5 ms·

I was unpleasantly surprised about the train price when I decided to take a train to go from Liverpool to London around 2008. I think at that time the rail tick

I was unpleasantly surprised about the train price when I decided to take a train to go from Liverpool to London around 2008. I think at that time the rail ticket was around £200 while the flight would have cost me around £50 (and MegaBus was I think £6) ... That gave me the impression that train in the UK was for rich people.

cnorthwood 5y ago
At present, a walk-up (no advance booking) peak-time first class ticket from Liverpool to London is £255. Standard class is £171. A walk-up off-peak standard class ticket is £66.10, and you can get it cheaper if you book a day in advance. At peak times, or for longer distances (think Scotland to London), planes can be cheaper, but not often. Coaches can generally be cheaper though.
toyg 5y ago
The UK is a basket case when it comes to rail. The country that effectively invented the bloody thing, completely lost its mind in the 70s and started scrapping its extensive network. Then the Tories got in power, and at that point heavily-unionised public service like rail simply "had" to be eviscerated. Now it's an embarrassment, when compared to most European countries: expensive tickets, poor reliability, obsolete and polluting trains, continuous inability to pay for itself... I could go on. I'm Italian, I thought "our" trains were bad, but in the UK it's much worse. Barely 40% of the network is even electrified, in 2021!
- Symbiote 5y ago
  Frequency of trains is generally higher in Britain.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  > Then the Tories got in power What I find particularly funny about this, it that Maggie Thatcher was a strong proponent to keeping the trains in public ownership, believing that privatising them was a bridge two far, even for her. Her successor on the other hand, they weren’t so bothered. However the recovery of passenger number after privatisation is undeniable. While the private model wasn’t great, the previous public ownership was even worse. Hopefully our second stab at public ownership goes better, this time we have very successful models like TfL to work from.
  - randomswede 5y ago
    The way it was privatised essentially guaranteed monopolies, though. Each segment is available ona multi-year lease for one operator. There are actually some segments that have multiple operators, but that's actually the exception. When Sweden privatised rail traffic, it still kept the track ownership in a single entity, and train operators bid for slots on the existing rail network. This gets you into a somewhat healthy competition between operators, hopefully (longer-term) driving down the price and driving up the quality for consumers. Comparing air and rail, a first class train ticket between Malmö and Stockholm (most direct car route seems to be 613 km) is (with the ex-monopoly train operator) 895 SEK to 1 735 SEK , and is about 4.5h city centre to city centre. A flight seems to be between 862 SEK (RyanAir, one carry-on luggage, 168 SEK with nothing, they say) and about 300 SEK. Listed flight time is 1h 20, airport would either be MMX or CPH (the latter has really good rail from the same rail station as the train in the previous para, taking about 21 minutes, then maybe 3-10 minutes at the airport). On the Stockholm end, you have either the fast airport train (ca 15 minutes), the slower (but cheaper) commuter train (ca 40 minutes) or airport buses (probably similar price as the commuter train, about the same speed at no traffic at all). Total travel time for "same start, same destination", train 4h 30m, airplane maybe 3-4h. I don't, genuinely, know what "class of service" the plane would be, ut short-haul you get pretty much the same seats and you may have the middle seat unoccupied for "business". And for reference, London Kings Cross to Edinburgh Waverley is 645 km by car, using the same route planner
mbanzi 5y ago
UK trains are even more expensive than Switzerland and this says a lot. Look at the rest of europe... you can take an Italian fast train and travel to major cities in the country very quickly, with wifi, arriving comfortably in the centre for a reasonable price.
baby 5y ago
Lived in London for a year and a half and almost never took the train because of that... it was soooo expensive.
phatfish 5y ago
Privatisation destroyed rail as a cost effective means of rail travel in the UK. In fact it all fell apart during the pandemic when the government had to take control of a number of franchised routes and temporarily re-nationalize them. Rail should not be a for-profit business, it is a public service and a natural monopoly. 100% of the money the public pay to make a journey should go back into maintaining the network and running the trains. I'm happy for a few execs to get their 100k+ salaries and for it to be justified by all the "hard work" and "value" they bring. But taking money from ticket sales, calling it profit and handing it to shareholders has to stop, it means the public get a dysfunctional rail service because there is no investment. Or it works, but the ticket prices are stratospheric. The Transport for London corporation is a good example of how it should be done.
- hogFeast 5y ago
  It is very weird as someone who studied British economic history and privatization to see this view so commonly. I am not sure where it has come from (although tbf, the media does not report accurately on this subject). The main benefit from privatization was a significant reduction in fares combined with massive growth in availability (people take for granted things today that were huge problems then: punctuality, safety, etc.). The rail network in the UK is publicly-owned, what is private is the franchise to operate on a certain route. The lack of investment, if any exists, has come from the govt...and I am not sure there is a lack of investment either...HS2 is going to cost £100bn...£100bn is a large number (as ever, I think people mean...London and the area around me isn't getting enough, this is also false, London receives obscene amounts of investment relative to the rest of the UK). Also, trains in Europe aren't really cheaper. Tickets are subsidised in Europe, in the UK passengers pay. The main constituency for subsidising the travel costs of wealthy commuters is...wealthy commuters. I am not sure why that idea is inherently attractive (and again, it is worth mentioning...our safety record is best in Europe, there is no real difference in punctuality, our fares are marginally higher but the ecosystem we have is far more robust). TfL is a great example: sucks down tens of billions in public money to subsidise the wealthiest people in the country...the North-East is still missing motorways and we are spending £20bn on the Elizabeth line...okay. The cost of a fiber roll-out for the whole of the UK is less than the Elizabeth line. The problem is that this has no end because the more infrastructure you build, the more agglomeration, the more infrastructure...London had this problem in the late 19th century with slums, the solution wasn't more density (also, we had to bailout TfL twice I believe, they are not an example of the system working, tbf there isn't a lot management can do with the workforce).
laurencerowe 5y ago
While unreserved peak-time travel is absurdly expensive in the UK if you travel off-peak or book far enough in advance it's much less. I used to regularly travel between Manchester and London (about the same distance as Liverpool) and it was £200 peak / £60 off peak for walk up return fares. That was 10 years ago. Looking now it's gone up to £370 peak (!) / £95 off peak return. While I did meet one person who regularly flew Manchester/London he lived very close to the airport so it wasn't too much extra hassle for him. It's only 200 miles / 2 hours on the train so the flights were mostly for connecting at Heathrow to international flights. Flights tended to be more popular London/Scotland where you're looking at 4 hours on the train.

cnorthwood 5y ago

At present, a walk-up (no advance booking) peak-time first class ticket from Liverpool to London is £255. Standard class is £171. A walk-up off-peak standard class ticket is £66.10, and you can get it cheaper if you book a day in advance. At peak times, or for longer distances (think Scotland to London), planes can be cheaper, but not often. Coaches can generally be cheaper though.

toyg 5y ago

The UK is a basket case when it comes to rail. The country that effectively invented the bloody thing, completely lost its mind in the 70s and started scrapping its extensive network. Then the Tories got in power, and at that point heavily-unionised public service like rail simply "had" to be eviscerated. Now it's an embarrassment, when compared to most European countries: expensive tickets, poor reliability, obsolete and polluting trains, continuous inability to pay for itself... I could go on. I'm Italian, I thought "our" trains were bad, but in the UK it's much worse. Barely 40% of the network is even electrified, in 2021!

Symbiote 5y ago
Frequency of trains is generally higher in Britain.
avianlyric 5y ago
> Then the Tories got in power What I find particularly funny about this, it that Maggie Thatcher was a strong proponent to keeping the trains in public ownership, believing that privatising them was a bridge two far, even for her. Her successor on the other hand, they weren’t so bothered. However the recovery of passenger number after privatisation is undeniable. While the private model wasn’t great, the previous public ownership was even worse. Hopefully our second stab at public ownership goes better, this time we have very successful models like TfL to work from.
- randomswede 5y ago
  The way it was privatised essentially guaranteed monopolies, though. Each segment is available ona multi-year lease for one operator. There are actually some segments that have multiple operators, but that's actually the exception. When Sweden privatised rail traffic, it still kept the track ownership in a single entity, and train operators bid for slots on the existing rail network. This gets you into a somewhat healthy competition between operators, hopefully (longer-term) driving down the price and driving up the quality for consumers. Comparing air and rail, a first class train ticket between Malmö and Stockholm (most direct car route seems to be 613 km) is (with the ex-monopoly train operator) 895 SEK to 1 735 SEK , and is about 4.5h city centre to city centre. A flight seems to be between 862 SEK (RyanAir, one carry-on luggage, 168 SEK with nothing, they say) and about 300 SEK. Listed flight time is 1h 20, airport would either be MMX or CPH (the latter has really good rail from the same rail station as the train in the previous para, taking about 21 minutes, then maybe 3-10 minutes at the airport). On the Stockholm end, you have either the fast airport train (ca 15 minutes), the slower (but cheaper) commuter train (ca 40 minutes) or airport buses (probably similar price as the commuter train, about the same speed at no traffic at all). Total travel time for "same start, same destination", train 4h 30m, airplane maybe 3-4h. I don't, genuinely, know what "class of service" the plane would be, ut short-haul you get pretty much the same seats and you may have the middle seat unoccupied for "business". And for reference, London Kings Cross to Edinburgh Waverley is 645 km by car, using the same route planner

mbanzi 5y ago

UK trains are even more expensive than Switzerland and this says a lot. Look at the rest of europe... you can take an Italian fast train and travel to major cities in the country very quickly, with wifi, arriving comfortably in the centre for a reasonable price.

baby 5y ago

Lived in London for a year and a half and almost never took the train because of that... it was soooo expensive.

phatfish 5y ago

Privatisation destroyed rail as a cost effective means of rail travel in the UK. In fact it all fell apart during the pandemic when the government had to take control of a number of franchised routes and temporarily re-nationalize them. Rail should not be a for-profit business, it is a public service and a natural monopoly. 100% of the money the public pay to make a journey should go back into maintaining the network and running the trains. I'm happy for a few execs to get their 100k+ salaries and for it to be justified by all the "hard work" and "value" they bring. But taking money from ticket sales, calling it profit and handing it to shareholders has to stop, it means the public get a dysfunctional rail service because there is no investment. Or it works, but the ticket prices are stratospheric. The Transport for London corporation is a good example of how it should be done.

hogFeast 5y ago
It is very weird as someone who studied British economic history and privatization to see this view so commonly. I am not sure where it has come from (although tbf, the media does not report accurately on this subject). The main benefit from privatization was a significant reduction in fares combined with massive growth in availability (people take for granted things today that were huge problems then: punctuality, safety, etc.). The rail network in the UK is publicly-owned, what is private is the franchise to operate on a certain route. The lack of investment, if any exists, has come from the govt...and I am not sure there is a lack of investment either...HS2 is going to cost £100bn...£100bn is a large number (as ever, I think people mean...London and the area around me isn't getting enough, this is also false, London receives obscene amounts of investment relative to the rest of the UK). Also, trains in Europe aren't really cheaper. Tickets are subsidised in Europe, in the UK passengers pay. The main constituency for subsidising the travel costs of wealthy commuters is...wealthy commuters. I am not sure why that idea is inherently attractive (and again, it is worth mentioning...our safety record is best in Europe, there is no real difference in punctuality, our fares are marginally higher but the ecosystem we have is far more robust). TfL is a great example: sucks down tens of billions in public money to subsidise the wealthiest people in the country...the North-East is still missing motorways and we are spending £20bn on the Elizabeth line...okay. The cost of a fiber roll-out for the whole of the UK is less than the Elizabeth line. The problem is that this has no end because the more infrastructure you build, the more agglomeration, the more infrastructure...London had this problem in the late 19th century with slums, the solution wasn't more density (also, we had to bailout TfL twice I believe, they are not an example of the system working, tbf there isn't a lot management can do with the workforce).

laurencerowe 5y ago

While unreserved peak-time travel is absurdly expensive in the UK if you travel off-peak or book far enough in advance it's much less. I used to regularly travel between Manchester and London (about the same distance as Liverpool) and it was £200 peak / £60 off peak for walk up return fares. That was 10 years ago. Looking now it's gone up to £370 peak (!) / £95 off peak return. While I did meet one person who regularly flew Manchester/London he lived very close to the airport so it wasn't too much extra hassle for him. It's only 200 miles / 2 hours on the train so the flights were mostly for connecting at Heathrow to international flights. Flights tended to be more popular London/Scotland where you're looking at 4 hours on the train.