[morrbo]

I'm sorry but this article is bullshit. Go and actually check the train prices (because I did) now. Book Sheffield to London 1 month in advance, comes out to £70 odd return (nearly 4x more than article states) with a first class upgrade for an extra £70....Paris to Leon 1 month in advance? £20 odd return with another £20 first class. Idk if something has changed but you can't quote this article anymore. Train prices in the UK are criminal.

[smcl]

Seconded, this article is quite misleading. The UK fares always seemed quite unpredictable to me when I used them, with variances similar to those you see when booking flight tickets. Maybe the fares have an extra component based on demand? If I look for second-class tickets from Edinburgh to Montrose (which I went on semi-regularly) @ scotrail.co.uk on 1st June I see prices that fluctuate from £9.30 to £24.60. Maybe the guy only looked at the lower-bound on the London-Sheffield route?

[iso1631]

Yes, train fares are based on demand, same as plane and coach fares. Same as they are in Europe (The Paris-Dijon journey in a months time is between €31 and €71 depending on what time you choose)

For walk up fares, Edinburgh to Montrose is 100 miles each way, an "off peak" return (so any time after 0930) is £34 if you limit yourself to LNER trains or 17p/mile, or £41 return for a choice of LNER or Scotrail trains. If you want to travel before 0930 on whatever train turns up next, it's £48.60 or 24p/mile.

What price do you think you should be paying? In 2019 Scotrail carried 1.8 billion passenger miles got £482.8m subsidy - a 27p per mile subsidy. The company made a £11m loss too.

How much should the tax payer subsidise your Edinburgh-Montrose journey? 35p/mile/ 45p/mile?

[iso1631]

The article actually explains this, with different options

> For travel today, bought at the station, immediate departure, outside the peaks...

And

> If travelling today in the business peak hours...

It acknowledges that finance bros travelling from Manchester to London for a 9AM meeting and traveling back on the 1630 will pay more. That doesn't affect most people

The summary makes it quite clear.

The big picture is that Britain has the most commercially aggressive fares in Europe, with the highest fares designed to get maximum revenue from business travel, and some of the lowest fares designed to get more revenue by filling more seats.

Basically a tax on last minute business travelers to subsidise leisure travelers and commuters.

[smcl]

Yeah I’d known about peak/off-peak, but it always seemed odd that there was such a wide range and that there were so many differently priced tickets within that range and I never knew the formula. An even longer journey I take here (Brno-Prague) seems to always be either 205kč or 245kč (£7-8.50).

I know British rail travel is more expensive, it’s the (to me) unpredictable ticket pricing that I would like to decrypt

[iso1631]

Privitisation has made fares far cheaper if you know what you're doing, it's great for people with a hacking mindset who aren't worried about looking at brfares.com, and maybe investigating things like routing guides.

Advanced fares exist to encourage people to travel by train who wouldn't normally. They are released on trains that are generally more lightly to get more revenue from perishable stock. Same as supermarkets selling lunch food near expiry date cheaply in the evening - they don't want to do it earlier in the day (and canibalise their lunch trade), but doing it at 4pm means they get extra money without revenue abstraction.

I'm not a fan of advanced fares though, I don't tend to plan, and I hate the stress of missing the train, so I look for hacks to get better flexible fares.

A Manchester-London "standard fare" has increase from £50 in 1995 (£100 today) to £160, however competition and sties like trainsplit mean you can buy a walk up return fare for £45 -- less than a quarter of the old cost after inflation, and only about 20 minutes longer than the old time.

There's more "hacks" to be had too. I used to travel from Wilmslow to London on a semi-regular basis (every few months, getting the 0811 fast train, and returning about 6pm. It cost about £120 return, because I bought a super off peak ticket from Edinburgh, which was valid on any train arriving into Euston that was on the route. Break of journey is well worthwhile - I travelled from Crewe to London a fair bit on a Chirk-Tunbridge Wells return, which allowed break of journey in both directions and was valid on so called "peak" trains from Crewe to London. Splitting tickets can work, especially on very overcrowded trains like the cross country services. Don't buy a pricey ticket from Exeter to Leeds, instead buy a combination of tickets for your journey and save a fortune.

All this means if you are willing to put in time or effort you can travel far more cheaply. The goal of the "rail delivery group" over the last few years has been to remove these "hacks", so everyone has to pay the full price.

Other options to reduce fares would be

1) Getting rid of the unions (rail staff have a strong contract meaning driver salaries have increased about 5.5% a year since privitisation -- same as the "standard" fare on the Manchester-London ticket)

2) Reducing staff (DOO where the driver has to press the "door open" button instead of the guard. This led to massive industrial action on both Northern and Southern)

3) Increasing train speeds (A London-Manchester return takes about 5 hours for staff, costing 5x3 salaries for the driver, guard, and buffet. Replace with HS2 and it drops to 2.5 hour round trip, halving staffing costs - and train leasing costs - and the HS2 trains are twice the size so there's twice as many seats so no need to price people off "overcrowded peak trains")

4) Increasing taxpayer subsidy. Given that the majority of rail travellers are of an above average income, and especially on the really expensive lines

The left have painted a picture of Richard Branson having stolen trillions of pounds over the years, but the profit margins are really very small. It might account for £5 on that £160 ticket, but that's not going to make people happy. I'd rather have the option to learn how to get cheaper tickets (typically typing in "trainsplit.com"). Sadly the narrative (see many posts on this thread) is that "privitisation means high fares and poor service". The evidence is that is nowhere near the whole story. Well respected rail journalist Mark Smith does a good balanced report comparing fares in europe and UK, and the reply comes "load of rubbish guvnor, check the prices now". I check the prices now, post screenshots which back up Mark Smith's points, and it's just a downvote with no reply.

I thought HN was a rational place, but it seems not when it comes to the UK railway.

[iso1631]

https://i.imgur.com/bvviAcJ.png

£17.60 on the 12:05 departure on Jun 16th on trainsplit with one change - 10p/mile.

And on the well-advertised and more expensive trainline on Jun 17th

https://imgur.com/ymtzPhw.png

£31.50 on the 12:37 direct. £43.50 first class .

The 11:22 SNCF Paris-Dijon on the same date is €31, or £27. The 12:22 is €40 (£35). One way.

https://i.imgur.com/1Zs0APR.png

[Camas]

Prices are "criminal" but not worth you doing more than a cursory search for a cheaper ticket?

[jokethrowaway]

Everything is more expensive in the UK - salaries are higher too, compared to Europe.

[ClumsyPilot]

London might be a beacon, but UK has the poorest regions in Western Europe. In fact some ex-soviet countries do better

https://highpaycentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/High_Pa...

[iso1631]

Train fares aren't (although the tax payer in France pays far more for train services -- services which are pretty rubbish compared with the UK.

Compare somewhere like Lesparre (population about 5,000 and 40 miles from Beudeux), which has about 10 trains a day taking 90 minutes.

With Cononley (25 miles out of Leeds) with 4 trains in each direction the next hour.