Holy frikkin smokatines!!!
I just checked National Rail to simply get a price on traveling from where I am in Stevenage to Brighton so I can plan my travels over the month. A simple journey with one connecting stop at Kings X. £28.90!! That’s just one way by the way. Their “Cheap Day Single” offering, which doesn’t include travel during peak hours. Are they insane? Seriously, are they MENTAL? I could fly from Pittsburgh to Chicago for less on a good day. That includes jet fuel people!!
Here’s what I just found with a tiny bit of research: How much would it cost to travel today by rail from London Kings X to Manchester? £109.50 for a Standard Open Single (each way), a 2.5 hour journey. You might, like most people, prefer to opt for the planet destroying option and fly from London Heathrow to Manchester: today’s prices, leaving today – £40 each way all incl. with British Airways. A nice comfortable 1 hour journey. BMI offers fares as low as £28 each way if you plan ahead.
It’s just WRONG how greedy the rail system is. You know something’s waaaay screwey when it costs less to fly somewhere that it does to catch the nation’s default public transport option. I’m not really sure how I’m going to be able to come and go to Brighton as freely as I’d planned… so I have to fashion another solution. Ehh! This leaves me slightly miffed.
** UPDATE **
I nearly forgot about Megabus!! I can ride between Brighton and London for just £3 each way. There’s a choice of 3 journeys a day, and from Kings X I can catch a train to Stevenage for £10, cutting the overall cost right down to £13 each way for just 1 extra hour in transit. I’m annoyed I have to use the rail system at all, but YAY for Megabus! You’ve rescued my UK adventure. I LOVE YOU!!
Cait
The bus fare is more like it. AmTrak here in the states is like that. Too expensive.
Ms. Wakame
Ouch that’s steep aj!! I didn’t know about the air subsidies either. Very interesting…
I am still horrified over the rail prices here. If you live in the UK, where hardly anyone has a drivers license (and thank God for that because there is no-where to park and hardly any space to drive), the nations economy depends on rail (and slightly on buses) to get to and from work every day. The average commute each way for people who work in London is around 2 hours. Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of catching trains here knows they are overcrowded and almost never on time with frequent cancellations that cause more overcrowding and lateness.
The rail system here used to be a well oiled machine that was affordable and reliable and the envy of other countries until privatization in 1994. Then there were a series of crazy accidents that resulted in an extremely expensive track replacement programme along with speed restrictions that caused severe operational disruption to the whole national network and spiralling ticket fares that just go up in crazy increments each year. Privatisation seems to work really well in the States from what I’ve seen… perhaps Americans are better capitalists… but in the UK it seems to be a recipe for disaster in each case so far. It scares me each time the government here decides to privatise any service that is part of the infrastructure. Hmm. I wandered a bit there…
Anyway, I’m just on holiday in the UK now, but when I lived here, relying on rail transport truly sucked. The prices were already almost outside my reach, but now within a year they have become truly unaffordable. I have no idea how my brother can afford to travel into the heart of London every day all month long. I don’t know what he’s paying, but I’m sure it feels about as comfortable as a prostate check. I feel so bad for anyone who has to catch a train to or via London every day… and luckier than ever that I can work from home.
aj
The problem isn’t that rail is too expensive – it’s that air travel is overly subsidized, what with bailouts to airlines and aircraft manufacturers from central governments in nearly every western nation. Like big-box retailing, air travel is a commodity where the competition is a race to the bottom.
If you think the equivalent of $50 for that rail journey is pricey, consider the far-flung distances between Canadian cities. For me to take the train from Montreal to Edmonton (granted, it’s like going from London to the Ukraine – literally) is somewhere in the order of $3000 CDN and involves a multi-day sleeper car journey. The air travel price is a couple hundred bucks and takes less than a day.
If we’d invested in bullet trains back then…