Trains
Comments
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"I pay 1000 euros a year here for a train pass, which lets me travel for free anywhere"
One of these two statements is clearly wrong.....0 -
Lets be honest, the train companies would be in serious trouble if commuters (who often have no viable alternative) stopped using the trains. Looking in London, the cost and reliability of trains/tubes has clearly been a factor in getting people on bikes.
Maybe one day companies will fully embrace the idea of home working for their staff. Imagine what would happen if people were only travelling to the office two or three days per week. In fact, I think that the eventual push for home working is likely to come as a result of the cost of commuting to work.
I only use the trains for commuting, and that is only once or twice per week. I cycle the rest of the working week. I find it mildly amusing that in my previous job the journey (heading south of London) cost £1.40, yet the journey into London, which isn't much further) costs £4.20. The cheaper journey was on an empty train and was extremely relaxing, with a seat guaranteed. For over three times the price I can instead travel into London on a packed, standing room only, train.0 -
Maybe take the bus to Doncaster instead ?0
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SmellTheGlove wrote:"This train will shortly be arriving into [station]"
Dear train operating company
although you persist in making it, the announcement reproduced above which I hear repeated dozens of times every year is not in English. I realise you may be a foreign multinational, but that's no reason to have a non-native speaker tea-boy write inane scripts in some perverted version of Globish to be parrotted by adequately educated local staff who are capable of thinking for themselves and making announcements that don't make you appear like a ignorant ar$ehat. You still would be an ignorant ar$ehat, but at least, passengers would not feel patronised by your centrally-generated gibberish.
Yours etc...
Now my DM-style rant is over I'll echo an earlier point about the endless sub-contracting and consulting. The risk-averseness in the rail industry borders on the infantile. The bottomless chain of outsourcing is one of the main contributors to the absurd costs run up by even the smallest railway project. I only worked in the industry ("funnily" enough as a consultant) for a year or so but the rake-offs that accumulated at every link were mind-boggling, until finally you arrived at some level where there was enough desperation or blindness that a company would actually agree to take on the work. Get rid of all the bloody middlemen and there's a chance that things might improve.
Who is DM ?0 -
If you're not travelling at peak (ie before 10am) times - a Railcard is a good idea in the South East - £28 for a year, 1/3 off....http://www.georgesfoundation.org
http://100hillsforgeorge.blogspot.com/
http://www.12on12in12.blogspot.co.uk/0 -
*counting my blessings that I get to commute by bike*
On the rare day I have to take the train, usually dicated by extreme weather, fatigue or a need to carry more than a bike will allow, it's not so much the cost as the claustrophobic germ-incubating anti-social-behaviour propagating cabins the carriages become.0 -
Grrr. I hate trains too. That's even with a student rail card (1/3 off) that i get free with my bank account.
My big gripes are that when i do get a seat, only the 4-seat table bays have enough leg room to physically allow me to sit properly on a seat. The other seats are such that i have to sit with my legs at an angle (usually in sticking out into the aisle). And also the back of the seats seem to have a forward tilting head rest area (at the top) which is exactly where my head ends up so if i sit back my head is tilted forward quite far which is really uncomfortable.
Unless i get in one of those table bays then i'm better off standing.0 -
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Got back to England yesterday, spent £48 on 2 singles from London to Ashford. Meanwhile it cost me £60 for a one-way coach ticket to Slovakia. So travelling from London to Bratislava (over 1000 miles) is less than 3x more expensive than London to Ashford.
Absolute joke.0 -
People always say how expensive train travel is in the UK and use Germany as the glowing beacon. However, my only experience of German trains was a trip from Munich across the border to Salzburg was expensive (probably at least as much as a trip from Newport to Birmingham which is a similar distance) and the train was a bit grubby. It was also late on one half of the trip! I may just be unlucky though as that is a single instance. That said I don't think rail fares outside the south east are that expensive, I can get a train to work for much less than it costs in fuel and parking and I recently did a train journey from Newport to Holyhead for about the same as it would have cost to drive.0
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johnfinch wrote:Got back to England yesterday, spent £48 on 2 singles from London to Ashford. Meanwhile it cost me £60 for a one-way coach ticket to Slovakia. So travelling from London to Bratislava (over 1000 miles) is less than 3x more expensive than London to Ashford.
Absolute joke.
No, you get to live in beautiful Kent. Be thankful. I live on the medway/swale edges and love Kent.0 -
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dmclite wrote:
Looks nice on the Google image search. Does it have a decent Indian restaurant, though? 'Cos I know Broadstairs and Deal do.0 -
Pross wrote:....
I can get a train to work for much less than it costs in fuel and parking and I recently did a train journey from Newport to Holyhead for about the same as it would have cost to drive.
I could get a train to work but, as I'd have to walk over five miles to and from different railway stations. it would only be a mile or so further to walk the entire distance. Given the shorest elapsed journey time on the train is about 45 mins it would also be faster to walk.
As for long distance travel, I 'commute' to our offices in Slough on a regular basis. The total cost of the journey, if you believe the AA's pence-per-mile calculation, would be £240 for the 400 mile round trip.
The rail fare is £245 and I'd have have £30 taxi fares on top of that.
Neither would I be able to stop at cheap hotels en route so that's another £50 or so on the bill.
Also, if I take the train I also have to put up with conditions that would be outlawed if I tried to transport livestock under the same conditions.
Bob0 -
That backs up what I said about the costs being in the south east. My trip to Holyhead was £57-00 travelling through the peak period with a ticket bought the day before (the journey is around 380 miles by road). The time by train or road is about 4.5 hours.
I've actually caught the train to work today. I have to get a bus 5 miles to the station (£2.75 return) and the train tickets from Newport to Cardiff were £4.50. Total journey time was an hour against 45 minutes by car with another 5 minutes walk from the car park, fuel cost would have been just under £5 and I'm lucky in that my parking is paid as the best I can get away with otherwise is £6 for a day. So for most people the train would be cheaper without adding significantly to the journey time (I also had a double seat to myself and there are trains every 10 minutes
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Horses for courses I guess but if I didn't need the car a lot during work I would probably get the train (cheaper still with a season ticket) and cycle more regularly in the summer.0
