Poor quality passenger rail service increases demand for private car purchases

[GoneSouth]

Indeed. A £30 fare is available Edinburgh - London early next week (Tuesday) on Lumo.

I’m really not that bothered about the cost anymore to be honest as I’m fairly confident every journey I make will have some level of delay repay heading back to me. Every journey I’ve made in the past 3 months has been at least partially refunded to me. What a ridiculous way to run a railway!

 

[al78]

Again, where are you getting the 'three months' from?

I can get a single Euston - Manchester in 8 days' time for £32. Admittedly it's not a peak time train but if you're cost conscious and travelling for leisure (say a few days away) then wouldn't you just adjust your plans to accommodate the cheapest fare?

Lucky you. I searched for advance London Euston to Manchester fares last week and the best I got was a little over £40 each way. Add to that the cost of getting from Horsham to London and back which I could do for £14 with advance tickets meant it cost me over £90 to visit family over the weekend in a couple of weeks by train. I can get there and back by car in a little less than one full tank of fuel which is about £70.

Here lies a problem. If you are single and want to take the train because it is an arguable better choice than contributing to traffic congestion with yet another car with just one person in it, you get punished in the wallet. If the system penalises you for making more responsible decisions, the system is flawed.

 

[Surreytraveller]

At least with the train if it's not coming you usually know, where as with the bus it just doesn't turn up. Had that happen to me on more than one occasion.

Most bus companies have apps that allow you to track their buses, which are far superior to National Rail Enquiries, as that doesn't actually show you where the trains are (yes, there's Real Time Trains etc, but the general public aren't aware of those)

 

[Mikey C]

We've been down to Wembley three times for football matches (from Lancaster). All before the current strikes, so in more "normal" times.

First time, we took the Pendolino and had to stay overnight (Sunday match, so had to travel down Saturday and return Monday, as no trains to get us there and back in the same day due to Sunday services). Worked out very expensive, not just the hotel, but the Pendolino cost was extortionate.

Second time, we drove down to the other side of Birmingham, parked in a "parkway" station and got the Chiltern Maryleborne train. Managed to do it all in one day with and early start and late return. A bit of a pain in the neck - train took a lot longer than it would have done to drive, and pretty costly for what was a relatively short train journey (not to mention delays and one train cancelled meaning a wait for the next).

Finally, bit the bullet and just drove all the way. Worked out quicker, less stress, less waiting around, more freedom, and a lot cheaper! Didn't realise how easy it was to drive there, and plenty of relatively cheap parking nearby.

A common approach is to drive down park on the edge of London near an appropriate tube station. Stanmore is a popular choice, as it's near J4 of the M1 and on the Jubilee Line so you can get straight to Wembley Park

 

[Johnnie2Sheds]

I get twenty boxes a year for FREE travel and I wouldnt use the railways at the moment. Its a joke. Hopefully there will be something left of it when this farce ends.

 

[Bungle73]

Most bus companies have apps that allow you to track their buses, which are far superior to National Rail Enquiries, as that doesn't actually show you where the trains are (yes, there's Real Time Trains etc, but the general public aren't aware of those)

As I already said the app just does not work.

And yes it does.....

 

[Llandudno]

Most people probably know they're going to Manchester for the day next weekend, but most people don't know three months in advance.

Plus, it's fairly normal to go somewhere and not know exactly what time you need to come back. Most of my long distance trips could probably stand an Advance outward (as I know which day I'm going) but would need a walk-up for the way back.

Plus there are never many super-cheap Advances on peak time trains. There may be one or two as a lead-in, but once sold anyone wishing to travel has to cough up royally. And while most trips might have a bit of flexibility of time, say +/- an hour or two in each direction, most don't have flexibility of day, e.g. I can't go for a weekend away with the kids on a Wednesday unless it's school holidays (and you can be sure the fare will be cranked right up then).

I tend to buy an advance both ways, yes I know for certain what time I want to travel on the outward, but usually buy a return advance for mid/late evening, the substantial saving over a walk up ticket usually more than pays for a bite to eat and a couple of pints - especially if there is a Wetherspoons handy!

 

[Bletchleyite]

I tend to buy an advance both ways, yes I know for certain what time I want to travel on the outward, but usually buy a return advance for mid/late evening, the substantial saving over a walk up ticket usually more than pays for a bite to eat and a couple of pints - especially if there is a Wetherspoons handy!

Some people do. But in the end if the railway doesn't offer affordable flexibility then those people will use the car.

Which is fine, if we aren't trying to deprecate the car - in that case you could say "drive, then, it's not a problem if you prefer that". But we are trying to reduce car use.

 

[Bikeman78]

Which is part of the problem. In the end under no circumstances whatsoever am I willing to pay £350 for a return journey between Euston and the North West. I'd rather not go, drive or use a road coach.

It was the same 20 years ago. As soon as I mentioned the peak time fare from Euston to Manchester was 150 quid, that was the end of the conversation. People travelling on business might pay it but leisure travellers just laughed.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It was the same 20 years ago. As soon as I mentioned the peak time fare from Euston to Manchester was 150 quid, that was the end of the conversation. People travelling on business might pay it but leisure travellers just laughed.

I'd not pay it on business with a straight face either, I'd look at staying the night before/after and travelling off peak, somewhere just outside London if necessary. Or drive.

 

[The Ham]

For long distances (I mean 50+ miles, not American style long distance) trains are usually the most comfortable, efficient and quick means of transport. At the other end though, it can be a pain if there is no connecting train or bus to take you where you need to be. Cheap and easily available car hire should be the answer. I've not seen car hire offices at many rail stations, unlike airports. Isn't this the ideal compromise and couldn't train companies be a bit more imaginative with linked deals? As someone who hates driving but enjoys exploring country areas I'd love to see this. (Or examples of it already happening)

Car clubs can be helpful, especially given you can hire then for the time that you need them (rather than for 24 hours at a time).

Bear in mind the research is from a cycling campaigning group, so have a vested interest in the messages given. They also, as happens too often with cycling groups, seem to think everyone lives within reasonable cycling distance of most places they want to get to. That isn't the case in large parts of the country. In my own case, I live in a middle-sized town but, like many people here, work in Leeds which is almost 20 miles away. Few people are going to want to cycle those kind of distances.

Whilst what you say is true, too many people drive when they could walk or cycle. Someone for little benefit.

For example if you need a little extra milk it can be cheaper to walk to the petrol station to buy outrageously expensive milk than it is to drive to buy it at a supermarket (only counting fuel costs).

Likewise where's the benefit in driving 600m to school to drop the kids off to drive back again every day (when it's cold and/or wet I can understand, however even those are few in number)?

Cars are useful, however if you want to carry on using them you certainly don't want fewer people cycling, going by train and walking.

I get twenty boxes a year for FREE travel and I wouldnt use the railways at the moment. Its a joke. Hopefully there will be something left of it when this farce ends.

However there are a lot of people who are using the railways (regardless of what many people feel).

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

Indeed. A £30 fare is available Edinburgh - London early next week (Tuesday) on Lumo.

Should this be something to celebrate when they suggested an average fare of £25?

 

[12LDA28C]

Should this be something to celebrate when they suggested an average fare of £25?

Of course not. A return from one end of the country to the other should be available for £1.50 with a free hot meal included, just like it is in Bangladesh, or something. At least that's what some commentators seem to be suggesting.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Of course not. A return from one end of the country to the other should be available for £1.50 with a free hot meal included, just like it is in Bangladesh, or something. At least that's what some commentators seem to be suggesting.

Behave. I'm suggesting reducing the Manchester-London Anytime Return fare from the ludicrous £300 to about £200 and the single to about £100. Which I now recall Avanti West Coast themselves suggested in their bid, until DaFT stopped them.

 

[12LDA28C]

Behave. I'm suggesting reducing the Manchester-London Anytime Return fare from the ludicrous £300 to about £200 and the single to about £100. Which I now recall Avanti West Coast themselves suggested in their bid, until DaFT stopped them.

I don't disagree. But some respondents claim that even the fares I quoted are only affordable 'by the rich' which is patently untrue. Of course walk-on fares have traditionally been more expensive in an attempt to regulate demand (or fleece passengers who are tied to travelling at a particular / 'peak' time - delete as appropriate) and maybe that needs to change in the post-Covid landscape.

 

[dk1]

Most bus companies have apps that allow you to track their buses, which are far superior to National Rail Enquiries, as that doesn't actually show you where the trains are (yes, there's Real Time Trains etc, but the general public aren't aware of those)

I find completely the opposite.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

At 1910 train operators have run 15000 services (see http://trains.im/ppm) so far today and across all operators level of cancellations pretty low even AWC aren't too bad. We need to stop talking down how bad the railway is as its very clear free of industrial action and major incidents it can just get on and deliver a pretty good service for the majority of passengers.

 

[Master29]

I get twenty boxes a year for FREE travel and I wouldnt use the railways at the moment. Its a joke. Hopefully there will be something left of it when this farce ends.

Of what?

 

[yorksrob]

Bit in bold - the facts don't support.

In 2019 (so pre Covid) only 2 European countries had a higher passenger KM travelled per year than the UK - France and Germany.

The UK was over 50% more than Italy, more than 3 times more than Spain.

In terms of passengers carried - so numbers using it, the UK again was 3rd behind France and Germany - bearing in mind Germany's population is 20% greater than the UK's it would be somewhat difficult to match German numbers. France has a similar population and carries about 2% more passengers - bearing in mind France is twice as big as the UK, there will be some long-distance travel there which the UK has no call for.

List of countries by rail usage - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Even if you look at rail's "modal share", the UK is 9th among European countries - on a par with Germany. And ahead of most of Scandinavia as well as Italy, Spain and Portugal.

The UK, France and Germany are the countries in Western Europe with the largest populations.

I might be missing something, however those statistics don't appear to be scaled by population size. Passenger km per head of population would be more meaningful to get a sense of how well used a system is.

Modal share is a bit more meaningful in this context, however passenger usage doesn't automatically correlate with a more passenger friendly system. It might mean that we have more larger urban areas where motor transport is comparatively more unnattractive.

No, we need to look at reliability, ease of use and value for money for passengers.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 9 Jan 2023 ==

There's an 18-25 railcard https://www.16-25railcard.co.uk/

So it's 25 to 60 - or in other words, those likely to be in full time employment as opposed to those who are either in education or retired who will have a lower income.

In theory, but of course there's no guarantee that those 25 - 60 will have more disposable income than other groups.

The railway should be value for money for the whole population, rather than trying to work out who it can get away with fleecing.

 

[gazzaa2]

I think the bulk of investment might be going where the bulk of demand is. London is an obscenely large place.

Cause and effect.

 

[ar10642]

I think a lot of scaremongering in many places is this idea that we risk not having a railway in Britain which is frankly unrealistic because no G7 country is without some form of rail transportation. Decline, yes but no railway at all, not a chance.

I don't think anyone is saying it will go completely but we risk death by 1,000 cuts outside of the major routes into London if we're not careful.

 

[The Ham]

Well, you don't know how many passengers there would be if there hadn't been a history of strike action on the railways. The only thing we can say for certain is that the railway famous for not striking carries more passengers per capita than any other in Europe, and doesn't even have the benefit of a huge megacity where train travel is almost unavoidable. If Switzerland went on strike regularly they may not be so successful. If you are travelling to central London there is basically no choice but to go by train. On strike days a small percentage may use coaches and their cars but in general you simply can't travel. People go to London by train because they have no choice, not necessarily because the service is excellent. Many if not most of the train travellers not going to London don't have much choice either, because they don't drive or don't have a car available. They are helpless on strike days.

Given Switzerland is mentioned as a place to replicate I thought that I'd look at how much it spends on its rail services.

First up we need to judge the size of the government budget:

Government spending, in dollars by country, around the world | TheGlobalEconomy.com

The average for 2022 based on 163 countries was 100 billion U.S. dollars. The highest value was in the USA: 3566.53 billion U.S. dollars and the lowest value was in Palau: 0.09 billion U.S. dollars. The indicator is available from 1960 to 2023. Below is a chart for all countries where data are...

www.theglobaleconomy.com

Countries Government spending, in dollars, 2021

UK 703.2

Switzerland 94.71

That's a ratio of 7.4:1 in favour of the UK.

CHF to dollars; 0.92

The current Swiss government spends CHF 4.6bn on the railways:

Financing

The federal government spends over CHF 5 billion annually on public transport and rail freight.

www.bav.admin.ch

That's $4.23bn.

Multiply that by 7.4 to get to a compassion to the UK given total spend is that much bigger and it will indicate that the UK "should" to match the spend by Switzerland $31bn.

On an exchange rate of £1 to $1.22 that's £25bn.

Hands up who thinks we should have a system like the Swiss to not have strikes?!?!?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Not that simple - the exchange rate to the CHF is artificially bad. Try it at CHF2 ish to the pound and it doesn't look anywhere near as bad.

 

[coppercapped]

Given Switzerland is mentioned as a place to replicate I thought that I'd look at how much it spends on its rail services.

First up we need to judge the size of the government budget:

Government spending, in dollars by country, around the world | TheGlobalEconomy.com

The average for 2022 based on 163 countries was 100 billion U.S. dollars. The highest value was in the USA: 3566.53 billion U.S. dollars and the lowest value was in Palau: 0.09 billion U.S. dollars. The indicator is available from 1960 to 2023. Below is a chart for all countries where data are...

www.theglobaleconomy.com

That's a ratio of 7.4:1 in favour of the UK.

CHF to dollars; 0.92

The current Swiss government spends CHF 4.6bn on the railways:

Financing

The federal government spends over CHF 5 billion annually on public transport and rail freight.

www.bav.admin.ch

That's $4.23bn.

Multiply that by 7.4 to get to a compassion to the UK given total spend is that much bigger and it will indicate that the UK "should" to match the spend by Switzerland $31bn.

On an exchange rate of £1 to $1.22 that's £25bn.

Hands up who thinks we should have a system like the Swiss to not have strikes?!?!?

Is that Swiss Federal government spending only? Does it include expenditure made by the Cantons? Don't forget that some of the 'private' railways in Switzerland are owned wholly or partly by the Cantons so your figures may not be directly comparable.

 

[The Ham]

Not that simple - the exchange rate to the CHF is artificially bad. Try it at CHF2 ish to the pound and it doesn't look anywhere near as bad.

The worst exchange rate I could find over the last decade was £1 = 1.4492 CHF on 18 Nov 2015 that sets the value at £23.5bn.

Over a slightly longer timeframe the best I could find was £1 = 1.702 CHF on 28 Jan 2010 that sets the value at £20bn.

https://www.exchangerates.org.uk/CHF-GBP-spot-exchange-rates-history-2014.html

You can search other years, I may have missed something, so feel free to let me know.

 

[jayah]

Contracted hours are necessarily limited due to safety requirements and cutting the timetable to fit the envelope will reduce revenue further.

There is no safety requirement that the contracted week is as low as 35hrs. Quite correct that cutting the timetable will reduce revenue, that is why they need to extend the working week instead.

 

[dk1]

I get twenty boxes a year for FREE travel and I wouldnt use the railways at the moment. Its a joke. Hopefully there will be something left of it when this farce ends.

I only get 16 but wouldn’t let it put me off completely. Get out there & enjoy.

 

[jayah]

Given Switzerland is mentioned as a place to replicate I thought that I'd look at how much it spends on its rail services.

First up we need to judge the size of the government budget:

Government spending, in dollars by country, around the world | TheGlobalEconomy.com

The average for 2022 based on 163 countries was 100 billion U.S. dollars. The highest value was in the USA: 3566.53 billion U.S. dollars and the lowest value was in Palau: 0.09 billion U.S. dollars. The indicator is available from 1960 to 2023. Below is a chart for all countries where data are...

www.theglobaleconomy.com

That's a ratio of 7.4:1 in favour of the UK.

CHF to dollars; 0.92

The current Swiss government spends CHF 4.6bn on the railways:

Financing

The federal government spends over CHF 5 billion annually on public transport and rail freight.

www.bav.admin.ch

That's $4.23bn.

Multiply that by 7.4 to get to a compassion to the UK given total spend is that much bigger and it will indicate that the UK "should" to match the spend by Switzerland $31bn.

On an exchange rate of £1 to $1.22 that's £25bn.

Hands up who thinks we should have a system like the Swiss to not have strikes?!?!?

You can't compare systems using tourist exchange rates. Try GDP or PPP for better comparisons.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 9 Jan 2023 ==

I literally found these deals within five minutes, for a journey in less than two weeks' time, not '7 months'. The prices were for a single ticket, no splitting required. If you can drive from Edinburgh to London for less than £30 in fuel, and in comparable time to the train then I would like to know how. Frankly, you are spouting utter nonsense.

You may be incapable of navigating a website and typing in some basic details but most people are not.

You've lost the room.

Most people travelling 70-150 miles are not interested in gaming these deals, booking weeks ahead, fixing to a single train or in splitting tickets. You are not competing with aeroplanes in most markets and £47 each way from London to Swansea doesn't sound like much of a deal in any case. Most people do not travel on their own for leisure either.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 9 Jan 2023 ==

It may well cut costs more than revenue and reduce the amount of subsidy required though?

Most of the railway loses money even on marginal costs. Cutting services cuts subsidy. It is a very dangerous position when the government realise that cutting rail services by half means more money for the NHS.
Customers, productivity, efficiency and financial sustainability are all important.

 

[Bantamzen]

But the evidence shows passengers do come back, much as that might annoy you. Can you identify a historical railway strike where that hasn’t happened?

So you keep saying, and so others point out that this return is not across the board and certainly not reflected in revenue. And let's not bathe in the light of the rose tinted glasses, industrial action and poor management has caused no end of trouble for the railways over the years. I remember the slow decay of service and quality during the 80s, and a lot of routes only survived thanks to the low-end engineering that turned Leyland Nationals into out bouncy friends that would become known as the Pacers. Without them the railways would be much less popular, especially across shorter routes.

What you also fail to recognise, despite it being articulated in this very thread is a growing discontent with the railway. Not just the usual British "grumble about it then go about your business as usual", but the start of a loss of trust. Be it the Northern meltdown, TPE's dire performance, but also the after effects of covid restrictions & year upon year a big price rises. Throw in hybrid working, and a shift towards EVs as people try to be seen to be more environmentally friendly, and a long running dispute combined with poor management plus the levels of inflation we are seeing, and you might find that not as many do return as you hope would. Maybe it won't be a concern for your TOC or depot, but in some parts trains are running around a lot quieter than they used to, and this will not be going unnoticed.

 

[jon0844]

At 1910 train operators have run 15000 services (see http://trains.im/ppm) so far today and across all operators level of cancellations pretty low even AWC aren't too bad. We need to stop talking down how bad the railway is as its very clear free of industrial action and major incidents it can just get on and deliver a pretty good service for the majority of passengers.

Given how busy the trains were yesterday, I suspect a lot of people upset by the disruption over Christmas didn't take to their cars this week.