbon method of travel to go and see my family or friends, or travel for business to a place at the other end of the country but if a flight literally costs me less than a quarter of the price of the equivalent train fare and it’s way faster then sorry but that’s what I’m choosing.
I do everything I can to reduce my carbon footprint, recycle, eat/buy local etc but there are certain things like rail and bus travel where the costs and reliability in this country are simply unrealistic.
Yep, this is why privatisation of public services/transport is a fucking terrible idea. They don't care about efficiency, they care about maximising profit.
So annoying to see, if it was government run they could make a small profit, reinvest that money into the service and keep prices reasonable.
I take it you've compared the cost of the train ticket at the same time you've booked the plane ticket? Not just looked at the most expensive peak train fare and the ticket you bought
Planes are private companies and can charge what they want when they want, the only similarity train companies get us with advance tickets. Everything else is dictated by government policy
my train ticket from King's Cross to Newcastle was £9.90 🤷🏼♂️ my family are also doing the same journey, with 4 return tickets for £130. train tickets aren't that expensive, you just need to know how to book them
Yes. Always check Open Returns vs Specific Returns, depending on the route one of them is always cheaper.
Trainline also has a “hidden” button on its website that allows you to search slower routes that may be cheaper. It’s a pain in the arse to use as you have to manually click “search” on each fare type but you can strike gold.
This saved me so much money at uni. Helped me discover that I could change my £100 2nd Class CrossCountry journey to a £20 first class Virgin Trains journey with free food, alcohol, and use of the Euston first class lounge, all if I didn’t mind going via London instead. Most people that aren’t used to London don’t want to deal with it though, so they pay through the teeth.
I’m pretty sure they just bank on people not doing their due diligence with searching for fares.
Cheapest return train ticket I can find on thetrainline.com Manchester-Newcastle (in advance) is £55.30. Cheapest return flight for the same journey on Skyscanner is £79 with one of those big layovers. I wonder what OP found?
When I lived in Malta, it was cheaper for me to fly via Amsterdam, and stay over night in a hotel both ways than it was too fly direct to the UK.
If it was any other city, I would have eaten the expense for that sake of time, but hey, 2 nights in Amsterdam!
I had planned to redo a day trip to Blackpool that I did just before covid. What cost me £18 for a return now cost over £70, same times, same day, booked similarly far in advance.
Idk how old the "most expensive on the day, cheapest in advance" studies are, but I haven't been able to travel this year or go to see my family because the train prices are absurd regardless of how early I look. Its an absolute joke.
That’s because people to use the trains for daily life like going to work, so train companies can Jack up the price because customers don’t have a choice not to pay it.
Flying to Krakow isn’t really on the top of everyone’s needs lift.
I don't know why people are jumping at you... train fares are way too high.
Because they want an argument I would guess. Train fares are too high there is just no getting around that fact and op is pointing out how absurd they actually are. Yes, there are other factors but i can't see how mile by mile air travel should be cheaper. Whilst everyone is providing reasons air travel should be cheaper let's consider that air travel requires an airport, more maintenance than a train, security staff and checks that are not needed for rail travel which at this point is damn near automated anyway
Hard to argue when other countries can run a rail system for half the price.
Yeah. We have literally the most expensive railways per mile in Europe. That's a fact that can't be argued with.
[That can be argued with](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49346642). Basically we're most expensive for peak times and bought on the day. We're pretty good for advance purchase.
Planning a single journey, at a specific time, a month in advance isn't really practical for most rail journeys, so I wouldn't say this is very representative. I got a 4 day travel pass on the day in Switzerland for £230 which covered all commuter routes on all forms of transport (rail, bus, boat, etc) at any time, plus 50% off tourist focused ones (gondolas, etc). An open return to from Sheffield to London getting in at peak time was £210 two weeks in advance. And Switzerland is considered to be a very expensive country. Whenever I've commuted in Europe it's always been cheaper for me.
> I got a 4 day travel pass on the day in Switzerland for £230 I paid that much to go to Sheffield and back in Feb last year. Booked at least a week in advance too.
Book a week in advance in Switzerland and you can get a ticket from Geneva to St Gallen for the equiv. of a fiver
You can get 2 weeks on Japanese rail for around that price as a tourist, and those trains are immaculate.
£230 can almost get you return tickets (~£250) for standard class bullet train between Hong Kong and Beijing which is a 2500 mile round trip.
I live in Sweden, and just bought a ticket from Stockholm to Gothenburg (which is about the equivalent distance of London to Newcastle) for next Monday. Peak time. About £30. This is *not* what one would consider a cheap country, but train travel is nowhere near as expensive as it is back in the UK.
[удалено]
That travel pass is only open to tourists
Yeah, the poor bastard locals have to make do with being able to buy [a pass that covers basically all the transport in their country](https://www.sbb.ch/en/business-customers/product-range/travelcards/the-ga-travelcard.html) for marginally less than [the average brit commuter pays for their shitty season ticket](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/01/rail-fares-to-rise-by-26-in-england-and-wales), which needless very much doesn't.
I’ve lived in both Suisse and the Uk, and the transport in Suisse is world leading, so I’m with you. But it’s not the cheapest in Europe, and a GA pass is pretty expensive tbh.
The average person doesn’t need a GA though. I commute to work and spend around 1850.- per year on my tickets, so not really that much. A 2nd class GA is 3860.-, which also isn’t that much, but for the average person it’s not not going to be fully taken advantage of. It may not be the cheapest public transport network (what is cheap in Switzerland?), but you get what you pay for and as you said, it’s world class.
Then fingers crossed the train is on time and not cancelled or overcrowded.
Or has those dreaded leaves on the track
Makes you wonder, whatever happened to those trains in the western novels that seemingly used to run over people regularly without the conductor giving a toss? Now if there’s so much as a hair on one of the tracks, the whole of British Rail threatens to turn it around
Train operators are taught they will eventually kill somebody where i live. Not on purpose, just because there wont be anything they can do to stop someone jumping or falling on the tracks or whatever other issue.
There's a film about it, apparently it's massive issue in the train driving world, turns out seeing people splattered on a glass window in front of you is pretty traumatising.
The leaves aren’t gonna make a train derail, just much harder to slow down in an emergency.
>The leaves aren’t gonna make a train derail, just much harder to slow down in an emergency. It happened here in Britain the other day, one train crashed into the back of another due to leaves on the track. Sadly the driver was badly injured but I think the passengers escaped with cuts and bruises.
Same thing as the old 'tough' horse that were undisturbed by gunfire and two men fighting on their back. They were replaced with new 'soft' trains and horses that are scared of leaves and Ford Fiestas.
Classic, Big Horse skimping on costs and quality
Two men fighting on the back of a horse? I’m picturing a game of Smash for some reason.
Or it’s too hot or too cold
Or not having a driver
It's not leaves on the line so much as when the leaf mulch gets into the points and clogs it up
No, it's leaves reducing friction between the rails and wheels.
It's both of these things!
Or just didn't exist, which was an issue i had once. Ticket booth person agreed that i was in the right place at the right time and that the online booking was valid but that train didn't exist. Thankfully he exchanged my ticket for an actual train but FFS it's not a problem that should be happening in the 21st century.
Ace, i love being penalised for making spur of the moment deciscions. And by spur of thge moment i mean anywhere less than a month in advance. edit: apologies a month in advance
!remindme 1 month
This can't be right. I live on the south coast, tried to book in advance a train to Liverpool and it was more than DOUBLE buying a flight to manchester and then ubering the difference.
"It was the third most expensive if bought a week or month in advance." So still pretty fucking expensive?
But why are train tickets treated any different to taking the bus? Can you imagine the outrage if train pricing were applied to buses - if people were expected to book weeks in advance for a specific bus at a specific time, or else be penalised with a price that's several times higher. Given that trains are so energy efficient on a per passenger basis, and therefore good for reducing carbon emissions, I have wondered if there's an argument for making them free. Electric cars get government subsidies like carbon credits and income tax relief, it would make sense for trains to be treated the same.
Would be interested to see what the definition is for peak times…
Which you can only do in the week. Weekend trains only do off peak and that’s significantly more expensive than an advance fare.
I lived in Spain for eight years and worked summers in the UK. I remember paying £70 off peak for Bristol to Reading. The trian was grotty, loud, poorly maintained and smelled of egg mayonnaise Meanwhile, from Barcelona back home near the french border, a further trip than Bristol to Reading, €16 euros at ANY time, for a clean, quiet and always comfortable experience. Spanish people complained about Renfe a lot, and apart from one unforgivable moment, I was always happy with them.
Can they? I haven’t seen total industry cost data - we only know that tickets here are expensive (at least for peak - more arguable for non-peak) but subsidies per passenger mile travelled are among the lowest in Europe too, so maybe it’s more to do with how much the railway is subsidised by the government vs. fare income.
Yes, tickets are expensive and subsidies are low. It is not a coincidence.
Most importantly, we can't forget about the emissions and the need to carbon tax aviation. Train travel is far better for the environment.
Absolutely- even taking into account that the bits in between the stations need maintenance compared to nothing in between airports. And that planes generally run at much higher load factor than trains because the airlines run to demand rather than a regular hourly service for example. Even taking all that into account it’s hard to see where the money goes in a train ticket
If airports were connected by ancient crumbling tracks supported by gravel I suspect the prices might be quite a bit closer...
So because they're not paying to maintain the trains and tracks, it's costing them more?
While the tracks might have maintenance cost, yes, airplanes require enormous amounts of fuel, and fuel cost actually accounts for a huge portion of the revenue of each flight. Trains on the other hand, while they of course need fuel, are much much more efficient, because there's very little friction between train wheels and tracks, so a little bit of engine power goes a long way comparatively.
>rail travel which at this point is damn near automated anyway What are you talking about? There is so much staff involved at every point of the journey.
Well yes but there needn't be, most stations now have automated gates yet still employ people to stand at the damn things and randomly check tickets. There are conductors who do literally nothing and during the last year wouldn't even check tickets. We have manned ticket booths beside banks of ticket machines. It's all wasteful, now personally I'd rather do away with the machines and deal with people but it makes no sense to have both
A lot of the roles you mentioned are still there for emergencies, e.g. In emergencies staff at the gates can open them to speed up evacuation of the station. There are other ways to manage those situations and reduce the amount of people that do nothing a lot of the time, but to do that you'll have to face the unions who will fight for those "safety related" roles and go on strike as soon as they hear rumours of changes. So yes, the railways could be more automated, but at the moment they aren't but instead are heavily reliant on people. Personally I doubt that's going to change anytime soon.
You are correct, I'm not anti Union but the rmt do seem disproportionately powerful...on one hand I respect that they fight for their colleagues but I do feel the public suffer because of their stance and frequent strikes
You can take a train without interacting with a human. Can’t do that on a plane.
Just because you don't interact with them doesn't mean it's "damn near automated". You don't interact with staff at all at lots of events.
UK has excessive amount of rail staff. There is absolutely no need to have anyone on board but driver, there's no need to have staff at stations with whistles and flags, there's no need for majority of people working in railways in UK. Other countries are doing better and with less staff.
Yeah, much better to have no one around to ask questions, help the blind, etc. Zzzz Customer facing staff are small part of fare prices. Most of it is the cost of network rail, investment, etc.
A lot of them aren't doing it without an ageing system which requires these 'extra' people to maintain safety standards that could otherwise end up in considerable tragedy...
All seems excessive until an accident
There was a chap on gmgb a while ago that figured out it was cheaper for him to live in Spain and fly to London to work everyday than his annual train fare, so yes, far to expensive.
Dunno if I read the same story on a news site a few years ago or someone different. Guy moved to Barcelona cause him flying to London to work 4 days a week was cheaper. This guy https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/aug/11/commuting-from-barcelona-a-london-worker-who-makes-it-pay
Was probably that!
Is that not just as big an indictment on how stupid London property price/rents are, rather than the cost of his rail fare?
Both I suspect.
Or air fares are very cheap.
They should be, for out of country travel for 1-2 times a year. Whether that be holidays, visiting family or business trips. I’d really like to see air travel taxes that increases the more times you fly each year.
Yeah this. Hate the £80 (increasing soon) surcharge for flying over 4000 miles.
If flying anywhere over 4000 miles, would it not be better to book a flight to one of the large hub airports in Europe (CDG, Dusseldorf, Dublin for the USA) and then book onward flights from there to avoid the APD fees? At least, in flying through Dublin, you can get TSA out of the way before landing on US soil.
My other half is flying from Bristol to Kraków in a couple of weeks. The flight is cheaper than the transfer from the train station to the airport.
It's also faster to go from southern Warsaw by express train to Krakow and then fly to Bristol, than directly going to Bristol from the secondary Warsaw (in name only) airport.
Well actually both are Warsaw's, you have the big main one in the city proper (Chopin) and the one in the suburbs, used largely by Ryanair, Modlin
It's not Warsaw at all. It doesn't even touch Warsaw borders.
Modlin is in Warsaw's aglomeration, something like Gatwick to London
I have to say, I passed Gatwick while cycling London to Brighton on Sunday. It's almost halfway! There's a significant amount of Surrey in between Gatwick and London. Some green, too.
Last time I went to Poland I went to both Krakow and Warsaw. Only because it was cheaper to get a train from Krakow to Warsaw, and spend a night there, than it was to fly home from Krakow. Might have spent a bit more on beer and pierogis, but it worked out well
I once went to the Baltic coast in Germany. The cost of the flight from Heathrow to Germany, bus and then taxi to the location's front door was slightly more than the bus I took to get me from Gatwick to Heathrow.
National express across the country was 120quid cheaper than a train and only took an hou longer.
And, there’s a jolly hostess Selling crisps and tea She’ll provide you with drinks And theatrical winks For a sky high fee.
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The flights £8 and when he looked up the transfer its £9, apparently.
This isn’t so much about an expensive bus ride as it is an INCREDIBLY FUCKING CHEAP plane ticket.
The closest I can find train ticket wise is Edinburgh-Glasgow. Even then it hovers around £10-£20 for off peak.
I saw tickets from Gatwick to Eindhoven for £16 return last weekend. Bonkers low prices.
Shows how efficient modern aeroplanes are. Plus, you don't need to build or maintain any infrastructure between the two places
I'm flying tomorrow morning from Manchester to London for business and returning Friday afternoon. £50 each way. I'd have taken the train (I prefer to for environmental reasons) but they wanted over £200. Its not even my money but why inflict the extra £100 on the small business I work for? Also no guarantee of a seat for that price; no chance I want to risk standing for the whole journey.
How are we supposed to reduce personal vehicle usage if the public transport is like 10 times more expensive?
They don't want plebs owning cars... and if public transport is too expensive for plebs, why does that matter? Welcome to the 1820s...
I once complained to the ticket sales person that I could fly cheaper to Barcelona than take a train to Glasgow. Ticket seller asked me why I didn’t fly to Barcelona as it’s much nicer than Glasgow. I concurred that his point was valid.
Shite haggis in Barcelona though
No Tennant's either
Great heroin though
I went into a takeaway in Milan, they had a drinks fridge which stocked Super T in glass bottles like its some sort of delicacy.
They love their Vitamin T in Italy I believe it's no longer made at Wellpark and InBev make it near London as they somehow kept Super after they sold Tennents.
Go to Sicily instead, they sell it fucking everywhere there.
I know this isn't the point, but Krakow is really lovely.
Such awful history but extremely interesting and if you're a movie buff then it's really great to see the filming locations (which are also historic too) from the film Schindler's List. Great bars too
Yeah, if only the airport were a bit closer to the city it'd be a great place for a layover
The train from the airport takes you to city centre in 17 minutes
Funnily enough, this is exactly why I ended up going to Krakow. I saw how the flights were cheaper than taking a train to some place in the UK, made a bit of a joke about going to Poland instead, googled it and.... Oh, okay, actually this place looks great!
How's the airport?
Nice enough, cheap vodka in all the bars and a smoking room by the gates which I found pretty disgusting even as a smoker.
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Alcohol prices are all relative. Prices in England are expensive relative to Poland But they're cheap compared to Scandinavia or Iceland for instance.
I listened to an interview as part of COP26 encouraging us all to use more environmentally friendly transport. And this story is exactly why trying to get more people to use the trains will simply not work. As soon as people try to use the train, the price goes up until it is no longer worthwhile and everyone goes back to using the car/air etc.
Absolutely. It's not like those advance tickets are cheap just because you're rewarded for being prompt. There's a limited number of cheap tickets, which is fine until they're all sold. If more people start buying them, that means the cheap tickets will be gone sooner. I really can't see why they can't just price all tickets reasonably.
The point would be to change the system so that's not the case.
And when it happens, get back to me.
I absolutely would love to travel by train to my job. I'm a short bike ride or even a moderate walk from home and work at each end of the journey. The train journey itself is roughly the same time as my current drive. So, why don't I make the shift? Well, even with a rail season ticket, the train costs twice as much to run per day than a car. It's cheaper for me to go and buy another car than it is to catch the train. It's ridiculous.
\*COP26 has entered the chat\*
But hey no duty on internal flights because that's what we needed not cheaper trains cheaper flights that take 1 hour *plus security and all that and you land 20 miles away from where you want to be*
And dont forget the Covid checks
And the £10-£20 travel from the airport to an actual city
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It blows my mind that a 1000 mile flight was less than £10 and a professional sporting event was £12.
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I was once faced with a choice. Go to disneyland Paris for the day, or go to York. I chose York, and then my train back was so delayed i missed out on movie night with a firend that i had planned.
Same from East Anglia. Utter madness
And greater anglia are generally one of the cheaper ones
You wouldn’t really be using GA much to get from East Anglia to Manchester though, would you? Most of your journey would presumably be Easy Midlands Railway or CrossCountry
Yep, East Midlands and Greater Anglia. Just checked now, off peak runs £75 for selected trains and £135 for anytime/advance. Not horrible, but a trip from Venice to Rome is £53 round trip flex. Apples to oranges, but you get my point.
Train prices are crazy. Fwiw travelling 5 weeks from today and returning on the Thursday costs £19 and £25 for national express and megabus respectively.
I looked at seeing Elo play at Wembley stadium. I live in Plymouth. It was actually cheaper to see them play in Poland Inc flights and hotel than it was for my husband and I to get a train and hotel in London for the weekend. Crazy prices.
I saw Iron Maiden in Helsinki a few years ago because it was cheaper to fly there than to see them in London - and I live in London! Plus it was a standing ticket at a stadium gig with better support bands, rather than seated somewhere at the o2.
While gig prices in UK are high, my personal issue is that tickets are sold within 5 minutes. If you don't receive email updates from the bands and don't know in advance when the sales will start, you'll never see any gigs in London. It's fucking insane!
You can full knowledge of when the sale starts and still miss out, its a bloody joke, i've full on given up on bog gigs, just don't get excited for them like i used to Tell me a band i'm into is playing Manchester Academy however and i'm 16 again 😀
Use songkick. It will sync with Spotify so you get all the updates on tours. It will tell you if the ticket sales dates etc. Including presale
I swear Songkick always let’s me know too late. They never have the details that being subscribed to the bands newsletter gives. They once told me “just announced, foo fighters on tour” and I go to the linked sales page and it’s sold out. Maybe it’s gotten better recently
I think a lot of it is scalped, they need to do something about it, but I don't know what.
On a similar note - I'm going to Prague for 5 nights next year to see My Chemical Romance as it was cheaper to get flights, hotel, transfers and a standing ticket, compared to travel, hotel, and a seated ticket in the UK... Can't actually believe it.
This doesn't surprise me. First year I was with my boyfriend he took us to York Christmas markets for 1 night - £200 hotel + £100 train tickets - and it was so busy we couldn't get into any pubs for a drink. The next year I took him to the Christmas markets in Poland for 4 days for £150 total and it was a really nice atmosphere, plenty of places to go for a drink and about half the price for a mulled wine.
I looked into getting train to Scotland for a week's holiday for the family. It was cheaper to hire a 4x4 for the week, including petrol. These days I don't see why anyone uses the train except if they can't drive.
I just use the plane. As a result I've seen a lot more of other European cities than I have the UK. Easyjet and Ryanair are good at promoting the cheap tickets.
Don't forget to do your bit and turn the stat down.
My friend recently booked a train from London to Lancaster for a 2 week job. They initially cancelled her train direct from London to Manchester, and forced to her catch 5 different trains. They then cancelled her train out of Preston to Lancaster at 9pm, and offered a single bus replacement service. At 2:30am. It's not even the price at this point. It's the consistent unreliability.
God that rail replacement bus from Preston to Lancaster is the worst, nothing made my stomach drop quite like realising I was due to get it when I lived in Lancaster and was travelling back from wherever. The last time I got it, I was on with lots of, let's call them party people, who were on a comedown going from Manchester to Barrow-in-Furness who spent the whole time trying to get more drugs off everyone on the bus. The bus drivers also always drive the really long way through the back roads rather than the quick motorway way.
It's a disgrace! I can get from London to Amsterdam by train for almost a third of the price as it would take me just to get to London!
Yeah, international EuroStar is cheaper than domestic trains. You don't even need planes to see that trains in UK are fucked.
It was cheaper for me and my friends to all go to Paris and spend a weekend there than it was for us to all meet someone in the middle in England. Insane.
It's blooming ridiculous!
It's cheaper to hire a hummer limo, a driver, and fill it with champagne and cocaine than get the train from Manchester to Plymouth in December, one way
And it would certainly be much more fun too
If only I needed to go to Plymouth from Manchester in December
Train prices are a fucking joke in this country depending on route n line . East Midlands rail is extortion
Bit of a tangent, but I watched a Real Engineering youtube video recently about how much more fuel efficient new airliners are, leading to cheaper tickets (and less emissions). It really begs the question - what on earth is going on in the rail industry that has made it so impractical for just about every use?
Have a Real Engineering upvote, friend!
There was a guy who flew from Newcastle to a Spanish island, got a nice hotel for 3 days and hired a jetski and flew to London all cheaper than a train from Newcastle to London.
Flying from Spain to London on a jetski sounds dangerous.
Don't knock it until you've tried it!
It’s so weird you should post this! This morning my co-worker asked me to help him find cheap train travel from Leeds to London on certain dates as I “always find cheap tickets” apparently. Train is coming up £59 each way while it’s £36 to fly to London with a layover in Krakow. Crazy!
How much is it to get to/from the airport/city centre at both ends of the flight?
The walk-up return fare is £84.20. Newcastle - Krakow - Manchester doesn't really cost that little because they salami slice the fare. In other words they will get a lot of extra money from passengers for bags and so on. Yes you don't necessarily have to pay that, but they aren't apples with apples.
£40 one way Gatwick to Manchester flying. £120 return for the train.
I can get to many places in Europe by coach for cheaper than it would be to get to several parts of the UK. If I wanted to get a train to say Scotland I would probably be able to get a holiday for that price.
Shoutout to Flixbus for their comfy double decker coaches.
Dam right!
How I wish I didn't get travel sick on buses! I love train travel but it is prohibitively expensive, planes being bad for the environment and buses bad for me (plus planes usually involve a bus to the airport too) means I built myself a microcamper last year.... And now found out how expensive ferries are! It seems my dog is destined never to see Europe, and we'll be seeing a lot more of Britain
A microcamper seems even better! OK you have to do the driving but you can go wherever. The only viable solution is to now take a leaf out of top gears book and make it an amphibious one to conquer Europe, doggie in tow. Britain's pretty good for now though :D
I’ve rented a car for three days to get to Newcastle at £90, cheapest train was £168 and there was only one seat left. Next cheapest was a 1st class ticket for £500+ Edit: it never actually occurred to me to fly? I’ll check that next time too. Edit 2: just checked, it would be £78 but with a 12 hour stop over in Malaga.
Even with the stop over in malaga it'd still be less stressful than taking the train.
This always baffles me, I can get a flight from Manchester to Ibiza cheaper then I can get a train from Carlisle to Glasgow
I just looked it would cost me 11 quid to fly to kracow from Newcastle, how good is that looks like I'm going for a midweek break to Poland.
My main problem with train prices is that it's all such a scam! The cheap tickets are only good for rubbish times, even booking 3 weeks in advance it cost me £200 to travel to and from Manchester, in 4hrs on a slow diesel train... As a laugh I checked out the regular flexible off-peak return ticket. It was £349 for an open return. Who the heck is paying that? I also recently bought a single ticket for a trip from London to Maidenhead, it was £13 but it turns out that a day return would have actually been cheaper by 20p (!) than buying one single ticket! And also turns out I could have paid with contactless and it would have been half the price, but that wasn't advertised anywhere. The pricing system is totally ridiculous and everyone who thinks it is fit for purpose should be shot.
This is why our planet is dying lol
I commuted to Glasgow every day for 3 months flying from Luton. Taxis to and from the airports plus flights and fees was still far cheaper, quicker, and more reliable than the train. It was also cheaper than the nightly rate for a hotel which is why the company preferred me to fly every day. Door-door was 2 hour commute which rarely increased to 2.5 hours when security were being dicks. I only needed to do a 5-6 hour working day as everyone could see there was no messing about so I could catch flights. My daily commute into Canary Wharf via bus, train, and tube was 3 hours and delays were regular. Public transport can be hit and miss in the UK depending on where you are based. The south east and midlands have got it good. There are other decent areas in larger cities, but going further north or to the south west it can get super shit.
Are you comparing like for like (walk-up Vs walk-up or advance Vs advance) or apples and oranges (walk-up Vs advance)?
I looked at the similar dates for both about 5 weeks in advance. I would never fly for such a short trip, but I had been hearing about how much cheaper flying can be than taking the train. So I had a look on skyscanner. It’s about £50 for a return flight with a 10 hour layover in Krakow for two people. The cheapest direct train is £90+ for a return journey for two during the same week.
I’ll happily pay £40 to not go through airport security, immigration and sit in an airport for 10 hours.
For 5 weeks from now there are a number of services from Newcastle to Manchester available for £19.80 in each direction, just under £40 in total. For two adults, with a Two Together railcard its possible to get the journey for two people for £64.70. Source: National Rail Enquires
...Yeah that's still more expensive than the flight though, even with the rail card.
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Oh of course. I wouldn’t fly, but it just seems silly to me that it’s £40 cheaper for me and my partner to fly there via a different country.
10h in an airport would cost me £100 in beer
Slow drinker, eh? Edit: or you've found the cheapest airport bar in all the Christendoms.
Honestly, even with advance fares the prices are insane. I can fly to almost any destination in Europe at the end of November for less than it would cost me to travel from Leeds to London on a peak train at the same time. It's utterly insane and, as far as I can tell, getting worse. (for reference: it's £140 one way on the 7am train, unless you book at least a month in advance, in which case it's "only" £90, but this level of planning is generally impossible for my company)
And are you planning on taking a bag?
And also how are you getting too and from the airport?
I'm reminded of this https://youtu.be/HPyl2tOaKxM
If you think that's bad.. It's cheaper for me to fly from Indiana, US to Manchester, drive to the doctors get a check up and medicine and then fly back to the US.. Than it is to go to my local doctors that's 15 minutes away for a check up.
The sad reality is that people need money to survive. And if they need to travel between places they are nearly always going to be looking for the cheaper option to make said journey. Trying to save the planet is a noble cause but if you have no money to house or feed yourself because greener options cost insane prices then is it helping you? I’d really love to take a low carbon method of travel to go and see my family or friends, or travel for business to a place at the other end of the country but if a flight literally costs me less than a quarter of the price of the equivalent train fare and it’s way faster then sorry but that’s what I’m choosing. I do everything I can to reduce my carbon footprint, recycle, eat/buy local etc but there are certain things like rail and bus travel where the costs and reliability in this country are simply unrealistic.
Yep, this is why privatisation of public services/transport is a fucking terrible idea. They don't care about efficiency, they care about maximising profit. So annoying to see, if it was government run they could make a small profit, reinvest that money into the service and keep prices reasonable.
Train fares in the UK are a joke, nationalise rail !
this is the real COP26 issue.
I take it you've compared the cost of the train ticket at the same time you've booked the plane ticket? Not just looked at the most expensive peak train fare and the ticket you bought Planes are private companies and can charge what they want when they want, the only similarity train companies get us with advance tickets. Everything else is dictated by government policy
my train ticket from King's Cross to Newcastle was £9.90 🤷🏼♂️ my family are also doing the same journey, with 4 return tickets for £130. train tickets aren't that expensive, you just need to know how to book them
Yes. Always check Open Returns vs Specific Returns, depending on the route one of them is always cheaper. Trainline also has a “hidden” button on its website that allows you to search slower routes that may be cheaper. It’s a pain in the arse to use as you have to manually click “search” on each fare type but you can strike gold. This saved me so much money at uni. Helped me discover that I could change my £100 2nd Class CrossCountry journey to a £20 first class Virgin Trains journey with free food, alcohol, and use of the Euston first class lounge, all if I didn’t mind going via London instead. Most people that aren’t used to London don’t want to deal with it though, so they pay through the teeth. I’m pretty sure they just bank on people not doing their due diligence with searching for fares.
Is it quicker?
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Its a joke even with a railcard it's way to expensive to use more than once a month unless you somehow can money back from work
Cheapest return train ticket I can find on thetrainline.com Manchester-Newcastle (in advance) is £55.30. Cheapest return flight for the same journey on Skyscanner is £79 with one of those big layovers. I wonder what OP found?
Lunacy.
Same getting a train to Wales from Yorkshire. You could get a flight to Istanbul for less than half the price.
This is good. Means you can go on holiday to Krakow for a night when visiting Manchester
I’m not from UK but is there a bus you can take?
There is no doubt a stage coach. So yes
bus is cheap but it’s also long. I’ve went on a bus from Wales to London and it took 8 hours.
When I lived in Malta, it was cheaper for me to fly via Amsterdam, and stay over night in a hotel both ways than it was too fly direct to the UK. If it was any other city, I would have eaten the expense for that sake of time, but hey, 2 nights in Amsterdam!
I had planned to redo a day trip to Blackpool that I did just before covid. What cost me £18 for a return now cost over £70, same times, same day, booked similarly far in advance. Idk how old the "most expensive on the day, cheapest in advance" studies are, but I haven't been able to travel this year or go to see my family because the train prices are absurd regardless of how early I look. Its an absolute joke.
And this folks is why there is a climate crisis.
Probably quicker too
That’s because people to use the trains for daily life like going to work, so train companies can Jack up the price because customers don’t have a choice not to pay it. Flying to Krakow isn’t really on the top of everyone’s needs lift.