Jesus that's fierce expensive @neil

I thought Irish Rail prices were a bit expensive, but I can get a day return (any train out and back) from my local station to Dublin for €40 (200KM each way - about 70 minutes if there's no intervening stops).
If I booked my ticket a week ahead, I could get it for €32, but I'd have to select the outbound and return train I wanted, though I would be able to reserve a seat.

@neil I had to go in to London, full price a while ago. 20 minutes - 20 miles or so. It was £30+.

I have a railcard, but even then it is still nearly £15.

Of course people won't use it if they have a viable alternative.

@neil I know someone planning to come to London from Belgium at the end of the month for a few days; they're going to drive and use the chunnel. Two seats on the chunnel are hundreds of pounds/3x cost/ more than taking the car across on it which is crazy.

@neil About 120 miles round trip by road. 3.5 miles / kwh @ 7p/kwh == £2.38 by electric car (plus I guess parking and congestion charge).

Note: this is not a suggestion that everyone should drive to London, but a commentary on the ridiculousness of rail fares. Although from a convenience perspective, training to London is probably better than driving, whereas for the vast majority of non-London destinations, the train is a complete pain in the arse compared to driving, as well as the cost..

@neil in fairness my open return for a ~40min trip into Newcastle is (always) £9 so maybe the problem is London/your particular Train Operating Company.

@neil It's laughable. Last trip to London from Manchester we took was over £100 each return - and before anyone says it, yes, we booked well in advance. That was a Saturday too, so would have been much more expensive during the week. Even travelling alone, it would have cost much less in petrol and probably parking as well.

@neil That is ridiculous. Here in Japan, Kyoto to Ōsaka (about 30 to 40 minutes) is about £3. I often reserve a “premium” seat for an extra £2.50. Even the Shinkansen from Kyoto to Tokyo which takes 2.5 hours (470km) is about £65.

And everyone uses the train.

When I try to explain that in the UK the price is different for every train and it depends when you book I get completely incredulous looks. Japan does not have peak/off peak pricing.

@neil On the other hand, travelling at non-peak times, you can go one way in First Class for £18.

But yeah, I know, as a non-Brit I should not comment on British matters.

It is just a pity when the story that spreads is that train travel in the UK is *always* extremely expensive. Which clearly is not the case.

@neil whereas I did Zürich to Utrecht return this weekend for £240 return - 8!hours trains each way- and that was 1st class coz it was only £30 more. With excellent and fairly priced hot food table service at my seat (!!!) for the longest leg. Hmmm

@neil

By comparison when I last went to the Netherlands in 2016, it cost me around £15 for a single standard train ticket from Nijmegen to Schiphol airport.

It's an hour and a half journey, literally from one side of the country to the other.

Today, almost a decade later the same journey costs under £25.

This is how it should be.

@neil a few years back when Swansea were about to get into the premier league a bunch of folks hired a limo from Swansea to the away match, the match and trip back including driver and discovered it cost less than the train

We need the equivalent of the German travel schemes.

@neil Your only hope is off-peak, advance booking and with one of the railcards.

@neil But for that price you get luxury conditions with five-star service right? Right?

@neil Even with the congestion charge and high parking charges, it’s still vastly cheaper for me to drive into London from Gloucestershire than to get the train.

@neil my flights DUB->STN for this weekend were cheaper. Possibly even including the ticket into Liverpool St.

@neil

I looked at the rail journey costs from Bristol to Haverfordwest.

A one way journey is ~£60. The cost for an equivalent journey via EV is ~£6.

That's the return journey cost. For up to 5 people. At a time of our choosing. In half the journey time.

When you get to Swansea or Carmarthen from Bristol there is no guarantee the connecting service from there to Haverfordwest will be running.

Back in the second age it was regularly replaced with a bus or taxi's 🤔🤦‍♂️

They would have to pay me to take the train with that alternate transport means available to me.

@neil TOCs are nakedly taking the piss and we're doing very little about it. This is not "public transport"

Just about any train in Eastern and Western Europe is much better. I've done all of it at one time or another. For example. OBB Vienna to Venice about 7 hours. £122.

@neil

@neil weird isn't it? Even factoring road tax, servicing etc it's cheaper for a single person to drive most often. I suspect though if it was cheaper they'd never be seats. We have mobile workforce and distributed families but no way to sensibly move about on mass.

@neil That's insane. Barcelona to Madrid (~2 hrs) is about 30 EUR and you can use the ticket on any later train if you miss the one you're booked on.

@neil For a trip to Perth from here in High Wycombe, the cheapest ticket I could find was half the cost of the car (including a share of maintenance etc.). And I couldn't take as much luggage with me. Slightly faster, but I wouldn't get to stop off at Tebay or the Moffat Toffee Shop.

@neil Truth