sippo Posted November 30, 2018 Posted November 30, 2018 Up again. Just heard on the radio. Swindon to Paddington is going to cost £270! That is shocking.
localzuk Posted November 30, 2018 Posted November 30, 2018 That sort of price is unjustifiable. You could get a taxi for less. 2
Mako Posted November 30, 2018 Posted November 30, 2018 This news is off the rails. We should come together and create a platform from which to voice our concerns before these prices go too far off track. 4
RLR Posted November 30, 2018 Posted November 30, 2018 Been getting the train for 6 years and it was bad to start off with and it's only got worse. The station I get on at is just a platform and doesn't have anywhere to buy tickets. We have to buy tickets from someone who walks through the train but 99% of the time they can't get through the train because it's too busy. People have to stand in the aisle. Every year they promise a better service from the extra fees but it just gets worse. Our train is getting more and more packed. If a train is cancelled, it means there are twice as many people on the next train which means a load of people can't even get on. I get a monthly ticket which I have to purchase at the station I'm heading towards. I'm forced to buy a return ticket to get through the barriers and then ask for a refund on that ticket once I've purchased my monthly ticket. They want to move everyone onto smart cards but their system isn't capable of allowing the 10% travel to work discount my work offers on the smart cards. My November monthly ticket has put in 7 delay repays. I've earnt back about £30 this month from delay repays (ticket costs £122). I still think getting the train is better than driving into the City though due to traffic and huge parking charges.
LeMarchand Posted November 30, 2018 Posted November 30, 2018 ...and they wonder why people don't use public transport?
TTG_Alice Posted December 3, 2018 Posted December 3, 2018 Train prices are ridiculous! If you want to find cheap train tickets use this website > https://www.splitticketing.com/ You can apply your discount railcard on it too. The website buys individual tickets for your trip, great for long journeys to London etc. 2
2ilent8cho Posted December 3, 2018 Posted December 3, 2018 This is why i almost always drive London from the midlands, I can get there and back on £40 fuel and park my car for under £5 for the whole weekend. If i take friends its £10 each return to London if 4 of us. Train? would be several hundreds!
Katy Posted December 3, 2018 Posted December 3, 2018 Someone complained to Virgin (think it was on Twitter or in the paper, can't remember) that Manchester to Euston anytime return (standard class) - at £338 or so - was more expensive than flying to New York. Another person said it was cheaper to fly to Moscow and have a night in a 5 star hotel. Their reply? "If you booked in advance you could have done it for £23".
hardtailstar Posted December 3, 2018 Posted December 3, 2018 Someone complained to Virgin (think it was on Twitter or in the paper, can't remember) that Manchester to Euston anytime return (standard class) - at £338 or so - was more expensive than flying to New York. Another person said it was cheaper to fly to Moscow and have a night in a 5 star hotel. Their reply? "If you booked in advance you could have done it for £23". There's a few news articles about flying and staying the night in another country is cheaper than some return tickets.
LeMarchand Posted December 3, 2018 Posted December 3, 2018 Their reply? "If you booked in advance you could have done it for £23". If you booked 3 months in advance on a totally inconvenient series of trains that, if/when one was delayed, would inevitably result in you having to pay extra.
jmak Posted December 3, 2018 Posted December 3, 2018 There's a few news articles about flying and staying the night in another country is cheaper than some return tickets.In a previous job we used to have team meetings in Belfast because it was cheaper than getting everyone to London (or Birmingham). Several of us lived within 90 minutes of London and no one lived in Northern Ireland. 2
stevejp Posted December 3, 2018 Posted December 3, 2018 This news is off the rails. We should come together and create a platform from which to voice our concerns before these prices go too far off track. Think you ran out of steam a bit towards the end there ... (although some of the points that you make are valid...)
mavhc Posted December 3, 2018 Posted December 3, 2018 In a previous job we used to have team meetings in Belfast because it was cheaper than getting everyone to London (or Birmingham). Several of us lived within 90 minutes of London and no one lived in Northern Ireland. Cheaper to video chat, also less polluting. What's causing the high prices? How can it be fixed?
jmak Posted December 3, 2018 Posted December 3, 2018 Cheaper to video chat, also less polluting. What's causing the high prices? How can it be fixed?Not saying it was ever a good idea.... Or that it was my idea.... There are times when it's good to be in a room together though. We used to have a ratio of about 1:10 online vs face to face for normal meetings and whole team meetings were only four times a year.
LeMarchand Posted December 3, 2018 Posted December 3, 2018 What's causing the high prices? How can it be fixed? Capitalism. Revolution.
mavhc Posted December 4, 2018 Posted December 4, 2018 Meh, can't be bothered with revolution. Capitalism doesn't work for networks, and there's really no competition, everyone has assigned routes. So, step 1: automate everything, then trains can share track, don't need timetables etc. step 2: integrate everything from electric scooters to cars, minibuses, coaches, trains, planes. step 3: on demand scheduling, say when you want to travel, as the number of people increases at that time the price goes down, you can pay more for a more precise time, or less if you're flexible. 1
Sheridan Posted December 5, 2018 Posted December 5, 2018 How do the train companies actually justify a £300 journey being £23 if booked in advance? Its not like the train wasn't going to be running anyway, and the fuel is the same cost as well
bossman Posted December 5, 2018 Posted December 5, 2018 The train fares should be charged per mile of travel..... That way it would be so much easier to calculate and the system would be so much easier to maintain.... Its not rocket science but companies make it so difficult!!! What about £1 per mile... That would make Swindon to Paddington approximately £80.... Greed!!!..... Pure Greed!!!.... pleased I live up North where we all have Horse n Carts..... haha!...
mavhc Posted December 5, 2018 Posted December 5, 2018 To encourage people to book early, so they size the trains correctly. Pricing per mile doesn't account for popularity of stations, or hills, bends, speeds. Pricing is very stupid though.
Sheridan Posted December 5, 2018 Posted December 5, 2018 To encourage people to book early, so they size the trains correctly.Pricing per mile doesn't account for popularity of stations, or hills, bends, speeds. Pricing is very stupid though.The irony of that is how many overcrowded trains there are!
LeMarchand Posted December 5, 2018 Posted December 5, 2018 To encourage people to book early, so they size the trains correctly. My wife frequently catches the train, and is always complaining that they don't put enough carriages on, especially if there is an event. So I don't think it's that. Pricing per mile doesn't account for popularity of stations, or hills, bends, speeds allow for price gouging on popular/commuter routes. FTFY Pricing is very stupid though. We agree on this, though .
bossman Posted December 5, 2018 Posted December 5, 2018 To encourage people to book early, so they size the trains correctly. Pricing per mile doesn't account for popularity of stations, or hills, bends, speeds. Pricing is very stupid though. The system would work much better if priced per mile as then the data analysis would give the train companies the data required to manage the train sizes and pricing by mile would be just that... The more popular the routes would be the the ones to the large cities from short journeys and therefore more people which would balance out the smaller trains coming from longer distances..... 200 people on a short journey @£1 per mile distance 80 miles = £16000.00 50 people on longer journey @£1 per mile distance 300 miles = £15000.00 They could introduce a city tariff of say £2 per mile to make it slightly cheaper for those travelling long distance bringing it down to say £0.50 for long distance to be worked out but that would be the only difference in pricing instead of the ludicrous system they have in place now.... Same as was done with fuel tax... The more miles you do the more you pay....simple really.... Not rocket science... Those that have to travel the furthest obviously pay more for the maintenance of the system.... Either that or get a job closer to home or drive....or in our case up North horse n cart....
mavhc Posted December 5, 2018 Posted December 5, 2018 'regulated fares are pegged to the Retail Price Index. According to National Rail, about 40 per cent of rail fares are regulated; that includes season tickets for commuter journeys, as well as "anytime" tickets around cities and "off-peak" returns for long-distance trains.' They are of course limited in flexibility of putting more carriages on busy trains if they're forced to run trains that aren't used much, finite number of carriages, and hard to move them around flexibly. 'Operators aren't allowed to share price information between them under competition law, even though they're not directly competing against each other, Smith says. "LNER are the lead operator for Aylesbury to Scarborough, because they take the lion's' share of the journey from London to York – but they don't necessarily know what the Chiltern Railways is doing between Aylesbury and London, or what the Northern fare setter is doing for York to Scarborough." He adds that they aren't allowed to know, under the Competition Act, because they can't collude. So the fare for a journey can be more than the total fare for each segment, because each arm doesn't know that the other is doing. "That's how fare anomalies arise."'
elsiegee40 Posted December 5, 2018 Posted December 5, 2018 Here in the south east there are some real problems with overcrowding and they're ones that aren't easily fixed. Trains heading towards where I live, a major commuter area, have to go through the Sevenoaks tunnel (and two others) which is particularly narrow and limits the size of the rolling stock. And station platforms aren't long enough to cope with more than 12 coaches. Even in a major station like London Charing Cross you can leave the train from the last carriage of a 12 carriage train because the platforms aren't long enough. Solving overcrowding for us requires major engineering work
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now