It was much, much better - by any account of imagination - than the public railway we have here in Portugal. And I’m guessing they cost the taxpayers a lot less too (but that part I didn’t check).
(1) Most tourists visit largely London and its near surroundings. Public transport in (and to) London is generally much better than other parts of the country.
(2) A lot of the downsides don't manifest if you're a relatively infrequent user and you're largely travelling at off-peak times. As a UK resident who doesn't commute on the railway, this also includes me -- my experience of trains is generally good because I travel at quieter times and I don't travel so often that unreliability is a regular experience.
(3) If you ignore the costs (by not being a taxpayer or because you're less price sensitive for infrequent travel and especially for holiday travel), then you're ignoring the large part of the argument which is "this privatization had massive inefficiencies and costs".
FWIW, the UK government pays about half of the 25 billion/year cost of the "operational rail industry" (source: https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/finance/rail-indust...). I couldn't find the equivalent stats for Portugal with a quick search, so I don't know how that compares.
Until relatively recently (things have improved in Scotland especially and now increasingly in English cities) it would have been illegal to do what London does anywhere else. My city really wanted a single card that works on a bus or a train anywhere in the city, they couldn't persuade anybody involved to actually do that and the cards went away without ever being actually useful.
Irish urban buses are like this in principle; they're branded TFI and operated by either Bus Eireann (state-owned) for non-Dublin stuff or Dublin Bus (state-owned) or GoAhead (private) for Dublin stuff. Only way to tell these days is a small notice on the door. However, you do care whether your route is Dublin Bus or GoAhead; if it's Dublin Bus it will probably merely be late, whereas if it's GoAhead it will probably be _very_ late or just cancelled. Is this not the case in London; ie are the operators all about the same in terms of level of service?
The funding for oeprating companies varies a lot, according to the chart on page 6, 3p per passenger kilometer for Thames link, 30p for Scotrail, -1.1p for west coast.
Yes, its not anything like a uniquely British problem, its widespread. Bigger projects are a lot more difficult to run, and governments are drawn to big projects.
Most complaints in the UK are about cost of tickets. They are very valid complaints imo, the cost of getting a train in this country can be absurd. There would be a really positive attitude towards train travel in the UK and our rail system if it wasn't trying to bankrupt you every time you use it.
In the South East, or if you're employer is paying for 1st class, definitely agree.
The EU basically mandates privatisation of railways.
They require track and trains to be run by different operators (DB InfraGO in Germany, ProRail in NL, etc) to the train operators.
They then require (nearly?) all passenger rail operations be available to private companies to bid on. The EU is taking the Netherlands to the ECJ over the fact the Netherlands won't allow it: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
Also the EU requires open access operators access to said separate tracks. That's why you're seeing all the competition in high speed routes (especially) in the EU. They have to pay a track access fee but are free to request to run whatever route it is.
The last point (well, all are really) is a big problem for many national operators as they make a lot of revenue from 'premium' intercity operations that cross subsidies the local trains. A lot of that "margin" is going to be eroded by the competition.
Trains get delayed and cancelled very frequently. They leave you stranded in the middle of nowhere because there's a technical issue fairly regularly: it's not a daily occurrence, but it's frequent enough that people will just go "ahhh classic british rail".
Trains are often packed, with literally nowhere to sit for hours-long journeys.
And this poor quality of service is very expensive. I know adults in their late 20s - early 30s with a fulltime job that choose to take the coach even though it's twice as long, because it's much cheaper. An ex-colleague was living outside of london, and spending £16k a year on train for commuting (you'd expect a big bill, but £16k is insane).
I'm sure there's plenty of countries that do worse, and as an infrequent traveller you'd probably be fine, but it's just... not great
As someone else mentioned, London (and really urban commuter services in general) are essentially separate; the problems are _primarily_ around the regional/intercity stuff.
One specific consequence of the privatisation. Earlier this year I visited Manchester. The airport to city route is operated by _two_ rail operators, on the same line. You buy a ticket for one service or other. I bought a ticket for operator A because their train was next. A few minutes later that train was cancelled, so I had to watch as a couple of operator B trains passed and wait for an operator A train.
I mean, no-one can tell me that’s a sensible way to run a railway.
(Mind you, this still beats Dublin airport, which currently has no rail at all, and under current plans will have _two_ separate rail lines around 2040-2050, and maybe a tram. Though, if that happens, at least the same ticket will work for both…)
As of June 2025, there is automatic ticket acceptance rules between those operators now in the case of cancellations and disruption, as both Northern and TPE are owned by the DfT.
Great British Railways will continue these kind of sensible changes (though not cheaper tickets, that's for sure!)
The railways in England and Wales are very adversarial. You have to do a lot of research and fight for your rights. It's about maximal revenue-extraction, not a customer-friendly experience.
Anytime Day Single: Any permitted - £6.70 Anytime Day Single: TPE only - £6.50 Anytime Day Single: Transport for Wales only - £5.40
Unfortunately many apps don't make this clear enough. I suspect you bought a TPE only ticket when any permitted would only be 20p more. Many apps will show you the cheapest ticket even if it results in massive downgrade in flexibility.
While it seems ridiculous (and tbh it is) on these kind of routes, it is useful on some routes, which the slower operator (eg Birmingham to London) is 1/3rd of the price of the fast one.
That practice should have been abolished long ago - it's totally anti-passenger.
GBR will likely solve this with removing the cheaper ticket, instead of making the cheaper ticket a generic ticket, of course :-)
As a whole though, at least out of major cities London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Manchester, the rail system is great.
A ticket for the next direct train (16:42, peak time) from Copenhagen to Århus is 449kr, £53. That's 300km in 3 hours.
London to Manchester is the same distance, 2¼ hours, and £193.
But there are also trains for £80 that take 2h11m.
https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/journey-planner/?type=single&...
(Also bear in mind the median income after tax is 50% higher in Denmark.)
I don't blame you. They do make it VERY hard to find and buy that particular cheaper ticket
Ticket websites generally assume you have unlimited funds and want the fastest route, always.
Those are indirect train services. That can also be the return price, which is very very good value. You do have to be careful with travelling the right route and company
The downside of this pricing system is (a) everybody complains about its complexity (b) if you really do need to travel at peak time or at very short notice you're going to pay a lot (c) it's really easy to make it look like it's a terrible rip-off by quoting the anytime walkup fare for an intercity journey :-)
My example wasn't especially ridiculous. Try something like Stansted Airport to Birmingham — 200km, 45 minutes slower than driving, and £97 — or £67 off peak.
The other ridiculous feature of British train tickets is when some return tickets cost just £1 more than a single ticket.
Every year without fail this goes up by a noticable amount, but the service is still unreliable. Looking back at my travel history, the train has either been late to arrive or late to get to my destination around 30% of the time. That delays can vary a lot as well between about 10mins (this morning for example) to 30 minutes on average.
But that's the average picture, the winters get so much worse for my route. There's a tunnel just before our station which frequently has water pouring through when it rains heavily which means no trains can run until it stops. Several times I've left my house with all the trains listed as running on-time and arrived at the station to be told by the (very nice) guard that he doesn't expect there to be any trains through until mid day.
They also get very crowded, at least on my route. They're meant to send a 3 carriage train but will frequently end up with only 2 carriages because they had a problem with one of them. This usually delays people boarding which means the resulting journey is around £8.40 for no seat and a 10-15 minute delay.
The UK rail sure isn't the worst in the world by any stretch. When a journey goes well it's seemless and I'm a big fan. But a lot of the time it feels like you're being bent over, especially when after several weeks of reduced services due to strikes you're suddenly met with a price hike of 5% with no improvement in the services reliability. All of that is just when you're talking about commuting as well. Any time I'm forced to head to London it's a miserable emptying of my wallet.
All of this is just my daily experience, but I'm so sick of this failed experiment. Each year it costs more, the service is just as unreliable, and the profits all leave the UK.
Maybe my expectations aren't reasonable, but it's something I'm effectively forced to use daily because of house prices.
That £8.40 will be £6.30 after claiming the delay repay for 30 minute delay. Only happening 30% of the time so that would work out to £7.77
Still it would be better if they were always on time.