Hopefully one day it will be cheaper to get a train from London to Cornwall than to fly from London to Marrakech.
June 22nd fares are Paddington to Penzance £70.90 BA Heathrow to Marrakech £118.00
Rail fare could be cheaper but doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
How much does it cost in petrol to drive from Paddington to Penzance?
For me rail fares need to be brought down in a way that gives people an alternative to using their own cars.
Yes I'll have my own privacy in my car, but the fact it'll cost £70.90 per person (via. train), to get down to Penzance, compared to £50 (the cost of a full tank in my car, which'll easily get down there) which could be spread over five people remains a no-brainer
Hopefully one day it will be cheaper to get a train from London to Cornwall than to fly from London to Marrakech.
June 22nd fares are Paddington to Penzance £70.90 BA Heathrow to Marrakech £118.00
Rail fare could be cheaper but doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
Remember, it takes 5 and a half hours by train from Paddington to Penzance.
Quicker to fly from London to Marrakech. Bargain!
Is it still quicker when you add on the time taken to get to the Airport and deal with having to be there two hours before you fly etc.
What about stuck in a taxi in South Ken traffic - and have to leg it to all the way to Paddington in a sweat? Only to find the Penzance service is severely delayed due to "operational difficulties".
And that's before you're stopped for an hour en route because of signal failure at Taunton.
If it didn't make you cry, the irony of this coming from the party that implemented it, would make you laugh: "Grant Shapps, who also worked on the review, said the railways had suffered from "years of fragmentation, confusion and over-complication"."
It might take some time to get right but when it is done and dusted, it'll mean a better and fairer system without foreign owned franchises taking big money out of the system .. AND, I was recently surprised to read that the channel tunnel is owned by a French company
Hopefully one day it will be cheaper to get a train from London to Cornwall than to fly from London to Marrakech.
June 22nd fares are Paddington to Penzance £70.90 BA Heathrow to Marrakech £118.00
Rail fare could be cheaper but doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
How much does it cost in petrol to drive from Paddington to Penzance?
For me rail fares need to be brought down in a way that gives people an alternative to using their own cars.
Yes I'll have my own privacy in my car, but the fact it'll cost £70.90 per person (via. train), to get down to Penzance, compared to £50 (the cost of a full tank in my car, which'll easily get down there) which could be spread over five people remains a no-brainer
I'm not saying the rail fares shouldn't be reduced but London to Penzance costs more in a car than just the petrol. Depreciation, opportunity cost, insurance, road tax, servicing, etc. are all part of the costs of a car journey.
Hopefully one day it will be cheaper to get a train from London to Cornwall than to fly from London to Marrakech.
June 22nd fares are Paddington to Penzance £70.90 BA Heathrow to Marrakech £118.00
Rail fare could be cheaper but doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
How much does it cost in petrol to drive from Paddington to Penzance?
For me rail fares need to be brought down in a way that gives people an alternative to using their own cars.
Yes I'll have my own privacy in my car, but the fact it'll cost £70.90 per person (via. train), to get down to Penzance, compared to £50 (the cost of a full tank in my car, which'll easily get down there) which could be spread over five people remains a no-brainer
I'm not saying the rail fares shouldn't be reduced but London to Penzance costs more in a car than just the petrol. Depreciation, opportunity cost, insurance, road tax, servicing, etc. are all part of the costs of a car journey.
Third off rail fare if you're more than one person. Or if you're young or old!
Comparison with cost of hiring car for the journey might be more realistic.
It might take some time to get right but when it is done and dusted, it'll mean a better and fairer system without foreign owned franchises taking big money out of the system .. AND, I was recently surprised to read that the channel tunnel is owned by a French company
Unless I have misunderstood something, the same foreign owned companies will be able to tender for franchises, as now. The change is going to be a new organisation (GBR) that will take over the awarding and administration of the franchises, a job currently done by the DfT. This organisation will eventually absorb Network Rail, which is currently the infrastructure manager.
Hopefully one day it will be cheaper to get a train from London to Cornwall than to fly from London to Marrakech.
June 22nd fares are Paddington to Penzance £70.90 BA Heathrow to Marrakech £118.00
Rail fare could be cheaper but doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
How much does it cost in petrol to drive from Paddington to Penzance?
For me rail fares need to be brought down in a way that gives people an alternative to using their own cars.
Yes I'll have my own privacy in my car, but the fact it'll cost £70.90 per person (via. train), to get down to Penzance, compared to £50 (the cost of a full tank in my car, which'll easily get down there) which could be spread over five people remains a no-brainer
I'm not saying the rail fares shouldn't be reduced but London to Penzance costs more in a car than just the petrol. Depreciation, opportunity cost, insurance, road tax, servicing, etc. are all part of the costs of a car journey.
There are hidden costs but taking four people by train to Penzance by train or by car is for most people a no brainer choice of car every time. Cheaper by far and more convenient. Train fares are prohibitive for family journeys. If car journeys need to be discouraged then train fares must fall significantly.
However as yet I’m not really seeing an answer to the big headache of the private railway which nobody has so far addressed.
Privatisation makes sense if it encourages competition, which benefits customers. How’s your choice of water supplier working out?
The UK system split the railway up into 20+ private monopolies. Now, I can certainly see that you can introduce competition on long distance routes, so long as you have a body that controls the timetables and fares, which GBR would do. So lets say you have two operators running high speed London- Manchester. You might be the sort that chooses one operator for the free coffee. But others just want to know that every half hour, on the same minute, there’s a train on that route. GBR would organise that. But will it be of interest to private operators compared to the old monopoly that Virgin enjoyed for years? Not sure. I am sure that you cant do this anyway on the commuter services. Better to hand it all to TfL, effectively the return of Network South East. But then it is all State owned, so where’s the pressure to deliver? Dunno. Across Europe they run the Open Access system on these routes, which works better, but private operators say it is still unfair because they go up against a strong State operator such as Deutsche Bahn. Fact is though that you could get from Brussels to Prague for €29, — albeit you need the Man in Seat 61 to guide you through buying the tickets. So we aint got it sorted either.
Never forget that while she hated trains, it wasnt Thatcher that sold them off. Presumably she realised it was a can of worms. But then again...water...
This looks like how the London Overground, DLR and London buses are operated, and their models have been reasonably successful and uncontroversial, with private operators being paid to operate services by TfL (to a strict specification) and all the revenue (and risk) reverting to TfL. I imagine a lot of people don't even realise that their DLR train or the 89 bus is being operated by a private company
Comments
On Twitter, I’m told Boris is a facist though... what should I believe?
Seriously, as Labour voter, I welcome this.... plus it makes Corbyn even more irrelevant. Win Win.
One for the bank.
Let's hope for more of the same - energy and water would be a good start.
BA Heathrow to Marrakech £118.00
Rail fare could be cheaper but doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
"If the plan is followed through and properly implemented .........".
For me rail fares need to be brought down in a way that gives people an alternative to using their own cars.
Yes I'll have my own privacy in my car, but the fact it'll cost £70.90 per person (via. train), to get down to Penzance, compared to £50 (the cost of a full tank in my car, which'll easily get down there) which could be spread over five people remains a no-brainer
Quicker to fly from London to Marrakech. Bargain!
Only to find the Penzance service is severely delayed due to "operational difficulties".
And that's before you're stopped for an hour en route because of signal failure at Taunton.
Comparison with cost of hiring car for the journey might be more realistic.
The change is going to be a new organisation (GBR) that will take over the awarding and administration of the franchises, a job currently done by the DfT.
This organisation will eventually absorb Network Rail, which is currently the infrastructure manager.
Across Europe they run the Open Access system on these routes, which works better, but private operators say it is still unfair because they go up against a strong State operator such as Deutsche Bahn. Fact is though that you could get from Brussels to Prague for €29, — albeit you need the Man in Seat 61 to guide you through buying the tickets. So we aint got it sorted either.
Doesn't look like it's getting cheaper to me.
Either they do it the correct way, or you'll end up with some stations only having one train a day due to lack of money coming in from it.