Should it be More Expensive To Travel By Train Rather Than Car

thescouselander

robt wrote: »

I think you need to check back to secondary school level physics, and research regenerative braking for electric trains.

Of course an empty train is more polluting than a car with one passenger - how many empty trains do you see?

Not all trains have regenerative braking - diesel ones for instance. Perhaps you could tell me exactly what proportion of the train fleet in the UK is actually fitted with regenerative brakes - probably less than half I would suspect.

I'm not sure how full trains get - I don't normally get on them because they're too flippin expensive.

movilogo

The train requires a lot of infrastructure to run and the actual running of the train isn't cheap either.

While I do not disagree with this comment, there are lot more rather than running cost.

Since UK trains are run by private companies rather than govt., profit comes before service. That pushes the ticket price higher and higher.

Countries like India, where many passengers don't even buy tickets, railways carry more than 20 million passengers every day and still make profit!

I strongly believe rail service should be operated by government and not by profit driven private companies.

thescouselander

movilogo wrote: »

While I do not disagree with this comment, there are lot more rather than running cost.

Since UK trains are run by private companies rather than govt., profit comes before service. That pushes the ticket price higher and higher.

Countries like India, where many passengers don't even buy tickets, railways carry more than 20 million passengers every day and still make profit!

I strongly believe rail service should be operated by government and not by profit driven private companies.

I agree it probably better for the government to run the trains. I'm not sure you can compare India with the UK though - at least we do get to sit inside the train in this country rather than on the roof.

The need to make a profit will push the price of a ticket higher but I'm not sure that is the only reason for high ticket prices - the train companies are only making a pretty average profit.

robt_2

robt wrote: »

I think you need to check back to secondary school level physics, and research regenerative braking for electric trains.

Of course an empty train is more polluting than a car with one passenger - how many empty trains do you see?

thescouselander wrote: »

Not all trains have regenerative braking - diesel ones for instance. Perhaps you could tell me exactly what proportion of the train fleet in the UK is actually fitted with regenerative brakes - probably less than half I would suspect.

I'm not sure how full trains get - I don't normally get on them because they're too flippin expensive.

I quite clearly didn't say all trains have regen brakes. I was pointing out the flaws in your arguments which you have not tried to counter.

thescouselander

robt wrote: »

I quite clearly didn't say all trains have regen brakes. I was pointing out the flaws in your arguments which you have not tried to counter.

My only arguement is that trains are very expensive to run - I was mearly proposing some reasons why that might be the case. Clearly regenerative braking is totally irrelevant for a train running on a non-electrified line.

Whatever the real reasons the fact remains that trains are very expensive to run as demonstrated by the extortionate ticket prices required to make the business viable.

mikey72

robt wrote: »

I think you need to check back to secondary school level physics, and research regenerative braking for electric trains.

Of course an empty train is more polluting than a car with one passenger - how many empty trains do you see?

Do you know how low a percentage of electric trains actually have regenerative brakes, and even that usually isn't fed back into the national grid.

robt_2

mikey72 wrote: »

Do you know how low a percentage of electric trains actually have regenerative brakes, and even that usually isn't fed back into the national grid.

a) It is not a low percentage of electric trains.
b) I know exactly how it works, cheers

darich

mickeypops wrote: »

The Inland Revenue allowance for motoring expenses is 40p per mile (up to 10K per year) which isn't particularly generous, I don't think. On that basis, the "true" cost of using the car is £104. (I imagine there is an element of depreciation - the hidden car cost - in this.)

Of course, the main difference is that your car can take 4 or 5 people for the same cost. And of course you start and end exactly where you like.

I agree with you - public transport is far too expensive.

I've never been able to work out the sense in premium pricing people's commute to work and back (as rail prices tend to go down after 0900) Surely we should do the opposite and cut prices at commuter times to encourage more people off the road?

The AA produces a table annually showing typical costs for running car in pence per mile.
Based on 10k miles per year and a car costing between £14k and £22k when new the total cost per mile is almost 65p.

Obviously the table contains many averages but according to the AA, the only way to get your running costs below 40p per mile is to run a car costing less than 14k when new, and to clock up approximately 20k miles per year in it.

That probably makes the car more expensive than the train.

Lum

I assume they're bundling in depreciation there. Doesn't apply to those of us running around in old bangers.

thescouselander

darich wrote: »

The AA produces a table annually showing typical costs for running car in pence per mile.
Based on 10k miles per year and a car costing between £14k and £22k when new the total cost per mile is almost 65p.

Obviously the table contains many averages but according to the AA, the only way to get your running costs below 40p per mile is to run a car costing less than 14k when new, and to clock up approximately 20k miles per year in it.

That probably makes the car more expensive than the train.

Not at all - First off there is no requirement to buy a brand new car if you want to travel by this means. If you buy second hand costs can be significantly lower than 65p per mile - especially the case if you buy an old banger that wont depreciate.

Secondly the cost per mile on the train can be quite a lot more. The last train journey I did worked out to be about £1 per mile and that was off peak. Obviously other journeys will be a good bit cheaper. It just seems all the journeys I actually want to do are very expensive and cost more than the car.