UKC

...are pretty grim, for a non-expense account punter. Watford Junction to Manchester Piccadilly open return = £376.00; London to Dubai return = £386.00.

Recently in Poland, Germany & Netherlands...the contrast is stark.

And now this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46387030

Blame the EU. They've completely failed to regulate prices or travelling conditions. Once we're out, we'll be able to provide the kind of rail service that British people want, not have it forced on us by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels.

I don't really understand the rail price, but the flight price you quoted is ridiculously cheap. One of the reasons is that Dubai and Emirates bought in massively to the hub and spoke model with a huge fleet of A380s flying all over the world. The advent of smaller, lighter ultra long haul planes such as the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 ULH mean that airlines can now offer direct flights between places that would traditionally have stopped in the ME or Asia. So it makes sense that Emirates are struggling to fill their huge A380s and are reducing prices.

Really! go and sit in the corner and think about what you've posted.

I have some sympathy with what you are saying - and I'm not playing Devil's advocate -  but we're not comparing like with like here. That London to Dubai price is, I'm guessing, for a heavily restricted ticket with no option of changing flights times after booking. According to National Rail Enquiries, I can purchase an advance single ticket for a train departing in just 20 minutes time for the journey from Watford Junction to Manchester Picadilly at a much more reasonable £53. One of the attractions of using rail is the ability to just turn up and board a train without a reservation but it would seem that rail companies are (understandably from their viewpoint) using ticket prices to discourage this.

No wonder punters hide in the loos to paying. £376 christ on a bike

I presume you noted the smiley?

More seriously, this is precisely the kind of logic bypass we've seen with some aspects of Brexit. Notably EU migration, where Brexiteers have openly blamed immigration levels on lack of EU controls, when in fact the UK had plenty of options within EU rules to limit the kind of job-less or benefit-seeking migration the press was very keen to portray as a big problem. And chose not to do so.

However, I do accept that bringing Brexit into yet another thread - albeit jokingly - might irritate some people, so I'll consider being more selective next time.

Is that an open return to Dubai or just a selected flight?

It makes a difference.  If you go onto trainline right now and put in the Watford Junction to Manchester (going today and coming back tomorrow) you can get a ticket from £72.45 return.  Some first class returns are available for £145.00.

There's an art to buying rail tickets at the best price.  There's also an art to portraying something in a bad light.  I use trains a lot and I can't pretend they are perfect, but if you do your homework they can be really good value.

Who mentioned Emirates? And its always been approx that price from London. Its about £500 from Newcastle.

Loads of airlines fly via there, I've used 4. Emirates aren't the cheapest, but for my money they are the one of the best. British Airways are the worst. Until you get into the air, when the cabin staff take over. They are superb. 

Incidentally, Dubai are busy closing down their airport ), and transferring to one that has almost twice the capacity just outside the (current) city limits. What on earth the traffic generated there is going to do to the area is anybody's guess........it will be able to handle 160,000,000 passenger movements a year.....

I agree. I find it absolutely crazy that I can drive on my own to London from Sheffield for way less that a single return train ticket. While it remains that way no one will ditch the car! 

That said, I work on the railway and the infrastructure is ancient and always in desperate need of repair so I see why it costs so much tbh

Roll on HS2!

Split ticketing can also save a fair amount of dosh if you have the time to sit down and work it out using one of the websites that specialise in that sort of thing.

Silly price, but does anyone buy open returns. My last Manchester to London rail journey was £60 first class.

That said the TGV from Paris to Barcelona was the same price and a much nicer journey.

Don't you do irony?

Well, from my perspective, my train travel to work already costs me more than my mortgage - its my single largest expense. And its going up 3% in Jan.

Absolutely insane

For two adult was cheaper to get a taxi door to door sheff to man airport) than we paid for a train and bus on the way home.

Yes there may be a way to get cheap fares, but as an occasional user (or someone who makes travel plans at the last minute by necessity) you end up paying over the odds. Kind of explains why I avoid public transport wherever possible, which I guess in turn drives up fares. 

Not only are the prices high, there are discrepancies on the same lines.

For example 06:58, 07:39 or 07:57 from Lancaster £95, single. The train stops in Preston. Get on at Preston and its now £175. Same train, just one stop later. The ticket inspectors know this, so are very keen on identifying where people get on. You can buy a single from Preston to Lancaster for around £8. Do the journey to Lancaster and get the reduced fair. You can even, sometimes, get on at Preston, as you have a valid ticket for the full journey. However, it depends on the inspector.

Tickets state "via any permitted route", though the routes are not listed. It is also governed by the National Rail Conditions of Travel, which is a 35 page pdf. This, I believe, is a condensed version of the rail handbook, which is several hundred pages long and goes back to Victorian era.

One can "break a journey" at any station. This may mean you can leave the station or it may not; depending on the staff member on the gate.

I think it is unreasonable to expect members of the public to digest a 35 page doc, which appears to impose arbitrary and often illogical rules on travel.

Yep, it's cheaper to fly to London from Edinburgh than take the train.

Haven't checked for a while but I think the same is true when travelling to most cities in the UK. I am utterly baffled over how it is invariably cheaper to fly than take the train.

"it will be able to handle 160,000,000 passenger movements a year....."

I suspect it will be a bit of a white elephant in the longer term, Airlines want more economical lighter aircraft (read -smaller) that fly further. The smaller planes are easier to fill and the planes and airlines are able to do the routes passengers want, rather than having to stop in ME.

Currently they can fly non stop between Sydney and London, but the airlines are doing research on the health impacts of flying for 20 hours non stop. once they are comfortable with that,  the hub and spoke model will probably falter. It's one of the reasons that Airbus are really struggling with the A380. It's propped up by one airline and it's no longer that economical compared to the latest twin engined planes. Why connect in Dubai if you can fly direct? As that evolves expect flights on Emirates etc to get cheaper and cheaper .

It shouldn't require hours of work and a knowledge of dark arts to get a sensibly, consistently priced tickets.  It's a nonsense.

And before anyone says it is, it isn't Jeremy Corbyns fault

Is the airfare an open return?

I bet you can get that rail return ticket for an awful lot less than £376!

And herein lies the problem, I want to go somewhere, not learn a craft.

So I drive, everywhere, and it is much more convenient and much much cheaper. I have not taken a train for decades. I want to, but from any other perspective than the carbon one, it is only a sensible choice for wealthy masochists or those travelling on expenses.

It's the difference between a service and a business. We would like to think that providing rail travel would be a service.

I look forward to it - although most of the ticket price is already surcharges and non-carrier costs..........

Agree about the A380 (and any other super-jumbo); It'll only ever be useful on v.v. busy routes, as with the costs (both acquisition and operation) it isnt very flexible, and the airlines need it to fly at capacity to be able to give any kind of competitive price. 

The size also impacts on the customer experience; its a fabulous piece of kit, but airport departure lounges / gates just arent built to cope with that number of people in one go.

It’s far from a perfect system. However, I assume most people coming from abroad and using trains for longer journeys will book in advance. It’s certainly what I do when taking long distance journey abroad.

You pay real price in the UK. In the other countries people who don´t use train pay for those who do.

Information system in German ICE last week

https://i.imgur.com/vr14vgi.jpg

Upgrading the rolling stock loos as well then.....

I agree - but that's where your above allusion to the EU is totally inappropriate. The EU's 'train directives' mandate that railways should be run as a completely free market. You'd think they might have learnt from the chaos which has resulted from the UK's rail privatization - but evidently not.

I did, and mine was supposed to have one too, but it must have fallen off in the post.

The railways are and will remain shit, until we stop supporting London, which is what HS2 is all about, and start upgrading the railways further north with upgraded intercity travel between the northern cities.

This is interesting https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/70-of-uk-rail-routes-now-owned-by-foreign-state...

Amazing that many or perhaps most other EU countries manage to have far more efficient rail services than the UK then (the OP's point) if this is, as you seem to be suggesting, the EU's fault!

It's hard to say if the A380 has really been a success for Airbus; it cost a fortune to design and eventually entered service as more flexible alternatives had been introduced so its long term future is doubtful.

Amazingly two of the earliest planes (barely 10 years old) are now being scrapped

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2018/06/06/first-airbus-a380-...

I've not flown on one, only had a wander round one of the prototypes in Farnborough which was impressive. But stripping a 400M€ plane for spare parts after 10 years, ouch.

I'm not sure they are shit really.

I regularly travel by train from Cumbria to Aberystwyth, a journey that involves several changes of train (and operator), and invariably I get to my destination on time and have a seat for the whole journey. Statistically, I am very unlikely to be killed or seriously injured, and I get to listen to some tunes, maybe have a beer and look at the view, and importantly my journey is far more environmentally friendly than the alternative modes of transport available.

I do appreciate that others may have different experiences.

Why would you assume most people like their holidays as neatly planned and regimented as you do?

It's been a long while since I used a train, 12 years ago but my Mrs used to be a fair ninja. We had a couple of trips to London from Leeds and one to Edinburgh from Leeds for £20 return each.

My last trip though was crap, me and a mate were stranded in Edinburgh on a Saturday morning, £80 each for the train back to Leeds, it took 6 hours and included 2 changes and was standing room only on all 3 trains. With hindsight I could have hired a van and drove home for less in 4 hours and had a seat the entire way, the cherry on the cake was I could have brought the broken motorbike back with us rather than driving back the next week to collect it. 

Yes, if you don't know how long you're going to be somewhere, and you've not had the time/wherewithal to spend ages looking into the best way to approach limiting how much to pay, it's the 'go to' solution for a lot of people. 

So perhaps it would be useful to compare open rail return tickets to air fares that allow the same kind of flexibility?

That's one of the stupid things I would stamp out. No playing silly buggers with pricing like that. A journey between two stations, via a given route, should be one price.

If I want to travel from Reading to Winchester, it shouldn't be cheaper to buy tickets from Reading to Basingtoke, and Basingtoke to Winchester. It's bloody madness.

I'm not suggesting anything of the sort: the current state of the UK's railways the is the UK's fault. What I am pointing out is the the market-driven EU railway directives will make it more difficult - perhaps, impossible - for a future progressive UK government to rectify the problems.

Why is an open return a daft idea?

I think you may be making the (very human) mistake of assuming that other people don't do what you think is an obvious thing to avoid doing. 

..but you’ve learnt the craft of driving? 

Someone asked about open returns, somoeone else said people travelling to or from another country buy advance train tickets for their destination in advance.

I can’t rely on planes being on time so I use open returns if a rail journey is involved after my plane lands. It makes sense to me.

I recently flew Stansted-Hannover return. I bought an open return train ticket to Stansted for £85. A fixed-time one was no cheaper anyway.

Subsequently I booked another flight for next week. Luton to Munich, then Munich into Stansted. I have a single train ticket to Luton. Single train tickets back from Stansted upon my return next week are all £85. However last night I was able to buy a new single ticket home from Stansted last night for £60 and keep my original open return to use next week.

This has saved £25

Quite WHY some Stansted tickets are £85 single and some £60 single and an open return is £85 minimum, is another matter. My point is that open returns make sense 

Last year I booked a fixed single ticket on a Venice-Florence train. I missed that train due to some delay and had to buy a new walk-on ticket which was a wee bit dearer than my original one but by considerably less than the wasted original ticket had been

Later this month I will be flying to Rome and travelling on to Florence.

I am due to land in Rome at 15:35

I will take the express train into Roma Termini from the airport

For what time of departure should I book my advance train ticket to Florence, please?

Advance tickets vary in price between 27E and 35E.

on the day it is around 50E

You need to look up the word 'irony' in a dictionary then do the same.

I'm quite slap dash, I'm pretty sure most people plan things like long distance travel considerably more than I do.

Quantify a lot of people.

I suspect the go to solution is actually driving in those circumstances, which is a problem. I agree the system is broken, but the idea that what people typically pay for a return rail ticket from Manchester to London is in anyway similar to what people typically pay for a long haul flight is laughable.

I'd fly to Florence!

I said it was a silly price and asked how many people actually bought open returns.

I think you might be making the (very human) mistake of assuming I had written something I haven't.

Aren’t you the clever and funny one today. Flights to Florence involved a lot of faff with trains on the UK side. Going via Rome is, strangely, the neatest option for me in that particular day. 

You are evading my quite reasonable question.

I recently did an inter rail holiday.

Bingley to Aberdeen via Leeds. (Then flew to stavanger). Stavanger to Oslo, Oslo to Gothenburg, Gothenburg to Copenhagen, Copenhagen to Bremen, Bremen to Bodegraven, Bodegraven to Amsterdam. None of the trips were booked more than a day in advance apart from the Bingley to Aberdeen leg.

Guess which part gave the most trouble?

Yes, the Bingley to Leeds train was cancelled, requiring an expensive taxi to Leeds right at the start of the holiday. Every other single train ran on time!

Thursday morning I had a commuter train in Germany delayed 10 minutes

Friday morning a similar train had a 10 minute delay and then suddenly ceased to exist

I’ve had one 30 minute delay on a train in Italy

all in all a decent record 

It's a daft idea because it costs £376 compared to £86.90 for an off peak return. 

It is usually possible to schedule trips that avoid paying the higher price. Sometimes it involves a nights accomodation but £150 including a good meal out and a few beers still sounds like a better option than £376 to pack yourself onto a busy peak time train

I’m just not sure why I should be telling you which train to catch, when a) you seem to have done lots of planning and worked out what is best for you; and b) I know nothing of your personal circumstances. 

Lots of people like a loose itinerary - moving around and finding camping or bed and breakfast along the way. 

Of course, the easiest way to do that is to hire a car in your destination country, but we should be making it economically viable to choose the more environmentally friendly option of public transport.

A system that makes it cheaper for a single person to drive long distances than take the train, never mind a family of four - unless you can plan everything out in advance and can schedule everything to make sure you're never on public transport at peak times - is absolutely nuts to my mind.

Watford Junction - Manchester Piccadilly return can be done at peak travel times for a bargaintastic £260ish if you book specific trains

What I don’t like to see is the pettiness applied to passengers who got on the wrong train and are being force to buy £50+ new tickets just for making a mistake or for running 15 mins late. I am talking about journeys of less than 2 hours in off peak hours in trains with plenty of seats.

I know people need to be discouraged from “trying it on” but unless I am always seeing very skilled con artists, all I see is perfectly reasonable civilised people being totally rinsed.

in fact I am now concerned as to whether my Stansted open return will be valid on the train I plan to use it on (19:21 Wednesday)

I’ve twice said on this thread that the system in the U.K. is broken, but that appears to have been ignored.

Well you are coming across as being either deliberately obtuse, or unable to recognise a rhetorical question being used to make a point.

So, in case I also am coming across as being deliberately obtuse, I'll courteously clarify.

You said:
"However, I assume most people coming from abroad and using trains for longer journeys will book in advance"

My point was that to do so is a bit of a gamble, relying on the overseas travel aspect - including getting from the airport to the rail station if the rail station is not in the airport - being on time. 

I have made an assumption here that the people coming from (or going to) abroad are flying, but the comment applies equally to arrival by train. 

Just because people are not posting "hear hear, well said NickB, what a great insight", does not mean that your comment has been ignored. 

What an odd comment. The fact that people are directing comments at me that don’t appear to acknowledge that is why I suspect it has been missed. You seem rather confrontational today. 

It's a figure of speech.

Quantify typically.  

Fair enough. I think you're right.

If it was a rhetorical question, you didn’t really want an answer.

You could make exactly the same point about booking an airline flight, where generally you don’t have much choice, you have to book a specific flight in advance.

In the example you have given, you have researched the options and decided that the penalty for having an open ticket is such that you are prepared to pay that rather than booking a specific train and either worrying about missing the train because of delays or booking a later train and the probably wasting some time waiting in the station.

The vast majority of visitors to the U.K. for example via London, will spend a night or more in London before travelling on to other U.K. destinations. The issues about flight delays becomes much less of an issue in these cases. So as I have said, the system is broken, but the comparison made by the OP is somewhat spurious.

Actually I don’t have to in this case. Quantify it how you like, but just assume it is the same for both times I use the word

The point is that the OP’s example is apples and pears.

There shouldn’t have to be an art though, should there. It’s just bullshit. 

It's scarcely an art, it's never been simpler, there's even an app for it these days

That is an awful lot of poo.

You appear to be an attention-seeking petulant cry-baby these past 36 hours

Was Blue the poster who sat by a crying baby on a train recently? 

Rhetorical questions in certain contexts are a request for a response rather than an actual answer to the question . Once upon a time I thought you had the nous to spot that and the courtesy to act on it.

oops deleted too much there but tou were saying that they will stay a night or two in a hotel.

at risk of being one of those UKC tedious pricks that responds to everything with “have you got a link to that”, I state merely that I am interested to hear how you reached that statement especially as I do a fair bit of overseas travel that doesn’t really accommodate me bedding down in one location before moving on to the actual destination the morning after 

There was such a thing on a train I was on last night but aside from saying that it compounded some other travel woes, I didn’t make a big deal about it. Maybe you thinking about the thread by BoingBoing

For me, babies cry and it can be irritating but I simply grit my teeth and assume it can’t last that long and assume that I did the same in infanthood, as opposed to posting pointless and inane clickbait threads on Internet forums about it all.

I meant to say earlier that I retire from this thread .

I think we've already covered that, thanks though

PKP InterCity is utter, utter garbage.  Low frequencies, poor services, dirty, knackered rolling stock, rotting stations (except where the EU has coughed up to posh them up a bit) and severe overcrowding (allegedly compulsory reservation, but all that means is that they don't *mark* the reservations).  Grim in the extreme.

My Polish housemate thinks our system (admittedly he doesn't use Northern) is great in comparison (if a bit expensive).

Deutsche Bahn is having massive problems with delays of late, and its fares are not as cheap as you'd think.  They are quite easy to compare with the UK because they use a very similar pricing model, with both unreserved and reserved ticket types.

Nederlandse Spoorwegen is OK but very, very basic.

SNCF (that everyone normally shouts about) is dire once you get away from the TGV.  Renfe...well, there's a reason Spain has an excellent coach network.

The grass is not always greener.

And I bet you can't buy that London to Dubai return on the day at that price, it'll be more like £2000 if you rock up at the airport and buy a flexible ticket.  Off peak the railway will be a lot less (if still a little expensive).  And if you book in advance you'll get a much better price for almost any likely version of that journey.

I'm not saying it's perfect, but your comparison is not fair.

None of this detracts from the fact that Northern Rail are institutionally incompetent, of course.  But Northern Rail is one TOC - all the others, without exception, are better.

Of course a significant part of the problem with our rail system lies with Network Rail.

Maybe it should be privatised :-;

You remember how "good" Railcrack was?

South Western passengers might not agree about Northern being the only problem TOC

SWR is currently going through a similar Driver Only Operation related set of strikes (for which I personally more blame the RMT - a nasty, overmilitant[1] organisation if there ever was one), but if you take that away is *nowhere near* as incompetent as Northern.

[1] I don't hate Unions, but I do sometimes wish the RMT would go away and the railway staff presently a member of it joined the rather more sensible ASLEF instead.

I used PKP extensively whilst working out in Poland for Euro 2012 (and on numerous other trips) and have always found it to be adequate including intercity services through the night, clean and functional. Yes, it's a bit tatty in places but when you're paying around £15 as the walk up price to go between Warsaw and Krakow.. who's to complain? Plus they don't have extortionate peak time pricing.

Compared to the excellent Swiss trains, where I recently was robbed of £45 to travel between Zurich and Lucerne and back (roughly Manchester to Stoke).. give me the PKP any day! 

Govia Thameslink Railway, what's their excuse? Nothing at all to do with the unions there.

You could say the Driver only operation is about safety and security for the passengers, trains are so long now the driver can't see along the length of it to make sure they are clear, and who do you go to to ask a question when there's no guard? It's been touted as the unions flexing their muscles but it's also the TOC not having a real incentive to sort it out. Personally, I think there should be guards on trains.

They can using CCTV with screens in the cab.

That part is true.

I have mixed views.  I can't see any argument for guards on city metro services, staffing the stations would be better.  Longer-distance there is an argument for a second person but a far less strong one that they should operate the doors.  Southern (GTR) have what they call OBS who are dedicated to passenger service and do not operate the train itself.

The trains are shite.Put them back in public ownership.Unified timetable,unified prices,staff on decent wage.Plus,no more insanity of a first class carriage with 2 people and the other carriages jammed to the gills.

You're Jeremy Corbyn.
Donate £5 to the Labour Party.

PS: I agree.

Southern want to replace guards with conductors. The difference is who is responsible for the train safety. 

A guard is responsible for train safety and the safety of the passengers. A conductor is not. 

Hence a guard has the ultimate say as to if the train can leave a station... They can get out the train and observe doors etc from the platform, while a driver cannot leave the cab.

Southern state that safety will not be compromised. Rmt state otherwise. 

Of course it may be nothing to do with that  but may be about jobs or something else but neither side can really admit it. 

Train service is mixed. Some excellent and some really bad.

have you been to Birmingham new street since it’s revamp ? Fantastic station.

just glad I do not have to commute on a Liverpool / Manchester train. 

But to get to London is great and excellent 

This is a bit like arguments when trams replaced horse and cart taxis, then buses, then trains. Water taxis and building of bridges over the Thames. Black cabs and uber.

The reality is in less than 25 years the only reason public transport will have any driver, guard or conductor is because people still desire a personal or human element. Not because they are needed. 

Unions always seem to be behind the times, fighting the argument of the last generation, not looking forwards to the next.

If they want to keep any staff in a job by 2040, personal service of conductor is the only route. Polite ticket checking, advice about ongoing connections, helping people with several bags, plus selling decent food and drink. 

Nationalisation then.

No. Nationalizing it would make think like the previous generation. They need to look forward. 

McDonnell, McCluskey, Corbyn, rmt etc....  they aren't forward thinking to a future tech world. They are dinosaurs of eras long gone. 

It needs investment though, which is a different debate. 

Agreed.  The future of people in work is dealing with people.  People make terrible automatons - and having people as automatons gets people killed.  Almost all road deaths are caused by human error.  By removing the human you remove the deaths.

For that reason, I think Driver Only Operation is a very short-term thing - maybe 20 years - and the future is going to be *guard* only operation like on the DLR.