the difference between public transport being seen as an enabler for the wider economy and a benefit to society for people to use and being seen as a “profit centre”
and to think it was sold to us that privatising rail would increase quality and keep prices competitive through the free market.
I once got a train journey in Palermo, Sicily. The ticket cost me €1.60
I thought the ticket machine was broken.
Even then it’s not even the Private companies profiting off it, it’s the Government that set the prices and take in most of it, since covid I don’t think Private companies have had a profit from it (before it was at most 2% of the fare). I Mean people blame all the private companies – but it’s the Government who you should be blaming for it mostly!
Of course UK train fares can be as low, but which tax would you raise to fund the subsidy?
You are basically having your fare in Berlin paid by German taxpayers.
On a serious note, Germany subsidise their rail and the UK don’t. I understand that everyone chipping in through taxes and making it cheaper for all, will enable higher usage, but were critically short of money and short term no ones taking that hit.
We need a stand alone policy group that work on 5-20+ year planning and not just a parliament cycle
UK is just a massive rip off
I drive a 2016 Toyota hybrid, it’s 31 miles to my place of work, it’s cheaper for me to drive than use public transport.
There’s no incentive for me to use public transport at all.
This is why I voted for Jeremy Corbyn.
Because every time private companies make profit from stuff like this, it’s taking that money out of the economy. It’s leaving less for people to actually spend, enthusiastically on things they want.
I can also share: I travelled from an airport near Helsinki to Helsinki city centre by train, it just costed me less than 5 Euro 🥹
It’s literally under £3 from Geneva airport to the centre, compared with £12 on the Elizabeth line Z1 to Heathrow… heaven forbid you want to get the express. Nearly £6 on the atrocious Piccadilly line too
It’s wild how the narrative of privatization for better service has completely fallen apart. Seeing it as a profit center instead of a public good is exactly where the rot set in. Stories like that €1.60 ticket just highlight how far we’ve strayed from the basic concept of affordable, functional transport.
Generally speaking transport in London is well priced. The exceptions being when you enter the special fare zones where the airport owns the track
Where is the public outcry over this? Oh wait it has nothing to do with immigrants or asylum seekers…
I used to Singapore MTR trains for 4-days last week. I probably made 14 separate journeys. The cost £11.50!!
Privatisation and Thatcher is the root cause here.
This is old, government are set to freeze rail fares for next year.
To get from Ciampino Airport in Rome to the city centre and the massive Termini train station it costs about €2.70. This includes a bus towards the town of Ciampino, and then a train to Rome’s central.
A journey of about 20 minutes… for €2.70
Whenever I use trains in Europe I reminded of how shit our rail system is.
I regularly get trains from Geneva to Zurich for about £40. Double decker trains, that are rarely if ever late…with multiple meal cars where you can buy a meal and really are essentially always not only on time but aggressively on time..i.e. leave the second it turns to the minute they are meant to depart…
The equivalent (yet shorter) journey from Manchester to London….I mean it’s a fairground dartboard game as to what you’d pay but I’ve seen up to £140
My dad is 2 minutes away by train but that 2 minute journey costs £4. I would travel by train a whole lot more if it wasn’t so wildly expensive
Porto Airport to historic centre, two euros. Taxi to Glasgow airport, 27 pounds one way (the bus is shite at 430’am)
This is an old post. Rail fares are being frozen as announced in the budget.
Isn’t there some weird ownership in place with the UK public transportation system? A lot of it is owned by European companies and they have excessive ticket prices in the UK which they use to subsidise their own national systems?
I am so fed up of this clickbait. The UK ticket mentioned has a standard single fare of 9 pounds. The 20+ pounds quoted is for first class. It’s on a regional service that stops once. In Berlin, a single ticket from the airport to Alexanderplatz costs €4.70. It’s a local train service stopping at every street corner entailing 14 stops and two changes. They are not equivalent.
Finding the most expensive UK ticket price possible and comparing with an invented foreign ticket price is just engagement bait.
Idk, restricting poorer people from moving around when you’re actively shafting poorer people just seems smart.
Working as intended tbh.
Just checked on National Rail and at 8am it’s £13.30, off peak it’s £9, so still high, but not £20. Presumably they’re talking about the Gatwick Express which is a bit different.
Rail travel is massively inefficient and costly for the average person.
I live 60 miles from London. So that’s a 120 mile return taking 3 hours for the complete trip there and back
It’s a £95 return which is basically 85p a mile or 50p a minute to be on the train. For that there’s no wifi for a significant part of the journey as it’s a dead zone so hard to work on the train. And coming back I usually have to stand for about 45 mins or stay a few hours late to get a seat
I recently had to travel up to see my parents and wondered what the cost would be. 5h car journey vs a 6h / 3 change train fair for £200. I can get there and back on almost a full tank so like £80 of fuel. So me and my wife it’s £400 vs £80 to drive.
We will never get traffic off roads and onto public transport when the cost and service is like that.
The big issue is I’ve been doing fairly long train journeys for 20 years. I used to go do a 5h trip to visit my wife when she was in uni when we were dating. And the service has not improved in 10 years. It’s still expensive, staff don’t give a shit if you have problems, it’s all just get cash and screw the passenger.
Good thing Labour are renationalising the rails and freezing fares.
I’ve moved to Melbourne, Australia and I recently took a 3 hour train ride to Warnambool.
It cost $8AUD.
It sucks.
Because if train travel was priced properly, I’d have travelled all over the UK by now.
Yup.
Add to that the utter con that peak and off peak is.
No one outside of the uk can actually believe its true.
Won’t someone please think of the shareholders?
Up until 2024, a large number of UK Rail networks were owned by a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn.
Their trains were literally subsidised by ours.
Picky transport nerd person here, and I do know that tickets are expensive in the UK – but I don’t think this is the best comparison.
Berlin Brandenburg airport is right on the outskirts of Berlin and has a Metro connection.
Gatwick is much further away from London and only has southern or Thameslink trains (or the extortionate Gatwick Express)
The best way to pay for this trip would be contactless, as Gatwick is in the London zones – off peak is £13ish.
London to Heathrow would be a better comparison, distance and connection wise.
Yes, I am a joyless old fart of a person.
This is not a meme – more useless moderation on this board
All transport in the UK is heavily taxed by the Government meaning the companies pay heavy to lease those tenders and run those Lines they operate on meaning while they do make profits the government makes a hell of a lot more
German trains are heavily subsidised, so thank the German taxpayer.
Berlin airport is in Berlin but Gatwick is in Surrey and miles from London. A better comparison is Heathrow or City Airport. From City airport to the centre is probably similar price. From Heathrow i’d guess a fractionnmore.
Just as an interesting fact:
Germany has a nationwide season ticket.
£50/month for everything public transport, excluding high-speed services – That’s basically the only exception.
Other than that you’re free to use buses, metros, trams, ferries, trains…
That ticket is also subsidised for pupils, people on benefits and by employers.
It’s awful how expensive season tickets in the UK are.
The price of Thatcherite privatisation! She has destroyed this country for profit.
40 comments
the difference between public transport being seen as an enabler for the wider economy and a benefit to society for people to use and being seen as a “profit centre”
and to think it was sold to us that privatising rail would increase quality and keep prices competitive through the free market.
I once got a train journey in Palermo, Sicily. The ticket cost me €1.60
I thought the ticket machine was broken.
Even then it’s not even the Private companies profiting off it, it’s the Government that set the prices and take in most of it, since covid I don’t think Private companies have had a profit from it (before it was at most 2% of the fare). I Mean people blame all the private companies – but it’s the Government who you should be blaming for it mostly!
Of course UK train fares can be as low, but which tax would you raise to fund the subsidy?
You are basically having your fare in Berlin paid by German taxpayers.
On a serious note, Germany subsidise their rail and the UK don’t. I understand that everyone chipping in through taxes and making it cheaper for all, will enable higher usage, but were critically short of money and short term no ones taking that hit.
We need a stand alone policy group that work on 5-20+ year planning and not just a parliament cycle
UK is just a massive rip off
I drive a 2016 Toyota hybrid, it’s 31 miles to my place of work, it’s cheaper for me to drive than use public transport.
There’s no incentive for me to use public transport at all.
This is why I voted for Jeremy Corbyn.
Because every time private companies make profit from stuff like this, it’s taking that money out of the economy. It’s leaving less for people to actually spend, enthusiastically on things they want.
I can also share: I travelled from an airport near Helsinki to Helsinki city centre by train, it just costed me less than 5 Euro 🥹
It’s literally under £3 from Geneva airport to the centre, compared with £12 on the Elizabeth line Z1 to Heathrow… heaven forbid you want to get the express. Nearly £6 on the atrocious Piccadilly line too
It’s wild how the narrative of privatization for better service has completely fallen apart. Seeing it as a profit center instead of a public good is exactly where the rot set in. Stories like that €1.60 ticket just highlight how far we’ve strayed from the basic concept of affordable, functional transport.
Generally speaking transport in London is well priced. The exceptions being when you enter the special fare zones where the airport owns the track
Where is the public outcry over this? Oh wait it has nothing to do with immigrants or asylum seekers…
I used to Singapore MTR trains for 4-days last week. I probably made 14 separate journeys. The cost £11.50!!
Privatisation and Thatcher is the root cause here.
This is old, government are set to freeze rail fares for next year.
To get from Ciampino Airport in Rome to the city centre and the massive Termini train station it costs about €2.70. This includes a bus towards the town of Ciampino, and then a train to Rome’s central.
A journey of about 20 minutes… for €2.70
Whenever I use trains in Europe I reminded of how shit our rail system is.
I regularly get trains from Geneva to Zurich for about £40. Double decker trains, that are rarely if ever late…with multiple meal cars where you can buy a meal and really are essentially always not only on time but aggressively on time..i.e. leave the second it turns to the minute they are meant to depart…
The equivalent (yet shorter) journey from Manchester to London….I mean it’s a fairground dartboard game as to what you’d pay but I’ve seen up to £140
My dad is 2 minutes away by train but that 2 minute journey costs £4. I would travel by train a whole lot more if it wasn’t so wildly expensive
Porto Airport to historic centre, two euros. Taxi to Glasgow airport, 27 pounds one way (the bus is shite at 430’am)
This is an old post. Rail fares are being frozen as announced in the budget.
Isn’t there some weird ownership in place with the UK public transportation system? A lot of it is owned by European companies and they have excessive ticket prices in the UK which they use to subsidise their own national systems?
I am so fed up of this clickbait. The UK ticket mentioned has a standard single fare of 9 pounds. The 20+ pounds quoted is for first class. It’s on a regional service that stops once. In Berlin, a single ticket from the airport to Alexanderplatz costs €4.70. It’s a local train service stopping at every street corner entailing 14 stops and two changes. They are not equivalent.
Finding the most expensive UK ticket price possible and comparing with an invented foreign ticket price is just engagement bait.
Idk, restricting poorer people from moving around when you’re actively shafting poorer people just seems smart.
Working as intended tbh.
Just checked on National Rail and at 8am it’s £13.30, off peak it’s £9, so still high, but not £20. Presumably they’re talking about the Gatwick Express which is a bit different.
Rail travel is massively inefficient and costly for the average person.
I live 60 miles from London. So that’s a 120 mile return taking 3 hours for the complete trip there and back
It’s a £95 return which is basically 85p a mile or 50p a minute to be on the train. For that there’s no wifi for a significant part of the journey as it’s a dead zone so hard to work on the train. And coming back I usually have to stand for about 45 mins or stay a few hours late to get a seat
I recently had to travel up to see my parents and wondered what the cost would be. 5h car journey vs a 6h / 3 change train fair for £200. I can get there and back on almost a full tank so like £80 of fuel. So me and my wife it’s £400 vs £80 to drive.
We will never get traffic off roads and onto public transport when the cost and service is like that.
The big issue is I’ve been doing fairly long train journeys for 20 years. I used to go do a 5h trip to visit my wife when she was in uni when we were dating. And the service has not improved in 10 years. It’s still expensive, staff don’t give a shit if you have problems, it’s all just get cash and screw the passenger.
Good thing Labour are renationalising the rails and freezing fares.
I’ve moved to Melbourne, Australia and I recently took a 3 hour train ride to Warnambool.
It cost $8AUD.
It sucks.
Because if train travel was priced properly, I’d have travelled all over the UK by now.
Yup.
Add to that the utter con that peak and off peak is.
No one outside of the uk can actually believe its true.
Won’t someone please think of the shareholders?
Up until 2024, a large number of UK Rail networks were owned by a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn.
Their trains were literally subsidised by ours.
Picky transport nerd person here, and I do know that tickets are expensive in the UK – but I don’t think this is the best comparison.
Berlin Brandenburg airport is right on the outskirts of Berlin and has a Metro connection.
Gatwick is much further away from London and only has southern or Thameslink trains (or the extortionate Gatwick Express)
The best way to pay for this trip would be contactless, as Gatwick is in the London zones – off peak is £13ish.
London to Heathrow would be a better comparison, distance and connection wise.
Yes, I am a joyless old fart of a person.
This is not a meme – more useless moderation on this board
All transport in the UK is heavily taxed by the Government meaning the companies pay heavy to lease those tenders and run those Lines they operate on meaning while they do make profits the government makes a hell of a lot more
German trains are heavily subsidised, so thank the German taxpayer.
Berlin airport is in Berlin but Gatwick is in Surrey and miles from London. A better comparison is Heathrow or City Airport. From City airport to the centre is probably similar price. From Heathrow i’d guess a fractionnmore.
Just as an interesting fact:
Germany has a nationwide season ticket.
£50/month for everything public transport, excluding high-speed services – That’s basically the only exception.
Other than that you’re free to use buses, metros, trams, ferries, trains…
That ticket is also subsidised for pupils, people on benefits and by employers.
It’s awful how expensive season tickets in the UK are.
The price of Thatcherite privatisation! She has destroyed this country for profit.
Comments are closed.