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A Single from Edinburgh to London on the 2nd of January is over a £100.
What kind of lunatic system is it which allows the railways to profiteer so horrifically from anyone needing to get anywhere over the festive season.
I expect its because there are a million tourists going to hogmanay or whatever the hell its called, BUT it is still absurd that the railways are run on some kind of lunatic for profit bonanza.
It's called capitalism (or greed).
£63 on train line.
That's only 25p a mile though
Up, blame Thatcher.....or just book in advance.
Probably cost the same driving from Edin to London! is it the same price for a return maybe do a deal with some one! needing to get fom London to edinburgh
maybe all the cheaper tickets have already been bought
possibly by folks who made plans a while ago ....
for balance an " anytime single " the week after is £150 so 100 is still a discount 😉
you should try planning a trip from Yorkshire to Cornwall at any time of year if you really want to see "pricey " train tickets 🙁
nammynake - Member
It's called capitalism (or greed).
or supply and demand
£100 is pretty cheap given the distance. which is a bout 30p per mile.
Bargin.
It's £100 for a standard peak ticket from Bristol to London which is about 90p per mile.
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Single's are always relatively expensive compared to returns. 2nd Jan is a peak day for travel, you seem to be booking quite late. At least there are still tickets available, trains are like planes there are only so many seats available. On that note you might check prices of a plane ticket.
trains are like planes there are only so many seats available.
You are kidding plenty of standing room on the train, yes pay full fair and don't even get a seat
And the price on 2nd January is no different from the price next Thursday.
If you went on the 1st or the 3rd you could fly for £32. The 2nd is full. 🙁
So have we established that it is the same price as normal then? Just the cheap seats are booked up.
I'm sure I used to pay nearly that for the 7am Glasgow to Warrington train on Monday mornings
Plenty of cheap seats available but the OP didn't see them, even 1st class is less than £100.
His point still stands. Trains are very expensive, and the prices change massively to suit demand. You don't get that on the bus do you? Or in the car? And booking in advance isn't always an option.
Trains can be expensive but with some careful planning they're not often less than half the price you may first think. Buses prices don't alternate no but coaches yes they might but never use them so not sure. Car no why would private transport fluctuate? But see how expensive a taxi is at Xmas or New Years Day. The prices alter purely based on demand very similar to many things.
brakes - Member
His point still stands. Trains are very expensive, and the prices change massively to suit demand. You don't get that on the bus do you? Or in the car? And booking in advance isn't always an option.
But you do with planes and coaches (there is nearly a 100% difference in National Express coach fares around that time) with the coach costing about £50 and taking longer, the train is £50-65.
If you can get the £50 fare that works out at about 13p/mile which is rather good.
12 quid on www.megabus.com
10 hour journey though
Drac : Have you made a start on the xmas sherry?
if thats too much then you can fly (note planes don't leave/arrive in the city centre and it probably costs loads to get too and from the airport)
http://www.skyscanner.net/transport/flights/edi/lond/140102/airfares-from-edinburgh-to-london-in-january-2014.html?rtn=0
A quick check on distances shows that it would take about £40 of diesel to run the car (the Sandwich motor, others are available) from London to Edinburgh. Train price doesn't look too bad by comparison.
Drac has TJ logged in as you? 8)
I know me defending trains there's something wrong there but for one person travelling alone they can be not too bad. I'm off to Leeds on Wednesday I got a return for about what it would cost to with first class return too.
Once you go over one person car is cheaper.
It is the basic pricing economics of supply and demand. If you don't like the price travel on the 3rd or 4th of January. Or better still you should have got your act together and booked earlier, if you were unable to confirm your plans earlier then you can hardly blame the train company for selling the seat earlier to another passenger at a lower price.
I could go onto explain that train, airline, hotel etc pricing and overbooking is almost as Marxist in it principles as it is capitalist. It is in neither in the consumers' or company's interests to have static non dynamic pricing, and not to overbook. This is one example where the fat cats really do support the poor. 😆
Oh and that train on the 2nd of Jan may depart with empty seats, and most probably will! 😆 Companies with highly perishable* products do not maximise their profits by selling every product it has - the Marxism bit falls over here a little.
I worked in airline revenue management for many years
* pretty much every consumer product is perishable
Everyone knows about basic pricing economics, the point here is not that it's £100 on a Tuesday and £200 on a Friday, it's that it's £100 on any day and not £50. Trains are expensive on any day of the week and for some there is no other choice of transport.
There's a lot of Stockholm Syndrome on display here.
Oh and that train on the 2nd of Jan may depart with empty seats, and most probably will! Companies with highly perishable* products do not maximise their profits by selling every product it has - the Marxism bit falls over here a little.
National infrastructure is not a "product" to which that methodology should be applied. There's a big public cost we all bear as a result.
[i]Everyone knows about basic pricing economics, the point here is not that it's £100 on a Tuesday and £200 on a Friday, it's that it's £100 on any day and not £50. Trains are expensive on any day of the week and for some there is no other choice of transport.[/i]
Does not questioning why it is £100 and not £50 demonstrate a lack of understanding in even the most basic concepts of pricing?
[i]National infrastructure is not a "product" to which that methodology should be applied. There's a big public cost we all bear as a result.[/i]
To what extent are the Train Operating Companies part of the national infrastructure? Rightly or wrongly based on past Governments decisions I now find it hard to see them any differently than airlines, buses etc. Is their relationship with Network Rail materially different than an airlines relationship with the BAA or other Airport owner?
Or better still you should have got your act together and booked earlier, if you were unable to confirm your plans earlier then you can hardly blame the train company for selling the seat earlier to another passenger at a lower price.
Yeah, except the railways are a national service massively subsidised by general taxation, so restricting them to the very rich on busy days is a ****** disgrace.
Does not questioning why it is £100 and not £50 demonstrate a lack of understanding in even the most basic concepts of pricing?
As a consumer, I need to understand the absolute cost of something and its value. I don't need to understand how the greedy corporations decided on its price to maximise their margins.
If something is expensive, it's still expensive regardless of how its price was calculated.
Cross country train operators cam charge what they like, and so they do.
Are the railways heavily subsidised these days? I honestly do not know, but the interim results for Network Rail for the 6 months ending 30 Sept 2013 are very healthy. Post tax profits of £861k with a capital expenditure programme of £2.7 in the first 6 months.
Not sure the position was as healthy a few years back.
brakes. That is where you and I will need to agree to disagree. I as a consumer I only need to understand the value of something.
Are the railways heavily subsidised these days
Not really, the operators have gone from having significant subsidies to having to pay to operate the franchises, National Express defaulted on those payments, so the East Coast franchise (in question here) is run by DOR - which is the Government.
As a consumer, I need to understand the absolute cost of something and its value
How do you go about deciding the "value" of a train ticket from London to Edinburgh? Do you mean you apply a totally arbitrary number in your head? Or do you sit down and price up the original cost of the infrastructure, the cost to electrify it in the 70s, the cost of the signalling, the upgrades, the train leasing costs, then divide all of these by potential passenger numbers to get a value to you? No, didn't think so.
So. Have we gone from 'discovering the OP doesn't know how to look for a cheap seat' to 'capitalism and trains' so quickly?
why do you ask? 😀
a totally arbitrary number in your head?
Let's not be contrary. It's not arbitrary, it's based on what's affordable for the consumer and value means the cost relative to the purpose of the journey.
You could buy a frozen chicken for £100 or you could buy fresh free range breastfed chicken for £200. Neither represent good value and both are a very expensive meal regardless of why they're priced like they are.
With the chicken example - you would buy something else and then the chicken price would have to come down or the chicken suppliers go bust.
With the trains there are limited alternatives and those that are cheaper are more of a pain - take longer, are more tiring et. Ultimately transport is becoming rapidly more expensive but our lives are built to some degree around cheap travel.
The alternative to expensive fares/having to be flexible about travel times to get something a bit cheaper - is to subsidise through Govt, or even re-nationalise. But then everyone pays through general taxation - is that more or less fair - discuss.
Now I'm not a tory, and I wish railways were government owned and run as a service, but I wonder what the complainers would do when everyone wants to travel from London on a Friday evening?
Bearing in mind they can't lay on any more trains.
As a consumer, I need to understand the absolute cost of something and its value.
Most take your hours to do a shop.
The railways are already subsidised olddog.
If the price is the price and not arbitary why do you get situations like this?
Cost of peak day return Nottingham to Birmingham - £34.50
Cost of return to Nottingham to Long Eaton plus return Long Eaton to Birmingham travelling on the same trains - £21.60
If it's supply and demand then can anyone explain why I had to pay £97 for a seat on a near empty train from Leeds to London?
Nothing more than greed in my opinion with train operators. At least the airlines price to get the plane 80%+ full before charging silly money and you're guaranteed a seat. East Coast would happily charge a fortune and then have you stand in the toilet.
Highlights how preposterous it is to run a railway as a profit making enterprise rather than a public service.
Andy_B. But you bought the ticket so you were perpared to pay that amount to travel on that train at that time of the day and they were prepared to sell you a ticket at that price. They will have done sums that suggest thatt the combination of factors, including what the regulator allows in terms of profit, would have maximised the revenue for that train. Tbh they were probably making a big loss on that train and would have been happier not running it at all and cramming everyone onto fewer trains. Bur were conmitted by the terms of the franchise.
The alternatives are that the rail fares are subsidised by the tax payer and you (and, me, I'm a rail commuter) would pay less. Or allow the train company to drop some of the near empty middle of the day loss making services.
Ultimately, it costs money to run trains, either passenger pays, taxpayer pays or a combination of both.
As for airlines. They simply wouldn't run empty fligtts, and believe me their pricing policy is ruthlessly to maximise revenues.
Highlights how preposterous it is to run a railway as a profit making enterprise rather than a public service.
Again, East Coast are operated by the Government.
East coast mainline is nationalised. National Express gave back the franchise becauae they couldn't make money.
I agrree it may be better to kept in public hands, but still left withvthe who oays dilemma, taxpayer or passemger
Doesn't matter - the ethos is entirely wrong.
Rusty - I agree, and the econmics are wrong too. No point privatising something when there is no competition, may as well run it centrally and in a co-ordinated way.
Still doesn't solve the fact that getting around costs, and we pay one way or anothet.
[i]ebygomm - Member
If the price is the price and not arbitary why do you get situations like this?
Cost of peak day return Nottingham to Birmingham - £34.50
Cost of return to Nottingham to Long Eaton plus return Long Eaton to Birmingham travelling on the same trains - £21.60[/i]
Unfortunately with the highly complex pricing structures that are deployed in the railways and airlines etc then these "pricing anomalies" are inevitable and almost impossible to eliminate (I acknowledge that the example provided is a glaring one)
However, it is important to remember that the consumer has not bought the same product from the train operator in the two examples cited and the contractual obligations of the train operator to the passssenger are not the same in the two examples.
The passenger who buys one ticket Nottingham to Birmingham return has bought one return ticket and there is one contract in place between the passenger and the train operator. The passenger who chose to buy two return tickets one for Nottingham Long Eaton return and the other for Long Eaton to Birmingham return has two SEPARATE contracts. The key word being SEPARATE.
In the Nottingham to Birmingham example, then not knowing the T&Cs etc then my thoughts would be little may go wrong.
BUT, transfer the same example to an airline with a passenger travelling from Edinburgh to New York via London, who elected to buy two tickets one Edinburgh-London and another London-New York. Two tickets, therefore two distinct contracts.
Then IIRC then from a contractual standpoint
1. Then when the passenger checks in at Edinburgh the airline has no contractual obligation to through check the passenger, and no obligation to through check their hold baggage, so they may be asked to reclaim their bags and recheck them in London
2. If the passenger has heavy or excess baggage then they may be asked to pay twice, once in Edinburgh and then again in London.
3. Oh and if they miss their connection in London (irrespective of whether the inbound flight was on time or delayed), then the airline does not necessarily have any contractual obligation to re-book the passenger onto a later flight, not pay any incidental expenses food etc nor an overnight stay if needed etc etc
In practice I am not sure how many of the full service national flag carriers etc would enforce all of this, but pretty sure that under the relevant IATA resolutions they would be fully entitled to.
Going back 15 years or more BA used to employ Revenue Protection officers at LHR to stop people checking in for the BA001/BA003 (Concorde) who had bought a ticket Paris-NYC. The BA fare PAR-NYC would have been cheaper than the LON-NYC fare, so people tried it on. If people are wondering why it was cheaper from Paris, then remember Air France where also flying Concorde directly from Paris to New York in competition to BA. It would have been 4 hours Paris to New York, 6 plus hours (at a guess) via London
I bought the ticket as I had no choice on that occasion. I had lost my prepaid cheap ticket so I guess that's a case of demand but definitely not supply / availability.
The real issue i have is that these tickets are usually this sort of price which forces me to drive because the petrol costs around £80 for a return trip from London to Leeds while the train runs near empty because of 'supply and demand'. I guess the petrol tax subsidises the rail company.
The airline example is not really the same thing, that's two tickets for two journeys and it's easy to see the advantage of paying more for one ticket.
My example is one ticket for one journey versus two tickets for one journey. There are no changes to be made, one direct journey on exactly the same train at the same times.
Just throwing this in. Ticketysplit is an app that helps you find if 2 tickets are better than one for the same journey.
Ok I will change the example to London to Sydney via Bangkok. One single flight (the BA009 IIRC) that seems to be the same as the one train Nottingham to birmingham stopping at long eaton.