[Closed] Rail fare - ouch!

Annoys me when this story gets trotted out every year. Usualy with some lazy journalist remarking that a commuter season ticket from York to London now costs more than the Apollo space pogram.

Afford it by virtue of being a commuter commuting to a job.

fortunate enough to only live 10 miles from work co I can cycle it

if I was paying for public transport or car , when combined with childcare bills, it wouldnt actually be worth me having a job!

thisisnotaspoon - Member

... now costs more than the Apollo space pogram.

😆

kimbers - Member

fortunate enough to only live 10 miles from work co I can cycle it

Get a Honda EX5 instead (reliable and economical - a workhorse) like most of the 3rd world employees. 😆

100 miles each way for <£50.
I think it's a bargin personally and even better the rest of you John Q Taxpayers are only subsidising me about £9.

Stoner - Member

100 miles each way for <£50.
I think it's a bargin personally and even better the rest of you John Q Taxpayers are only subsidising me about £9.

100 miles ... crikey ... everyday? 😯

What time do you get up to catch the train? 3am? 😆

Lucky the wife works for the local train company so I get unlimited free travel now, used to do the Newbury-London commute (shudder).

I think it's a rip off. £4 to go from Darwen to Bolton a journey of 10 miles. On a train that's are knackered and your lucky to get a seat on. It is cheaper to drive. But a lot cheaper than £18 in a taxi.

My cycle commute is 6 miles along the canal but the towpath it's one long puddle in winter so not very pleasant. It's about 7 miles by car as it's slightly twistier and goes over a big hill rather than round it like the canal does.

Or I can walk one mile to the station, take a ten minute journey on the train to the third station along, then walk five minutes to work. That costs me £4.10 now - it was £3.20 when I started in this job two and a half years ago.

Mrs got the bus to derby before Christmas with the 11 year old. Cost eleven quid for an 8/9 mile journey. Utter rip off!

£3,640 will be what my season ticket costs when I renew it in April.

only once a week chewie.
It sounds a lot but it's quite relaxing.
I get a lateish train (7:41) gets me in at around 10ish. Plenty of seats. Grab a bacon & egg omelette from the buffet. I bring my own coffee. Watch some TV, maybe do some work, browse STW. Then I get an evening train home and get home around 9-10ish.

Doing that once a week means Im at home the other 6 days. It's a trade-off Im happy with.

Mrs got the bus to derby before Christmas with the 11 year old. Cost eleven quid for an 8/9 mile journey. Utter rip off!

Comisserations to your wife on having to go into Derby.

But £11 doesn't sound right, I got the bus in from Ticknall and it was only about £3 (£2.70 rings a bell, but it was weeks ago so probably incorect), and kids are half price. It'd be £2.70 in petrol for the same car journey, and still have to pay for parking on top!

£40 ish for 1 week for me. That's for a 40 mile journey each way but the ticket is also valid for the entire Midlands network. Personally, I don't think it's too bad, it's cheaper than the petrol in the car and means I dint hammer the mileage on it either.

Sorry my mistake. Little one did get a half so it was just short of 8 quid.
Would have been nearly 11 if it was me and her.

£2,088 yesterday to renew my annual card from Dorking to Wimbledon - I ride from Wimbledon into Hammersmith, as it's quicker by at least 15 minutes each way, and about a grand cheaper not having a Tube season ticket.

I was driving in the job before this. Diesel costs were at least as much before I factored in wear and tear on the car. Now I use the train, we've gone down to one car.

From my perspective, it's cheaper than driving, and I get about an hour on the bike each day as a little bonus. Am I getting value for money from the rail company? Well, both rail companies that go through my station have added extra carriages, but it's still packed in the mornings, and I've yet to see a Southern service come in remotely on time if I change at Epsom in the evenings.

I'm in Bookham so take mostly the same route as you but have to get to Kings Cross at the moment - do get the tube as don't fancy riding it.

BTW, I do like the way they've extended the platforms though hadn't noticed longer trains. Also think the new foot bridge at Stoneleigh (I think) is a nice bit of prefab engineering.

Heh, my occasional regular train trip has gone up by precisely nothing. Bargain.

My company moves in March.
Doubling my commute, to over 1.5 miles.
My office is currently further from the security gate, than my house.

Sometimes I get two trains home; I used to buy two separate tickets as it was significantly cheaper than both legs on one ticket.

Now though each individual leg has gone up but the combined ticket has dropped massively so is now much cheaper!

I've given up attempting to find logic in train fares.

When this story is trotted out every year, the more cynical would sigh knowingly, and suggest that is is just more of the endless narcissisistic self-absorption for people who don't believe life exists outside the M25, and their tedious echo-chamber - a self-obsessed media who all live just outside London and work in central London?

But I don't think that at all. I think its the price well worth paying - one of many, admittedly - for the honour and privilege to live and work in the very epicentre of the universe itself. The absolute pinnacle of civilisation. birthplace of modern culture. Where the streets are literally paved with gold

The rest of us are just, like, soooooooooooo jealous 😆

When I travel to London from Cheltenham it costs £158 return. Not great value imo.

Forget rail fares, its the increase in the bridge toll, over the Severn heading into Wales, that gets my goat!

yup, paying to [b]get in[/b] to wales will never seem right

Runcorn to London now £301 return at peak times! I must rack up about £8k per year on that trip and some people do it at least once a week. I claim it back on expenses but it still has to be passed on to our customers, who then pass it on to their customers - that's you and me.

it costs £158 return

Cheltenham

They know their market 😉

Bent udder, Be you Ben?

binners said

When this story is trotted out every year...

you trot out a similarly banal response. in fact the same hackneyed response that gets thrown at many a thread about London. and one of only a few in your previously funny but increasingly bitter and dull parochial repertoire.
there, I said it.

I agree with Binners. It's a very London centric story.

However it was £200+ return from Derby to Reading at peak times over Christmas! Off peak was marginaly more paletable at £70. Genuinely flaberghasted that they can cram that many people onto a train at £200 a head and not make a profit.

......in fact the same hackneyed response that gets thrown at many a thread about London.

yes, go and sit out on the cobbles munching coal and bothering whippets with that Spanner chappie won't you

20p increase £6.10-£6.30 for a 15min-ish 12-ish mile journey not sure if it was either 20 or 30p increase last year. Petrol appears to be going down while everything else goes up, still, it'll keep some people happy.

Mines £3208. That equates to about £15 a day for a journey of 26 miles each way

Mudshark - I'm sure I've seen you out on the trails, so hello *waves*. The longer trains were just before Christmas - but they're not in evidence now.

Happy rider - yes, it's Ben. Who you?

Oh, and with the London-centric thing. Yeah, I know. If I had a choice of awesome jobs outside London and could move my young family, I'd be there like a shot. Unfortunately, the business I am in is London-centric for the work I currently do. If I want to get ahead, and not work in some strange places (and I've worked in several bits of the UK and around the rest of the place that are properly 😯 ) then I'm stuffed.

The trouble round here is the peak fares. Off-peak is still suprisingly ok in the south west (price per mile, compared to our recent experiences on network southeast). In fact in the summer when the traffic is silly, Cornwall on the train (and the train still goes to pretty much every remotely good-sized town barring padstein, wadebridge, helston and launceston) then the train is way cheaper for one person than the fuel in your car and cos of all the emmets on the roads, usually faster too. Devon is another story though. Terribly poorly served by trains imho.

OT, but my favourite recent discovery is the Stagecoach 'explorer' bus ticket where you get to go all over Devon on stagecoach buses (long/rural and exeter/torbay urban routes alike) for £7.50 a day or £22 a week. As such it is longer in time than the train, but ludicrously cheap per mile and with no peak/off-peak times at all. What does even a zone 1/2 day or weekly travelcard cost on TFL these days?

As such this week I have done plymouth to exeter uni return (4 buses and 95 miles all in) for a third what it would cost on the train for the times i needed to travel, and not including £3.50 for buses to and from plymouth railway station in the first place.

The one off peak fairs can be expensive but when you calculate the season ticket price per mile it come out pretty good.

Open return from Sheffield to London today was £199. When I first did the journey 6/7 years ago it was £100. So a rough doubling in price! Again work pay and it's once a month or less but it still pains me.

And now for the good news:

Scotrail are once again doing their Club 55 promotion. That means I get to travel to any station in Scotland for £19 return!!

At least you can all get some sort of public transport to work. Not everyone has that option.

Monthly commute into London £550 including parking. Have to be cute about which trains to get or its 40 mins standing. Robbery.

Due to my wife's infinite wisdom, wer'e going to london in August. Can't book a train yet but at todays prices it's just as cheap to fly! Nuts!

It's reported as a London-centric story but surely higher fares apply all over the country?

Live outside the M25 and season ticket now £3100. Both of us working again so two tickets just bought are painful.

I'm also outside the M25, and my season ticket with tube would be about three grand, too.

I ditched the tube bit of the season ticket and bought a Brompton. Tube season from Wimbledon to Ravenscourt Park near Hammersmith was about a grand. Brompton was £750 two years ago. It's quicker than the tube, I get about 90ish miles in a week, and I can also stuff my face. Helps if you have a shower at work - we do, so I get more time with the udderlets in the morning, too.