8 ms·

The UK train system is a dire, expensive mess. Attempting to avoid getting directly political here, but I strongly believe it’s one of the lowest hanging fruit

The UK train system is a dire, expensive mess. Attempting to avoid getting directly political here, but I strongly believe it’s one of the lowest hanging fruit a political party could act on to curry favour with the electorate. Would be amazing to see this productised à la the way split ticketing works.

controlledchaos 2y ago
As a North American who travels in the UK multiple times per year, I really need you to elaborate. My experience has been nothing less than amazing, in comparison to the complete lack of rail options at home.
- djhworld 2y ago
  If you travel in and around the South East, inc. London the service is pretty good, regular although still very very expensive. In the north though it’s a mixed bag, frequently delayed, huge underinvestment, expensive etc.
  - Moomoomoo309 2y ago
    You have to remember what public transit is like in NA. What in Europe is unacceptable, late frequently, and problematic, is probably the best public transit someone from NA has ever been on, except maybe the NYC subway. It's a really, really low bar. NJTransit is considered one of the best in the US (and it is, unfortunately), and it's worse than anything I saw in Europe when I visited.
    - drstewart 2y ago
      From NA The UK definitely does not have the best public transit I've ever seen. ESPECIALLY for the price.
  - thebruce87m 2y ago
    Note that when an English person says the north, they expect everyone to know they are talking specifically about the north of England, not the north of the UK even if everyone else is talking about the UK.
    - AlotOfReading 2y ago
      Though Scotrail was just as bad for many years, so it was a bit of a moot point until a few years ago.
    - pjc50 2y ago
      It's a very moveable dividing line depending on where the speaker is from, there's no Mason-Dixon line here. Can mean anywhere north of London. No normal person refers to Scotland as "north UK" when they could say Scotland, though.
      - twic 2y ago
        You do occasionally see "North Britain" for Scotland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Britain It was once common, and in modern times it's occasionally used as a deliberate affectation.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
        When I grew up (in London), Watford was always the "gateway to the north". On the other hand, Balham was the "gateway to the south" (which reached as far as the Mediterranean).
        rjmunro 2y ago
        I think the original phrase was "North of the Watford Gap", but people often mis-abbreviate to "North of Watford". The Watford Gap is not the same place as Watford. It's about 75 miles north of London. Watford is within London's motorway ring road (The M25), and on the underground map. Its only about 17 miles away from the centre.
    - 2y ago
- moomin 2y ago
  America has much more serious problems with rail, but the UK experience still isn't great. The broad root cause is that back in the day we had the genius idea of paying multiple private companies to run trains on shared lines. We set up metrics to measure their performance that, bluntly, do not work. They underinvest and when there's any sign they're not making money, they hand the contract back. All in all, we get all the disadvantages of a nationalised system with all the disadvantages of a privatised system with a couple of original problems thrown in for good measure. But the train near my house still runs.
  - graemep 2y ago
    The infrastructure privatisation was reversed a long time ago, and most of the delays, in my experience, are due to problems with tracks. The biggest problems recently (for me) have been strikes and inadequate services. The rot really goes back to pre-privatisation (it was not great in the 1990s) and arguably started with the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, based on the decision not to subsidise rail in the face of increasing road use.
  - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
    >The broad root cause is that back in the day we had the genius idea of paying multiple private companies to run trains on shared lines. Train travel has doubled since the privatisation. The main problem is we don't know how to build out infrastructure in a cost effective manner (see HS2 and the electrification of the Great Western Main Line). This isn't surprising as we do it in a stop/start manner rather than a continual process.
- graemep 2y ago
  Low bar? British people tend to compare with rail travel experienced on holidays in places like France. Those systems do seem to be better (I do not have recent experience myself) and this then feeds the usual British tendency to take a rosy tinted view of the rest of the world and pessimism about the UK. It also varies a lot in different places. Costs vary with types of tickets, who you are, and whether you have various discounts. Local train services are very weak where I live (Cheshire) so while I can get to major cities quite easily its difficult to travel between towns in the county on trains (or buses).
- spxcxlxxs 2y ago
  I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Japan. Wait till you try the trains there! They're so punctual that delays issue a certificate for employees to present to employers* * Source: random article
  - toephu2 2y ago
    Wait until you try high speed rail in China. They're 10-15 years ahead of Japan.
    - elpalek 2y ago
      Can you please elaborate on the Chinese advantage?
      - dangus 2y ago
        The network is massive and the average and top speeds are very fast. China has more high speed rail than the rest of the world combined.
        elpalek 2y ago
        China's land area is approximately 25 times of Japan, def has a bigger network. But the top speed is comparable in current generations[1] except the Maglev. 1. https://www.railway-technology.com/features/the-10-fastest-high-speed-trains-in-the-world/?cf-view https://www.railway-technology.com/features/the-10-fastest-h...
        dangus 2y ago
        Comparable and essentially identical for sure, but 30 km/hr slower is slower.
        tirant 2y ago
        Compared to their size, Spain and Japan have a largest high speed network than China. And tickets, specially in Spain, are very cheap.
- prmoustache 2y ago
  I have lived in Switzerland for year and my very limited experience with trains in Scotland has been great. Trains were on time, and personel at the railway stations were very polite and helpful with us. But maybe we were just lucky.
- oniony 2y ago
  I often travel intercity to London and a ticket travelling out early, say, Monday and returning after peak hours, say, Wednesday costs upwards of £75. I have to book well in advance to get this price. I have just priced such a journey and the cheapest I can get for the days I chose next week is £105, for example. The journey time is about 2:20 but often it takes 10 minutes longer. Quite often (maybe 1 in 6) my train to London would get cancelled. I would be able to get a refund no problem, but there is no compensation for the fact I have driven to the station and am now stuck without any travel plans. Conversely I would have to arrive at the station early, for if I missed my train I would forfeit that half of the ticket and would have to pay again to travel on the later train. As such my journey would actually also include an extra 15 minutes of slack time in case the car didn't start and I needed to wake the wife for a lift, for example. It would also be quite stressful on the way home, where a meeting might overrun, putting my chances of getting my booked train at risk. A year or two ago they opened a new "parkway" railway station (basically park-and-ride) and now the earliest train no longer stops at my local station. It would take me 30 minutes to drive to the parkway station, plus cost me £6 a day parking there, so my only option now is the later train which arrives in London at 8:30, if it is on time, making it impossible for me to start work before 9am. The trains are supposed to have eight carriages, of which one is first class. On the outward journey I could often get a seat but the return journey would be standing only for the first hour. Quite often the train would arrive with only five carriages meaning it would be absolutely rammed the whole way. This leaves you very exhausted and sweaty for the start of the work day. And forget first class: it is twice the price of standard class. So I've given up with the long distance train and now drive down to a commuter town near London and get the train just the final bit. I can also get into London much earlier and I don't have to pre-book specific trains. It's actually cheaper too, with the fuel and train tickets coming in at about £65, though obviously there's car depreciation, tyres, &c. on top. So between £75-£130 for a prebooked ticket on an inflexible, specifically timed, intercity train, with a total journey time of about 3:00, or £65 for a drive down in my own car whatever times I want with a total journey time of about 3:30.
- habosa 2y ago
  I’m an American who lived in London for 3 years and was also impressed, but as someone who only had to use national rail for leisure (got around London by bus/tube) I was oblivious to two things: 1) Commute hours are brutal. Trains are packed and even a few minutes delay can feel like ages when you’re missing a meeting. 2) The cost of 5x weekly round trips is enormous. The average annual pass for someone commuting into London from outside is like £4000. That’s in a country where the average wage is around £40,000. That’s a huge amount of money to spend on public transportation. I know a car would be more but I’ve never met a single American who spends that fraction of their income on public transportation. Still though … I’d rather have expensive and unreliable trains than no trains at all.
  - xnorswap 2y ago
    Also it's hard to state how much, and especially when it comes to transport, that London isn't England. London is it's own bubble with "Transport for London" running all transport. It has lots of investment, cheap busses, frequent trains and a reliable underground. It has synchronisation between different forms of transport, and timetables that make sense. The rest of the UK, the rest of England especially, has incredibly expensive buses, might be lucky to get one train an hour in some places, and might have 3 different bus companies serving a small town, meaning you can't even travel on a day pass, as you'll find that one bus company refuses to accept your ticket because it's a different bus company. Or you find you have to wait much longer for your return journey as the "wrong" company buses turn up first.
sksksk 2y ago
I agree that it's a dire , expensive mess. But it doesn't seem like low hanging fruit at all... Anything that will improve the situation will be expensive and/or take a long time to achieve.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  And "short-term cost, long-term benefit" is kryptonite to the average politician. "We get the blame, the next guy takes the credit"
  - mattigames 2y ago
    One of the reasons China gets things done.
    - tehjoker 2y ago
      china has elections you know
      - dijit 2y ago
        Any elections in the People's Republic of China occur under a one-party authoritarian political system controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It's not the same, and as a consequence of being one-party; means (like the parent suggests) they can be more long term focused, which seems to be working.
        PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
        There's still blame, but it is attached to people, not "the party" (at least not in terms of action taken to enforce blame).
        tehjoker 2y ago
        prefer this to allowing conservatives to have any power. why should guys doing the heil hitler salute get a turn at the wheel
amiga386 2y ago
It's harder than it looks. Excluding special cases like HS1 and TfL, we have three players: - Network Rail, who maintain the entire country's track, signalling, etc. Also owns and runs some major stations. Run at arms length by government, centrally funded. - Train Operating Companies (TOCs), who won a bid held every few years on how much they'll pay the government to be allowed a monopoly on running a particular regional service franchise. Government sets the rules of the franchise, e.g. customer compensation, punctuality targets, etc. TOCs have no control over the network. They lease trains from ROSCOs. They pay and schedule drivers, guards/ticket inspectors, ticket desks, customer support, station staff (they're also responsible for running most stations), and get money in by selling tickets to the public. - Rolling Stock Companies (ROSCOs), who own (commission and maintain) the trains and lease them out to TOCs for exhorbitant prices. ROSCOs extract most of the value of the railway. ROSCOs exist because trains are so expensive that neither government nor TOCs can afford them. Many of these TOCs are other countries national rail operators in disguise, e.g. the Scotrail franchise was recently run by Abellio which was actually the Dutch national railway company (NS). So all profits (not that there are many) leave the country and subsidise other countries' rail networks. The current government has committed to taking back ownership of all TOCs at the end of their franchise terms, so in future both Network Rail and all TOCs will be publicly owned. But at the same time, that might not make anything cheaper; most of the value is sucked out by ROSCOs, so unless the government commits to buying its own trains too, the ROSCOs will just charge more for the same trains if they see the government finding any efficiencies, ensuring tickets don't get cheaper. Some fuming about ROSCO dividend payments: https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rail-rolling-stock-company-turns-taxpayers-money-into-dividends/ https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rail-rolling-stock-company-turns... And to add to that, much of the cost (or cost savings) the TOCs were pursuing were effectively industrial relations - can they get away with having driver-only or driverless trains, in order to have just 1 or 0 paid staff member per train? Unions say "no". Union members start working to rule and suddenly you have no trains on Sunday, even if you're the government. So... it's tricky.
- blibble 2y ago
  there is no doubt that the early ROSCO deals were outrageously tilted against taxpayers/passengers (they pay £1 for old BR trains the state paid for, then we pay them to rent them back) however the newer ones are significantly better funding the capital cost of a billion pounds of new trains isn't free (even for a government), and there is risk on that investment they also maintain the trains (to varying levels of quality)
blibble 2y ago
it's not dire and it's not expensive compared to the next reasonable alternatives if you compare the cost of a London commuter belt season ticket compared to the cost of driving+parking, it is still very much a bargain
- Symbiote 2y ago
  It's expensive for irregular users. If I want to visit friends in Derby, coming from London, that's £81. For no good reason, a return ticket is £84. If I need to travel at peak times, that's £123. Booked months in advance it might be £20, roughly what a bus ticket costs.
  - nprateem 2y ago
    There is a good reason the return is only £3 more. It's so fare dodgers who buy a single have still basically paid the full fare.
    - curiousObject 2y ago
      I don’t understand. Wouldn’t most fare dodgers buy no tickets, not just buy a single ticket for part of a return journey? What’s the reason that people try to dodge fares by buying a single ticket? Is it because they know when and where tickets are likely to be checked?
      - devnullbrain 2y ago
        I believe the PC is hinting about station barriers. Major stations need you to scan a ticket (or con a guard) to get off the platform or out of the station. Minor stations sometimes don't - and if it's your station you'll know. I think the real reason is less sensational: trains that go full in one direction still have to go back in the other direction whether they're full or not.
        lozenge 2y ago
secondcoming 2y ago
All the train drivers recently got massive pay increases so we can expect efficiency and cost to improve sometime soon!
jdietrich 2y ago
Only 2% of all journeys in the UK are made by train. Only 8% of people in England use trains at least once per week. The professional-managerial class grossly over estimate the social and economic importance of passenger rail, because the network was built to serve their needs. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66c5c0b6cbe60889bddd278d/nts-2023-factsheet.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66c5c0b6cbe60... https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a815d8e40f0b62302696ea1/rail-passengers-factsheet-2016-revised.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a815d8e40f0b...
- crazygringo 2y ago
  Well yeah, you're not going to take a train to the corner store. Your PDF notes that 29% of trips are made on foot. 2% of trips by train is a lot higher than the number of trips by airplane... And again, 8% of people using trains once a week is a lot higher than they use planes... ...And yet I don't think anybody "grossly overestimates" the social and economic importance of airplanes. People use trains to visit family, go sightseeing, and so forth. They're a hugely important part of infrastructure, even if most people don't use them daily.
  - salynchnew 2y ago
    If walking down to the corner shop is considered a "journey" then 2% of all journeys being made by train is a massive number.
- Doctor_Fegg 2y ago
  Now try closing the railways of south-east England and see how well the roads hold up without them.

controlledchaos 2y ago

As a North American who travels in the UK multiple times per year, I really need you to elaborate. My experience has been nothing less than amazing, in comparison to the complete lack of rail options at home.

djhworld 2y ago
If you travel in and around the South East, inc. London the service is pretty good, regular although still very very expensive. In the north though it’s a mixed bag, frequently delayed, huge underinvestment, expensive etc.
- Moomoomoo309 2y ago
  You have to remember what public transit is like in NA. What in Europe is unacceptable, late frequently, and problematic, is probably the best public transit someone from NA has ever been on, except maybe the NYC subway. It's a really, really low bar. NJTransit is considered one of the best in the US (and it is, unfortunately), and it's worse than anything I saw in Europe when I visited.
  - drstewart 2y ago
    From NA The UK definitely does not have the best public transit I've ever seen. ESPECIALLY for the price.
- thebruce87m 2y ago
  Note that when an English person says the north, they expect everyone to know they are talking specifically about the north of England, not the north of the UK even if everyone else is talking about the UK.
  - AlotOfReading 2y ago
    Though Scotrail was just as bad for many years, so it was a bit of a moot point until a few years ago.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    It's a very moveable dividing line depending on where the speaker is from, there's no Mason-Dixon line here. Can mean anywhere north of London. No normal person refers to Scotland as "north UK" when they could say Scotland, though.
    - twic 2y ago
      You do occasionally see "North Britain" for Scotland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Britain It was once common, and in modern times it's occasionally used as a deliberate affectation.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
      When I grew up (in London), Watford was always the "gateway to the north". On the other hand, Balham was the "gateway to the south" (which reached as far as the Mediterranean).
      - rjmunro 2y ago
        I think the original phrase was "North of the Watford Gap", but people often mis-abbreviate to "North of Watford". The Watford Gap is not the same place as Watford. It's about 75 miles north of London. Watford is within London's motorway ring road (The M25), and on the underground map. Its only about 17 miles away from the centre.
  - 2y ago
moomin 2y ago
America has much more serious problems with rail, but the UK experience still isn't great. The broad root cause is that back in the day we had the genius idea of paying multiple private companies to run trains on shared lines. We set up metrics to measure their performance that, bluntly, do not work. They underinvest and when there's any sign they're not making money, they hand the contract back. All in all, we get all the disadvantages of a nationalised system with all the disadvantages of a privatised system with a couple of original problems thrown in for good measure. But the train near my house still runs.
- graemep 2y ago
  The infrastructure privatisation was reversed a long time ago, and most of the delays, in my experience, are due to problems with tracks. The biggest problems recently (for me) have been strikes and inadequate services. The rot really goes back to pre-privatisation (it was not great in the 1990s) and arguably started with the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, based on the decision not to subsidise rail in the face of increasing road use.
- tonyedgecombe 2y ago
  >The broad root cause is that back in the day we had the genius idea of paying multiple private companies to run trains on shared lines. Train travel has doubled since the privatisation. The main problem is we don't know how to build out infrastructure in a cost effective manner (see HS2 and the electrification of the Great Western Main Line). This isn't surprising as we do it in a stop/start manner rather than a continual process.
graemep 2y ago
Low bar? British people tend to compare with rail travel experienced on holidays in places like France. Those systems do seem to be better (I do not have recent experience myself) and this then feeds the usual British tendency to take a rosy tinted view of the rest of the world and pessimism about the UK. It also varies a lot in different places. Costs vary with types of tickets, who you are, and whether you have various discounts. Local train services are very weak where I live (Cheshire) so while I can get to major cities quite easily its difficult to travel between towns in the county on trains (or buses).
spxcxlxxs 2y ago
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Japan. Wait till you try the trains there! They're so punctual that delays issue a certificate for employees to present to employers* * Source: random article
- toephu2 2y ago
  Wait until you try high speed rail in China. They're 10-15 years ahead of Japan.
  - elpalek 2y ago
    Can you please elaborate on the Chinese advantage?
    - dangus 2y ago
      The network is massive and the average and top speeds are very fast. China has more high speed rail than the rest of the world combined.
      - elpalek 2y ago
        China's land area is approximately 25 times of Japan, def has a bigger network. But the top speed is comparable in current generations[1] except the Maglev. 1. https://www.railway-technology.com/features/the-10-fastest-high-speed-trains-in-the-world/?cf-view https://www.railway-technology.com/features/the-10-fastest-h...
        dangus 2y ago
        Comparable and essentially identical for sure, but 30 km/hr slower is slower.
      - tirant 2y ago
        Compared to their size, Spain and Japan have a largest high speed network than China. And tickets, specially in Spain, are very cheap.
prmoustache 2y ago
I have lived in Switzerland for year and my very limited experience with trains in Scotland has been great. Trains were on time, and personel at the railway stations were very polite and helpful with us. But maybe we were just lucky.
oniony 2y ago
I often travel intercity to London and a ticket travelling out early, say, Monday and returning after peak hours, say, Wednesday costs upwards of £75. I have to book well in advance to get this price. I have just priced such a journey and the cheapest I can get for the days I chose next week is £105, for example. The journey time is about 2:20 but often it takes 10 minutes longer. Quite often (maybe 1 in 6) my train to London would get cancelled. I would be able to get a refund no problem, but there is no compensation for the fact I have driven to the station and am now stuck without any travel plans. Conversely I would have to arrive at the station early, for if I missed my train I would forfeit that half of the ticket and would have to pay again to travel on the later train. As such my journey would actually also include an extra 15 minutes of slack time in case the car didn't start and I needed to wake the wife for a lift, for example. It would also be quite stressful on the way home, where a meeting might overrun, putting my chances of getting my booked train at risk. A year or two ago they opened a new "parkway" railway station (basically park-and-ride) and now the earliest train no longer stops at my local station. It would take me 30 minutes to drive to the parkway station, plus cost me £6 a day parking there, so my only option now is the later train which arrives in London at 8:30, if it is on time, making it impossible for me to start work before 9am. The trains are supposed to have eight carriages, of which one is first class. On the outward journey I could often get a seat but the return journey would be standing only for the first hour. Quite often the train would arrive with only five carriages meaning it would be absolutely rammed the whole way. This leaves you very exhausted and sweaty for the start of the work day. And forget first class: it is twice the price of standard class. So I've given up with the long distance train and now drive down to a commuter town near London and get the train just the final bit. I can also get into London much earlier and I don't have to pre-book specific trains. It's actually cheaper too, with the fuel and train tickets coming in at about £65, though obviously there's car depreciation, tyres, &c. on top. So between £75-£130 for a prebooked ticket on an inflexible, specifically timed, intercity train, with a total journey time of about 3:00, or £65 for a drive down in my own car whatever times I want with a total journey time of about 3:30.
habosa 2y ago
I’m an American who lived in London for 3 years and was also impressed, but as someone who only had to use national rail for leisure (got around London by bus/tube) I was oblivious to two things: 1) Commute hours are brutal. Trains are packed and even a few minutes delay can feel like ages when you’re missing a meeting. 2) The cost of 5x weekly round trips is enormous. The average annual pass for someone commuting into London from outside is like £4000. That’s in a country where the average wage is around £40,000. That’s a huge amount of money to spend on public transportation. I know a car would be more but I’ve never met a single American who spends that fraction of their income on public transportation. Still though … I’d rather have expensive and unreliable trains than no trains at all.
- xnorswap 2y ago
  Also it's hard to state how much, and especially when it comes to transport, that London isn't England. London is it's own bubble with "Transport for London" running all transport. It has lots of investment, cheap busses, frequent trains and a reliable underground. It has synchronisation between different forms of transport, and timetables that make sense. The rest of the UK, the rest of England especially, has incredibly expensive buses, might be lucky to get one train an hour in some places, and might have 3 different bus companies serving a small town, meaning you can't even travel on a day pass, as you'll find that one bus company refuses to accept your ticket because it's a different bus company. Or you find you have to wait much longer for your return journey as the "wrong" company buses turn up first.

sksksk 2y ago

I agree that it's a dire , expensive mess. But it doesn't seem like low hanging fruit at all... Anything that will improve the situation will be expensive and/or take a long time to achieve.

HPsquared 2y ago
And "short-term cost, long-term benefit" is kryptonite to the average politician. "We get the blame, the next guy takes the credit"
- mattigames 2y ago
  One of the reasons China gets things done.
  - tehjoker 2y ago
    china has elections you know
    - dijit 2y ago
      Any elections in the People's Republic of China occur under a one-party authoritarian political system controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It's not the same, and as a consequence of being one-party; means (like the parent suggests) they can be more long term focused, which seems to be working.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
        There's still blame, but it is attached to people, not "the party" (at least not in terms of action taken to enforce blame).
      - tehjoker 2y ago
        prefer this to allowing conservatives to have any power. why should guys doing the heil hitler salute get a turn at the wheel

amiga386 2y ago

It's harder than it looks. Excluding special cases like HS1 and TfL, we have three players: - Network Rail, who maintain the entire country's track, signalling, etc. Also owns and runs some major stations. Run at arms length by government, centrally funded. - Train Operating Companies (TOCs), who won a bid held every few years on how much they'll pay the government to be allowed a monopoly on running a particular regional service franchise. Government sets the rules of the franchise, e.g. customer compensation, punctuality targets, etc. TOCs have no control over the network. They lease trains from ROSCOs. They pay and schedule drivers, guards/ticket inspectors, ticket desks, customer support, station staff (they're also responsible for running most stations), and get money in by selling tickets to the public. - Rolling Stock Companies (ROSCOs), who own (commission and maintain) the trains and lease them out to TOCs for exhorbitant prices. ROSCOs extract most of the value of the railway. ROSCOs exist because trains are so expensive that neither government nor TOCs can afford them. Many of these TOCs are other countries national rail operators in disguise, e.g. the Scotrail franchise was recently run by Abellio which was actually the Dutch national railway company (NS). So all profits (not that there are many) leave the country and subsidise other countries' rail networks. The current government has committed to taking back ownership of all TOCs at the end of their franchise terms, so in future both Network Rail and all TOCs will be publicly owned. But at the same time, that might not make anything cheaper; most of the value is sucked out by ROSCOs, so unless the government commits to buying its own trains too, the ROSCOs will just charge more for the same trains if they see the government finding any efficiencies, ensuring tickets don't get cheaper. Some fuming about ROSCO dividend payments: https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rail-rolling-stock-company-turns-taxpayers-money-into-dividends/ https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rail-rolling-stock-company-turns... And to add to that, much of the cost (or cost savings) the TOCs were pursuing were effectively industrial relations - can they get away with having driver-only or driverless trains, in order to have just 1 or 0 paid staff member per train? Unions say "no". Union members start working to rule and suddenly you have no trains on Sunday, even if you're the government. So... it's tricky.

blibble 2y ago
there is no doubt that the early ROSCO deals were outrageously tilted against taxpayers/passengers (they pay £1 for old BR trains the state paid for, then we pay them to rent them back) however the newer ones are significantly better funding the capital cost of a billion pounds of new trains isn't free (even for a government), and there is risk on that investment they also maintain the trains (to varying levels of quality)

blibble 2y ago

it's not dire and it's not expensive compared to the next reasonable alternatives if you compare the cost of a London commuter belt season ticket compared to the cost of driving+parking, it is still very much a bargain

Symbiote 2y ago
It's expensive for irregular users. If I want to visit friends in Derby, coming from London, that's £81. For no good reason, a return ticket is £84. If I need to travel at peak times, that's £123. Booked months in advance it might be £20, roughly what a bus ticket costs.
- nprateem 2y ago
  There is a good reason the return is only £3 more. It's so fare dodgers who buy a single have still basically paid the full fare.
  - curiousObject 2y ago
    I don’t understand. Wouldn’t most fare dodgers buy no tickets, not just buy a single ticket for part of a return journey? What’s the reason that people try to dodge fares by buying a single ticket? Is it because they know when and where tickets are likely to be checked?
    - devnullbrain 2y ago
      I believe the PC is hinting about station barriers. Major stations need you to scan a ticket (or con a guard) to get off the platform or out of the station. Minor stations sometimes don't - and if it's your station you'll know. I think the real reason is less sensational: trains that go full in one direction still have to go back in the other direction whether they're full or not.
      - lozenge 2y ago

secondcoming 2y ago

All the train drivers recently got massive pay increases so we can expect efficiency and cost to improve sometime soon!

jdietrich 2y ago

Only 2% of all journeys in the UK are made by train. Only 8% of people in England use trains at least once per week. The professional-managerial class grossly over estimate the social and economic importance of passenger rail, because the network was built to serve their needs. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66c5c0b6cbe60889bddd278d/nts-2023-factsheet.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66c5c0b6cbe60... https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a815d8e40f0b62302696ea1/rail-passengers-factsheet-2016-revised.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a815d8e40f0b...

crazygringo 2y ago
Well yeah, you're not going to take a train to the corner store. Your PDF notes that 29% of trips are made on foot. 2% of trips by train is a lot higher than the number of trips by airplane... And again, 8% of people using trains once a week is a lot higher than they use planes... ...And yet I don't think anybody "grossly overestimates" the social and economic importance of airplanes. People use trains to visit family, go sightseeing, and so forth. They're a hugely important part of infrastructure, even if most people don't use them daily.
- salynchnew 2y ago
  If walking down to the corner shop is considered a "journey" then 2% of all journeys being made by train is a massive number.
Doctor_Fegg 2y ago
Now try closing the railways of south-east England and see how well the roads hold up without them.