Gradual renationalization of UK trains

The train service is just hugely disjointed and it doesn't make sense. Where I live I have to go 1 stop to the next town to change which is the outermost stop on my nearest city's network. It costs something like £6 all day, anytime as many journey's as you want on the city network (which is good) but that extra stop costs me £3 for a 5 minute leg. The train on an evening is only one every hour and there is another that goes a slightly different route on the other half hour and if I get that it would be £12. The one leg return train leaves 5 minutes before the one from the city gets in so it is useless as a return journey because it adds a 55min wait to a 25min plus 5min journey. That is two ends of two lines meeting so there are no other trains coming or going to that stop.
 
Commuter trains from Harlington to St pancreas are 40 quid return, for 27 miles.

It's outrageous given how heavily used those trains are
 
Redwurzel said:
The trains in general are more punctual now than say 30 years ago. They are also a bit cleaner. They are used more i.e. the stations ands trains are busier.

Prices are more all over the place, with little logic in some cases. Just checked from my local city to Middlesbrough is £94 for the Swansea home game if I shop around and take specific trains. Its also 5 hours 45 minutes while its normally 4.5 hours in a car and that's door to door (250 miles each way) Open off peak returns are £150. These are without railcard. A railcard is £30 a year. Its £55 fuel in the car plus wear and tear and there is usually two of us in the car. I don't use it much but I hear that trains Transpennine to Manchester are often late and that means missing a connecting train making it impossible to get back on evening trains or ending up with long distance taxis.

There are more railcards now - two together, young people are up to 30 in some cases and it used to up to age 23. Some Rover cards are a real bargain if say you want to travel around Wales for 4 days.

I do think money is wasted on the bidding process especially re bidding this must be increasing the costs of the tickets. There is too many differences in ticket prices - sometimes 5 or 6 times more expensive.

Network Rail has been publicly owned for around 25 years - Railtrack was a bit of a disaster when private and before Rail track there were rail crashes too.
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I think your car cost calculation is an illustration of the problem the trains have, because unless you have an astonishingly fuel efficient car I think your estimate is low for petrol alone, and the way most people consume their vehicles, you should be treating a lot more than just petrol as a marginal per mile cost anyway.

I reckon Swansea is about to 660 mile round-trip. Are you really getting 9p a mile? That’s 70 mpg in old money at a competitive 1.43 a litre. I reckon 12-15p a mile is nearer the mark.

Then there’s your consumables. Work out those, replacing the tires, replacing the pads, etc, all your maintenance, almost all occasioned on a per mile basis, and you’ll find another 5-10p.

Finally, the one people really miss, but which is for most people something else that should really be reckoned as a per mile thing is depreciation. If you are a very rare car user age might be the dominant factor there. For the vast majority of us it’s mileage. So depreciation should be probably reckoned per mile as well. A 25k car that might take 125k miles to essentially lose its value, hardly the height of excess, amortizes at another 20 a mile.

Even without other fixed costs you can easily be looking at 40p or so as a true marginal mileage cost for any who are more than occasional car users. More like £250 for Swansea and back.
 
There’s a 23.18 Redcar to York in the Monday Friday timetable. Not sure about Saturday
 
FishofContemplation said:
I think your car cost calculation is an illustration of the problem the trains have, because unless you have an astonishingly fuel efficient car I think your estimate is low for petrol alone, and the way most people consume their vehicles, you should be treating a lot more than just petrol as a marginal per mile cost anyway.

I reckon Swansea is about to 660 mile round-trip. Are you really getting 9p a mile? That’s 70 mpg in old money at a competitive 1.43 a litre. I reckon 12-15p a mile is nearer the mark.

Then there’s your consumables. Work out those, replacing the tires, replacing the pads, etc, all your maintenance, almost all occasioned on a per mile basis, and you’ll find another 5-10p.

Finally, the one people really miss, but which is for most people something else that should really be reckoned as a per mile thing is depreciation. If you are a very rare car user age might be the dominant factor there. For the vast majority of us it’s mileage. So depreciation should be probably reckoned per mile as well. A 25k car that might take 125k miles to essentially lose its value, hardly the height of excess, amortizes at another 20 a mile.

Even without other fixed costs you can easily be looking at 40p or so as a true marginal mileage cost for any who are more than occasional car users. More like £250 for Swansea and back.
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I have a lease and all those things are included so on a comparison between getting the train and driving the only considerations for me are cost of fuel and time.

Also, the example given was his journey to the Riverside from his home for the Swansea game,not Middlesbrough to Swansea.

If I travel back to Teesside to visit family it costs me the £15 to charge at home, the same again at my parents to return and takes about 2.5hrs (120ish miles). Best case is I can get the train (but will need to get to/from the station at each end) and it takes 4 hours with 3 changes and costs £90. If I take the family it's £200 but the car is still the same price.

There are almost never any situations that don't involve me being unable to drive due to drinking that makes the train a better option than the car.
 
FishofContemplation said:
I think your car cost calculation is an illustration of the problem the trains have, because unless you have an astonishingly fuel efficient car I think your estimate is low for petrol alone, and the way most people consume their vehicles, you should be treating a lot more than just petrol as a marginal per mile cost anyway.

I reckon Swansea is about to 660 mile round-trip. Are you really getting 9p a mile? That’s 70 mpg in old money at a competitive 1.43 a litre. I reckon 12-15p a mile is nearer the mark.

Then there’s your consumables. Work out those, replacing the tires, replacing the pads, etc, all your maintenance, almost all occasioned on a per mile basis, and you’ll find another 5-10p.

Finally, the one people really miss, but which is for most people something else that should really be reckoned as a per mile thing is depreciation. If you are a very rare car user age might be the dominant factor there. For the vast majority of us it’s mileage. So depreciation should be probably reckoned per mile as well. A 25k car that might take 125k miles to essentially lose its value, hardly the height of excess, amortizes at another 20 a mile.

Even without other fixed costs you can easily be looking at 40p or so as a true marginal mileage cost for any who are more than occasional car users. More like £250 for Swansea and back.
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I get 50p per mile from work.
 
Well done Nano for reading my post accurately - its 500 miles round trip to the Riverside for me, just happens our first home game is against Swansea

If I travelled by public transport add in four lot of bus fares to the £94 train return fare, assuming buses are running at the right time for example there are no practically no Sunday buses near me nor buses after 6pm any day. My car does about 12.5 miles per litre - Tudor Garage Shell near Stewarts Park was £1.39 per litre two weeks ago and its the same where I live. The £94 is based travelling on specific trains which are often not the most convient to use, what I often want is open off peak which is £150 (30p per mile) which makes a £510 Boro season ticket look cheap!

Sometimes there are bargains on the train, but it is hit and miss - a few years ago I drove 12 miles to a station in the West Midlands region (which for rail tickets I am not in) and got a £7.90 day return rail ticket to Coventry any train that Saturday (about 140 miles round trip from that station) i.e. less than 6p per mile! The problem at Coventry is the chaos after the game if going by rail.

Cardiff away on August 31st is around £25 cheap day return (22p per mile) plus £3 to park the car all day near my home station, or around 9 litres of fuel in the car (£12.60) I do now know a number free parking places in Cardiff. For the planet I should go by train, but it will cost me more money even if I doubled the fuel cost to account for wear and tear. I don't drink more than one pint at Boro games so can still drive. I could get a third off the £25 but would have to pay £30 for a senior card which I rarely would use. (Cardiff away and WBA away and Oyster Card fares when in London). Another issue with the train is having to stand in trains after Boro games compared to seat in a car.

Overall rail fares seem quite expensive to me. I do remember some pricey rail trips under British Rail too. Maintenance of our rail network was often put forward - lots of 150 year old tunnels and bridges so for example double decker trains can't be used. Of course the German rail network was largely destroyed from 1942 to 1945, so they could start again often with Allied funding after the war. France has much more space to operate in, say build new lines. Look at all the money spent on the South Devon lines when parts were washed away by the sea.
 
rkangel said:
I hope this leads to improvement. I've had to travel with South West a few times this year and every trip has been an unpleasant experience.
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All our major operators up here, Northern, TPEX and LNER are already in this state of ownership,. The first two remain a shambles. The third was allowed to effectively opt out of the national ticket scheme and do away with return tickets to the cost of the customer in a way that would never have been tolerated if they had been in the private sector.

That’s not to say I’m in favour of fragmented privatisation. But the ownership structure isn’t the problem. The lack of investment is.
 
rkangel said:
I hope this leads to improvement. I've had to travel with South West a few times this year and every trip has been an unpleasant experience.
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Going to Southampton last season was a nightmare, one of the problems the right hand not knowing what the left was doing

Problem was at Brockenhurst I remember, if you have crews and trains to the East spin the trains at Soton and let that run normally you’d think… then the guard was meant to get off at Guildford but they never told him…
 
Tryasize10 said:
Yeah German efficiency on their rain network is a complete myth.

Never had a bad experience on the trains in France mind. Absolutely class
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DB are shocking like. I used to work in Denmark and had to commute by trian from Copenhagen. Whenever I got the DB service that went to Hamburg it was more often than not delayed. If I got a Danish train it was fine
 
I don't use the trains a lot, but Mrs W does. Price has shot up in recent years. London and back for her has more than doubled in 7 years, possibly as offers have dried up.

There were problems when it was BR, but it was cheaper in real terms and the Government subsidies were less than?
 
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