Item — HN Reader

The UK train system is a dire, expensive mess. Attempting to avoid getting directly political here, but I strongly believe it’s one of the lowest hanging fruit a political party could act on to curry favour with the electorate.

Would be amazing to see this productised à la the way split ticketing works.

6 comments

I agree that it's a dire , expensive mess. But it doesn't seem like low hanging fruit at all...

Anything that will improve the situation will be expensive and/or take a long time to achieve.

And "short-term cost, long-term benefit" is kryptonite to the average politician. "We get the blame, the next guy takes the credit"

Which is why the mess of American healthcare won't be fixed anytime soon.

One of the reasons China gets things done.

china has elections you know

There is some low hanging fruit, like the ticketing system.

Might be possible to improve satisfaction without costly infrastructure upgrades by ensuring you have a seat for long trips and being more aggressive with discounts at quiet times.

Plenty of times I’ve been one of like 30 people on a 12 car train despite the ticket having cost £60. The train is going to run anyway, so may as well price more aggressively.

That's why we focus on the important stuff like spending several million to call lines suffragette and lionness.

> Anything that will improve the situation will be expensive and/or take a long time to achieve

Only if you do it properly.

I mean there’s pretty low hanging fruit mentioned in the article. If rail strikes are frequent enough to feature in the formula, end the strikes by paying the workers well.

Paying train workers what they are demanding is expensive

British train drivers are the best paid in Europe by a staggering amount.

https://www.euronews.com/travel/2022/12/23/train-strikes-the...

You don't understand how this works, do you? By paying workers because of strikes, you are increasing the number of strikes.

Any evidence for that, or is this entirely opinion?

As a North American who travels in the UK multiple times per year, I really need you to elaborate. My experience has been nothing less than amazing, in comparison to the complete lack of rail options at home.

Low bar? British people tend to compare with rail travel experienced on holidays in places like France. Those systems do seem to be better (I do not have recent experience myself) and this then feeds the usual British tendency to take a rosy tinted view of the rest of the world and pessimism about the UK.

It also varies a lot in different places. Costs vary with types of tickets, who you are, and whether you have various discounts.

Local train services are very weak where I live (Cheshire) so while I can get to major cities quite easily its difficult to travel between towns in the county on trains (or buses).

I’m an American who lived in London for 3 years and was also impressed, but as someone who only had to use national rail for leisure (got around London by bus/tube) I was oblivious to two things:

1) Commute hours are brutal. Trains are packed and even a few minutes delay can feel like ages when you’re missing a meeting.

2) The cost of 5x weekly round trips is enormous. The average annual pass for someone commuting into London from outside is like £4000. That’s in a country where the average wage is around £40,000. That’s a huge amount of money to spend on public transportation. I know a car would be more but I’ve never met a single American who spends that fraction of their income on public transportation.

Still though … I’d rather have expensive and unreliable trains than no trains at all.

Also it's hard to state how much, and especially when it comes to transport, that London isn't England.

London is it's own bubble with "Transport for London" running all transport.

It has lots of investment, cheap busses, frequent trains and a reliable underground. It has synchronisation between different forms of transport, and timetables that make sense.

The rest of the UK, the rest of England especially, has incredibly expensive buses, might be lucky to get one train an hour in some places, and might have 3 different bus companies serving a small town, meaning you can't even travel on a day pass, as you'll find that one bus company refuses to accept your ticket because it's a different bus company. Or you find you have to wait much longer for your return journey as the "wrong" company buses turn up first.

If you travel in and around the South East, inc. London the service is pretty good, regular although still very very expensive.

In the north though it’s a mixed bag, frequently delayed, huge underinvestment, expensive etc.

Note that when an English person says the north, they expect everyone to know they are talking specifically about the north of England, not the north of the UK even if everyone else is talking about the UK.

Similarly, Americans expect people to be aware that California is not "the South", despite being on the southern border, and that the Midwest is actually in the eastern half of the country.

Basically the names of geographical regions don't always make sense.

It's a very moveable dividing line depending on where the speaker is from, there's no Mason-Dixon line here. Can mean anywhere north of London.

No normal person refers to Scotland as "north UK" when they could say Scotland, though.

Did you know that most people outside the US do not intuitively understand the arbitrary US delineations for North, South, West, Midwest? And yet, "they expect everyone to know they are talking specifically about..."

Though Scotrail was just as bad for many years, so it was a bit of a moot point until a few years ago.

Every country does this, the US south, midwest etc are nonsense geographically.

You have to remember what public transit is like in NA. What in Europe is unacceptable, late frequently, and problematic, is probably the best public transit someone from NA has ever been on, except maybe the NYC subway. It's a really, really low bar. NJTransit is considered one of the best in the US (and it is, unfortunately), and it's worse than anything I saw in Europe when I visited.

From NA

The UK definitely does not have the best public transit I've ever seen. ESPECIALLY for the price.

I often travel intercity to London and a ticket travelling out early, say, Monday and returning after peak hours, say, Wednesday costs upwards of £75. I have to book well in advance to get this price. I have just priced such a journey and the cheapest I can get for the days I chose next week is £105, for example. The journey time is about 2:20 but often it takes 10 minutes longer.

Quite often (maybe 1 in 6) my train to London would get cancelled. I would be able to get a refund no problem, but there is no compensation for the fact I have driven to the station and am now stuck without any travel plans.

Conversely I would have to arrive at the station early, for if I missed my train I would forfeit that half of the ticket and would have to pay again to travel on the later train. As such my journey would actually also include an extra 15 minutes of slack time in case the car didn't start and I needed to wake the wife for a lift, for example. It would also be quite stressful on the way home, where a meeting might overrun, putting my chances of getting my booked train at risk.

A year or two ago they opened a new "parkway" railway station (basically park-and-ride) and now the earliest train no longer stops at my local station. It would take me 30 minutes to drive to the parkway station, plus cost me £6 a day parking there, so my only option now is the later train which arrives in London at 8:30, if it is on time, making it impossible for me to start work before 9am.

The trains are supposed to have eight carriages, of which one is first class. On the outward journey I could often get a seat but the return journey would be standing only for the first hour. Quite often the train would arrive with only five carriages meaning it would be absolutely rammed the whole way. This leaves you very exhausted and sweaty for the start of the work day. And forget first class: it is twice the price of standard class.

So I've given up with the long distance train and now drive down to a commuter town near London and get the train just the final bit. I can also get into London much earlier and I don't have to pre-book specific trains. It's actually cheaper too, with the fuel and train tickets coming in at about £65, though obviously there's car depreciation, tyres, &c. on top.

So between £75-£130 for a prebooked ticket on an inflexible, specifically timed, intercity train, with a total journey time of about 3:00, or £65 for a drive down in my own car whatever times I want with a total journey time of about 3:30.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Japan. Wait till you try the trains there!

They're so punctual that delays issue a certificate for employees to present to employers*

* Source: random article

Wait until you try high speed rail in China. They're 10-15 years ahead of Japan.

I have lived in Switzerland for year and my very limited experience with trains in Scotland has been great. Trains were on time, and personel at the railway stations were very polite and helpful with us.

But maybe we were just lucky.

America has much more serious problems with rail, but the UK experience still isn't great. The broad root cause is that back in the day we had the genius idea of paying multiple private companies to run trains on shared lines. We set up metrics to measure their performance that, bluntly, do not work. They underinvest and when there's any sign they're not making money, they hand the contract back. All in all, we get all the disadvantages of a nationalised system with all the disadvantages of a privatised system with a couple of original problems thrown in for good measure.

But the train near my house still runs.

>The broad root cause is that back in the day we had the genius idea of paying multiple private companies to run trains on shared lines.

Train travel has doubled since the privatisation.

The main problem is we don't know how to build out infrastructure in a cost effective manner (see HS2 and the electrification of the Great Western Main Line). This isn't surprising as we do it in a stop/start manner rather than a continual process.

The infrastructure privatisation was reversed a long time ago, and most of the delays, in my experience, are due to problems with tracks.

The biggest problems recently (for me) have been strikes and inadequate services. The rot really goes back to pre-privatisation (it was not great in the 1990s) and arguably started with the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, based on the decision not to subsidise rail in the face of increasing road use.

It's harder than it looks. Excluding special cases like HS1 and TfL, we have three players:

- Network Rail, who maintain the entire country's track, signalling, etc. Also owns and runs some major stations. Run at arms length by government, centrally funded.

- Train Operating Companies (TOCs), who won a bid held every few years on how much they'll pay the government to be allowed a monopoly on running a particular regional service franchise. Government sets the rules of the franchise, e.g. customer compensation, punctuality targets, etc. TOCs have no control over the network. They lease trains from ROSCOs. They pay and schedule drivers, guards/ticket inspectors, ticket desks, customer support, station staff (they're also responsible for running most stations), and get money in by selling tickets to the public.

- Rolling Stock Companies (ROSCOs), who own (commission and maintain) the trains and lease them out to TOCs for exhorbitant prices. ROSCOs extract most of the value of the railway. ROSCOs exist because trains are so expensive that neither government nor TOCs can afford them.

Many of these TOCs are other countries national rail operators in disguise, e.g. the Scotrail franchise was recently run by Abellio which was actually the Dutch national railway company (NS). So all profits (not that there are many) leave the country and subsidise other countries' rail networks.

The current government has committed to taking back ownership of all TOCs at the end of their franchise terms, so in future both Network Rail and all TOCs will be publicly owned.

But at the same time, that might not make anything cheaper; most of the value is sucked out by ROSCOs, so unless the government commits to buying its own trains too, the ROSCOs will just charge more for the same trains if they see the government finding any efficiencies, ensuring tickets don't get cheaper.

Some fuming about ROSCO dividend payments: https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rail-rolling-stock-company-turns...

And to add to that, much of the cost (or cost savings) the TOCs were pursuing were effectively industrial relations - can they get away with having driver-only or driverless trains, in order to have just 1 or 0 paid staff member per train? Unions say "no". Union members start working to rule and suddenly you have no trains on Sunday, even if you're the government.

So... it's tricky.

there is no doubt that the early ROSCO deals were outrageously tilted against taxpayers/passengers (they pay £1 for old BR trains the state paid for, then we pay them to rent them back)

however the newer ones are significantly better

funding the capital cost of a billion pounds of new trains isn't free (even for a government), and there is risk on that investment

they also maintain the trains (to varying levels of quality)

> ROSCOs exist because trains are so expensive that neither government nor TOCs can afford them.

Is this sarcasm that I am missing? There is absolutely no reason that Government (or a Government-owned business) couldn't "afford" rolling stock. That's a really poor excuse (and completely made up) if they claim that.

There are loads of reasons governments can't afford up-front capital expenditure! They have an income stream (taxes) but that all goes out the door on existing liabilities, including financing existing debts. They can only get money by raising taxes or cutting existing services. The third way is to try and attract external capital, e.g. "attracting inward investment" or "public-private partnerships", where someone else puts the money down, the trains/hospitals/schools/etc. get built, but the investors who paid for the things own the things and the government pays to use them for decades to come.

This annoys the hell out of future governments, because it's effectively tying their hands, but it also lets the current government look like it's doing a lot more in its short term without raising taxes.

it's not dire and it's not expensive compared to the next reasonable alternatives

if you compare the cost of a London commuter belt season ticket compared to the cost of driving+parking, it is still very much a bargain

Maybe commuting can be a good deal sometimes, but for a 5 hour trip for 2 people with railcards, we were looking at £160ish when booked in advance (!) or £400ish if not.

If we drive our car, this is 4 hours with less than £35 of petrol (the full tank is approx £35 and it gets us there and some of the way back).

Booking in advance and having to get stressed about making it to the station on time, dealing with the frequent delays (I only started driving a year or two ago, so for many years I've been coping with the train, and genuinely it is delayed 50% or more for this journey in my experience) which can easily be another 2 hours on top etc, having to process the delay repay evidence for that, ...

Add to that, these 'cheap' fares are usually for awkward times, like arriving late at night. And then I have to get someone to pick me up from the station on the far end as well.

You can rightfully point out that my car needs maintenance too, but we have to do that anyway and I'd still argue that it's not enough to make up the difference.

Very tangentially, but a few years ago I was travelling at Christmas and the ticket machines were broken so wouldn't dispense the ticket I had already bought (for collection on departure). The station staff and train staff let us through for 2 trains, but on the 3rd train the guard was so vicious and insisted we pay for a whole new ticket for the whole journey, at full price with no railcard discounts or anything, which came to the aforementioned £400 when we had already paid £160. Was she right to do this? Maybe, but merry Christmas lol.

We were pretty miffed to say the least and it definitely spoilt the Christmas time a bit! £400 is not nothing for us to say the least. I eventually got it back by filing a chargeback with my bank. The train company never answered my e-mails or apparently even Mastercard's communications on the matter, so the ruling went to me by default. Kind of amusing in a way, but not an experience I'd like to repeat and it took 4 months.

So is the train not dire? I can't say I'm rushing to get back on it.

I think it always helps to remember the railway in the UK is operated for the benefit of commuters

I am a heavy rail user, and I never, ever use it for leisure trips

(the RMT/ASLEF strikes saw to that)

It's expensive for irregular users.

If I want to visit friends in Derby, coming from London, that's £81. For no good reason, a return ticket is £84.

If I need to travel at peak times, that's £123.

Booked months in advance it might be £20, roughly what a bus ticket costs.

Thats crazy.

But maybe you guys need to adopt the inter suburban mindset.

Those charges are what an Australian in NSW would expect to pay for a long distance rail service. Something with food service. I remember paying 120 bucks for a Casino to Newcastle years ago.

But the NSW intersuburbans run on the same ticketing and pricing system as the suburban lines. Newcastle, which seems to be roughly the same distance from Sydney as Derby is from London, costs like 6 - 12 bucks. Walk on walk off, like any other train.

The biggest issue they have is that the new rolling stock is garbage. The older trains were costing too much to maintain but they were quite comfortable for 12 bucks.

Brisbane to Gympie is pretty cheap too tbh. Same deal, slightly different schedule but run as an intersuburban rather than another rail class.

the return is 30p/mile, which is still considerably cheaper than driving

(HMRC rate is 45p/mile, which constitutes insurance, capital cost, wear, petrol, etc)

the single pricing is because they don't want to sell singles at all, but remember that return lets you come back upto a month later (your choice when)

There is a good reason the return is only £3 more. It's so fare dodgers who buy a single have still basically paid the full fare.

All the train drivers recently got massive pay increases so we can expect efficiency and cost to improve sometime soon!

Only 2% of all journeys in the UK are made by train. Only 8% of people in England use trains at least once per week.

The professional-managerial class grossly over estimate the social and economic importance of passenger rail, because the network was built to serve their needs.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66c5c0b6cbe60...

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a815d8e40f0b...

Well yeah, you're not going to take a train to the corner store. Your PDF notes that 29% of trips are made on foot.

2% of trips by train is a lot higher than the number of trips by airplane... And again, 8% of people using trains once a week is a lot higher than they use planes...

...And yet I don't think anybody "grossly overestimates" the social and economic importance of airplanes.

People use trains to visit family, go sightseeing, and so forth. They're a hugely important part of infrastructure, even if most people don't use them daily.

If walking down to the corner shop is considered a "journey" then 2% of all journeys being made by train is a massive number.

Now try closing the railways of south-east England and see how well the roads hold up without them.