A rant about trains...

[annwfyn]

Recently, David Cameron made a statement to the effect of 'people don't need to drive everywhere - we have a perfectly good train system'. I think he may have been trying to explain why it's generally a good thing to tax car travel lots, and try and beat people into taking the train.

Well, wide eyed and bright with hope, I decided last weekend to try the more environmentally sound train while travelling up to Birmingham. Sadly, I failed entirely, after getting to Euston, only to find out that the fare of £28 quoted on Virgin Trains website, was only applicable when travelling via the slow train from Marylebone. The normal London-Birmingham train service costs £38 return. I didn't have £38 on me, or available in my bank account (I'm a student and so often broke. It's a sad story), and Marylebone was a bit of a way away (and would have gotten me to Birmingham at a rather uncivilised time) so I went home, moped, and wound up deciding to drive up to Birmingham the next day with pierot and ksirafai, who nobly gave me money for petrol as well.

I had a completely empty tank of petrol just before leaving. I put £30 of petrol in it, and it got me to Brum and back, and has got me into college and back for the last three days. I also paid £8 for a day's parking in Birminham city centre. Time-wise, I spent about the same amount of time driving as I would have done if I'd had to travel across London to Euston, and then up to Birmingham. So, it took the same amount of time to drive as it would have done to travel by train, and it cost me exactly the same amount to get a car containing three people up to Birmgham, and park for day as it would have done to get a single person up to Birmingham by train.

There's a rant coming at the end of this, if I can just put it into words. I think it starts with me being of the opinion that trains are meant to be good things. They are meant to be better for the environment, ease congestion from the roads, offer an alternative form of transport for those who can't afford a car. Yet none of this can come to pass as long as train fares continue to be this high. At the moment, there is absolutely no positive incentive for me to use public transport outside of London. It isn't cheaper, it is less comfortable and less convenient. This needs to not be the case. People need to have positive reasons to not drive everywhere. Yet the government, and the opposition, don't seem to see this. Instead they are trying to sort out the car problem by penalising drivers and car owners, quietly making travel in general more and more prohibitively expensive for everyone beyond the middle classes and economic elites. That's not reasonable. Why can we not try and help the planet and ease congestion by offering people alternatives, instead of just taxing them into stasis?

And why on earth does it cost so much more to travel from Euston instead of Marylebone?

In other news, I've done nothing all week except college, dinner and TV and it feels amazing. My sanity is greatly restored. I think we all need to sit and chill every once in a while. I think life is beginning to pick up pace again, however.

Mostly for my reference, here are my plans for the rest of the week:

Thursday:

Daytime - adventures in museums with adze and anyone else who is around.
Evening - Writing my museology essay which is due in on Monday.

Friday:

Daytime - going to the bank to change all our mortgage stuff over to the new joint account, tidying, hopefully finishing my museology essay.
Evening - meeting up with molez.

Saturday:

Daytime - meeting up with Mark Buxton to wander around museums and chat.
Evening - meeting up with kittyboo_tastic and her young man for drinks and dinner

Sunday:

Currently free. What have I forgotten? I've got a reasonable lump of uni work to do if nothing else comes up...

Comments

[silver-blue.livejournal.com]

Couldn't agree more.

There's certainly strong arguments for promoting public transport - practicality, efficiency, reduced congestion, reduced pollution (regardless of my anti "let's all panic about global warming" stance at the moment). All of these are good things.

But they've got things totally the wrong way round. Moves are being made to push people onto public transport before actually providing a reasonable public transport network in terms of efficiency and price. That's just going to cause problems - a network that isn't in a position to cope with increased passenger numbers, high costs, alienation of passengers, and just a general mess.

I've seen high quality public transport networks in action - in Japan (national train network and Tokyo subway), and Kuala Lumpur (city wide monorail). Those are reasonably priced, on-time and efficient networks - and people will *choose* to use them over a car because of those reasons. Whereas in the UK the move is to shove people onto late running, expensive and rubbish networks as opposed to the still more convenient private transport measures. Which is silly.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I will say that public transport within London is pretty damn good. I've never felt that traumatised by having to use the tube, although I do drive into college these days due to the lack of a tube station in Camberwell.

It's just when you leave London it all falls apart, and it does sometimes seem as if this is being affected by the majority of decisions on such matters being made by men who never do leave London.

[silver-blue.livejournal.com]

I don't particularly think so. The tube in particular is extortionately expensive for a mediocre (at best) service with poor reliability. Bus is reasonable, certainly. Overland train services within London and surrounding area vary wildly from excellent to awful.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

You see, I quite like the tube, but it's entirely possible that it's overpriced. I don't have a huge amount to compare it to.

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

The tube is overpriced, certainly. The service hasn't really improved with all the price hikes, but sticks around the 'okay' mark.

But I get buses, anyway. I hate the tube.

[anonymous-james.livejournal.com]

I agree, to get from Waterloo to Farringdon I can either get the 243 and often get a seat or get the tube and stand with my nose in someone's armpits. That's assuming I get on the train in the first place. My choice was obvious.

Of course the 243 is one of _the_ most popular buses and so that queues are madness. But I reckon it's still quicker because you have to change to get to Farringdon. Most of the time I'm a loon on a bike, it cuts 15 minutes off my journey. I really am "better off by bike"

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

One of my housemates often cycles to work, it's often much quicker for her. I never managed to learn and anyway, I work on the same bus route I live on, so it's simple.

[lilitufire.livejournal.com]

The Tokyo Metro system kicks its arse. I am always shocked at how small, dirty and inefficient the tube is when I come back.

The Ginza line in Tokyo is from the late 1920's, so it's not all about the old.

[astro-dust.livejournal.com]

Yes, the tube is expensive, in a far away lil' ol' town called Melbourne I could get a weekly ticket for $18.00AU now i pay £22.40 on my oyster... The aussie price converted into pounds is around £7.00. I know Melbourne is comparatively a tiny place compared to London, but that's three times the price.

Waaah.

[satyrica.livejournal.com]

Melbourne's public transport was great from my brief experience but Sydney . . . oh how I wish for London transport in Sydney . . .

[wildrogue.livejournal.com]

I haven't much to compare it to, but to me the tube seems pretty good and is certainly improving gradually.

That said I grew up in a place where buses came by weekly so my views of a good service might be a little skewed.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

We had two buses per day when I was a young 'un.

Then I hit my teens, and it became one bus every two hours, and that were luxury, I tell you.

I hear rumours of hourly buses from Lambourn to Newbury now. I tell you - those kids these days just don't know how lucky they are!

(the bus never went anywhere other than Newbury, which kinda sucked if you had anywhere else to be, but let's not worry overly about that!)

[riksowden.livejournal.com]

Bah, when i lived in Leafield there was a bus at 3pm on a Thursday to Witney. The bus back was at 2.30 - the next Thursday.

One bus a week!

[anonymous-james.livejournal.com]

Do you use the tube in rush hour? I wouldn't even contemplate that, buses or cycling seem like the more obvious choices.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

The big difference between London and HK/Kl is that their urban rail networks are almost a hundred years newer than ours - the Victorians didn't build for our infrastructure requirements. Talk to Monty about the hellishly difficlt work that LU have to do to keep the tubes running in tunnel networks simply not designed for the modern world.

And as for cost? I didn't vote for Ken, so my hands are clean.

[omentide.livejournal.com]

There's quite a good plan for linked busses and trams through West London. But it's currently being trashed by Ealing Council. Who recently generously added 20 minutes to my daily journey line by closing a bus lane which, I guess, was proving an inconvenience to motorists. When the Central Line broke I had to get the bus every day and stood in the freezing cold for hours watching lines of cars, one person in each, paralysing the system and preventing me from getting home.

It's a chicken and egg situation.

When we go up to Scotland I look at the price and running time of trains and realise it's cheaper to fly. So I fly, even though I know that flying is wasteful. (And note that I'm not mentioning global warming here).

I don't have a car and don't want one. It's not just the petrol. It's the tax and the maintenance. I'm getting the best of both worlds at the moment - when I have a use for a car, I hire one.

The tube is inefficient and overpriced. Mostly, as others have said, due to the age of the system and the disruption that would be caused (and is being caused) to improve it. Being an old codger, I'd quite like to see fare dodgers being made to pay to use it!

And proper school buses. Because it takes a lot less time to get to work during school holidays. And less than ten minutes (as opposed to over 20) to return my hire car on a Monday morning!

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

why on earth does it cost so much more to travel from Euston instead of Marylebone?

The correct question is actually "why does it cost so much less to travel from Marylebone instead of Euston?"

The answer is that no fucker would travel London to Birmingham on the High Wycombe route (i.e. Marylebone) provided by Chiltern Trains because it takes longer than the Milton Keynes (i.e. Euston) route provided by Virgin Trains. So they discount the living hell out of a Chiltern ticket. You can even do it for £15 return if you don't mind being restricted on your travel times.

This is one of the massive things that annoys me. We need a cheap, high quality, public transport system if we're even going to start tackling global warming. Instead we have privatisation and idiocy. If you run a service for profit, it will seek to profit from its users! Who piggin' knew?

Bloody Tories.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I did notice the greatly increased travel time from Marylebone to Birmingham actually. Twas one of the things that prompted me towards my car. And the irritating thing is that I would quite like to be environmentally friendly! I would also, however, like to have enough money to eat, and I resent feeling as if I'm paying through the nose to get the train.

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

I trust you have a Young Person's Railcard, on the basis of being a full-time student?

I totally know what you mean. Because I'm still not used to being a driver I can resist the urge. But it does make me mad that it can often be cheaper by car.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I actually don't, due to it costing £30 (last time I checked) and my not using trains often enough to make it worthwhile. It must be noted - I'm hideously London centric these days and just tend to stay in a fairly local area. If I were to travel more, I would certainly get a Young Person's Railcard!

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

Then the last time you checked, you checked wrong. They cost £20 (http://www.youngpersons-railcard.co.uk/) and more than just save you 33% on your ticket, they also let you buy Saver tickets and use them at any time of the day.

Which means your Euston-Birmingham run would never cost more than £25. If you envisage doing that at least twice a year, it suddenly becomes worthwhile...

[suave-steve.livejournal.com]

It's not even like they chose a simple method to privatise it but instead turned it into a 3 tiered cake of companies with competing profit motives and models.

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

...all using tracks owned and maintained by a third party. WTF?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Bloody Tories.

Remind me again who has been in power for the last decade without renationalising the railways, and whose hamfisted dealing with Network Rail made things so spectacularly worse?

[raggedhalo.livejournal.com]

Labour Party.

Don't like them much more than I do the Tories.

[adze.livejournal.com]

You know it cost me less to fly from Newcastle to Stansted after Christmas than take the train to Hatfield? Even including the coach I didn't have to get, it was still cheaper to fly. In a real plane and everything. And it took a third of the time, on a day when the trains weren't running, for no apparent reason.

I like travelling my train. It's relaxing, and simple. But it's so expensive and inconvenient that it sometimes isn't worth it. Not that I have too much choice most of the time.

Anyway, I shall get on the train in the morning, and aim to be with you for 12ish, or maybe a little earlier.

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

I don't miss my car very much. But then again, I don't travel by train that often and usually know well in advance when I am going to need to. This means I can book ages ahead and get the dirt cheap tickets, so I mind less.

I do find the differences in ticket prices to be insane, though. I can get a first class ticket to Wellingborough for less than a standard class ticket to Northampton, and a standard to W can be got for a third of the price to N. Bon & Dave live in between the two. This makes no sense whatsoever.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I'm basically awful at planning in advance. One month is advance seems to be my maximum for making plans. Beyond that, I rarely have a clue what I'll be doing.

Even my last holiday became slightly complicated due to confusion about my term dates.

This makes it harder to get cheap train fares. Admittedly, that's my own fault for being shite, but I still feel it is a tad unreasonable to have an entire train system which relies on people being able to book in advance!

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

I don't usually book more than a couple of weeks in advance on account of being a)rubbish and b)crap. I plan in advance, yes, but then it just sits in my head. :-)

There's no doubt that the whole system is bonkers, though. See above '1st class for £11, standard for £20' example. If it were more affordable across the board, then maybe people would use their cars less.

[baldurs-voice.livejournal.com]

And it is becouse of this that I am unable to travel much and see people that I would love to meet up with and do stuff with out side of games like go see a film or have a drink or somethink but by the time I get there I have normial spent the best part of £35 as it is

and just as a side note the £28 pound to brum from marlybone is the train I have to get for london (stops in bicester) and for a return for me to london is £25 and I am about half way betreewn the two

yes london is good for travel not great but is a lot better anywere else

[wildrogue.livejournal.com]

Completely understand and agree. While I was living and working in Reading I had two options for my daily journey to work.

1 - The car at around £10 per week and 20 minutes each way.
2 - The bus at £25 per week and 40 minutes each way, plus a around 30 minutes walking time - making the whole journey over an hour because the two times of day the bus didn't stop directly outside the office were 9am and 5pm. Clever.

Oddly enough I chose to drive.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Yes.

I like the train. I use it whenever I can. But, sadly, I just suck up the fact it'll cost more than flying, and usually then pay more still to travel First Class to have an actually pleasant journey.

Other examples of general fuckupery - sleeper trains. Should be the best idea ever - get on a train in London, sleep, wake up in Edinburgh. Fantastic. In practise, there's one small flaw - they utterly, utterly suck, because they're older than most of our grandparents.

It *is* possible to get very, very cheap train tickets if you book about a month in advance and know how to work the online booking systems. I can usually get a train ticket to London for about £50 return. But, frankly, you shouldn't have to do that.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I quite like the sleeper trains, but it might just be that I fell in love with them when I discovered the joy of sleeping through a dull train journey and getting into London first thing in the morning!

[kittyboo-tastic.livejournal.com]

very much looking forward to saturday....
which museums are you visiting this week?

as for the trains.... my man and myself both don;'t have a driving licence? unbelievable? we both have lived our past years in big cities with massive transport structures (paris and london), making it irrelevant to drive. and as we both always have been too broke to invest in the necessary in the long-term but all too superfluous in the short-term, we've never found an appropriate time to learn to drive.
admittedly, this is slowly becoming a problem (had to ignore an application for a great job because of that), and we'll have to think about this very soon.

as much as I'm everyday becoming a fiercer eco-freak, I completely understand your position!

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Museums-wise - I think adze and I are going to Greenwich Maritime Museum tomorrow, and then I'm going to the British Museum on Saturday daytime. I sometimes think I spend too much time at the British Museum. Then I think there is no such thing.

I'm being vaguely tempted by wandering to the V&A soon to see Tipoo's Tiger (http://footguards00.tripod.com/09GALLERY/Art/09_cornw-tipu.htm). It was the subject of one of a museology seminar I went to recently, and it has rather piqued my interest, but I'm not entirely sure.

I'm looking forward to Saturday as well! Just need to get confirmation off pierot that he can make it too, but it's looking good at the moment. I'll definitely show, in any case.

[(Anonymous)]

hey, if you're going to the V&A thursday, send a me a text-message and we'll have coffee (thursday is 'woopy-i-volunteer-at-the-V&A-day').
I love Tipoo's Tiger....! it's one of my favourite works in the museum!

[kittyboo-tastic.livejournal.com]

sorry, that was me. i forgot to sign in..

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

E mail me your mobile no? I'm not sure if I've got it. My e mail is surinen@gmail.com.

If I don't come to the V&A tomorrow, I think I may well next week. I keep wanting to see that tiger!

Tube, trains and cars

[mangochutney04.livejournal.com]

I agree too. When booking travel for work I often find low cost airlines to be cheaper than trains for clients coming down from the North or Scotland etc.

Cars compare even better when you have a 1.4 diesel as we do. The yearly car tax is only £50 which is peanuts and the cost per mile of running a diesel is only 8p which makes any trip very reasonable. Just a shame the insurance is so darn expensive living in bump and scrape trafficky London.

Since there's been two of us I rarely find it economical to take the train.

For comparison, Chutney's weekly travel pass for a 1.5 hour each way commute to work in Singapore cost the same amount as ONE single tube fare from Colliers Wood to Balham £3 (3 stops on the tube). The equivalent journey in Singapore cost me less than 30 pence - about one-tenth of the cost.

In Singapore, car tax is very hefty - we're talking thousands of pounds - even my MD couldn't afford a car when living as an ex-pat out there and coupled with the hardly worth worrying about cost of public transport and the availability of taxis (average fare £1.50) it is no wonder that there are very few cars on the road and that the tube system is hugely popular. Mind, it's also air conditioned unlike London's and we think they are third world?!

Saying that, I don't think my travel pass is all that bad here - £50 a month for two zones and I can use the tube (as I do each day), bus, train or tram....so many options....and even though I could take transport the whole way I prefer to walk.

But to get me on the train for long-distance trips I'd definitely need big time incentives. Of course we have a dog which doesn't help but I enjoy the private time Chutney and I get in the cabin of our car on these road trips which is as much part of the fun as where you're going.

I hate to admit it but I once got out of giving green Lib Dem David Rendel MP an environmentally friendly lift share to a conference up North on the basis that we had just got married and three is a crowd.

Re: Tube, trains and cars

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean about the private space! For ages, jez and I used to use long car journeys as our time for chatting and bonding. They are very good for that.

[satyrica.livejournal.com]

Birmingham was a bit of a special case (thanks to privitisation and different companies running different lines) in my experience of catching trains around the country: it's tricky because when they work they're great but when they don't . . . oh fuck do they make you angry . . .