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The annual gravy train is about to depart: all fat cats aboard!
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7167367.stmTrain passengers across the UK are facing above-inflation fare rises of up to 11% on Wednesday.
Regulated fares, which include most season tickets, are going up by an average of 4.8%, and many unregulated fares are set to rise by much more.
So what must be the most expensive railways in the world continues to rise well above inflation rates year after year after year.
The Association of Highwaymen and Daylight Robbers (sorry, Train Operating Companies) has said the improvements are much needed and they will be used to improve the network and blah blah blah. But let's examine those claims in detail. All quotes from the current issue of Private Eye.
- ATOC claims amongst other things the increases help pay for new and refurbished trains. Yet First Great Western is rising its fairs a whopping 9.8% and it's dumping its new rolling stock and replacing it with crap 1970s technology Pacer trainsets.
- Similar story with Northern Rail (5.7% increase), which is having its new trains taken away and replaced with old ones.
- Southestern is getting some new trains at least, but they are to be used only on selected services. Yet all Southern passengers (the immense majority of which will never use those new trains) will see price hikes of up to an unbelievable 14.9%.
- Another excuse peddled by ATOC is better punctuality. Yet the likes of FGW, Cross Country and the King's Cross to Edinburgh route fares have suffered some of the highest hikes, when their punctuality have fallen to piss-poor levels.
- Yet another excuse is "better stations". ATOC mentions the Ebbw Vale line in Wales as an example and announces new stations will be built. However it forgets to mention the project is being financed entirely by the taxpayer already, not by passenger fares.
Etc etc etc ad infinitum.
Can there be anyone still foolish enough to believe our railways are
a) good value for money
b) best run by private, for profit companies
Renationalise the lot. Please!
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
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Comments
BUT the constant rises are disgusting and I don't see how there is any hope of encouraging people to use public transport.
Or when (if) I pass my driving test, I'll probably have to get a car. Will probs work out cheaper than public transport if they keep putting the fares up. So much for being green.
The prices are getting stupid though, even with a railcard. Bloody country.
I got pre-booked cheap ones to get home at Xmas & got another to get back to uni afterwards. They were only £15. If I'd bought them on the day, they'd be £48+ and that's with my YP railcard :yuck:
I think a lot of the far rises this year are because there has just been a major shake up of the franchises, and the ECML and Cross Country routes have changed hands and so they have put the prices up because of that.
Oh and at least you can open the windows on Pacers, unlike on a 158 where they don't open and the aircon is always broken as well :yuck:
Transpennine Express are the best, their trains are really good and the service is always on time. Friendly staff as well, unlike some others.
It costs £50 for me to drive home, £55 to fly home and wait for it... £90.90 to get the train. f'ing ridiculous and that was looking at prices for 2 months in advance.
Strongly agree. Every time i mention that a return ticket from Brighton to Luton is extortionate people mention these magical advanced tickets. I've never seen one; I've never met anyone in person whose managed to get one; I can't seem to book one myself - I've tried booking 6 months in advance and it's been the same price.
I think anybody who believes re-nationalising the railways will mean an end to fare rises or see fares slashed is incredibly naive. Deutsche Bahn, a private company, run the vast majority of Germany's rail network, probably the best in Europe. France have some first class long distance services but their local/regional services are patchy and worse than ours in parts. Whilst nationalisation won't help I think only two or three companies should be running the whole network and it should be very tightly regulated with fare increases controlled better.
One of the main problems at the moment is the government milking the trains: National Express have just paid £1.4 billion to run GNER's old line....GNER paid £1.3 billion but never made any money out of it: if it was barely profitable when GNER were paying £1.3 billion National Express paying an extra £100 million hardly seems sensible... If the govt wanted a decent rail service they'd charge National Express half that amount and force them to put the other half into improving their service. If even at arms length the govt couldn't give a toss about the railways why should they be re-nationalised? Part of the reason the trains are in a state is because successive govts underfunded and neglected the rail network....
I've just checked my fares, Leeds-York daily returns and it's gone up 20p off peak and £1 peak times. Which is a pain because I could get out £10 and that would be my train fare, bus fare and lunch all in one! Not anymore.
This is it: The govt demands so much money for franchises that don't last long enough for train companies to invest in buying their own rolling stock, causing them to have to rent (lease? hire?) it from places like HSBC.
Edit: I've just checked the Capital Connect site and currently it won't even let me book my journey two months in advance. The problem with CC is very simple: they're money grabbing shysters.
Also I think that AP tickets are released on a certain day each week, maybe they all get snapped up quickly then?
Seeing as the likes of GoAhead and FirstGroup made £66m and £48m profit from their rail operations last year, I find it a tad hard to feel sorry for the poor operators or believe their excuses for not investing in new rolling stock.
With all respect to young persons and students, they don't make the bulk of travellers in this country and the affordability of their tickets is sadly the exception rather than the rule. It's all very well that it is affordable to travel between certain cities if book 12 years in advance and one is under 26 years old. The immense majority of people don't qualify on either ground.
What can they do though? What would YOU improve, and how would you go about doing it? Why do you think they haven't done so already?
JsT is far better at this than I am so I'll wait for him to come and post I think!
And I would build the much needed high speed line between London and Scotland. If that means having to put taxes up, so be it. With its solitary, 70 mile track (that takes you out of the country) Britain is at the bottom of the high speed link. There is no reason why anyone would want to take a plane between London and Scotland (let alone Manchester, Newcastle or Liverpool) if we had a proper high speed railway.
The irony is that the time which presumably the government wants to encourage people out of their cars (rush hour and weekdays) is the time when these advanced fares seem to mysteriously disappear, if they existed in the first place. To be honest, on a weekend, I would probably enjoy the drive anyway.
My favourite was when I last went to London, and had to pay £49 return for the privilage of a 9 hour journey involving a bus. Quite cheap. But I didn't fancy the bus because it would normally only take about 5 hours, so I checked the alternative route via Leeds (about £10-20 more expensive on the other days I'd looked). And surprise, surprise, on the day that the railways were being repaired, the alternative route had jumped to over £250 return.
And cheap tickets are probably only available to those who can travel off-peak in three months time.
EDIT: I can't find any details of discounted tickets on Capital Connect's site.
No idea why London to Scotland should be a high priority. It would be nice if it was a bit quicker but for all the billions that it would cost there are more important priorities. It takes a bit under 4 1/2 hours London to Edinburgh. That's definitely quicker than driving and for a lot of people quicker than flying. (Depends where you live - getting to the airport, then there's security and at the other end travelling from the airport to wherever you need to be... if it's the city centre then the train would probably have been the quicker option).
Rather than spending billions on a grand showpiece London-Scotland link we should focus on improving transport within cities - Cross Rail and the tube in London, expanding the Midland Metro, etc. The London-Scotland route as it is isn't bad at all; it's actually pretty good - can't say the same for local transport services around the country, which on a day-to-day basis are used by more people.
The train is not attractive and fast enough. Build and run a proper high speed line, with modern TGV trains that take you between London and Scotland in 2.5 hours (or Manchester in 1.15) and you will see abandoning the planes.
It's either that or cut train fares by 50%. Which is as likely to happen as Ian Paisley becoming the next Pope.
I suspect they get the plane because of cheap flights.
Overall reliability is increasing. Some sections are suffering in paticular from overcrowding lines and infrastructure failiures. This is being worked on and improved. Ebbw Vale is one example and is being funded by Welsh Assembly. There are many many other examples of station improvements, in the last 6 or so years Leeds, Edinburgh, Manchester Piccadilly, St Pancras have all been completely redone. Many many other stations are having increased platforms or platform lengths, increases for customer comfort and increased accessibility for the disabled.
I just wish you'd use something other than Private Eye, as I say over and over and over again Private Eye know jack shit about the damn railways.
No cheap tickets because there is no direct service. Try getting a cheap ticket from Derby or Brum to York and they will exist. Some TOC's ban railcards from Advance purchase as they are cheap enough as it is.
Absolutely Spot on
Absolutely, the railways only want to milk all the cash possible out of the railways, if it was renationalised how would it be any different at all?
The only reason cheap fares like the ones you mention exist (Brum - Cov for example) is the local authority or PTE subsidise the fare.
Do you have a source?
I think it would benefit more people to extend, improve and develop public transport in British cities. Extending the Midland Metro, starting on Cross Rail, putting the necessary money into the tube and building a tram or metro in Leeds should all be much higher priorities than shaving a bit of time off long distance rail services to Scotland. Leeds is the largest city in Europe without a tram or metro. For the second city, Birmingham has very poor public transport..
How many people regularly go from London to Aberdeen? I think it's pretty obvious that it's a lot less than those who live and work in cities and need to get around. The West Midlands conurbation alone has half the population of Scotland and London's population exceeds Scotland's. Yes, it'd be nice if London-Glasgow was a bit quicker but it would cost billions and billions: laying down new track, buying land to make way for bigger tracks, new trains, etc. Money that could be better spent I think.
St Pancras is a five minute walk from Euston. It's not as if it's impossible to go to Paris for the weekend on the train at the moment.
Brighton to Bedford is meant to be a straight-through-line - it rarely is when i travel 'cause they're always digging the fucking thing up. Anyway, there just aren't cheap tickets available.
If you travel late at night or on a weekend then you probably do get some maintenance every now and again, but everything needs some sort of maintenance and it has to be done at times where it'll cause the least possible disruption.