Should taking a train be cheaper than driving a car?

[Llandudno]

Travelling on rural roads could be a matter of 1p per mile based on the lack of bus or train service, 3p per mile lets say on B roads, 5p per mile on non trunk road A roads, 8p per mile on major A road trunk roads and then 10p per mile for Motorways. This is based on the most polluting cars

So 100 miles on a motorway is £10.

A salesman doing 30k a year with 25k on motorways £2500 and the rest on smaller roads another £250. Its perfect the government gets loads of money, penalises the worst polluters.

This is all in a perfect world

Although this sounds like a reasonable suggestion, however, if any political party put in their manifesto I suspect they may lose their deposits in most constituencies...!

 

[Randomer]

I could see road charging being introduced steadily (or stealthily depending on your point of view).

First to HGVs then to all "commercial" vehicles. After that a steady increase in what counts as commercial to eventually include all non commuting use (i.e. anything you would need business use insurance for) and then finally in include all journeys with a work related purpose (so commuting as well.) Small stages until eventually nearly every car owner is paying something. Not something I would advocate personally.

In regards to "peak" rail pricing the difference between demand management pricing and yield management pricing (i.e. to maximise return but potentially have empty seats on the train) is key to me. I personally have the feeling that some long distance franchises have gone towards yield management on some traffic flows. Particularly the main East and West coast franchises, though I openly admit this is purely anecdotal on my part.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

Road charging's going to have to happen simply because of the loss of fuel taxation receipts as people move to electric cars. It's not an "if", it's a "when" and "how".

 

[neilmc]

I live four miles from a railway but around fifteen miles from my nearest mainline station. So, if I wish to do a journey south (and as I live in Cumbria almost all my journeys would be south) it takes me around an hour to get that four miles from my house, and that's assuming that my wife drops me at the station as there's no regular bus and long-term parking costs are ridiculous). So although I usually buy a Senior Citizens Railcard in fact I haven't used it in the last two years, and with the COVID hassle I won't be using it again for the foreseeable future.

Now IF Shap station was reopened and IF the parking was free I might be tempted back on the train, just occasionally. But as we can't function in a Cumbrian village without car ownership, once it's there I might as well use the car every time, and once there's two of us in the car train travel's an economic nonsense even if we lived next door to a station!

One consequence of COVID is that with so much enforced working from home the rail companies' golden cash cow, the overcharged commuter and long-distance business traveller, has dried up and what will happen now? Much of this travel might NEVER come back if working from home has become the new norm so will the leisure traveller be expected to stump up the difference? Except that the leisure traveller usually has a choice, even if it's a poor one between travelling and staying at home. When passenger services are withdrawn and lines start closing rather than reopening political minds may suddenly be concentrated on rail travel again.

 

[60019]

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.

Since there would be a huge increase in services, and a decades-long building project, it is hard to see which workers would object. Even with DOO everywhere and efficiency improvements, there'd be a lot of driver jobs for displaced guards etc., more signallers, and so on. The TOC owners and perhaps some of the engineering contractors whose tasks would be brought in house would be upset, and the people financing the ROSCOs would have a lot of disruption, but the main objection would be from HMT.

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?

A not entirely serious way to remove market distortions would be to apply a consistent carbon tax across the whole economy, apply consistent safety standards, accessibility rules, and so on, and then subsidise the road and rail network by the same amount. That would make road traffic so expensive fuel prices would hardly matter.

Great in urban areas, but what are you going to do for rural dwellers who have no public transport of any type?

The real problem is the daft planning policies which have for decades forced people to move to those rural areas (because that's where houses are) even thought there is no work there, causing extra road traffic, increasing the costs of public services, and upsetting everyone who already lives there.

Travelling on rural roads could be a matter of 1p per mile based on the lack of bus or train service, 3p per mile lets say on B roads, 5p per mile on non trunk road A roads, 8p per mile on major A road trunk roads and then 10p per mile for Motorways. This is based on the most polluting cars

I suspect if you broke down the costs and charged them fully to road users, the lowest cost would be the main B roads, because the local roads don't carry much traffic but still need maintenance because of erosion and frost.

local buses are for the poor.

This is partly the result of the strict restrictions on public finances: in the bigger cities the long-run cost of busy bus routes are worse than a tram, or sometimes even heavy rail, but local authorities can't get the capital necessary to achieve those savings.

 

[Starmill]

Moving to a French-style Motorway toll system sounds very sensible indeed to me. The toll for the 450km from Paris to Lyon comes in at €35,70, the 275km from Paris to Calais at €22,00, and the 850km from Paris to Perpignan at €57,40. This has notable benefits for the drivers in that journey time reliability becomes very high too. We can then allow fuel duty and vehicle excise duty to decline in real terms and to naturally fall away as electric vehicles take over.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The real problem is the daft planning policies which have for decades forced people to move to those rural areas (because that's where houses are) even thought there is no work there, causing extra road traffic, increasing the costs of public services, and upsetting everyone who already lives there.

Eh? People choose to move to rural areas from cities because they're nice. Part of the deal is that it's less convenient as you have to travel for services. There is no real shortage of suburban housing in most British cities. Yes, people are priced out of some of them (most notably London, Edinburgh and to some extent Manchester) but that can still be to surrounding towns, for instance if you want to commute to Manchester, Preston has vast amounts of very cheap housing (it's not a super-nice place, a bit nondescript, but that's not the issue). The typical rural idyll is generally more expensive.

 

[Western Lord]

Inevitably a rail forum is full of pro-rail people, sometimes to a ridiculous extent. The plain fact is that even if rail travel were free you wouldn't get everyone (or even the majority) out of their cars. On a purely practical level if even 5% of road traffic transferred to rail the rail network would be swamped and there is no conceivable rail network that could cater for the journeys made by private car.
For a real world view I recommend the Barry Doe column in the latest issue of Rail Magazine. Mr. Doe has never owned a car or even learned to drive but, he states, if he were starting out today he would do both. This is largely because he finds modern inter city trains so totally unappealing to travel on. If modern rail travel is such a turn off for him, good luck attracting anybody who is already comfortably ensconced in their car.

 

[RT4038]

Inevitably a rail forum is full of pro-rail people, sometimes to a ridiculous extent. The plain fact is that even if rail travel were free you wouldn't get everyone (or even the majority) out of their cars. On a purely practical level if even 5% of road traffic transferred to rail the rail network would be swamped and there is no conceivable rail network that could cater for the journeys made by private car.
For a real world view I recommend the Barry Doe column in the latest issue of Rail Magazine. Mr. Doe has never owned a car or even learned to drive but, he states, if he were starting out today he would do both. This is largely because he finds modern inter city trains so totally unappealing to travel on. If modern rail travel is such a turn off for him, good luck attracting anybody who is already comfortably ensconced in their car.

But how 'real world' is the view of Mr Doe? He is also a strong enthusiast, who, like many of us, hankers after the world of our younger years (and no doubt empty Mk1 carriages on inter city trains!).

On addition to the point about no conceivable transport network could cater for the journeys made by private car, nor can public transport conceivably cater for the privacy, and not having to sit next to/opposite strangers, at an economic price.

 

[Bletchleyite]

For a real world view I recommend the Barry Doe column in the latest issue of Rail Magazine. Mr. Doe has never owned a car or even learned to drive but, he states, if he were starting out today he would do both. This is largely because he finds modern inter city trains so totally unappealing to travel on. If modern rail travel is such a turn off for him, good luck attracting anybody who is already comfortably ensconced in their car.

Personally I found original Mk3s totally unappealing to travel on due to the awful seats, and Mk2s with the wings that forced me to slouch not much better. So that's a point of personal preference. I personally find the Class 444 to be the best British train, past or present, to travel on, that I have experienced[1], and the 80x really aren't that much different were it not for the F*insa S*phia, while I can think of little worse than creaky worn-out Mk1s with steamed-up windows and uncomfortable, excessively bouncy seats. (I'll admit to having a fondness for DB Bm compartment stock, but only if I can have a compartment to myself )

So in other words, vehicle interiors are a matter of personal opinion, and so not everyone is going to hold the same view as him. In particular Pendolinos are very popular - it is rare to find a non-enthusiast member of the public who really dislikes them - at worst it's just indifference to them.

And at the right price - as I said, there seems to be no shortage of people willing to pay next to nothing for nearly 5 hours on a 350/2 from Liverpool to Euston via Brum.

[1] The 397 had a chance to beat it, but unfortunately due to poor build quality, poor ride and F*insa S*phias it failed. Mk5a? Yes, but only in 1st which is something really special, Standard is best described as "poor".

But how 'real world' is the view of Mr Doe? He is also a strong enthusiast, who, like many of us, hankers after the world of our younger years (and no doubt empty Mk1 carriages on inter city trains!).

Not very "real world" at all. People called the InterCity West Coast of yore bad names, and it deserved them. Yes, seeing a newly painted 90+Mk3 set on the WCML was lovely and nostalgic, but in reality for the purpose of travelling places the present situation is better. And Mk1s with steamed up windows, rattles, poor ride, bouncy seats etc? Big nope.

On addition to the point about no conceivable transport network could cater for the journeys made by private car, nor can public transport conceivably cater for the privacy, and not having to sit next to/opposite strangers, at an economic price.

Cars will always have a role. I recall someone quite prominent in the bus industry pointing out that going after every possible journey was just not going to happen, and they were right. Was it Alex Hornby, maybe? Even in places that are quite anti-car - the Netherlands, for example - cars are still used. And they can be used together with public transport, too - someone driving and parking up at MKC (say) to take a train to Manchester is better than someone driving all the way. It's also worth remembering that a fully laden family electric (or even modern diesel) car makes very efficient use of road space and is probably better for the environment than a 1980s branch line DMU.

 

[urbophile]

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

You mean not in the short term. In the long term it will incur massive financial cost if society hasn't collapsed before then.

 

[Bletchleyite]

You mean not in the short term. In the long term it will incur massive financial cost if society hasn't collapsed before then.

It is something that can't really be modelled financially, and just needs to be considered as something that is necessary to solve pretty much whatever, because death/extinction is the other option long term. It's more like COVID than it is like traffic congestion.

 

[jfowkes]

It's also worth remembering that a fully laden family electric (or even modern diesel) car makes very efficient use of road space and is probably better for the environment than a 1980s branch line DMU.

Yeah, but isn't the average occupancy of a car something like 1.2? The fully-laden car is a rare beast.

 

[NorthOxonian]

Yeah, but isn't the average occupancy of a car something like 1.2? The fully-laden car is a rare beast.

It will presumably vary between different types of journey. I would imagine average occupancy for commuting is very close to 1, whereas it should be higher for other uses, particularly leisure travel.* If levels of working from home increase then that average might increase purely because the types of journeys people are taking changes.

* If there's been actual research done on this, I'd be interested to see it.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yeah, but isn't the average occupancy of a car something like 1.2? The fully-laden car is a rare beast.

Yes, that's very true, but it does suggest that what the railway should be doing (in an environmental context) is concentrating its marketing on people travelling alone or with one person, and that trying to get family holiday travel is of less importance because a car is a very efficient way to fulfil that travel requirement unless "not going at all" is under consideration.

 

[Bevan Price]

Who are these people with "expense accounts?" Do they carry them with their briefcase and filofax like it's the 1980s, with a copy of the FT tucked under their arm?

Both of my employers you book tickets through a TrainLine-esque website. Which any employee of any grade can use for business-related travel.

It was just another way of saying "the employer pays the bill" - the £334 does not come from your own account.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It was just another way of saying "the employer pays the bill" - the £334 does not come from your own account.

I think the term "having an expense account" actually referred to those people who had a ore-allocation of funds and so could sign their own expenses. But really if your employer will pay it as a matter of policy then that is neither here nor there.

 

[neilmc]

My ex-employer finally refused to pay what would be the current ridiculous sum of £360 for people based in Manchester to attend a business meeting in London, so they insisted that at least one way should be booked in advance or meetings timed to allow off-peak travel/ a cheap hotel. And we're talking about a major high street bank here. As I worked in fraud prevention I heartily approved of this decision. Now very few people go anywhere at all for meetings thanks to COVID and the refusal to be fleeced any more.

 

[All Line Rover]

The exceptionally low fares quoted by the OP are a relatively recent innovation in France, introduced by SNCF's new low-cost sub-brand. Typical French intercity fares are lower than comparable UK fares, yes, but not as low as €16.

The UK already has some low-cost long distance train operators. One formerly went by the name London Midland. And, if plans have not been changed by Covid, the East Coast Main Line will soon have a low-cost train operator that almost exactly replicates the proposition of SNCF's sub-brand. Unlike SNCF, however, it is wholly commercial (open access). There appears to be no government will to support such services, even if they support a modal shift and even if they are profitable!

 

[21C101]

The problem is that most motoring costs are paid whether you drive or not, where was all of that is loaded into the fare with a train.

Pay per mile long term car leasing, insurance and the governments proposed 75-150p a mile tax (to replace Petrol Duty with the switch to electric cars) might change that.

If it happens it will also enable the government to charge much higher peak "fares" for driving.

 

[biko]

The goal should not be to completely remove cars from the road, the goal is to reduce externalities of road traffic: noise, congestion, emissions, etc. For rural areas, public transport can never be the full solution. Electric cars are much better suited to those areas and for social reasons, there should be some kind of demand-responsive public transport service, but a frequent bus or train is unfeasible. Public transport is the solution for cities, large towns and suburbs, but also for long-distance travel.

To reduce car usage where it is needed most (so city centres, busy motorways, long distance travel), road pricing would do a very good job to let people feel what the real cost of travel actually is. As I mentioned in other threads, a French tolling system would be a good start to make competition with trains fairer. Together with a mile-based charge and a surcharge for city centres, I believe the fairest charging system can be created. If transport could be more integrated, it becomes a good alternative and people will actually change mode. A very good example is Stockholm, where they created a toll cordon around the city centre and improved public transport. Now, there is no congestion anymore and use of public transport increased. Also, travel is much more spread over the day now.

To come back to the thread title, I wouldn't say train travel should be always cheaper, but it should be more competitive, not only through fairer pricing of road vehicles but maybe in some cases also through reducing train fares. This is a balancing act and I think it should be based on the goal of it all: improving the liveability of the country.

 

[BigCj34]

For someone travelling alone, going by public transport should beat the cost of driving. With a railcard and advance tickets, it often does. If I paid full-price for the walk-up fare, even off-peak, it usually does not even when factoring the non-fuel costs of running the car.

On the rural lines I use the full-price tickets can quite easily beat the driving costs, but the journey times are notably longer, and the services are not frequent enough, so there is a cost of convenience even if the journey was free.

 

[jthjth]

The problem is that most motoring costs are paid whether you drive or not, where was all of that is loaded into the fare with a train.

Pay per mile long term car leasing, insurance and the governments proposed 75-150p a mile tax (to replace Petrol Duty with the switch to electric cars) might change that.

If it happens it will also enable the government to charge much higher peak "fares" for driving.

I’ve no idea who came up with the 75-150p/mile figure, but it’s way off. If you do the sums, to replace the lost tax revenue on liquid fuels you need to charge between 12 and 20p/mile, depending on some of the assumptions made. Anything above that is road pricing to influence demand.

The other issue about rail pricing is that train travel becomes hopelessly expensive compared to the car once there are two or more of you travelling, and no, a 2 together rail card doesn’t solve that problem.

 

[Watershed]

The other issue about rail pricing is that train travel becomes hopelessly expensive compared to the car once there are two or more of you travelling, and no, a 2 together rail card doesn’t solve that problem.

With a Family Railcard, 2 adults and 2 children cost 1.72× the undiscounted fare for 1 adult. With one adult and one child you can in fact travel for less than an unaccompanied adult.

The car may still be a cheaper option with large groups and particularly where there are no children involved, but that is effectively the economic feedback telling you that driving is the most efficient option.

This is not entirely unjustifiable - if you have a train with a capacity of 150 passengers, and you have 150 travellers made up of "2+2" families, and 150 solo travellers, then of course you want all the solo travellers on board the train, as this will mean the least number of cars on the road.

 

[BigCj34]

An easy win would be an all age railcard, as this does not require any wholesale fares reform. Have the railcard cost more if there is much concern about lost revenue or to reflect higher median incomes.

Fuel does not get more expensive as you age while car insurance gets cheaper. After the age of 31 rail travel becomes 50% more expensive until you hit 60. It is an effective way to lose patronage.

 

[Watershed]

An easy win would be an all age railcard, as this does not require any wholesale fares reform. Have the railcard cost more if there is much concern about lost revenue or to reflect higher median incomes.

Fuel does not get more expensive as you age while car insurance gets cheaper. After the age of 31 rail travel becomes 50% more expensive until you hit 60. It is an effective way to lose patronage.

That would undermine the value proposition of many longer distance season tickets, and reduce the income from other frequent business travellers. The Treasury is unlikely to be prepared to risk that golden goose.

With the exception of the Disabled Railcard, which the industry is de facto required to offer under equality law, most Railcards probably wouldn't have survived into privatisation without the protections which backbenchers lobbied John Major into including in the Railways Act 1993.

These protections were intended to prevent the newly privatised industry from rinsing those in society most likely to rely on public transport - the young and the old. In the context of a quasi nationalised industry such a protection is a political matter and thus moot, but it is one underlying reason for there not being a 30-59 Railcard.

 

[21C101]

I’ve no idea who came up with the 75-150p/mile figure, but it’s way off. If you do the sums, to replace the lost tax revenue on liquid fuels you need to charge between 12 and 20p/mile, depending on some of the assumptions made. Anything above that is road pricing to influence demand.

I think you have answered your own question.

 

[Jozhua]

The premise that the cost of fuel = the cost of driving is flawed.
To give some context, alongside tracking my rail miles, I've been tracking the cost of each trip. My average cost per mile by rail is 15p. The average cost per mile of driving is 41p. It is worth considering this is with a railcard though, but also includes services like Metrolink & Tyne and Wear Metro, where I am not eligible for any specific discounts. So let's round it up to maybe 25p. Still comes in a decent amount cheaper than driving, although this figure will vary significantly depending on your car, insurance policy, parking, etc.

UK Transit Fares suffer from two major problems:
-The Price
-Integration

Integration needs to be much better, especially between modes like buses. Currently, poorly served communities are punished further by being charged more to change modes.

Part of the issue is that TOCs are incentivised to charge as much as they can in order to maximise farebox revenue & sometimes make repayments to the DaFT...
Limited capacity & bean-counting MBAs in government have also led to the increase in fares.

The whole thing is rather unfortunate really, especially as rail is so efficient. What it does mean though, is that even the underfunded, unreliable service is still more competitive than driving for many, so given some decent capacity and a proper fares system, there is potential for many more riders!

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

This is really the major overlooked issue, it's about service and convenience primarily.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The premise that the cost of fuel = the cost of driving is flawed.
To give some context, alongside tracking my rail miles, I've been tracking the cost of each trip. My average cost per mile by rail is 15p. The average cost per mile of driving is 41p. It is worth considering this is with a railcard though, but also includes services like Metrolink & Tyne and Wear Metro, where I am not eligible for any specific discounts. So let's round it up to maybe 25p. Still comes in a decent amount cheaper than driving, although this figure will vary significantly depending on your car, insurance policy, parking, etc.

So you think it's flawed that we might consider the fixed and close-to-fixed costs of car ownership as a subscription to the lifestyle choice of car ownership rather than dividing them on a per mile basis (which is basically everything except fuel, brake linings and tyre wear), but you don't think it's flawed to think of Railcard purchase in the same way?

 

[A0wen]

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

Paris to Lyon is 305 miles compared to 200 for London to Manchester.

There is a clear time advantage for the former by train as a TGV - but as I understand it TGV journeys are limited in that you have to travel on your booked train etc.

City centre to city centre makes sense by train - but most people aren't travellimg city centre to city centre - if you were travelling from somewhere like Hemel Hempstead to Ashton under Lyne - you'd end up with a much longer train journey than a simple Euston to Stockport / Piccadilly at which pointdriving it is more attractive.