5 ms·

From the looks of it, this chap was travelling around in first class. Which would probably give a slightly different impression of train travel... I suspect he

From the looks of it, this chap was travelling around in first class. Which would probably give a slightly different impression of train travel... I suspect he also wasn't travelling at peak times when trains are at their busiest and most unpleasant. To some extent, I agree that trains get a lot of criticism, and only some of it is deserved. But some of that criticism is very deserved...

notahacker 4y ago
And travelling around with the sort of budget that can consider first class and a willingness to book tickets at suitable times (and comparing prices with international sleeper trains in the rest of Europe!) completely misses why British commuters paying 20%+ of their after tax income for an annual rail pass into London consider it expensive.
- blibble 4y ago
  I doubt many people are paying 20%+ of net income to commute in you'd have to be on minimum wage and a reasonable distance out (in which case you might as well just work locally) 10% however I can believe
  - edent 4y ago
    Have a play with https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/Season-Calculator.aspx https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/Season-Calculator... My old commute into London was £3,660 per year - standard class. Pretty close to 20% of my net at the time. Plenty of people do it because big cities are where the opportunities are.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      And that's not necessarily out of line. Where I live outside Boston which is within a (long--about 90 minute) commute into the city, commuter rail passes (including subway/bus) + parking at commuter rail station would run you about $6,000 per year.
      - notahacker 4y ago
        But the point of comparison most people are making isn't with the infamously public-transport-averse USA, it's with countries in Europe where rail travel is state run and heavily subsidised (and the house price savings from living further up the line are smaller)
        justincormack 4y ago
        The UK has an explicit policy of not subsidizing commuter trips, only longer trips.
        blibble 4y ago
        it's actually the exact opposite the commuter fares are regulated, none of the others are
        ghaff 4y ago
        As of 2020 about 60% of MBTA costs were not covered by fares. I don’t know if that’s considered heavily subsidized by European standards or not.
    - blibble 4y ago
      I have been a London commuter for 15 years, with a £5k season ticket quite why you'd subject yourself to that pain if you're on barely more than minimum wage I really don't know
      - scott_w 4y ago
        If you’re doing that it’s because you don’t have a choice
  - ljf 4y ago
    Season ticket from not that far from Brighton is the best part of £5k a year. My good friend who commutes from there earns £40k before tax from his job in London. So I reckon some people pay 20 percent or more if they have a job they can only do in London, and for various reasons cannot living in London.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    Annual season ticket to London from Peterborough, at the edge of the commuter belt with relatively affordable housing is £9,500 (including Tube) That's 20% of your after tax income if you're on more than double the median UK salary
    - blibble 4y ago
      there's like 5 people who commute daily from Bristol too peterborough is on the border of super-commuter category
      - steve_gh 4y ago
        Many more than that. Pre-pandemic Bath was quite busy in the mornings. Only 75 mins from Paddington, good comfortable trains, and always a seat, so you could work. What's not to like
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      Commuting from Peterborough would be absolutely insane. You can't convince me you can't find cheaper housing between London and Peterborough. That radius has got to be the majority of the UK's housing stock?
      - Symbiote 4y ago
        It's something people might do for a short period, or while looking for a better option. A friend commuted from Coventry to London for a year. She moved there with her husband, but had one more year to go on her PhD -- using the labs at the university was essential, but there was also plenty of work that could be done on the train.
      - notahacker 4y ago
        Peterborough is a commute of around an hour, was a designated New Town for precisely that reason and tops most people's list of least expensive London commuter towns to actually live in. Sure, you can pay a mere £4k per annum for your rail ticket coming in from somewhere like Stevenage, but then you have to find a mortgage lender that will let you borrow another £100k (and won't have a more exciting locality or fancier house to show for it)
  - cirrus-clouds 4y ago
    I've posted this before: a monthly season ticket comparison from 2017 for UK and Continental Europe. The price differences between UK and other countries are stark: - UK: Luton to London St. Pancras (35 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £387 - UK: Liverpool Lime Street to Manchester Piccadilly (32 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £292 - Germany: Dusseldorf to Cologne (28 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £85 - France: Mantes-la-Jolie to Paris (34 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £61 - Italy: Anzione to Rome (31 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £61 - Spain: Aranjuez to Madrid (31 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £75 Source is the TUC (2017): https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/uk-commuters-spend-6-times-much-their-salary-rail-fares-other-european-passengers https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/uk-commuters-spend-6-times-much-... > UK workers on average salaries will spend 14% of their income on a monthly season ticket from Luton to London (£387), or 11% from Liverpool to Manchester (£292). > By contrast, similar commutes would cost passengers only 2% of their incomes in France, 3% in Germany and Italy, and 4% in Spain.
    - pgorczak 4y ago
      I checked the German rates recently and I wish that were still true. The ticket for going between Dusseldorf and Cologne train stations with intercity or regional trains is 175 GBP (146 if you book for the whole year). The one for regional trains only but including transport within the two cities is 269 (216) GBP.
      - cirrus-clouds 4y ago
        Thanks for the update. The Dusseldorf and Cologne route monthly price seems to have risen quite high. Here are the 2022 prices for the UK. The Liverpool to Manchester route price has dropped: - UK: Luton to London St. Pancras (35 miles) | Monthly ticket cost: £387 (2017) | £452.80 (2022) - UK: Liverpool Lime Street to Manchester Piccadilly (32 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £292 (2017) | £234.70 (2022)
        zahllos 4y ago
        I can add an extra data point for a country on the continent. Switzerland: £327 a month with an annual commitment, unlimited use of the swiss rail network, local buses/metros/trams/boats etc, with the exception of mountain tourism railways.
  - dan-robertson 4y ago
    10% is very believable. 20% isn’t implausible, e.g. Cambridge to London is £6k which would be about 20% of your net income if you were employed earning £40k (and putting nothing into salary sacrifice for pension). Plenty of young people live in London on that sort of income but it’s obviously more difficult to make it work if you want to live alone or with more space for eg a family and I guess this is a big reason for people wanting to live outside the city. Though Cambridge is a slightly weird option there: the town is expensive and so are the tickets.
- daleharvey 4y ago
  A funny quirk of the UK train system is that if you know what you are doing you can get first class upgrade for I think it was £5 on some of the major routes like Edinburgh to London, The author talks about the price differences with advance tickets so it seems like they did their research and didnt necessarily travel expensively
Symbiote 4y ago
He mentions one first class journey. That's easily affordable by booking well in advance, I sometimes even did this as a student if it was £5 more or so on a £50 ticket.
- scmbradley 4y ago
  He mentions eating a hot meal in first class, he also has a picture of Trans Pennine Express first class seats. There's two pictures of hot meals. I'm leaning towards mostly first class tickets. Yeah it can be affordable, but it doesn't give a representative view of train travel...

notahacker 4y ago

And travelling around with the sort of budget that can consider first class and a willingness to book tickets at suitable times (and comparing prices with international sleeper trains in the rest of Europe!) completely misses why British commuters paying 20%+ of their after tax income for an annual rail pass into London consider it expensive.

blibble 4y ago
I doubt many people are paying 20%+ of net income to commute in you'd have to be on minimum wage and a reasonable distance out (in which case you might as well just work locally) 10% however I can believe
- edent 4y ago
  Have a play with https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/Season-Calculator.aspx https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/Season-Calculator... My old commute into London was £3,660 per year - standard class. Pretty close to 20% of my net at the time. Plenty of people do it because big cities are where the opportunities are.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    And that's not necessarily out of line. Where I live outside Boston which is within a (long--about 90 minute) commute into the city, commuter rail passes (including subway/bus) + parking at commuter rail station would run you about $6,000 per year.
    - notahacker 4y ago
      But the point of comparison most people are making isn't with the infamously public-transport-averse USA, it's with countries in Europe where rail travel is state run and heavily subsidised (and the house price savings from living further up the line are smaller)
      - justincormack 4y ago
        The UK has an explicit policy of not subsidizing commuter trips, only longer trips.
        blibble 4y ago
        it's actually the exact opposite the commuter fares are regulated, none of the others are
      - ghaff 4y ago
        As of 2020 about 60% of MBTA costs were not covered by fares. I don’t know if that’s considered heavily subsidized by European standards or not.
  - blibble 4y ago
    I have been a London commuter for 15 years, with a £5k season ticket quite why you'd subject yourself to that pain if you're on barely more than minimum wage I really don't know
    - scott_w 4y ago
      If you’re doing that it’s because you don’t have a choice
- ljf 4y ago
  Season ticket from not that far from Brighton is the best part of £5k a year. My good friend who commutes from there earns £40k before tax from his job in London. So I reckon some people pay 20 percent or more if they have a job they can only do in London, and for various reasons cannot living in London.
- notahacker 4y ago
  Annual season ticket to London from Peterborough, at the edge of the commuter belt with relatively affordable housing is £9,500 (including Tube) That's 20% of your after tax income if you're on more than double the median UK salary
  - blibble 4y ago
    there's like 5 people who commute daily from Bristol too peterborough is on the border of super-commuter category
    - steve_gh 4y ago
      Many more than that. Pre-pandemic Bath was quite busy in the mornings. Only 75 mins from Paddington, good comfortable trains, and always a seat, so you could work. What's not to like
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    Commuting from Peterborough would be absolutely insane. You can't convince me you can't find cheaper housing between London and Peterborough. That radius has got to be the majority of the UK's housing stock?
    - Symbiote 4y ago
      It's something people might do for a short period, or while looking for a better option. A friend commuted from Coventry to London for a year. She moved there with her husband, but had one more year to go on her PhD -- using the labs at the university was essential, but there was also plenty of work that could be done on the train.
    - notahacker 4y ago
      Peterborough is a commute of around an hour, was a designated New Town for precisely that reason and tops most people's list of least expensive London commuter towns to actually live in. Sure, you can pay a mere £4k per annum for your rail ticket coming in from somewhere like Stevenage, but then you have to find a mortgage lender that will let you borrow another £100k (and won't have a more exciting locality or fancier house to show for it)
- cirrus-clouds 4y ago
  I've posted this before: a monthly season ticket comparison from 2017 for UK and Continental Europe. The price differences between UK and other countries are stark: - UK: Luton to London St. Pancras (35 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £387 - UK: Liverpool Lime Street to Manchester Piccadilly (32 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £292 - Germany: Dusseldorf to Cologne (28 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £85 - France: Mantes-la-Jolie to Paris (34 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £61 - Italy: Anzione to Rome (31 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £61 - Spain: Aranjuez to Madrid (31 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £75 Source is the TUC (2017): https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/uk-commuters-spend-6-times-much-their-salary-rail-fares-other-european-passengers https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/uk-commuters-spend-6-times-much-... > UK workers on average salaries will spend 14% of their income on a monthly season ticket from Luton to London (£387), or 11% from Liverpool to Manchester (£292). > By contrast, similar commutes would cost passengers only 2% of their incomes in France, 3% in Germany and Italy, and 4% in Spain.
  - pgorczak 4y ago
    I checked the German rates recently and I wish that were still true. The ticket for going between Dusseldorf and Cologne train stations with intercity or regional trains is 175 GBP (146 if you book for the whole year). The one for regional trains only but including transport within the two cities is 269 (216) GBP.
    - cirrus-clouds 4y ago
      Thanks for the update. The Dusseldorf and Cologne route monthly price seems to have risen quite high. Here are the 2022 prices for the UK. The Liverpool to Manchester route price has dropped: - UK: Luton to London St. Pancras (35 miles) | Monthly ticket cost: £387 (2017) | £452.80 (2022) - UK: Liverpool Lime Street to Manchester Piccadilly (32 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £292 (2017) | £234.70 (2022)
      - zahllos 4y ago
        I can add an extra data point for a country on the continent. Switzerland: £327 a month with an annual commitment, unlimited use of the swiss rail network, local buses/metros/trams/boats etc, with the exception of mountain tourism railways.
- dan-robertson 4y ago
  10% is very believable. 20% isn’t implausible, e.g. Cambridge to London is £6k which would be about 20% of your net income if you were employed earning £40k (and putting nothing into salary sacrifice for pension). Plenty of young people live in London on that sort of income but it’s obviously more difficult to make it work if you want to live alone or with more space for eg a family and I guess this is a big reason for people wanting to live outside the city. Though Cambridge is a slightly weird option there: the town is expensive and so are the tickets.
daleharvey 4y ago
A funny quirk of the UK train system is that if you know what you are doing you can get first class upgrade for I think it was £5 on some of the major routes like Edinburgh to London, The author talks about the price differences with advance tickets so it seems like they did their research and didnt necessarily travel expensively

Symbiote 4y ago

He mentions one first class journey. That's easily affordable by booking well in advance, I sometimes even did this as a student if it was £5 more or so on a £50 ticket.

scmbradley 4y ago
He mentions eating a hot meal in first class, he also has a picture of Trans Pennine Express first class seats. There's two pictures of hot meals. I'm leaning towards mostly first class tickets. Yeah it can be affordable, but it doesn't give a representative view of train travel...