Comment by fy20 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fy20 | Hacker News Reader

I grew up in the UK and from a late teen until my mid twenties I travelled by train across the country every week or so. I took the train as it was convenient for my route (no changes) and it didn't make sense to have a car for the rare times I used it (I'd commute to work by train or bike). There were long distance busses, but the times weren't convenient and they had even less leg room than aircraft.

The one thing that still makes me wonder is how expensive trains are, or maybe more accurately how cheap budget airlines are. I'd usually pay ~£25 each way, and I'd book in advance and had a youth discount. Full price tickets if I'd just turn up on the day would be over £100, and closer to £200 for first class (which on this route was just a slightly bigger seat, no food). For the same price I could have flown to the other side of Europe for the weekend and paid for a hotel. During peak times often the trains would be completely full up (500 seats, and maybe another couple hundred standing), so the routes are not exactly under-utilised.

Do trains just cost more to build and run than airports and aircraft or what is going on here?

Unfortunately yes, airplanes have less infrastructure costs than trains. Once you airport is built, you are potentially connected to any other airport. For trains you still need to build thousands of miles of rails, with complex infrastructure to allow them to change directions.

And rails need permanent upkeeping, it's not a one time investment.

Besides the points all the other commenters made, there is an issue of congestion.

Trains and train tracks in the UK are _massively_ over-capacity. The West Coast Main Line, which is the main connection point between London and most of the Midlands and the North is the most congested train track in Europe.

Trains in the UK are expensive because we are decades behind in rail infrastructure spending while airports were targets of massive spending thanks to the boom in international low-cost flights in the 2000s and 2010s. HS2 should make train prices slightly more palpable, and hopefully more projects will follow.

Also, advance open-return tickets bought 24h in advance are massively cheaper than tickets last-minute tickets.

I think this has to do with privatization. If trains were run by the government (sure, less efficient but also no need to feed greedy shareholders), it would be much cheaper.

Whilst there might be some gains from bringing everything under one roof, cutting out the need for shareholder returns isn't going to do much for the average ticket price - IIRC most train companies in the U.K. have long-run profit margins of 2-3%.

Ironically it’s other way around. The reason why flights are so cheap is because they are privatized and there is heavy competition. US used to have heavily-regulated air travel. Once it was de-regulated prices went down.

Since railroads require very expansive infrastructure, have natural competition limitations (two companies can’t send two trains on the same path at the same time), they are heavily regulated, and as such there is less competition, and thus no invisible hand of the market helping to lower the prices.

Dont think so.

In denmark trains are run by the government, but its still cheaper (at least pre-covid, dont know at the moment) to take a plane from Copenhagen to Århus (capital to next biggest city).

Your question reminds me of this video by Wendover Productions: Why Trains are so Expensive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwjwePe-HmA (12m38s)

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