Should taking a train be cheaper than driving a car?

[Dima]

Hi forum members and anonymous readers (like myself until very recently),

This is not a purely railway thread, it's rather about the train vs car policies, so I am ok if it's moved to another sub-forum.

I moved relatively recently to the UK after having lived for some time in France, and there are some differences in their transport systems that surprise me.

It looks like it is often cheaper to travel by car even between major British cities, than taking a train even on advance tickets. The difference is even more striking if there are multiple passengers in a car. For example, London - Manchester can cost around £20 for fuel for the whole car, while train prices usually start from around £35 per person. While driving results in a longer journey, it has an added convenience of being able to choose when to drive, not needing to change from a train to a tube/bus with luggage etc, which makes it a no-brainer for many people who already own cars.

Let's compare this to, for example, Paris - Lyon. It is often possible to find train tickets for 16€, while driving will cost around 35€ for fuel and another 35€ for tolls. Given that a train takes around 2 hours, in contrast to 5 hours, here taking a train becomes almost a no-brainer, the very opposite to the situation in the UK.

I understand that much of it is because the public transport in the UK is less subsidized than in France. But it looks like it is completely fine to effectively subsidize the motorways, which is a bit strange to me. Yes, the car owners are paying the vehicle tax, but it doesn't depend on how much they drive and whether they use motorways or not.

In my opinion, this situation has several negative consequences:

1. People who own cars are incentivized to use them for long journeys even when there are alternatives by train, contributing to pollution, congestion, accidents etc.
2. People who don't own cars for economic reasons are limited in terms of mobility across the country.

And here are several questions that I would love to discuss with the forum:

- Why are the situation so different?
- Should the UK move towards the French model to make using trains (and public transport in general) cheaper than using a car?
- Would you agree to pay for using motorways to subsidize public transport?
- Have there been any plans to fix this problems that were given attention at the government level?
- Do you think that HS2 will help by providing extra capacity and allowing to reduce the train fares?

I am very interested in what you think about this!

Cheers,
Dima

 

[Bletchleyite]

There's an error in your premise there. Car users are not subsidised, they provide a significant net income to the public purse.

 

[telstarbox]

And yet the London - Manchester service is well used, and a lot of the passengers will be car owners. You haven't included the cost of parking a car in London or Manchester which is not insignificant!

 

[farci]

There's an error in your premise there. Car users are not subsidised, they provide a significant net income to the public purse.

Are you excluding infrastructure and other costs in your calculation?

https://ipayroadtax.com/no-such-thi...rivers-start-paying-the-full-costs-of-motoring/

I submit Trains/Public Transport vs Cars is not a binary choice. Other countries manage to combine both modes, such as in Switzerland's Rolling Highway

 

[Bletchleyite]

That does not look like a particularly reputable website, rather one that is trying to make a point. If you have a gov.uk reference that breaks it down properly, I'll pay attention, otherwise I call your bluff on those figures.

 

[RHolmes]

In an ideal world the train would always ideally be cheaper (sometimes it is but often it isn’t) but you’re negating to include the ‘hidden costs’ of car ownership which include but are not limited to:

- Parking
- Insurance (it’s not cheap for everyone!)
- Distance vs Time
- Fuel
- Emissions tax
- MOT and Maintenance
- Sobriety
- Amount of travellers

For example it might be cheaper for a person to drive from London to Manchester by car then an on the day train ticket, but in the same argument you could also buy a £1 mega bus ticket and travel for several hours and go via Birmingham. At what cost does a person value your own time?

 

[PeterC]

And yet the London - Manchester service is well used, and a lot of the passengers will be car owners. You haven't included the cost of parking a car in London or Manchester which is not insignificant!

Not only the cost of station parking but the cost and time disbenefit of a suburban train and cross London transfer to access an inter-city service. Then of course there is the time and cost of getting from the other inter-city terminus to your destination which may involve a bus ride if you are lucky or quite a lengthy cab ride if you aren't.

Apart from a limited number of destinations in, or across, London rail isn't a realistic alternative for me until the journey gets so long that a full meal break will be necessary.

 

[Llanigraham]

My 2 most common journeys, Caersws - Shrewsbury, and Caersws - London, are both cheaper by rail than by car, and I am sure I can find several others I less commonly make.

 

[6Gman]

Hi forum members and anonymous readers (like myself until very recently),

This is not a purely railway thread, it's rather about the train vs car policies, so I am ok if it's moved to another sub-forum.

I moved relatively recently to the UK after having lived for some time in France, and there are some differences in their transport systems that surprise me.

It looks like it is often cheaper to travel by car even between major British cities, than taking a train even on advance tickets. The difference is even more striking if there are multiple passengers in a car. For example, London - Manchester can cost around £20 for fuel for the whole car, while train prices usually start from around £35 per person. While driving results in a longer journey, it has an added convenience of being able to choose when to drive, not needing to change from a train to a tube/bus with luggage etc, which makes it a no-brainer for many people who already own cars.

Let's compare this to, for example, Paris - Lyon. It is often possible to find train tickets for 16€, while driving will cost around 35€ for fuel and another 35€ for tolls. Given that a train takes around 2 hours, in contrast to 5 hours, here taking a train becomes almost a no-brainer, the very opposite to the situation in the UK.

I understand that much of it is because the public transport in the UK is less subsidized than in France. But it looks like it is completely fine to effectively subsidize the motorways, which is a bit strange to me. Yes, the car owners are paying the vehicle tax, but it doesn't depend on how much they drive and whether they use motorways or not.

In my opinion, this situation has several negative consequences:

1. People who own cars are incentivized to use them for long journeys even when there are alternatives by train, contributing to pollution, congestion, accidents etc.
2. People who don't own cars for economic reasons are limited in terms of mobility across the country.

And here are several questions that I would love to discuss with the forum:

- Why are the situation so different?
- Should the UK move towards the French model to make using trains (and public transport in general) cheaper than using a car?
- Would you agree to pay for using motorways to subsidize public transport?
- Have there been any plans to fix this problems that were given attention at the government level?
- Do you think that HS2 will help by providing extra capacity and allowing to reduce the train fares?

I am very interested in what you think about this!

Cheers,
Dima

Because the political culture in the UK is different and will not support the level of public subsidy it would require.

 

[Altfish]

There's an error in your premise there. Car users are not subsidised, they provide a significant net income to the public purse.

Probably not if you factor in the environmental damage caused.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

It's hard to defend the British system, but it might be worth looking at some of the reasons for it. In no particular order, I'd note the following:

- a culture opposed to cross-subsidy. Brits don't like paying for benefits that don't immediately fall into their hands, so increasing taxation on road travel to reduce the fares on the railways would not be popular. This isn't just a transport issue: whenever funding of the National Health Service comes up, someone will ineivtably suggest a special tax to help pay for it, rather than just arguing that it should be funded out of general taxation.
- limited railway capacity. While 2020 will show a lot of trains running around empty because of Covid, for the last few years the problem has been that the trains have been overly full. In the long term, this can be resolved by buying more trains and building more lines for them to run on - but in the short-to-medium term, there needs to be some sort of rationing mechanism to limit how many people want to travel. The easiest rationing system is by price: quite simply, some passengers are priced off the railway.
- the different distances in France and Britain. Although Britain and France have more or less the same population, Britain is about half the size of France. One result of this is that (broadly) nowhere in Britain is all that far from anywhere else - which means that the railway's advantage of taking people long distances in comfort and without exhaustion is not as pronounced in Britain as it is in France.

There's no doubt plenty more reasons. None of them may be huge and decisive by themselves - but they add up into Britain not being such a good place for cheap trains, and a good place for cheap road travel. Which I think most members of this forum would consider to be a shame.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Probably not if you factor in the environmental damage caused.

Environmental damage is not a financial cost to the public purse and thus must be considered as a separate matter.

 

[farci]

That does not look like a particularly reputable website, rather one that is trying to make a point. If you have a gov.uk reference that breaks it down properly, I'll pay attention, otherwise I call your bluff on those figures.

Institute for Fiscal Studies reputable enough for you?

In this 2019 report they argue that the percentage of direct costs paid by motorists does not cover the other social costs.
"Driving imposes costs on wider society. According to government estimates, the biggest of these by far is congestion (80% of the total). Government estimates for 2015 suggest that each additional kilometre driven caused an average of 17p of societal harm. Other costs include accidents, greenhouse gas emissions, local air pollution and noise. While the additional cost of greenhouse gas emissions, at 1p per kilometre driven, may sound small, this still equates to £4 billion per year across the UK"
https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/14407

With the greatest of respect, I'm arguing that we need a level playing field and a comprehensive transport policy. Westminster's rail policy is to squeeze the amount of investment, putting rail at a competitive disadvantage
"Since 2011-12, income from fares increased by 18.2%, although passenger journeys increased by 18.4%, while Government funding, excluding borrowing, decreased by 21.1%"
https://www.transport-network.co.uk/Passengers-take-on-more-of-the-costs-of-running-rail/14754 (quoting the ORR)

 

[Dima]

And yet the London - Manchester service is well used, and a lot of the passengers will be car owners. You haven't included the cost of parking a car in London or Manchester which is not insignificant!

Yeah, some people value the convenience that the train offers, the fact that they can relax or work instead of driving, have a quicker centre to centre journey and they (or their companies) are ready to pay for this.

I am wondering how the French can have such low prices on Paris - Lyon and not run out of seats on every train when the alternatives to the railway on this route are less viable? Is it because they have a lower demand or a higher capacity because the TGV runs on dedicated tracks? That's why I asked about HS2 in the original post.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I am wondering how the French can have such low prices on Paris - Lyon and not run out of seats on every train when the alternatives to the railway on this route are less viable? Is it because they have a lower demand or a higher capacity because the TGV runs on dedicated tracks? That's why I asked about HS2 in the original post.

They often do run out of seats, AIUI. It's hidden a bit because of compulsory reservations.

 

[Ianno87]

Environmental damage is not a financial cost to the public purse and thus must be considered as a separate matter.

It is in terms of premature deaths, illness due to pollution etc.

 

[HSTEd]

I'd love a world where public transport throughout the UK was cheap, and fast, enough to provide unprecedent mobility to the populace.

Unfortunately the people of said country will be unwilling to pay for such a system through taxation.
And the rail industry in particular would almost certainly be unwilling to adopt the reforms necessary to make such a system feasible at any reasonable cost in any case.

So it is all moot.

 

[Dima]

In an ideal world the train would always ideally be cheaper (sometimes it is but often it isn’t) but you’re negating to include the ‘hidden costs’ of car ownership which include but are not limited to:

- Parking
- Insurance (it’s not cheap for everyone!)
- Distance vs Time
- Fuel
- Emissions tax
- MOT and Maintenance
- Sobriety
- Amount of travellers

For example it might be cheaper for a person to drive from London to Manchester by car then an on the day train ticket, but in the same argument you could also buy a £1 mega bus ticket and travel for several hours and go via Birmingham. At what cost does a person value your own time?

I didn't consider many costs of car ownership on purpose because they are not linked to how much you drive, like the vehicle tax and MOT. An insurance can be quite expensive, but unless you have something like pay by mile I don't think it is easy to figure out how much a particular journey costs. Anyway, I don't think that a marginal impact on insurance, maintenance and other costs of driving an extra mile will be higher than the fuel costs, so in my opinion we can use the latter as an estimate of them total marginal costs.

So my point is that once you own a car, it's often cheaper to drive everywhere

 

[peteb]

Interesting debate. In a post covid world I'd hope that confidence in and thus demand for public transport will return to pre covid levels. Even with a move to electric cars the issues that cars pose in terms of outlay, fuel, where to park them, traffic congestion generally and safety (much safer to travel by train) means that an integrated public transport system will always be preferable for journeys to major towns and cities. So travel between those centres of population via train vs car should be encouraged and fares made as attractive as possible. And this means low priced train travel should deter the use of cars. However there are areas where travel by car is essential and for some travel by train is just not possible. Not sure how to compensate for this to be fair and equitable?

 

[HSTEd]

And this means low priced train travel should deter the use of cars. However there are areas where travel by car is essential and for some travel by train is just not possible. Not sure how to compensate for this to be fair and equitable?

The UK has a sufficiently high population density that it seems unlikely that the cost of providing saturation bus services would actually be ruinous on a national scale.

 

[stj]

I live close to a station but it is not the cost thats stops me using the train.Until they build more lines and run longer hours the car will always be first choice

 

[OliverS]

A few years ago I priced up the relative costs of buying a second car to commute vs train vs motorbike. The train came out best, followed by motorcycle followed by car a long way behind. That was because I was considering the full cost of the car, including depreciation, rather than the marginal cost as I had no other need of the car. In fact I cycled a lot (which was the absolute cheapest) and ended up on a motorbike as the train wasn't quite reliable and/or frequent enough.

 

[jfowkes]

It is in terms of premature deaths, illness due to pollution etc.

Not to mention weather and climate related costs like floods, landslides, wind damage...

 

[HSTEd]

A few years ago I priced up the relative costs of buying a second car to commute vs train vs motorbike. The train came out best, followed by motorcycle followed by car a long way behind. That was because I was considering the full cost of the car, including depreciation, rather than the marginal cost as I had no other need of the car. In fact I cycled a lot (which was the absolute cheapest) and ended up on a motorbike as the train wasn't quite reliable and/or frequent enough.

Depreciation is a bit problematic though, given a functioning second hand car market.

 

[Wynd]

Should rail be cheaper than car.
Yes.

Are roads and driving subsided?
When you consider Health, stress, lost productivity, environment, societal harm, absolutely yes. Even without its provablu

Should we as a country drive less.
Absolutely.

Are busses the solution to getting people out of cars.
Never.

Should any passenger be “priced off the railways”?
No.

Are our trains too small?
Yes.

Is there enough connectivity accross our rural and urban areas.
Not even slightly.

Is our intercity service running as effectively as it could?
No.

Should the government stop building roads and reinstate rail en masse?
Yes.

Is HS2 the beginning of such a policy? Perhaps, if it ever gets out of Birmingham.

Should the revenue and infrastructure part of the equation be put back in to one company, like BR?
Yes.

Should the government take a position of maximising revenue in to the railways by our competing Airlines and Postal services to take market share and thus increase rail financial income?
Yes.

Should more trains of greater length and frequency be priced at a flat rate per mile with simplified ticketing.
Yes.

Would this increase uptake and reduce car ownership.
Yes.

 

[Ianno87]

Should rail be cheaper than car.
Yes.

No. Rail has many advantages (e.g. working on the move, travelli g home after a few drinks etc) which people are prepared to pay a premium for.

Are roads and driving subsided?
When you consider Health, stress, lost productivity, environment, societal harm, absolutely yes. Even without its provablu

Should we as a country drive less.
Absolutely.

Agree.

Are busses the solution to getting people out of cars.
Never.

Buses can often run at a frequency that rail cannot, and can reach city centres
E.g. Cambridgeshire Guided Busway.

Thus are better at modal shift than a rail service would be.

Should any passenger be “priced off the railways”?
No.

By that logic, travelling from Penzance to Thurso would cost £1.

Rail should, however, be of competitive economy to driving.

Are our trains too small?
Yes.

In some cases, yes.

Is there enough connectivity accross our rural and urban areas.
Not even slightly.

Depends whether rail is the best answer or not.

Is our intercity service running as effectively as it could?
No.

It appears to (pre-Covid) generate plenty of revenue.

Should the government stop building roads and reinstate rail en masse?
Yes.

I'd agree with "provide non-car travel alternatives en-masse"

Is HS2 the beginning of such a policy? Perhaps, if it ever gets out of Birmingham.

It already does.

Should the revenue and infrastructure part of the equation be put back in to one company, like BR?
Yes.

That doesn't fundamentally change the cost of running the railway, merely how it is accounted.

Should the government take a position of maximising revenue in to the railways by our competing Airlines and Postal services to take market share and thus increase rail financial income?
Yes.

Or people just wouldn't travel at all.

Should more trains of greater length and frequency be priced at a flat rate per mile with simplified ticketing.
Yes.

You want not to price anybody off, but also charge a flat rate per mile? That doesn't work.

Would this increase uptake and reduce car ownership.
Yes.

Or you just get the same people who would've travelled anyway paying less for it.

 

[Llandudno]

The car v rail pricing comparison is not helped at the moment by the low cost of petrol at around £1.10-£1.15 per litre, when it was upwards of £1.40 a few years back. In the meantime rail fare keep increasing annually by around 2-3%.

As the public purse is under severe pressure owing to Covid, could now, or certainly in the next 12 months be the opportune time to increase fuel duty by 10p per litre?

Didn’t Stagecoach Bus division notice an uplift in patronage when petrol prices were at the their peak as some people ditched their cars for commuting? Any uplift in fuel duty should not apply to stage carriage bus services.

 

[tbtc]

I don't know if (typical) train travel was ever cheaper than the (typical) cost of driving - but with a train you...

...pay for a driver
...pay for a guard/ ticket collector/ conductor
...pay for cleaners
...pay for signalling staff
...pay for regular maintenance and safety checks
...pay for ticketing staff
...pay for the depreciation of the train
...pay for station staff (dispatchers etc)
...pay for fuel

With a car you tend to treat the cost of the journey as being that you...

...pay for the fuel

So motorists are doing the driving themselves, doing the cleaning themselves, making a very approximate cost for the depreciation/ maintenance costs - of course the cost of driving yourself is going to appear cheaper for the majority of journeys (other than ones where your can run long trains with sufficient passenger numbers over a fairly long distance, the kind of markets where rail has fantastic economies of scale).

Easy to complain about high train fares (I may have done it myself once or twice...) but, if you want a world where train fares are broadly equivalent to the cost of driving, then what would that entail? Tickets would fluctuate daily/weekly in line with fuel prices? Would you accept the kind of cost slashing that would be necessary to get ticket prices down that low?

Or would that mean slashing the size of the network to some kind of Serpell level, at which the remaining train services would be busy/profitable enough to be in the same ball park as the cost of motoring?

But certainly cut back on routes like the Far North which has eighty eight passengers per day north of Helmsdale (and there's no way that that's going to be efficient even if you could power the 158 on fairy dust and pay the driver in peanuts)

That's the problem with these kind of arguments - it's easy to complain about the status quo but if your utopia is a world where no passenger is every "priced off" the railway then what are the logical conclusions of that?

Institute for Fiscal Studies reputable enough for you?

In this 2019 report they argue that the percentage of direct costs paid by motorists does not cover the other social costs.
"Driving imposes costs on wider society. According to government estimates, the biggest of these by far is congestion (80% of the total). Government estimates for 2015 suggest that each additional kilometre driven caused an average of 17p of societal harm. Other costs include accidents, greenhouse gas emissions, local air pollution and noise. While the additional cost of greenhouse gas emissions, at 1p per kilometre driven, may sound small, this still equates to £4 billion per year across the UK"
https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/14407

With the greatest of respect, I'm arguing that we need a level playing field and a comprehensive transport policy. Westminster's rail policy is to squeeze the amount of investment, putting rail at a competitive disadvantage
"Since 2011-12, income from fares increased by 18.2%, although passenger journeys increased by 18.4%, while Government funding, excluding borrowing, decreased by 21.1%"
https://www.transport-network.co.uk/Passengers-take-on-more-of-the-costs-of-running-rail/14754 (quoting the ORR)

If you want a level playing field then presumably you're calculating the accidents, greenhouse gas emissions, local air pollution and noise caused by the railway too?

Or is this thread only considering the "externalities" from motorists and pretending that trains don't pollute (e.g. a lightly loaded DMU chugging along at a couple of miles to the gallon, or the gasses breathed in by anyone unlucky enough to have stood waiting at New Street for any period of time) or have accidents or cause noise that annoys people living nearby lines?

By that logic, travelling from Penzance to Thurso would cost £1.

Rail should, however, be of competitive economy to driving.

Actually I think you'll find that your £1 fare is exclusionary and a barrier to some people, so you'd need to subsidise it further than that to stop people being "priced off" the railways

<removes tongue from cheek>

 

[40129]

Interesting.

As someone else noted the problem with comparing England and France is that the population density of the two countries is significantly different and there are longstanding differences in the attitudes to subsidizing public transport thru taxation.

I note the OP uses the Paris-Lyon TGV service as a basis for comparison. However, AIUI the picture of rail travel in France is a little less rosy if one looks beyond the TGV network. I live within 5 minutes walk of my local train station (in a town that has 2 main line stations) and can be in four major shopping/employment centers within 45 minutes of leaving home if I use the train - no chance of getting to them in that tine by car. My local train service also takes me to the rural north west of England and north Wales at least once every hour seven days a week and only becomes a bus service if there is significant engineering work. The trains are clean, punctual and even pre-Covid were rarely overcrowded despite being 2-3 car. In terms of cost , I must admit to not having a clue as to the current fare as I'm a railway employee and therefore have a staff pass. The irony is tt this is also the sole reason I need a car as I can't always get take the train to/from work.

I am wondering if I lived in a similar town in France as to whether I would have such a good level of service

 

[Bevan Price]

The really expensive rail tickets are for people who want to travel at peak hours, and for whom booking in advance is inconvenient (or there are no available seats). In such circumstances, a standard class return from Liverpool to London would cost £ 334. Only millionaires - or people on expense accounts could afford to travel by train. And driving by car is always going to be much cheaper, even allowing for city centre parking charges.