UK: Manchester to London rail ticket more expensive than flying to India | Hacker News Reader

UK: Manchester to London rail ticket more expensive than flying to India

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This twitter thread is by Manchester's Mayor Andy Burnham. Manchester to London by rail is a two hour route and Burnham lists the cost of a open return ticket.

As Burnham says, advance booking is not impractical for many people. And when you book in advance for cheaper tickets, there is limited availability. Daily commuters travelling to work pay some of the most expensive rail tickets in Europe.

I've posted this before: a monthly season ticket comparison from 2017 for UK and Continental Europe. It bears repeating because the price differences between UK and other countries are shocking (and for us in the UK, pretty depressing).

- UK: Luton to London St. Pancras (35 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £387 (approx $547/€448)

- UK: Liverpool Lime Street to Manchester Piccadilly (32 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £292 (approx $412 /€344)

- Germany: Dusseldorf to Cologne (28 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £85 (approx $120 /€98)

- France: Mantes-la-Jolie to Paris (34 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £61 (approx $86 /€71)

- Italy: Anzione to Rome (31 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £61 (approx $86 /€71)

- Spain: Aranjuez to Madrid (31 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £75 (approx $106 /€87)

Source: https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/uk-commuters-spend-6-times-much-...

For people living in the South East and commuting to London a monthly season ticket is easily £500... You can imagine the impact of WFH has had on both train companies' and people's budgets.

Regarding France, in the Paris area (like your example) employers are also required to pay for half the cost of a monthly season ticket. So it the ticket costs EUR71 you actually only pay EUR35.50 out of your own pocket, which may be less for the whole month than a day peak-time ticket into London.

Interesting, feels like the Netherlands has similarly extremely expensive public transport too. People usually commute within the Randstad and pay exorbitant amounts to do so.

The Hague to Amsterdam is approx 40mi/64km. The monthly ticket for 2nd class seating is 325€. If you don’t buy a season ticket, the round trip is 25.6€!!

It seems to me that 35 years ago I would pay $110 for a monthly ticket between Washington, DC, and Baltimore, something around 40 miles. If I am reading the MARC chart correctly, the ticket is now $243. So I guess we are better off than the UK.

It's not a like-for-like comparison:

- direct train vs. flights with layovers

- date and time of your choosing vs. a date and time not of your choosing, some time in the next month(?)

- buy in advance vs. buy on the day

Also rail networks require far more staff, and cost a huge amount to maintain. Trains have very large economies of scale, where the cost of journey rapidly come down with large volumes of passengers. Flights don't benefit from anywhere near the same savings when scaling up.

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