Rail travel ‘too expensive’

THE vast majority of people surveyed recently believe rail fares in the UK and the especially the South East are too expensive. What a surprise – NOT.

Ninety-five per cent said we pay too much for rail travel, compared to just five per cent who said tickets are reasonably priced. The latter ones must be, I am afraid, living in a dream world or even cloud cuckoo land.

As previously mentioned in another article, when one can fly cheaper from London to Birmingham return – and cheaper by over £100 – then something is not adding up.

Southeastern rail company announced that regulated fares, such as season tickets, would go up by an average of 6.8 per cent while unregulated fares, such as cheap day returns, have been increased by 4.8 per cent.

They claim that they have to increase the fares in order to improve service. This, yet again, does not add up.

There is a bus company from Devon that can offer a non-stop bus service twice-daily for less than £20 return to Exeter while by train the same journey off-peak would cost about £80 or such. No one can tell me the coach operator is making a loss on this run so why do the train operators claim they have to have such high fares.

They think of their shareholders and the high dividends and the fat salaries of their directors. Time this was changed and maybe even time to denationalize the railroad system, entirely, once again.

© Michael Smith (Veshengro), December 2007

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Rail travel ‘too expensive’

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Train prices in UK set to rise – AGAIN

Once again the train operators in the UK intend to raise their ticket prices yet again, and that well above the rate of inflation, in some cases in the South East of England and some groups of tickets well above ten percent.

Already now train travel in the UK – on long distances and short – is more expensive than is flying. While it is possible to fly from London to, say, Manchester for around £60 return, by train the cheapest rate is over £100 return. Does this make sense? Certainly not if this country’s government is serious about wanting to get people out of their cars and to have more people use public transport. If you make it more expensive than driving or flying this is NOT going to happen. Apparently this is not something the powers that be understand.

Or, and now I know that this would fall under the tag of “conspiracy theory”, is there something else behind this all? Are the powers that be trying to make it as difficult as possible for people to commute and force us all to live, once again, close to where the jobs are? If you cannot travel to work by car, the use of which is being made more and more difficult and it may, indeed, be a factor to environmental pollution, cannot, financially, afford to travel by train – or other “public” means – to work and it is too far to walk or cycle then, by simple force of mathematics the workers, white and blue color alike, will have to, once again, move back to closer where the work is. This means a return to the towns and cities where people can be monitored better. Just some food for thought.

If the government of this country is really interested in reducing car use and still being able for people to commute then there is only one way; cheaper train travel, on a nationwide scale.

In addition to that, in order to green the travel to work, we must have a proper cycle lane network. Not the gimmicky so-called “cycle lanes” that extend for a few yards to a few hundred yards and then, often, very abruptly end.

Furthermore we need to have a rail travel where we can take along, even on our journeys to work, the bicycle along, so that we can get from the railroad station to our place of work without the need of taking, say, a taxicab. Let's green our countries in the way of travel and transportation.

To sum up; the fact that the train companies are (allowed to be) putting their fares up, yet again, well above inflation, is not going to make for less car use, of that we can be sure. We must have cheap – not just cheaper – public transport, in towns and cities, but also across the nation. It does not make sense that I can fly cheaper from London to Manchester than using the train. This does not compute.

© Michael Smith (Veshengro), November 2007

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Train prices in UK set to rise – AGAIN

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