4 ms·

Im not sure I understand your 3% point, are you saying Virgin pay more into Network Rail on the WCL and this wouldnt happen if government owned/controlled? Int

Im not sure I understand your 3% point, are you saying Virgin pay more into Network Rail on the WCL and this wouldnt happen if government owned/controlled? Interestingly, I can take a 3.5-4hr train from Penang to Kuala Lumpur for $12, made by Siemens I believe, traveling faster than the Pendolino/Voyagers, and with a similar level of comfort (I do think the seats are bit narrower though), so in comparison I consider the UK crazy priced unless you get some off-peak deal (still not great). I suspect if still subsidized then it's probably very inefficient, I dont know but I certainly dont feel good paying the train ticket prices in the UK even the off-peak saver.

arethuza 9y ago
I pay £11 per day for my 35 min commute into central Edinburgh (I work from home a lot so season tickets don't make much sense) and given that parking in Edinburgh would be £25 a day £11 a day looks like a bargain given that the station I commute from in Fife is 10 mins drive away from where I live and has free parking always available.
- sitepodmatt 9y ago
  That doesn't sound too bad, but I don't think that's representational of most routes and hence most travelers, in that if you stand outside Euston, Glasgow or Edinburgh before 8.30am and ask people what they paid to get to work and if they considered it value for money you would likely get a lot of expletives
  - arethuza 9y ago
    I suspect I would be much less happy with the service if it wasn't for the fact that I am far enough out from Edinburgh so that the train is relatively empty so I can pretty much always get a seat (and a window seat on the side with the best views). Two stops in from where I get on the train fills up dramatically and there are often people standing.
  - isostatic 9y ago
    However they don't take commuter bus services, or drive, or ride a bike, or move closer to the office, or change job location, or change job times. The media has driven this culture of people believing in 'rip off Britain'. If people were commuting 100 miles a day for the cost of a cup of coffee they'd still say it was a rip off (although oddly it would be the commute, not the £4 latte)
- walshemj 9y ago
  free parking what socialist paradise is this - a while back I looked at buying a flat near my local rail station - I reckoned I could have covered all my property taxes or a large chunk of my mortgage from renting out my unused parking space
  - arethuza 9y ago
    The Kingdom of Fife!
pjc50 9y ago
Nothing to do with the trains themselves, everything to do with the tracks and their maintenance. There's a pie chart in that PDF I linked elsewhere which shows that about 50% of the cost is network rail, 30% staff and 20% train leasing. I suspect the UK could maintain it for a lot less if it could pay Malay wages for the track maintenance and train staff. UK railways have been chronically mismanaged for years. Better comparison would be against other European countries.
- sitepodmatt 9y ago
  Fair points. What would be the benchmark country in your opinion?
  - pjc50 9y ago
    I'm hardly an expert, but Germany and Japan are the obvious examples to look for best practices. Really the UK comes off badly compared to most European countries. Worth noting that Abelio (Dutch state-owned) and DB Freight (German state-owned) operate in the UK. (anyone in the age range eligible for InterRail, I would highly recommend spending a month travelling the railways of Europe)
    - arethuza 9y ago
      I don't think many people are happy with the way that Abelio has been operating Scotrail.
    - isostatic 9y ago
      Germany subsidies its rail network by €17b a year. The UK subsidises by €4b. In the UK we have decided to go for lower taxes and lower subsidies. We do that while still subsidising lines that are good for the country but not profitable (old mining towns in south wales which would collapse if people couldn't commute to Cardiff etc, cornish rurual lines which attract tourism and offer transport for local residents who may not have 1 car per adult, etc). This means that on the profitable lines which would make commercial sense (say Manchester to London, or some London commuter lines) we have to charge more. Remember commuter tickets are twice the price of business tickets - as they are paid after income tax (which varies from 33% to 60%). When I was offered a job based in the office, I wanted an extra £10k a year for the commute -- £2200 for the ticket, £3300 for the extra tax to pay for that ticket, and £5k for the time out of my day. They decided that I didn't actually need to be based in an office after all, and I go (to that one) about once every 3 months, which costs them £20 return (but would cost me £45). This is offset by the massive discounts. A season ticket from Nuneaton to London, 206 miles a day, about 1 hour in each direction, is £9000 a year, for 230+ days of travel, or 47,000 miles. 19p per mile. If you're willing to take a little longer and travel on London Midland it's £6500 per year, 14p per mile. On the other hand, a day trip from Nuneaton is £154 in peak time, £104 on the slower train. That's 74p per mile - 3.5 times the price of the commuter.
isostatic 9y ago
There's a constant claim from the left that train fares in the UK are overpriced because the train operating companies take a profit of about 3% of the revenue. There is a profit margin to be made on any savings, I'm sure that if Stagecoach or First or whoever could cut costs enough to make more money they would. We have very old infrastructure, laid down in the mid 19th centuries, and very crowded lines. Building a new line is a mammoth task, and expensive, as we've seen from HS2. Rail staff are hardly cheap too - a virgin trains driver earns £51k, top 10% of earnings in the country.

arethuza 9y ago

I pay £11 per day for my 35 min commute into central Edinburgh (I work from home a lot so season tickets don't make much sense) and given that parking in Edinburgh would be £25 a day £11 a day looks like a bargain given that the station I commute from in Fife is 10 mins drive away from where I live and has free parking always available.

sitepodmatt 9y ago
That doesn't sound too bad, but I don't think that's representational of most routes and hence most travelers, in that if you stand outside Euston, Glasgow or Edinburgh before 8.30am and ask people what they paid to get to work and if they considered it value for money you would likely get a lot of expletives
- arethuza 9y ago
  I suspect I would be much less happy with the service if it wasn't for the fact that I am far enough out from Edinburgh so that the train is relatively empty so I can pretty much always get a seat (and a window seat on the side with the best views). Two stops in from where I get on the train fills up dramatically and there are often people standing.
- isostatic 9y ago
  However they don't take commuter bus services, or drive, or ride a bike, or move closer to the office, or change job location, or change job times. The media has driven this culture of people believing in 'rip off Britain'. If people were commuting 100 miles a day for the cost of a cup of coffee they'd still say it was a rip off (although oddly it would be the commute, not the £4 latte)
walshemj 9y ago
free parking what socialist paradise is this - a while back I looked at buying a flat near my local rail station - I reckoned I could have covered all my property taxes or a large chunk of my mortgage from renting out my unused parking space
- arethuza 9y ago
  The Kingdom of Fife!

pjc50 9y ago

Nothing to do with the trains themselves, everything to do with the tracks and their maintenance. There's a pie chart in that PDF I linked elsewhere which shows that about 50% of the cost is network rail, 30% staff and 20% train leasing. I suspect the UK could maintain it for a lot less if it could pay Malay wages for the track maintenance and train staff. UK railways have been chronically mismanaged for years. Better comparison would be against other European countries.

sitepodmatt 9y ago
Fair points. What would be the benchmark country in your opinion?
- pjc50 9y ago
  I'm hardly an expert, but Germany and Japan are the obvious examples to look for best practices. Really the UK comes off badly compared to most European countries. Worth noting that Abelio (Dutch state-owned) and DB Freight (German state-owned) operate in the UK. (anyone in the age range eligible for InterRail, I would highly recommend spending a month travelling the railways of Europe)
  - arethuza 9y ago
    I don't think many people are happy with the way that Abelio has been operating Scotrail.
  - isostatic 9y ago
    Germany subsidies its rail network by €17b a year. The UK subsidises by €4b. In the UK we have decided to go for lower taxes and lower subsidies. We do that while still subsidising lines that are good for the country but not profitable (old mining towns in south wales which would collapse if people couldn't commute to Cardiff etc, cornish rurual lines which attract tourism and offer transport for local residents who may not have 1 car per adult, etc). This means that on the profitable lines which would make commercial sense (say Manchester to London, or some London commuter lines) we have to charge more. Remember commuter tickets are twice the price of business tickets - as they are paid after income tax (which varies from 33% to 60%). When I was offered a job based in the office, I wanted an extra £10k a year for the commute -- £2200 for the ticket, £3300 for the extra tax to pay for that ticket, and £5k for the time out of my day. They decided that I didn't actually need to be based in an office after all, and I go (to that one) about once every 3 months, which costs them £20 return (but would cost me £45). This is offset by the massive discounts. A season ticket from Nuneaton to London, 206 miles a day, about 1 hour in each direction, is £9000 a year, for 230+ days of travel, or 47,000 miles. 19p per mile. If you're willing to take a little longer and travel on London Midland it's £6500 per year, 14p per mile. On the other hand, a day trip from Nuneaton is £154 in peak time, £104 on the slower train. That's 74p per mile - 3.5 times the price of the commuter.

isostatic 9y ago

There's a constant claim from the left that train fares in the UK are overpriced because the train operating companies take a profit of about 3% of the revenue. There is a profit margin to be made on any savings, I'm sure that if Stagecoach or First or whoever could cut costs enough to make more money they would. We have very old infrastructure, laid down in the mid 19th centuries, and very crowded lines. Building a new line is a mammoth task, and expensive, as we've seen from HS2. Rail staff are hardly cheap too - a virgin trains driver earns £51k, top 10% of earnings in the country.