High fares - The issue that won't go away

[talldave]

In reality most people consider fixed costs (purchase and servicing as well as non-mileage-based repairs, tax and insurance) to be the cost of membership of the "I own a car" club. The variable costs are mostly just fuel and a small amount for brake and tyre replacement.

Insurance and servicing can technically vary by mileage but they don't significantly for most users up to average-ish mileages.

It's a fallacy to suggest that a per-mile model is the only one that should be applied as a comparison. Do people work out Railcards on a per mile basis? I bet most don't.

As the owner of two cars - one big for family stuff and one tiny for shopping/errands they cost me (for all servicing/maintenance/tax/insurance) around £3 a day and £2 a day respectively to keep on the road - that's two cars available 24/7 for less money than our gas bill! But being in London, it we're going towards central London, we'll use buses & trains every time. At the moment, thanks to Thames Water making travel a misery, it's quicker to walk anywhere local than take a car out or use a bus.

 

[Haywain]

Do people not see the benefit of having a publicly accessible train network?

Those who don't use it are unlikely to see any benefit.

 

[saismee]

Those who don't use it are unlikely to see any benefit.

So it's just a generally anti-socialist mindset. The same kind of mindset that would abolish (or formerly oppose) the NHS as you are paying for everyone else rather than just yourself. Effectively selfishness. The NHS isn't the best example though, as it's much easier to see the benefit of accessible healthcare for all. It's frustrating.

 

[Haywain]

So it's just a generally anti-socialist mindset.

We don't live in a country with particularly socialist values, so that's to be expected.

 

[anothertyke]

Excellent interview of Lord Hendy by Richard Bowker on Green Signals today about GBR and the future for the rail industry.

 

[JonathanH]

Excellent interview of Lord Hendy by Richard Bowker on Green Signals today about GBR and the future for the rail industry.

What does it reveal about train fares?

 

[Falcon1200]

That is indeed how it is. Firstly the majority of my car journeys are quite impractical by rail, to and from points nowhere near the network. Secondly having a car (and indeed the skill to drive it) is part of overall life, provided for my family, like having a house for us all.

Good points. Working for the railway, and therefore having staff travel, I did not learn to drive, or buy a car, until I was 30. Now? I would not be without a car, because as you say so many journeys are not feasible by public transport. Visiting my daughter, for example, takes less than 40 minutes by car; Public transport would require two buses and two trains, and would take at least 5 times as long. No amount of investment will change that imbalance.

 

[miami]

Those who don't use it are unlikely to see any benefit.

Every person on a train is someone not in a car in front of me.

 

[yorksrob]

More on a "am I going to make at least two small journeys with this within a year" basis, as that's all it takes for it to become worthwhile.

Can someone explain why subsidies seem to be considered to be the "worst-case" option for reducing fare prices? From what I've heard from people living in Brisbane, Australia, their train fares are 50 cents between any two stations on their network and it's funded by high taxes on the coal industry. The media and Liberal/right wing party make this out to be evil, but it's reducing their reliance on coal and making travel effectively free on their network. Everything I've heard from people who actually use the trains say it's great when travelling with a group or to an event that's easily accessible from a station. I've also heard that they intended to make the service free but they still need usage metrics so 50 cents is reasonable enough. I appreciate that their trains act more as a metro than the UK's rail network and we don't exactly have a coal industry to tax, but surely there's a solution to this. One big upside is that you can almost entirely remove revenue protection roles (at the gateline, and on trains) and greatly cut down the prosecutions department... I'm sure that'd save a decent chunk, but obviously not more than they currently bring in.

Is it just that the average taxpayer sees "tax increase" and gets sour? Do people not see the benefit of having a publicly accessible train network?

We don't live in a country with particularly socialist values, so that's to be expected.

Too many people are still in awe of failed, small-state kitchen sink economics

 

[anothertyke]

What does it reveal about train fares?

Very little directly.

I would say it revealed that in Lord Hendy's mind, GBR is about driving efficiencies by reducing the number of contractual interfaces, placing responsibilities for operations and infrastructure in the same place, driving operational decision making down to the lowest sensible point in the hierarchy, implementing Williams. Hendy clearly thinks the TfL---LUL and buses relationship experience is relevant as a structural model.

At the end he said that the aim is to get the cost and revenue lines moving in the right direction, base business cases securely on the realities. develop long term rolling stock procurement planning which itself would deliver efficiencies.

How would that dividend be spent? No answer. In fact the conversation was largely different from the one on this thread.

 

[Tomo]

Since LNER 'simplified' their fares my journey from Kent to Yorkshire is barely cheaper than the petrol even with my 75% discount.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Since LNER 'simplified' their fares my journey from Kent to Yorkshire is barely cheaper than the petrol even with my 75% discount.

LNER haven't "simplified" fares to Yorkshire, unless you mean the single-fare pricing bit.

Not saying they haven't just put them up though!

 

[Joe Paxton]

Very little directly.

I would say it revealed that in Lord Hendy's mind, GBR is about driving efficiencies by reducing the number of contractual interfaces, placing responsibilities for operations and infrastructure in the same place, driving operational decision making down to the lowest sensible point in the hierarchy, implementing Williams. Hendy clearly thinks the TfL---LUL and buses relationship experience is relevant as a structural model.

At the end he said that the aim is to get the cost and revenue lines moving in the right direction, base business cases securely on the realities. develop long term rolling stock procurement planning which itself would deliver efficiencies.

How would that dividend be spent? No answer. In fact the conversation was largely different from the one on this thread.

Sounds interesting and worth a listen.

I envisage GBR as being the de-fragmentation of the railways. SWR may now be nationalised (and later this year c2c then Greater Anglia), but it's the next step - that of integrating the disparate TOCs (or perhaps "TOUs", to use a term coined in the run up to privatisation?) back together, along with Network Rail, into a cohesive whole which is where the real wins are possible - as well as all manner of challenges and difficulties too!

How GBR will be organised internally - and it'd be a mistake for it to be too central and top-down - will be interesting. Many consider the final sectorisation days of BR to have been a reasonably
successful model, but whilst that might provide some inspiration I wouldn't expect the future of be a carbon-copy of that either.

 

[Bald Rick]

This reads like a bit of a weird comment - it seems to rather write off from rail travel those age 30-59 who don't travel with their 'family', nor regularly with a specific other person, are not an ex-service person, do not have a qualifying disability, or are not travelling wholly within the 'wider south-east' (ex-NSE area).

It’s not writing them off at all. Just recognising that people who are between 30-59 and travelling alone are more likely to be doing so for work, and have a higher than average disposable income, and therefore place a higher value on their time, and thus be more willing to pay higher fares.

In terms of Friday, I'm one of the few who go into the office and the trains around the peak are noticeably quieter. I suspect Friday mornings do well because of lots of people doing leisure activities and travelling off peak.

Friday mornings are dead. Fridays from 1100(ish) onwards are very busy.

I’ll bet every other supplier to the industry had an inflation clause in their contract.

I’ll bet they didn’t, including wuite a few rail staff.

 

[yorksrob]

Friday mornings are dead. Fridays from 1100(ish) onwards are very busy.

Which are already off-peak, so it makes sense to spread some demand to the dead morning and have a better, more marketable product for the leisure oriented clientelle.

Off-peak Fridays are a win-win !

 

[Bald Rick]

Which are already off-peak, so it makes sense to spread some demand to the dead morning and have a better, more marketable product for the leisure oriented clientelle.

Off-peak Fridays are a win-win !

Its Friday evenings that are the problem.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Its Friday evenings that are the problem.

Off peak all day Friday spreads the load, though. The 19xx services off Euston are not the sardine tins they were.

 

[Joe Paxton]

It’s not writing them off at all. Just recognising that people who are between 30-59 and travelling alone are more likely to be doing so for work, and have a higher than average disposable income, and therefore place a higher value on their time, and thus be more willing to pay higher fares.

Perhaps it was just your phraseology, or indeed my interpretation of it, but the latter part of your earlier comment...

The demographic market segment of people who wish to travel by rail for their usual journeys and are not eligible for a railcard is frankly rather small (and getting smaller).

... kind of suggested to me a lack of interest in the railcard-less demographic, or at least a lack of ambition to try and attract them to travelling by rail. That's all I was really getting at. But this is but an informal discussion forum so I do appreciate we're not here for a forensic examination of each and every contribution!

 

[island]

As usual, the motorist block holds the political class in its thrall.

They've had a decade or more of freezes while passengers have had relentless increases. It's about time there was some fairness.

Precisely. Even worse than that, the fuel duty setup is in the form of a legal presumption it will increase by inflation plus, so that the OBR has to presume it will, even though every year without fail the government freezes it.

I also think most people think train companies control the price of train fares while they know it's the government that controls fuel duty so the government doesn't get (so much of) the blame when rail fares rise.

They do, but then they also think it's all "private/foreign companies creaming off profit" which hasn't been the case since March 2020. This fiction won't be maintained once GBR is up and running,

 

[yorksrob]

Its Friday evenings that are the problem.

Off peak all day Friday spreads the load, though. The 19xx services off Euston are not the sardine tins they were.

Indeed. If they can manage it on lines out of Euston, they can manage it everywhere.

To be honest, I'm beginning to think that evening peak times are an anachronism that's had its day. Just another obstacle to passengers going about their business.

 

[Sonic1234]

Perhaps, but the 'motorist block' is a huge proportion of the voting population. Far greater than the 'train passenger block'.

It's a rare example of Government actually enacting the will of the people. Cars hold a special place in people's psyche which public transport does not.

 

[Tetchytyke]

A lot of it is the power of advertising. Cars are advertised as being about freedom, excitement, joy. Car adverts always have a car being driven rapidly on an empty mountain road. They’re never about trudging round the North Circular to go to Brent Cross shopping centre on a wet Bank Holiday Monday.

Add into that the fact that the automotive industry and the oil industry are both very powerful lobbyists. Look at the irrational rage towards electric cars. People claim they “prefer” ICE cars even though, for most driving, electric cars are much easier- better acceleration, regenerative braking, no gear changes, better torque. Look how “range anxiety” has become a thing, even though petrol cars also have a limited range before you need to fill them up and it’s a real problem if you don’t.

Trains don’t have any of that. Trains are a figure of fun. People who are obsessed by cars are “petrolheads”, all blokey charm and pints down the pub. People who are obsessed by trains are “trainspotters”, all jam jar glasses and plastic clothing. British Rail sandwiches. Leaves on the line. Wrong type of snow.

It’s why expenditure on roads is always “investment” but expenditure on railways is “subsidy”.

 

[redreni]

It's a rare example of Government actually enacting the will of the people. Cars hold a special place in people's psyche which public transport does not.

The history of that is interesting, though. To oversimplify, it basically went:

1. Cars were something only rich enthusiasts could afford.
2. Rich enthusiasts started driving their cars into towns and cities causing noise, nuisance, carnage, destruction and, quite often, injury and death.
3. There was a public outcry and people wanted them banned. Some regulation was introduced (traffic lights, speed limits, that sort of thing) but at the same time, the car manufacturers and oil companies spent vast sums of money on public relations to change people's attitudes to the car as they ramped up production, because existing public attitudes were not remotely conducive to the business model.
4. The PR exercise was expensive and went on for a long time, and was ultimately quite successful. Car manufacturers and oil companies demanded and got:
(a) massive, publicly funded road building programmes (without facing anything like the hostility public funding for rail always encounters)
(b) removal of public transport, including closure of railways, tramways, trolley buses and reductions in motor bus services as a way of encouraging people to buy cars
(c) in the USA they also got walking outside of designated spaces criminalised ('jaywalking') and planning laws changed so homes couldn't be built anywhere near basic amenities like shops, ensuring suburban Americans would have no choice but to drive everywhere. Naturally, once you've got generations of people used to a world where driving is the mode that is prioritised and travel by other modes is slow and/or difficult and/or dangerous and/or incredibly expensive (think Amtrak) then, of course, people will not favour policies that penalise motorists.

We are fortunate in Europe that car dependency hasn't been so comprehensively established and relatively few people live in places where it is actually impossible to get around without a car. There are lots of places where the alternatives to driving are not good enough to induce people to choose them, though. I've a feeling the transition to EVs will change that as a new generation of young adults is faced with the prospect of being unable to afford to buy a car and sees little prospect of being able to buy one outright, as the enormous cost of new cars has its effect on used car prices. So even if they remain cheap to run, people who don't have them and can't afford to buy them will increasingly demand sensible alternatives.

I have no difficulty, as an advocate of rail, making the same kinds of demands the automotive industry did in the 1950s - there is not enough capacity, so significantly more capacity should be provided and neither the rail industry nor its customers should have to make any contribution whatsoever towards the cost of that. Unlike their demands back then, a demand for sustainable transport infrastructure is very much in the public interest.

 

[Indigo Soup]

I've a feeling the transition to EVs will change that as a new generation of young adults is faced with the prospect of being unable to afford to buy a car and sees little prospect of being able to buy one outright, as the enormous cost of new cars has its effect on used car prices.

We'll also see that with the introduction of self-driving cars, which are even more enormously expensive and introduce a whole host of issues relating to congestion and safety. Those advocating them are already dusting off the same playbook used by the automotive lobby in the early twentieth century to justify the demands needed to make them work.

 

[yorksrob]

A lot of it is the power of advertising. Cars are advertised as being about freedom, excitement, joy. Car adverts always have a car being driven rapidly on an empty mountain road. They’re never about trudging round the North Circular to go to Brent Cross shopping centre on a wet Bank Holiday Monday.

Add into that the fact that the automotive industry and the oil industry are both very powerful lobbyists. Look at the irrational rage towards electric cars. People claim they “prefer” ICE cars even though, for most driving, electric cars are much easier- better acceleration, regenerative braking, no gear changes, better torque. Look how “range anxiety” has become a thing, even though petrol cars also have a limited range before you need to fill them up and it’s a real problem if you don’t.

Trains don’t have any of that. Trains are a figure of fun. People who are obsessed by cars are “petrolheads”, all blokey charm and pints down the pub. People who are obsessed by trains are “trainspotters”, all jam jar glasses and plastic clothing. British Rail sandwiches. Leaves on the line. Wrong type of snow.

It’s why expenditure on roads is always “investment” but expenditure on railways is “subsidy”.

Yes, there are always lots of ridiculously pretentious car adverts around.

It's good that the railway industry is starting to advertise the railway system as a whole again. It will take more than good advertising to counter feelings that the railway is expensive to use and difficult to plan around.

 

[Llandudno]

That is the case for some railway staff but there are many who do not own and have no need for a car.

Especially if rail travel is free…!

 

[yorksrob]

It looks as though the Guardian has published an opinion piece that echos my fears:

A great prize, but a great risk: why we all need the nationalised South Western Railway to work | Sarah Nankivell

If fares don’t fall and services don’t improve, it could undermine the case for public ownership for a long time to come, says Sarah Nankivell of Common Wealth

www.theguardian.com

If services don’t improve and fares don’t fall, critics will have their attack line ready: “We told you nationalisation doesn’t work – just look at the trains.”

It is critical that public ownership is seen to deliver better value for money

 

[redreni]

It looks as though the Guardian has published an opinion piece that echos my fears:

A great prize, but a great risk: why we all need the nationalised South Western Railway to work | Sarah Nankivell

If fares don’t fall and services don’t improve, it could undermine the case for public ownership for a long time to come, says Sarah Nankivell of Common Wealth

www.theguardian.com

I'd like to say one would expect better of the Guardian, but that would only be true if one hadn't been reading it.

Utterly preposterous, of course. Nobody ever says failed private enterprises mean the private sector mustn't be allowed to run anything again. Anyone who said so would be dismissed as an idealogue. It doesn't matter how many such failures occur or how damaging they are.

There could be a thousand reasons why GBR might not succeed. But successful public railways have existed and still exist, so there is nothing that could possibly happen to GBR that would support a conclusion that public ownership can't work.

 

[yorksrob]

There could be a thousand reasons why GBR might not succeed. But successful public railways have existed and still exist, so there is nothing that could possibly happen to GBR that would support a conclusion that public ownership can't work.

One would hope so, but the economic right will generally take any opportunity to kick the public sector. Even our Nige was promising a DOGE in every Town Hall not long ago.

 

[route101]

Higher fares and having no railcard to use have made me question if I can afford the train now. Less advance fares, increased roll out of one way pricing which makes return trips higher and no railcard have made fares expensive now.