Rail fares up 50% in ten years

CLAPTON

Treadmill wrote: »

Network Rail are showing 172 job alone, the tocs and focs have similar numbers and look on The Railway People site, I work on the Railway and can tell you that the Railway has been consistently understaffed in all areas for the 15 years I have been on, good news for me because I'm hoovering up the overtime.

One would normally expect around 3-5% recruitment rate just as normal natural atttrition (deaths, retirements, job changes, location moves, childbirth etc)

assuming say 40,000 rails workers (maybe more for all I know) one would expect say about 1200 or more vacancies over a period of time.

Andy_L

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Its useless, what kind of sensible mass transit system costs more than flying.

One that has to pay duty & vat on fuel?

StevieJ

dtaylor84 wrote: »

There was a brief comment from a First Great Western spokesman on the news on ITV earlier:



Well, my car costs about 12p/mile (fuel alone, admittedly). What's more, it can carry five people!

The cost of a bus for me to travel into town is £2.40 that would be 1.5 to 2 miles, I make that £1.20 - £1.60 a mile :eek: The taxi cost would be £4.00 for the same journey, there is something wrong somewhere

grizzly1911

StevieJ wrote: »

The cost of a bus for me to travel into town is £2.40 that would be 1.5 to 2 miles, I make that £1.20 - £1.60 a mile :eek: The taxi cost would be £4.00 for the same journey, there is something wrong somewhere

If it wasn't for "pensioner" bus pass subsidies it would cost a damn site more .;)

StevieJ

grizzly1911 wrote: »

If it wasn't for "pensioner" bus pass subsidies it would cost a damn site more .;)

Strangely enough my mother was visiting and took a trip into town, she showed her pass and the driver wanted £1.90 for some reason, a full bus meant little time to argue. He said computer (after scanning) say £1.90 so that is what you pay.

grizzly1911

StevieJ wrote: »

Strangely enough my mother was visiting and took a trip into town, she showed her pass and the driver wanted £1.90 for some reason, a full bus meant little time to argue. He said computer (after scanning) say £1.90 so that is what you pay.

Was that "peak time" or was it an independent operator?

StevieJ

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Was that "peak time" or was it an independent operator?

I thought they were all independent operators? it was Arriva, the time was about 13:30.

zagfles

ruggedtoast wrote: »

You can look up the prices yourself on National Rail. There is one train at 10.27am doing that route that costs £38. The rest cost between £64 and £170.

You're presumably looking at fares for today, which will exclude the best deal advance fares. Try looking at next week, eg next Tues, 20:15 train MAN-WFJ, is only £12.50 !! Loads of other cheap fares, even in the daytime there's a £20 fare. Loads of others around the £36 mark.

The latter is working out almost £1 a mile. Rubbish.

I have to go up to Scotland this month. I thought I'd take the train and avoid all the faffing about with airports. The cheapest quote I got for rail was £360. The flight costs £100.

Its useless, what kind of sensible mass transit system costs more than flying.

Flying is a "mass transit system", it's just another form of public transport. Why shouldn't it be cheaper, there is much less infrastructure to maintain, trains need miles and miles of tracks to travel on, planes just need air to travel through. Plus there's more competition in air travel.

timbo58

The railways are still suibsidised by the taxpayer to the tune of around 50%, the vast majority of whom do not use it btw.

The UK fares have BOTH the highest fares (season tickets etc) and the lowest fares (advance) in Europe in actuality, I doubt peak high desirability tickets will ever go down since demand has been growing at over 5% per year for the past decade either!

I think it's a bit odd that the railway companies are in the private sector and providing a nice return thankyou very much for their shareholders but that HMG is chipping in nearly 50% (and will probably always chip in at least 25%) and we have no 'golden share' option as taxpayers?

Surely if the railways were ripe for privatisation (which a tory government forced through btw) then we wouldn't have been subsidising them all these years later?

HMG needs to make it's own mind up here as it's hypocrisy IMHO to privatise something that cannot stand on it's own two feet without the taxpayers propping it up financially.

I realise a huge amount of investment has gone into the rail since privatisation (I worked for a TOC for 15 years) and this investment wouldn't have been forthcoming from HMG who had steadily starved it over the decades before under all colours of Government, however IMHO if an industry needs a considerable amount of Taxpayers money to keep it going then it should be considered a state asset and nationalised or scrapped completely.

I have read that HMG could have kept the coal mines open and their jobs going & communities alive by making substantially less subsidy even if they were just mining for export alone -surely then the subsidy for private railway companies is outrageous?

ruggedtoast

zagfles wrote: »

You're presumably looking at fares for today, which will exclude the best deal advance fares. Try looking at next week, eg next Tues, 20:15 train MAN-WFJ, is only £12.50 !! Loads of other cheap fares, even in the daytime there's a £20 fare. Loads of others around the £36 mark. Flying is a "mass transit system", it's just another form of public transport. Why shouldn't it be cheaper, there is much less infrastructure to maintain, trains need miles and miles of tracks to travel on, planes just need air to travel through. Plus there's more competition in air travel.

Worst attempt at a pro-flying argument ever.