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Comment by pera | Hacker News Reader

I never understood why trains are so expensive in England: when I lived in Bristol I liked to spend time in Bath, it's just a ~10 minutes ride but it costed 10 pounds each way if I remember correctly... but at least you could bring your bike for free :p

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Public transport in the UK is trapped in a vicious cycle. The system is poor, so people buy cars, which means fewer people use the system, which means less investment, which means the system gets even worse, so more people buy cars. Despite all its ills, driving is, for enough people, a more pleasant experience than tackling strikes, standing on a train for two hours, or being unable to travel at certain times at all.

I have to go on a cross country journey this Sunday which would suit the use of the train, except there are none at all on my section of the main line early in the morning, so I shall drive all the way into London. The data may make it look as if no-one needs or wants to use the train early on a Sunday, except we might, if we had the option.

More people use trains than in the 1990s.

More people have cars too though. Working on gut here rather than having checked any figures, but I'd wager that the proportion of rail journeys compared to car/bus journeys, for any given distance long/med/short, has fallen.

I thought this was an interesting question, so I looked it up. I don't have figures going back to the 1990s, but I've looked at the DfT's dataset on modal share NTS0409 [1] which has data 2002-2018.

Looking at number of trips/head, surface rail was 13 in 2002, rose to a pre-pandemic peak of 22 in 2018 and fell back to 15 in 2022. Bus (London + non-London local + long-distance) was 74, 48, and 37 respectively; motoring (car driver + car passenger + motorbike + taxi) was 694, 614, 512. Overall was 1074, 986, 862. So rail had a modal share of 1.2%, 2.2%, and 1.7% in 2002, 2018 and 2022.

The distance measure looks similar for rail: 482, 683, 493, from 7193, 6530, 5373. Modal share 6.7%, 10.5%, 9.2%. (I haven't done separate sums for buses and motoring.

So at least since 2002, it looks like rail has had a small but growing modal share of a steadily declining travel market, until disrupted by Covid to a place below peak but still considerably ahead of where it started.

Caveats: I haven't included the tube, and these data don't disambiguate light rail systems from 'other' (including flights). Rail remains dominated (like bus travel) by London & South East commuting, at least in number of trip terms.

[1]: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/tsgb01-m...

More people are alive than in the 90s.

> or being unable to travel at certain times at all.

This is all fine and dandy until enough people decide to travel by car, and eventually there are traffic jams making you virtually unable to travel (by car) at certain times as well.

The times are different though. Plus the time when there tends to be the most traffic is when train fairs can be so ludicrous that it was not unreasonable for a group of 4 to consider chartering a helicopter from Bath to London instead.

You aren't lying. I recently visited London and did a day-trip by train to Oxford. I booked my ticket way ahead for 12 Pounds each way. If I had waited and bought a ticket at the station on the day of travel, it would have been closer to 80 Pounds each way IIRC. There was a bus option as well but I wasn't aware of it until I was already in Oxford. Bus was 13 Pounds each way.

The system is suffering from too many people rather than too few; it has a problem of chronic under- and mal-investment, of which the cancellation of HS2 is just one example.

The problem is that for whatever reason rail users ""don't count"" politically.

UK's number of cars per capita is not much different from countries in Europe which have much better services, though.

> Despite all its ills, driving is, for enough people, a more pleasant experience than tackling strikes, standing on a train for two hours, or being unable to travel at certain times at all.

In order to make driving less attractive than mass transit outside of urban cores like Manhattan or London, driving would have to be made more costly via increased tolls, removal of parking spaces, and less road capacity in conjunction with mass transit being made more frequent (every 5 to 10 minutes) with more routes.

Point to point travel in an individual vehicle is just very hard to compete with, especially on amount of freedom.

There's a policy decision to cover as much as possible of the operating costs of the network from fares rather than government funding. The operating costs of UK trains per passenger-km is actually pretty competitive to European comparators but many countries fund a large part of the operating costs of their train networks from general taxation.

Simple, they're run by European train operators to subsidise their national networks.

> to subsidise their national networks

Do you have a source? That's an extraordinary claim, the sort of thing I'd expect to find in Nigel Farage's bag of lies

Here's one article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davekeating/2019/08/15/almost-a...

I believe it's a little out of date now, as some of the lines have been renationalised due to failures of the private sector.

"to subsidise their national networks" is a framing, but "for profit" is the simple truth of train operators in a privatized system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arriva_UK_Trains : subsidiary of DB

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C2c : subsidiary of Trenitalia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avanti_West_Coast : part owned by Trenitalia

And so on.

(Don't forget that the real profit ends up with the "train landlords", the ROSCOs: https://www.leasinglife.com/features/who-owns-the-trains-ros... ; all of them are parented in Luxembourg for tax reasons)

It is effectively true. Many European firms own chunks of the rail franchises in the UK and charge a shed load more than their local rail services are able to. Similar to the power franchises with the likes of EDF owning a large stake and charging a lot more here than they can get away with in France.

It isn't an EU thing, though it has at times been something Farage and his ilk have banged on about as if it is an EU thing, it is the way the Tories setup the privatisation of the railways (running them into the ground first as part of making the case for taking them away from the public purse (which it isn't as there are still significant subsidies involved)).

> it is the way the Tories setup the privatisation of the railways

which they did to implement... EU Directive 91/440 ("First Railway Package")

yes, the UK tended to gold plate EU regs, but the spark was the EU

It's not an EU-bash, it's true. We sold off the railways to private companies, most of which are actually the nationalised rail operators of other countries.

Bristol <-> Bath is GWR, which is owned and operated by the British company FirstGroup; they're mostly known for First Bus but they do trains too.

Given passenger numbers increasing in the last couple of decades have given trains huge economies scale reducing their costs and yet fares go up, public subsides go up and train companies bust. The only answer I can think of is UK trains are expensive because we are really bad at running them.

Because the government decided to stop subsidising the railways.

Everywhere you see very cheap train fares it's because they are subsidised.

> Everywhere you see very cheap train fares it's because they are subsidised.

Everywhere you see cheap road travel it's because they are subsidised.

muh roads

Nah, because of the awful way the privatisation is managed. Not that I think it should be privatised anyway, but really had to be it is hard to imagine it being setup in a way that benefits the passengers less.

The killer is that there are still significant subsidies involved, so we pay through the nose for bad service due to the way privatisation is arranged and also pay extra through indirect taxation too. In fact, even adjusted for inflation we pay more for the railways via taxation now than we did when they were a publicly funded industry. Funfunfun.

A quick reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financing_of_the_rail_industry...

The subsidies go mostly to the infrastructure and currently that number is high because it includes the cost of the shambolic HS2. Indeed, Network Rail is still a state-owned company. But the majority of the expenses (trains, staff, etc) are borne by the operators and paid for by the fares.

I agree that the way privatisation has worked is poor, though.

But the way it should work is that the franchises pay in to maintain the infrastructure that they use, which is itself privately owned. The subsidies were well above pre-privatisation levels long before HS2, largely due to a couple of major incidents in 2000 or soon after (showing that the claims privatisation could fund a safe rail system was at best grossly incorrect and at worse an outright lie by those bidding for the franchises).

The public purse should not be raided more after privatisation than before, surely?

Well no, the infrastructure is not really privately-owned since Network Rail is owned by the government. But I agree that in an actual privately-run system franchises should cover all those costs. Of course that would mean even higher fares.

In any case, railways are expensive and need significant investment. In terms of financing the question is then to find the the sweet spot between fares and public spending (i.e. taxes).

Neither privatisation nor nationalisation are silver bullets. As is often the case it is a question of good management and customer focus. That being said, it is hard to imagine a system with real competition because of the very nature of railways, which tend to be natural monopolies. That being the case, state ownership may make sense, with the caveat that it should be well managed along private sector standards.

Also in the UK the way the railway system is set up is incredibly inefficient and bureaucratic so it costs us a lot more to run our system and build improvements than comparable EU countries. The railways were privatised for ideological reasons seemingly by people who didn't actually understand free markets. The privatisation was done in way that generated a lot of complicated contractual interfaces between a network of various private companies most of which can only make a profit with government subsidy.

As Boeing is finding out now with the 737 max and their Spirit subcontractor, every time you need to organise something across a contractual boundary, like who's responsible for making sure the doors don't fall off your aeroplane, it adds a lot of cost and time in contract negotiations, paperwork, inspections and inflexibility if you want to enforce what you have asked the other party to do and to understand what still remains your responsibility. Therefore when you go to a subcontractor for something you try to make sure it is very clearly defined what they are responsible for. For example, when an architect designs a skyscraper, they will try to design the cladding in a way that makes sure that watertightness is solely the responsibility of the one cladding subcontractor. If it leaks they are on the hook, simple. If you create complicated interfaces between systems then subcontractors can get out of responsibility for problems by blaming each other or the design of the interface.

So back to the railways. The government specifies where, when and how many seats a train service should have, they let contracts to train operating companies who then pay another (now government owned after it went bankrupt) company, Network Rail, to access the track. These train operating companies don't own the trains, they lease them from one of three other government created private (and now highly profitable) companies that provide all rolling stock. The train operating companies are generally responsible for light maintenance while the leasing companies are responsible for heavy maintenance. The train operating companies also provide staff for stations and branding but they don't own or maintain the stations although they are responsible for some maintenance and keeping them clean (or they used to be, it's complicated). All the money for this comes from the government as subsidy and from fare revenue paid to the train operating companies through a central clearing house. Train fares are for the most part dictated by government. Train operating companies have a little bit of freedom to sell discounted tickets to fill spare capacity, but there isn't really any on our main intercity routes and on commuter routes when people need to travel so most people are paying the government capped fares.

Here's an example of why this system is crazy. If we want to upgrade a rail line to electronic moving block signalling to increase the number of trains that can run per hour there are negotiations between the department of transport, the track owner, all the train operating companies that run on that route and their leasing companies about who is paying for the equipment to be fitted to the track and the trains, the specification to make it all compatible, when this will happen and who is responsible if things go wrong. On a complicated route like the West Coast mainline, this could involve multiparty negotiations between say 10 operators, 4 leasing companies, network rail and the department of transport. It could involve hardware and software modifications to more than 20 different types of train, some of which are up to 40 years old. Guess who is actually paying for all this anyway? The taxpayer and government dictated fares from rail passengers. There is no real free market incentive operating anywhere here to drive cost efficiencies in providing these modifications and all these negotiations need to be documented, have responsibility assigned and have procedures agreed. Guess who you need to do this? Lots of corporate lawyers... Guess how long this takes, fucking ages.

That is why we have a system where a ~350 mile journey from London to Glasgow takes more than twice as long and typically costs more than twice as much for half the legroom compared to a ~350 mile journey from Paris to Bordeaux.

A train network is like the mechanism of a clock, the trains are like the teeth on the cogs; they have a place they should be and they need to move in sync with perfectly with each other. We've designed a system that makes organising this insanely complicated with no overall coordinated strategy for improvements. A densely populated country like ours can't function properly without an efficient train network to allow its workforce to be flexible and move around easily and it affects our productivity and our ability to remain competitive globally.

</rant ends>

Edit: corrected missing word

>That is why we have a system where a ~350 mile journey from London to Glasgow takes more than twice as long and typically costs more than twice as much for half the legroom compared to a ~350 mile journey from Paris to Bordeaux.

Just for my own interest as an American, I can take a 350 mile journey on a train from where I live (Jacksonville, FL) to Miami. There are two trains a day, one of which takes 11 hours and costs $72, the other takes 9 hours and costs $94. Based on my experience, both of these trains are likely to be between 3 and 6 hours later than the scheduled time. How does that compare to the London to Glasgow cost and time?

Don't come across many Jacksonvillians around these parts. I use this train between Charleston and Jacksonville somewhat frequently and can second your experience with it.

That's not far off the same cost as to get to Glasgow from London, looking for tomorrow it's between £55 and £70. Significantly longer though for yourself, the train here is around 4 hours 45 mins (give or take). It's also generally close to on time, and we have delay repay for anything over 15 minutes.

London-Glasgow takes about 4h45m typically with about 7 stops. There's a train every hour between from 5am until about 6pm. Today the 5:30pm train is full, the 6:30 is £119 (€140) for a single ticket 2nd class. If you are more than 6'2" tall your knees will be wedged against the seat in front of you like on a budget airline, the ride quality on the train is too bumpy to be able to use a mouse or trackpad accurately with a laptop, you will struggle to select paragraphs of text. There is not really enough room to use a laptop anyway if you haven't booked a table. If you need to work, it will be necessary to upgrade to 1st class this costs £270 (€315). There is also a persistent fault with the toilets on this type of train that means sometimes there is a strong toilet smell.

Paris-Bordeaux takes 2h05m and is non-stop. If I go online now the next train is at 6:30pm and costs €60 2nd class. There is a non-stop train roughly every hour and there are also trains that stop 2-3 times that take about 3h but are a bit cheaper. The 2nd class seat is spacious your legs are about 5" from the seat in front and there is a table with enough space to comfortably use a laptop which has an individual socket and usb charging point per person. The ride quality is very smooth, you can easily use a laptop trackpad or mouse accurately enough to do CAD work, you wouldn't realise that you are travelling at 200mph. Edit: 1st class is available for €72 and did I mention that the train is double decker? it's just a lot cooler. Another edit: There are quite a few trains tomorrow with tickets for €29 and one train with a ticket for €12.50

Thanks for the reply. For what it's worth if you're ever in the US, Amtrak does offer very spacious seating and often enough you'll have your part of the row to yourself. Probably comparable to flying first class, I'd say.

Yes American trains are great, I've only used regional trains from New York but they were spacious and comfortable. Your Miami - Jacksonville pairing is interesting, I was thinking about it and I think the big difference between the US and the UK is that if you couldn't take the train in the UK all those people would be on the road and it would cause a traffic meltdown. Whereas in the US most people are going to either drive or fly between regional cities like that and the whole country is criss-crossed by freeways and flights that link cities together in a big mesh so you can drive or fly quite directly to your destination. I get the impression that most freeways outside of big cities have relatively predictable journey times in traffic. You can fly Glasgow/Edinburgh - London but it is also a busy route and there is no capacity in the London airports for more regional flights. Likewise pretty much all North-South car journeys in Britain are on two motorways which are very busy. The drive will currently take anywhere between 7-10+ hours depending on what time of day you travel.

My commute into Edinburgh is about 35 mins each way by train and it's £9.60 for a return (reduced for a bit because of a subsidy by the Scottish Government) normal price is about £15.00.

I'm in the US. We wanted a commuter train in my city - instead we got a very expensive toll lane built by a Spanish company. The tolls are so expensive by the mile that only the wealthy or those with a business that can write them off as an expense use the lane. If the company doesn't make enough, our taxes have to pay for the shortfall.

I actually like my commute into Edinburgh - it's very scenic, you go over the Forth Bridge and I always get a seat. There was a while when the trains were less reliable but since the Scottish government took over direct management of the rail company things seem a lot better.

Is this Dallas or Houston?

Piedmont of NC... When I visited Dallas, I found it very similar.

The Bristol to Bath journey is the UK's most expensive ticket by £/km. (Although it's £10 for a return if both trips are on the same day)

Indeed, Bath to Oldfield Park was (is?) the most expensive train journey on a per-mile basis possible in the UK.

I always thought it was Covent Garden to Leicester Square on the underground. It's about 250 metres.

Yes, seems that my info there is well out of date (though when I last lived in the UK, the underground is on a different fare regime).

You may well be correct anyway to be honest, people usually consider trains and underground as different things, and the underground is a bit of a cheat here because the stations are so close.

I'm so disappointed every time I go back there, and the bloody tickets now, ffs, it shouldn't be like air travel, the whole thing was setup by someone who's never used public transport.

The whole thing was set up by people who don't like public transport. They don't like public anything. They don't want the peasants to have nice things, because only extra-special wealthy people should have nice things.

The rail network was cut right back in the 60s by the then transport minister, who happened to have a large share in the corporation building out the motorway network.

And so on.

Completely dysfunctional politics. Utterly unsuited to the 21st century.

The British Rail system is so ridiculously over-complicated, my only conclusion is that it is deliberately designed to add as many layers of profit and obfuscation as possible.

For instance, Southern Railway is owned by Govia Thameslink Railway, which is part of Govia which also operates Gatwick Express, Great Northern and Thameslink services.

However, Govia is a partnership between the Go-Ahead Group and Keolis.

Keolis is a French transportation company owned by SNCF, the French national railway, and CDPQ (a crown company of Canada).

Go-Ahead is owned by Globalvia, a Spanish multinational transport infrastructure company, and Kinetic Group (formerly known as AATS Group) which is an Australian-based multinational bus company.

Globalvia are owned by OPTrust, one of Canada's largest pension funds; PFZW, the second-largest pension fund in the Netherlands; and USS, a large UK Pension scheme.

Kinetic Group are also owned by OPTrust, but also by Foresight Group Holdings plc a British private equity and venture capital business, supposedly focused on clean energy generation and associated infrastructure (*cough* Go-Ahead spends £100 million a year on Diesel *cough*).

Now, try to imagine how many small subsidiaries those companies have where transfer-pricing can occur and how many layers of profit are being extracted.

France's SNCF trains are run by SNCF (owned by the French Government) who also do all the track and maintenance.

Germany's Deutsche Bahn (owned by the German Government) runs Germany's trains.

Deutsche Bahn also own Arriva and were nearly banned by the UK government for how badly they ran the trains in the north of England (spoiler: they weren't).

Avanti West Coast are part owned by Trenitalia, who are mostly owned by the Italian Government. Trenitalia also owns c2c who run the London, Tilbury and Southend franchise.

The northern railways were run by a succession of similarly named companies before being returned to the UK Government as operator of fast resort.

The whole thing is a tangled mess of the worst kind of vampire capitalism: sucking up subsidies, bleeding companies dry by overloading them with debt, providing terrible service, then handing the drained husk back to the government once they've bled them to death.

I've concluded that the private companies that replaced the UK publicly owned companies are run to be a front for borrowing money and sucking up subsidies to pay to shareholders. The train companies are no better than the water companies, though they seem to be better at obfuscating what they are doing.

It's the same formula over and over again: you borrow; pay as much of it as you can out to shareholders; run a minimal service to bring in just enough money to pay the debt payments; invest the minimum to allow you to keep operating and if possible, you do it through transfer pricing with other companies in the parent companies' structure. When your creditors eventually catch up with you, you go cap in hand to the government looking for a bailout and if that fails, you hand the franchise back before forming a new company to bid again.

Southern Water, for instance, uses 1/3 each bill to pay debt payments. Even Network Rail, who are owned by the British Government, are paying 1/3 of their income to service their debts.

This is very similar to the "hollowed-out firms" of the UK who distribute more to shareholders than they generate in net income—1/5 of FTSE 350 paid out on average 178% of their net earnings after tax in 2010-1019.

It's all a con and we are chumps.