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I agree with trying to reduce the number of cars in a city is a great goal for congestion, safety and pollution. BUT Has anyone seen what it costs to get arou

by jarym 7y ago

I agree with trying to reduce the number of cars in a city is a great goal for congestion, safety and pollution. BUT Has anyone seen what it costs to get around on the tube? Or the ASTRONOMICAL costs of train tickets if you live just outside the capital? It costs me £8 to park my electric car in London and perhaps 40-60 minutes to drive there. A train takes 30 minutes but costs almost £30 for a return ticket. How is that reasonable? That ticket for ‘public’ transport is a huge chunk of ones salary; and that’s not even adding the cost of the tube into the equation.

rocgf 7y ago
The cost of trains in the UK is ridiculous. My employer once paid £320 for a return ticket from Manchester to London.
- celticninja 7y ago
  I pay that fortnightly. Although I can usually get it for £220 with advance notice.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    AU$400 per fortnight for train tickets! Astonishing. No one one in fifty Briton's live in Australia.
  - tigershark 7y ago
    Mmm.. I just got a return ticket London Glasgow for something like 90£. How is it so much more expensive for Manchester (considering that my train went through Manchester and is much closer than Glasgow)?
    - maccard 7y ago
      I've done Edinburgh to London a few times, and it's been >£200 each time
      - dijksterhuis 7y ago
        You must be booking first class? Or at peak times? It’s £150ish open return from Dundee to London via Edinburgh IIRC for standard class off peak. Pretty much same price as Dundee to Edinburgh train > plane to stanstead > train into liverpool street. Also takes about the same time..
        maccard 7y ago
        Probably times - not booking first class. I'm travelling again in a few months, but flying, and my flights from Edi to London city are £70 return. My total journey time door to door will be 3:30 (as I happen to be heading to the right part of London for City airport to make sense) and my bus to/from the airport in Edinburgh will cost me £7.50. I've just checked trainline and for the same dates, a train is 4hours 20, will cost £145 for "super off peak single" - and if I'm not careful booking it I'll be standing for that trip. In my case this time I'll also need to get another train from Liverpool St to east london, which is 2 more trains and an extra 30 minutes each way. I'd much rather take the train, but the costs are often stacked against trains in favour of flying.
    - rocgf 7y ago
      Well, there are two reasons, I believe. One is the fact that the longer in advance you buy it, the cheaper it is and the second is that peak vs. off-peak times matter a lot. If you buy one month in advance and at non-peak times (e.g. 12:00 on a Wednesday or similar), it will be around £30-40 probably.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
lostlogin 7y ago
> Has anyone seen what it costs to get around on the tube? I recently visited London for the first time in 10 years. Obviously it’s not the same as a visitor as it is as a resident, but the public transport and the tube in particular, was fantastic. It was easy, I could use PayWay, it adjusted my fees to a daily maximum and got me everywhere quickly (except for the outages on Sundays). It might be imperfect, but I’m envious.
IAmEveryone 7y ago
Aren’t there far cheaper options for regular commuters? Here in Berlin, a single one-way ticket is €2.60, but a monthly is around €80. That’s less than a euro per ride for the average person that commutes by subway and uses it for some other trip every second day. Trains are, unfortunately, rather expensive, at least compared to flying and to taking a car you already own. I believe fuel and vehicle taxes should increase to the point where they pay for most if not all of road construction costs. Contrary to popular opinion, large parts of those costs are currently financed from general taxation. Because tracks and stations make up the bulk of the cost of train rides, increases in ridership have low marginal costs. Any move to get people to use trains would therefore tend to lower per-trip costs.
- leifg 7y ago
  Having lived in Berlin and now living in London I asked the same. The monthly ticket that is very common in Germany either doesn't exist here or is ridiculously expensive. Even if you go by tube on a daily basis you are better off paying for each trip.
  - gcoleman 7y ago
    That's not true - season tickets are definitely cheaper than pay as you go if you travel every day. e.g. Annual Travelcards give you 12 months travel for the price of ten and a half. https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/how-to-pay-and-where-to-buy-tickets-and-oyster/travelcards-and-group-tickets https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/how-to-pay-and-where-to-buy-tickets...
    - jsmith99 7y ago
      Annual tickets are barely worth it if you just take the tube, not buses, and don't use it at weekends. Single fare prices were frozen by the mayor, but travelcards were not.
    - cbzoiav 7y ago
      I commute Canning Town to Bank. Daily its £5.30. Weekly cap is £35.10 / Monthly £134.80 so you won't hit them on just commute. In reality I have a railcard so its actually £4.50pd / even less likely to hit caps.
ageitgey 7y ago
I live in zone 3/4 and getting around on the tube is not bad at all. There is a daily cost cap of around £8 depending on how far you go, but I usually don't hit it or get that close. But regional trains I agree can be super expensive. So for those living outside the greater London area, that could indeed be rough.
- esotericn 7y ago
  It's not just those living outside London. I live in London and travel outside of it because I know people living all over the country, I take weekend holidays to nature, etc. Via rail if I did the same journeys I do in the car it could easily cost me 500-1000GBP a month. Non-advance tickets are basically priced at the "no, we don't want you to make that journey" level.
DanBC 7y ago
It's not just the high cost, but the absolutely baffling fare structures and restrictions on travel. To go from London to Cheltenham in the afternoon you can pay anything from £21.50 to £50.10 depending on how far in advance you buy the ticket and what route you take (direct is cheaper than change at Bristol). And then there's a mix of restrictions or no restrictions (and those aren't always tied to price, some expensive tickets will have restrictions). https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/YU https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/YU
tigershark 7y ago
Driving in central London is much more expensive than the tube given the congestion charge and the ultra low emission zone.
- esotericn 7y ago
  The congestion zone is quite small. It also only applies M-F 7am-6pm, and electric vehicles are completely exempt. The ULEZ doesn't apply to most modern cars (a 15 year old petrol meets the bar); it primarily targets the cheat diesels.
morrbo 7y ago
Yep. Going to Cardiff from London is the absolute worst. I've had friends say they have paid (well, clients) ~£500 for first class returns. £121 for a standard anytime single. Almost guaranteed you won't get a seat for the first hour of the journey. You can say "book it sooner" but it really doesn't make that much (if any) difference, booking the same ticket type (any time single) a month in advance is the same price. Imagine that, 2 hours and 15 minutes on a train for £121 (~150 USD) 50% of the time you will be standing because there aren't enough seats. Sorry to rant but the trains, and lack of cheaper reliable alternatives really gets me about this country.
- plotteddancer16 7y ago
  Isn’t there an unlimited ticket for commuters?
esotericn 7y ago
I agree. I've always owned a car despite having lived in Z2 etc in London. It is completely impractical to use trains for general transport unless you plan everything months in advance or you're not paying for it. The tube and NR within the Oyster zone are an exception - those are relatively cheap and work well. Anywhere outside of the M25 is like going back to the dark ages. Today is Friday. Let's say I decide to visit family because I'm free, a friend cancelled plans, whatever. This is not a cherry picked example; I'm typing this before I even look. OK, I've just checked. An advance single to my hometown is between 80 and 100 GBP depending on time. That's not including travel on either side, just mainline to mainline. There are no changes required. Most cars will do that journey for 20 GBP, in far more comfort, at any time I would like to leave (maximum traffic variation would be approx 1 hour in a 4 hour journey). I've bought an electric vehicle because air pollution is a real problem. But getting rid of cars? Intercity rail needs to be fixed first, and I mean really fixed - the prices need to come down by _at least_ a factor of 2. I haven't even mentioned the fact that if you want to live within walking distance of a station that can commute into London, you've missed the window on ever owning a home that's not an absolute shoebox; so for most that actually want a real family home, a car is still the only option because living close to the tube needs inherited wealth, a 1% job, or doing it 20 years ago.
ljf 7y ago
Obviously I don't want you exact location and destination, but intrigued where you are travelling from and to at that price of train, and also at that swift time to get in (at rush hour?) and that you can consistently find parking 'in' London and at that cost (for how long?). I've never parked an electric car in central, but finding standard parking used to be hard. I generally go to Stratford now and park thee and get the train in (if I need to - I'd rather just get the train straight to Stratford or Liverpool Street Station)
- mft_ 7y ago
  I had a quick random check; for peak tickets, it's close to £30 from Reading and Guildford, and mid-£20s from St Albans and Stevenage. --- Anyway, comparing train prices to an electric car probably isn't the model that the pricing is based on. Many years ago, I actually complained to my MP that it was cheaper for one person to drive a not-cheap car (<30mpg) than take a pre-booked off-peak train. The response (from a researcher at the DoT) disagreed, and showed that after incorporating amortised insurance, road tax, depreciation, and maintenance cost, it was comparable. But of course this was for a single traveller; for two or more travellers in the same car, there was no additional cost. Anyway, it's not surprising that partial costs of an electric car are far lower than taking the train.
sjg007 7y ago
Run for office on a platform to make train fares cheaper and you will probably win. The only other thing to factor in is car payment, insurance, tax/reg but you probably have a car anyway so that evens out in the end in my opinion. The only other factor would be less stress due to the fixed train commute vs car. But since trains are packed it sounds like prices are too low even though they are unreasonable... I guess an alternative would be flex time and work from home options so you don't have to commute in each day.
- JetSpiegel 7y ago
  Isn't Corbyn planning to nationalise the rail service?

by jarym 7y ago

rocgf 7y ago

The cost of trains in the UK is ridiculous. My employer once paid £320 for a return ticket from Manchester to London.

celticninja 7y ago
I pay that fortnightly. Although I can usually get it for £220 with advance notice.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  AU$400 per fortnight for train tickets! Astonishing. No one one in fifty Briton's live in Australia.
- tigershark 7y ago
  Mmm.. I just got a return ticket London Glasgow for something like 90£. How is it so much more expensive for Manchester (considering that my train went through Manchester and is much closer than Glasgow)?
  - maccard 7y ago
    I've done Edinburgh to London a few times, and it's been >£200 each time
    - dijksterhuis 7y ago
      You must be booking first class? Or at peak times? It’s £150ish open return from Dundee to London via Edinburgh IIRC for standard class off peak. Pretty much same price as Dundee to Edinburgh train > plane to stanstead > train into liverpool street. Also takes about the same time..
      - maccard 7y ago
        Probably times - not booking first class. I'm travelling again in a few months, but flying, and my flights from Edi to London city are £70 return. My total journey time door to door will be 3:30 (as I happen to be heading to the right part of London for City airport to make sense) and my bus to/from the airport in Edinburgh will cost me £7.50. I've just checked trainline and for the same dates, a train is 4hours 20, will cost £145 for "super off peak single" - and if I'm not careful booking it I'll be standing for that trip. In my case this time I'll also need to get another train from Liverpool St to east london, which is 2 more trains and an extra 30 minutes each way. I'd much rather take the train, but the costs are often stacked against trains in favour of flying.
  - rocgf 7y ago
    Well, there are two reasons, I believe. One is the fact that the longer in advance you buy it, the cheaper it is and the second is that peak vs. off-peak times matter a lot. If you buy one month in advance and at non-peak times (e.g. 12:00 on a Wednesday or similar), it will be around £30-40 probably.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

lostlogin 7y ago

> Has anyone seen what it costs to get around on the tube? I recently visited London for the first time in 10 years. Obviously it’s not the same as a visitor as it is as a resident, but the public transport and the tube in particular, was fantastic. It was easy, I could use PayWay, it adjusted my fees to a daily maximum and got me everywhere quickly (except for the outages on Sundays). It might be imperfect, but I’m envious.

IAmEveryone 7y ago

Aren’t there far cheaper options for regular commuters? Here in Berlin, a single one-way ticket is €2.60, but a monthly is around €80. That’s less than a euro per ride for the average person that commutes by subway and uses it for some other trip every second day. Trains are, unfortunately, rather expensive, at least compared to flying and to taking a car you already own. I believe fuel and vehicle taxes should increase to the point where they pay for most if not all of road construction costs. Contrary to popular opinion, large parts of those costs are currently financed from general taxation. Because tracks and stations make up the bulk of the cost of train rides, increases in ridership have low marginal costs. Any move to get people to use trains would therefore tend to lower per-trip costs.

leifg 7y ago
Having lived in Berlin and now living in London I asked the same. The monthly ticket that is very common in Germany either doesn't exist here or is ridiculously expensive. Even if you go by tube on a daily basis you are better off paying for each trip.
- gcoleman 7y ago
  That's not true - season tickets are definitely cheaper than pay as you go if you travel every day. e.g. Annual Travelcards give you 12 months travel for the price of ten and a half. https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/how-to-pay-and-where-to-buy-tickets-and-oyster/travelcards-and-group-tickets https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/how-to-pay-and-where-to-buy-tickets...
  - jsmith99 7y ago
    Annual tickets are barely worth it if you just take the tube, not buses, and don't use it at weekends. Single fare prices were frozen by the mayor, but travelcards were not.
  - cbzoiav 7y ago
    I commute Canning Town to Bank. Daily its £5.30. Weekly cap is £35.10 / Monthly £134.80 so you won't hit them on just commute. In reality I have a railcard so its actually £4.50pd / even less likely to hit caps.

ageitgey 7y ago

I live in zone 3/4 and getting around on the tube is not bad at all. There is a daily cost cap of around £8 depending on how far you go, but I usually don't hit it or get that close. But regional trains I agree can be super expensive. So for those living outside the greater London area, that could indeed be rough.

esotericn 7y ago
It's not just those living outside London. I live in London and travel outside of it because I know people living all over the country, I take weekend holidays to nature, etc. Via rail if I did the same journeys I do in the car it could easily cost me 500-1000GBP a month. Non-advance tickets are basically priced at the "no, we don't want you to make that journey" level.

DanBC 7y ago

It's not just the high cost, but the absolutely baffling fare structures and restrictions on travel. To go from London to Cheltenham in the afternoon you can pay anything from £21.50 to £50.10 depending on how far in advance you buy the ticket and what route you take (direct is cheaper than change at Bristol). And then there's a mix of restrictions or no restrictions (and those aren't always tied to price, some expensive tickets will have restrictions). https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/YU https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/YU

tigershark 7y ago

Driving in central London is much more expensive than the tube given the congestion charge and the ultra low emission zone.

esotericn 7y ago
The congestion zone is quite small. It also only applies M-F 7am-6pm, and electric vehicles are completely exempt. The ULEZ doesn't apply to most modern cars (a 15 year old petrol meets the bar); it primarily targets the cheat diesels.

morrbo 7y ago

Yep. Going to Cardiff from London is the absolute worst. I've had friends say they have paid (well, clients) ~£500 for first class returns. £121 for a standard anytime single. Almost guaranteed you won't get a seat for the first hour of the journey. You can say "book it sooner" but it really doesn't make that much (if any) difference, booking the same ticket type (any time single) a month in advance is the same price. Imagine that, 2 hours and 15 minutes on a train for £121 (~150 USD) 50% of the time you will be standing because there aren't enough seats. Sorry to rant but the trains, and lack of cheaper reliable alternatives really gets me about this country.

plotteddancer16 7y ago
Isn’t there an unlimited ticket for commuters?

esotericn 7y ago

I agree. I've always owned a car despite having lived in Z2 etc in London. It is completely impractical to use trains for general transport unless you plan everything months in advance or you're not paying for it. The tube and NR within the Oyster zone are an exception - those are relatively cheap and work well. Anywhere outside of the M25 is like going back to the dark ages. Today is Friday. Let's say I decide to visit family because I'm free, a friend cancelled plans, whatever. This is not a cherry picked example; I'm typing this before I even look. OK, I've just checked. An advance single to my hometown is between 80 and 100 GBP depending on time. That's not including travel on either side, just mainline to mainline. There are no changes required. Most cars will do that journey for 20 GBP, in far more comfort, at any time I would like to leave (maximum traffic variation would be approx 1 hour in a 4 hour journey). I've bought an electric vehicle because air pollution is a real problem. But getting rid of cars? Intercity rail needs to be fixed first, and I mean really fixed - the prices need to come down by _at least_ a factor of 2. I haven't even mentioned the fact that if you want to live within walking distance of a station that can commute into London, you've missed the window on ever owning a home that's not an absolute shoebox; so for most that actually want a real family home, a car is still the only option because living close to the tube needs inherited wealth, a 1% job, or doing it 20 years ago.

ljf 7y ago

Obviously I don't want you exact location and destination, but intrigued where you are travelling from and to at that price of train, and also at that swift time to get in (at rush hour?) and that you can consistently find parking 'in' London and at that cost (for how long?). I've never parked an electric car in central, but finding standard parking used to be hard. I generally go to Stratford now and park thee and get the train in (if I need to - I'd rather just get the train straight to Stratford or Liverpool Street Station)

mft_ 7y ago
I had a quick random check; for peak tickets, it's close to £30 from Reading and Guildford, and mid-£20s from St Albans and Stevenage. --- Anyway, comparing train prices to an electric car probably isn't the model that the pricing is based on. Many years ago, I actually complained to my MP that it was cheaper for one person to drive a not-cheap car (<30mpg) than take a pre-booked off-peak train. The response (from a researcher at the DoT) disagreed, and showed that after incorporating amortised insurance, road tax, depreciation, and maintenance cost, it was comparable. But of course this was for a single traveller; for two or more travellers in the same car, there was no additional cost. Anyway, it's not surprising that partial costs of an electric car are far lower than taking the train.

sjg007 7y ago

Run for office on a platform to make train fares cheaper and you will probably win. The only other thing to factor in is car payment, insurance, tax/reg but you probably have a car anyway so that evens out in the end in my opinion. The only other factor would be less stress due to the fixed train commute vs car. But since trains are packed it sounds like prices are too low even though they are unreasonable... I guess an alternative would be flex time and work from home options so you don't have to commute in each day.

JetSpiegel 7y ago
Isn't Corbyn planning to nationalise the rail service?