Hmmm, HS2

A colossal amount of money that will really benefit who exactly? Would it even ‘make back’ the money?

njee20

That was with a discount (Annual ‘Gold Card’ here, AKA a bog standard 12 month season ticket).

Yes, could go the night before, pay for a hotel, food, etc. but that’s all extra expense. Driving there in my own will still be cheaper, and not really take very much longer. We’d also be guaranteed a seat! To make rail travel attractive and get people out of their cars, then it has to be realistically priced. Sadly the pricing model in this country is utterly broken. There’s too many separate Train Operating companies running trains they lease from other companies on Track owned by Network rail. There’s just too many people extracting too much money from the railways, end of.

The WCML is virtually full. You’ve got to do something. HS2 unlocks vast amounts of capacity. Hard to define the benefit in pound amounts though.

I agree the pricing structure is daft though!

Interesting read here, guess costs are probably up again though

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24159571

The pricing structure is intentional so as to dissuade people from using trains

Here:

From 15:20 onwards, a Virgin rail manager admits that pricing is used as an incentive not to travel at peak times and to book in advance – months in advance.

Then there’s this, in the Standard “The Lib Dems also raised concerns that the changes could add to increase train overcrowding, with commuters no longer incentivised to wait until 9.30am”

How do you think that people are incentivised? Hint: not with free croissants and coffee.

To make rail travel attractive and get people out of their cars, then it has to be realistically priced

It is at certain times. The problem with rail is that most people want to travel at the same time. This is clearly not possible so they up the prices, but the trains are still full so they keep upping them. The money subsidises the off peak trains to encourage people to travel off peak, or to tempt off peak travelers from their cars. They don’t want to tempt peak travellers from their cars because they can’t carry them.

Can’t really blame them for that policy. They can’t put more trains on because there’s no room. Hence HS rail.

Basically the problem here is that you’re expecting rail to take the place of cars, in a country that we’ve built exclusively for car, and judging it by that standard. It’s not that rail is doing a good or bad job, it’s that it’s not the right tool for the job you’re asking of it.

That doesn’t mean give up on rail though, it means let’s put some of the effort we put into building a nation of motorists into other ideas. But that’s hard.

Well the car does have at least one fundamental advantage though…

I’ve started work in a new office in London Bridge £58.00PW to get from Hampton Court to Bank and it’s a godawful journey, the train’s OK and pretty reliable but the Waterloo and City line is designed to eat people’s souls. Door to door it’s just over an hour. So I binned that pretty sharpish and ride instead, just over an hour door to door, arrive feeling happy and lively, 15 minutes in the work shower and I’m all set. Best of all I get a new bike on CTW that costs me around 1 weeks train fare per month. I appreciate that not everyone can ride or has showers and flextime but compared to the licensed robbery of the rail companies I’ll take the bike anyday.

Bike is absolutely the best way in London if you are able bodied, amazed it took you this long 🙂

No showers before!

Was she fit?

If so, pay the fine, say how you doin’ and give her a bloody good…

And another one before breakfast.

Don’t make judgements either.

molgrips – Member

Well the car does have at least one fundamental advantage though…

Yep- that we’ve built an astonishing amount of infrastructure to make them viable

And why did we build that infrastructure?

Because cars (and horses before that) take you exactly where you want to go, rather than to a central location.

You may be anti car but you have to admit it is rather useful, which is why cars are so popular. It’s not a subversive conspiracy. This usefulness is what leads to over-use of course and subsequent under investment in alternatives which would be better, and hence we are where we are. But there is more to driving than commuting.