Rail Fares to rise again, above inflation.

[EXTspotter]

There is always a way, Jacko. A second (paid) job on my days off, doing the crazy experiments at the uni, the ones which pay best are the most uncomfortable - one my friend did and got £300 for meant he had to remove all the hair from his body (I have no idea why) before he could be a test subject. Another good idea may be to take part in a sleep study one, because you have to stay in the monitored lab all night, but at least it is closer to the train station than my house!

[doktorhonig]

The ticket for this time is about £2700, but the placement (which is necessary for me to qualify in the profession I am training) is unpaid. I can see a lot of tesco 7p noodles in my future.

Holy Sith! ( don't need another warning )

That's 430 Euros per month! I could get a second apartment for that!

[GurraJG]

A commuter monthly ticket between Uppsala and Stockholm in Sweden, one of the more popular commuter routes, is 2180 SEK, or a little £200, not including local transit. In England, a monthly ticket between Colchester and London, a similar length journey, is £420, not including local transit.

Yeah, train travel in England is bloody expensive!

[doktorhonig]

Wow, so that would be about 3000 Euros per Year? I could get a first class flatrate for Austria plus a 1-year-pass for the local transit in Vienna for about 2600 Euros. But then again... you earn more money than we do here.

[GurraJG]

But then again... you earn more money than we do here.

Even so, it's ridiculous. The average person in Britain does not earn twice of what an average Swede does.

[JamieLei]

No but we're taxed a lot less though. And therefore prices for subsidised goods such as rail transport are higher. How much I wonder is SJ and the Pendeltag subsidised I wonder.

[Chris]

Somewhere the government will have to decide at what level the subsidy will be 'tolerable'. All we know currently is that 40% is 'too high'. What will be acceptable - 35%? 30%? We just don't have the population densities to have 0% like Japan does on many lines.

25% government subsidy is meant to be the golden figure.

[JamieLei]

Where did you get that figure from? Not attacking you or anything, just wondering.

[Chris]

Like many multitudes of random factoids I come out with, I have no idea of where the information was sourced from or whether it is even remotely true .

[GurraJG]

No but we're taxed a lot less though. And therefore prices for subsidised goods such as rail transport are higher. How much I wonder is SJ and the Pendeltag subsidised I wonder.

I don't really know how much SJ is subsidied, but that's not really the point I was making. The point I was trying to make is that rail travel in the UK is insanely expensive.

[Chris]

I don't really know how much SJ is subsidied, but that's not really the point I was making. The point I was trying to make is that rail travel in the UK is insanely expensive.

And Jamie's point is that rail travel is expensive in the UK because we pay less tax and hence have more disposable income to spend on train tickets, which are more expensive because we pay less tax and hence have less money to subsidize the railways with.

[JamieLei]

Of course we could go the complete other way and tax ourselves 80% and have a free transportation system. That would allow the cranks to boast about their 'wonderful free system'.

Coming back to reality, the other half of the puzzle is that our railway is indeed very expensive to run compared to European ones. The McNulty report is looking into that.

[Kevo00]

Coming back to reality, the other half of the puzzle is that our railway is indeed very expensive to run compared to European ones. The McNulty report is looking into that.

Two words. Transaction costs.

Most continental countries have benefited from the fact that we made all the mistakes in rail privatization or liberalization first.

[GurraJG]

I don't really know how much SJ is subsidied, but that's not really the point I was making. The point I was trying to make is that rail travel in the UK is insanely expensive.

And Jamie's point is that rail travel is expensive in the UK because we pay less tax and hence have more disposable income to spend on train tickets, which are more expensive because we pay less tax and hence have less money to subsidize the railways with.

I realise that. But even so, rail travel in the UK is really expensive. I think we can all agree on that, surely?

[JamieLei]

I don't really know how much SJ is subsidied, but that's not really the point I was making. The point I was trying to make is that rail travel in the UK is insanely expensive.

And Jamie's point is that rail travel is expensive in the UK because we pay less tax and hence have more disposable income to spend on train tickets, which are more expensive because we pay less tax and hence have less money to subsidize the railways with.

I realise that. But even so, rail travel in the UK is really expensive. I think we can all agree on that, surely?

It is. But we pay less tax. And also we get a better service than in most other European countries. Where else apart from Japan do you get intercity trains running every 20 minutes?

[GurraJG]

You pay less tax, yes, and you have more disposable income, yes, but for two comparable journeys to cost £200 and £400 seems unreasonable, to be honest. Anyway, I'm not sure why we're arguing about this, I just intended to show the difference in price between a two similar tickets on two similar journeys in two different countries. I'm not trying to say which is the better system, I just wanted to hightlight the differences.

[JamieLei]

I found Swedish trains to be equally expensive actually. I did the Nykoping - Stockholm route 3 times, and for £13 each way for not a particularly long distance, it worked out to be more than Britain. The walk-up fare from Birmingham to Crewe (a similar distance) is about the same.

[Rubidium]

It is. But we pay less tax. And also we get a better service than in most other European countries. Where else apart from Japan do you get intercity trains running every 20 minutes?

In the Netherlands, although it's every 15 minutes on the major lines.

For example:
Utrecht - Gouda - Den Haag: 4 intercities per direction
Utrecht - Gouda - Rotterdam: 4 intercities per direction (so 8 intercities Utrecht - Gouda an hour)
Utrecht - Amsterdam: 4 intercities
Utrecht - Den Bosch - Eindhoven: 4 intercities
Utrecht - Amersfoort: 4 intercities
Amersfoort - Deventer: 4 intercities
Amersfoort - Zwolle: 4 intercities
Amersfoort - Schiphol: 4 intercities
Amersfoort - Amsterdam: 4 intercities
Utrecht - Amsterdam - Alkmaar: 4 intercities
Utrecht - Schiphol: 4 intercities
Utrecht - Arnhem - Nijmegen: 4 intercities
Schiphol - Amsterdam: 4 intercities and 2 high speed trains
Rotterdam - Amsterdam: 4 intercities and 2 high speed trains

If you look at the longer routes, e.g. Nijmegen - Arnhem - Utrecht - Schiphol it is 'only' 2 times an hour, but then 15 minutes later you have Nijmegen - Arnhem - Utrecht - Amsterdam - Alkmaar. In Utrecht they will share the platform with respectively Eindhoven - Den Bosch - Utrecht - Amsterdam - Alkmaar or Eindhoven - Den Bosch - Utrecht - Schiphol. These trains arrive and depart at roughly the same time so effectively you can trave these longer routes every 15 minutes, although in half of the cases you need to transfer. The same happens in Amersfoort.

There are even plans for upgrading the Eindhoven - Den Bosch - Utrecht - Amsterdam/Schiphol intercities to once every 10 minutes because the full length double decker intercities aren't big enough. There has already been a test for this, though they need to change some infrastructure as closing a major road for 80+% of the day is somewhat troublesome.

This map shows the frequency of the lines, but the longer lines I mentioned before. Thus you'll need to account for several of these longer routes running in parallel for long stretches.

[GurraJG]

I found Swedish trains to be equally expensive actually. I did the Nykoping - Stockholm route 3 times, and for £13 each way for not a particularly long distance, it worked out to be more than Britain. The walk-up fare from Birmingham to Crewe (a similar distance) is about the same.

Oh yes, some fares in Sweden are expensive, but when it comes to monthly or season tickets, prices are lower in Sweden, and if you use the train often, the price of a season ticket will be of more concern to you than the price of a walk-up fare.

[supermop]

The ticket for this time is about £2700, but the placement (which is necessary for me to qualify in the profession I am training) is unpaid. I can see a lot of tesco 7p noodles in my future.

Holy Sith! ( don't need another warning )

That's 430 Euros per month! I could get a second apartment for that!

Where are you renting an entire apartment for under 430 EUR a month? I'd move somewhere for that!