I cycled from Edinburgh to Glasgow yesterday to watch some bands.

My train home cost £12.90

Yet, if I’d got the train through and back it would have been £13.00

My Garmin suggested I used ~3000 calories – certainly cost >10p to fill up, so I actually lost money. Shitey wet headwind too.

How are they allowed to get away with this chicanery?

Certainly doesn’t promote “active travel”

Train prices are a joke. I occasionally have to travel for work on train. And if I were to get on at an earlier stop (and  we’re talking an hour earlier), it would generally cost half the price. They charge a significant amount less for the longer journey, on the same train.

Most return fairs are better than a single, it’s just a pricing model, I nearly always just get the return and keep them as it’s a freebie within a month

Would you rather they charged £25.70 for the return?

Mrs ws and I travelled from belper to Nottingham the other day, it’s 18 ish miles, and an hour in the car around rush hour. We wanted a next day return as we were stopping over in a hotel. Computer said NO!!! You could only have a same day return. Cost us 36 quid which I think is a **** rip off when we were trying to do the right thing by using public transport etc.

I just booked the train to Portsmouth to catch a ferry,neath to pompey would have been nearly £70 so I booked neath-cardiff and Cardiff to pompey for £20 odd pound,its he same train aswell,bit strange really.

Going Sheffield this weekend.

40-50 quid in the car

vs

£160 on return train tickets (for the two of us)
plus about £16 on bus fares to & from train stations
plus about an additional 1 hour each way on buses
and you have to book it a month in advance

frankly I would rather spend my Saturday morning reading a book and staring out the window. But for the sake of £130 i’ll suffer the motorway…

Buy the return, sell the unwanted portion outside the station for half price cash in hand.

And if trains upset you don’t even look at one way air travel

@mike –

where do you live?  One way air travel is often cheaper than the train for journeys of >150 miles

(in another fantastic victory for fans of air pollution)

Sorry I mean longer haul, price difference of £50-100 on £1000 fares between one way and return

“Keep the return” it’s only same-day returns that are similar in price to singles

Rail ticket pricing is a joke.

But it’s getting looked into (was announced this week) so may become slightly less of a joke, as investment will no doubt continue to be a joke.

 it’s only same-day returns that are similar in price to singles

Rail ticket pricing is a joke.

Depends where you live – Manc to Brum is £37.40 Off Peak Standard Single (though can be had very special in advance for £20, Open return is £38.40 so travel back any time within a month

But it’s getting looked into (was announced this week) so may become slightly less of a joke

The announcement this week was by the Rail Delivery Group aka the train operators.

I wouldnt get your hopes up that it will be an improvement.

I used to get the train to work with the bike and cycle either end to get some extra miles in and save money, it’s a lot cheaper to drive now though since they put all the prices up.

Before I went back to the car a return was about £12 but if you booked a single it was just over £4 each way. It was a half hour journey with one station in between stops, I once looked at the price for a ticket from the station in the middle to my destination and it was more than I was paying!!

The whole pricing system is just totally mental.

Train companies don’t set fares they simply implement government policy.  Most of the regulation was set in 1995 immediately pre privatisation and is hopelessly out of date, which is what creates anomalies.  I can’t imagine sorting out train fares will be high on this governments priority list for some time to come though so the most we’ll probably see is minor improvements.

Well planes and trains travel in two directions. Most people do return journey’s so the cost to the airline/train operator is the same whether you do the return journey or not -they are unlikely to fill an empty ‘return’ seat due to lack of demand for one-way travel, so charging the same or similar price for one way vs return makes complete sense – they have to cover the cost of the return seat that you will not be filling. Then factor in the fact you have to have some loss making routes to have an effective network so you can feed the main routes with passengers from a wide area then the cost base escalates pretty quickly. So not a swindle at all really.

I went to buy a return ticket the other day.  The man said “where to?”  I replied, “back here of course…”.

Thanks Rockhopper

If you can plan ahead the prices can be really low, but clearly heavily subsidised by the late buyers who cannot. The peak fares are eye wateringly high, first class stupid money.

I think local rural bus prices are q high, for 2 people a taxi is cheaper.

One way air travel is often cheaper than the train for journeys of >150 miles

Well planes and trains travel in two directions. Most people do return journey’s so the cost to the airline/train operator is the same whether you do the return journey or not –they are unlikely to fill an empty ‘return’ seat due to lack of demand for one-way travel, so charging the same or similar price for one way vs return makes complete sense – they have to cover the cost of the return seat that you will not be filling. Then factor in the fact you have to have some loss making routes to have an effective network so you can feed the main routes with passengers from a wide area then the cost base escalates pretty quickly. So not a swindle at all really.

This is just so fundamentally flawed it must come from a rail company “big book of excuses” justification?

A load of people go from A-B in any given day and most will also go from B-A at some other point in the future …

It’s not like there is one train there and one train back.

I remember decades ago catching a train and getting a paper bag at the buffet.

The paper bag informed me that the train was XXX times more efficient than a plane and XXXX times more efficient than a bus/coach and XXXXX times more efficient than a car…. I remember wondering then why it was also XX times more expensive than these highly inefficient ways to travel?

I remember wondering then why it was also XX times more expensive than these highly inefficient ways to travel?

Lack of government investment

https://www.theguardian.com/money/datablog/2017/jan/06/tracking-the-cost-uk-and-european-commuter-rail-fares-compared-in-data

Like with much internet shopping, you need to be eagle-eyed.

Cost us £17.20 for Advance tickets between Southampton and Warminster, using a Two Together Railcard. If you know of a journey ~6 weeks in advance, scour the ticket sites for Advance tickets and on longer journeys, try splitting each way into multiple tickets.

It’s sometimes worth looking at a stop further away from your destination if you are between 2 – particularly, if it is less popular. It costs more to travel to London from Preston than Lancaster for example, even though Lancaster is 20 miles further down the track. Supply and demand economics I guess.

One way plane tickets are really cheap!

Edinburgh to Bristol, by train, booked a month ahead, £180!!! Easyjet, £45. And planes are much easier to book bikes onto, apart from KLM.

Slowpuncheur makes a good point, can’t remember the numbers but from my village, through Edinburgh to Rosyth is much cheaper than going to Edinburgh because its peak when it gets to Ed but is off peak by the time it gets to Rosyth…

One way plane tickets are really cheap!

Some are.. same as some train tickets are, I’ve paid £100 for a return leg from Sydney to Newcastle (UK) as it seemed worth having just in case, I’ve checked the same flights as singles and pairs for international on various airlines and 2x Singles is nearly always more than a return.

Pricing rules, strategy and policy is a huge field and not straightforward!!

Lack of government investment

I find it hard to believe that’s the entire reason.

It doesn’t explain why Euston-Preston > Euston-Lancaster for example…

I also struggle to see how

Edinburgh to Bristol, by train, booked a month ahead, £180!!! Easyjet, £45

when that £45 includes air tax etc.

@stevextc because if you pick 2 points for comparison it doesn’t give you the full picture!!

A few weeks ago I needed to travel one way from South coast of England to Carlisle. I knew a week ahead so could book advanced and got it for £38. I was on the early rush hour commuter train. If I had just wanted to go to London in rush hour I would not have been allowed to book in advance and the leg from my train station to London alone would have cost £4 more than my entire trip to the other end of the country. Moral of the story – when going to London and I know a few days ahead I book a longer journey that goes via London and throw the rest of the ticket in the bin. It’s crazy.

I just landed in Brussels.

The flight from Edinburgh cost £26…

” The flight from Edinburgh cost £26…”

and how many were on the flight – and how many paid 26 quid ?

It’s sometimes worth looking at a stop further away from your destination if you are between 2 – particularly, if it is less popular. It costs more to travel to London from Preston than Lancaster for example, even though Lancaster is 20 miles further down the track. Supply and demand economics I guess.

It’s not strictly true though, there are usually a fixed number of Preston-London and Lancaster-London cheap tickets available in advance.  As Lancaster is much nicer than Preston people aren’t so inclined to pay hand over fist to spend a day smelling londoners armpits on the underground to avoid staying at home, so the advance tickets don’t sell out so quickly, so usually you can get the less popular tickets cheap in advance.

“Keep the return” it’s only same-day returns that are similar in price to singles

Whenever I’ve looked booking the day before get’s an open return for practically the same price as an on the day day-return.

I think it’s more a case of the further station means you can often arrive at off peak time. For example, I can use an off peak return on the same train out of Euston as someone from Preston who has to pay peak prices – and the worst part is they have to get off in Preston!

Just be careful about using buying tickets for destinations before the one you intend to get off at. The operators can fine you if you do this I think.

Sorry to bring this back “on topic” (nobody flies from Edi to Gla unless they own their own plane, and the standard return tickets are only valid on day of issue)…*

I cycled from Edinburgh to Glasgow yesterday to watch some bands.

My train home cost £12.90

Yet, if I’d got the train through and back it would have been £13.00

<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>…</span>

<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>Certainly doesn’t promote “active travel”</span>

so you think “active travel” policies should be specifically targeted to encourage off peak single direction journies of c50 miles so that the tiny number of people who would consider cycling that are financially incentivised?  I think they might argue that letting you take your bike for free on some of the busiest trains in Scotland Without prebooking is a pretty good deal, that encourages active travel!

the standard single price for Edi to Gla is 14.40 with a peak return costing 24.70; and an off peak return is 13.00.  But it can actually be as little as 10.40 if you pick the right trains at off peak times on the slower/quieter lines.  I think this is a temporary incentive though to encourage people to avoid the busiest trains as Scotrail have screwed up with getting the new Hitachi trains running and the lead o the old rolling stock has expired so they have a massive overcrowding issue.  It is common so see people unable to board the trains at any of the intermediate stations (including haymarket) at peak times.

*if you need month long open returns it’s worth looking at costs from Eskbank which require a change in ed anyway as it’s often cheaper than two singles.

It’s unlikely that people would cycle 50 miles – I (and we – stw) are outliers there.

I was way out of peak hours too – 11pm departure

But the same policy seems to exist across the whole ScotRail network. Was the same when I worked/cycled/got train to Inverkeithing, which was around 12 miles.

So really didn’t incentivise taking the train one way – big difference in doing 12 miles a day on the bike and 24….

Check out the website: splitticketing.com

It basically checks every combination of single tickets for parts of your specified route.  This way you always end up with the cheapest price making great savings over the normal single fare