Im not sure I understand your 3% point, are you saying Virgin pay more into Network Rail on the WCL and this wouldnt happen if government owned/controlled?

Interestingly, I can take a 3.5-4hr train from Penang to Kuala Lumpur for $12, made by Siemens I believe, traveling faster than the Pendolino/Voyagers, and with a similar level of comfort (I do think the seats are bit narrower though), so in comparison I consider the UK crazy priced unless you get some off-peak deal (still not great).

I suspect if still subsidized then it's probably very inefficient, I dont know but I certainly dont feel good paying the train ticket prices in the UK even the off-peak saver.

Nothing to do with the trains themselves, everything to do with the tracks and their maintenance. There's a pie chart in that PDF I linked elsewhere which shows that about 50% of the cost is network rail, 30% staff and 20% train leasing. I suspect the UK could maintain it for a lot less if it could pay Malay wages for the track maintenance and train staff.

UK railways have been chronically mismanaged for years. Better comparison would be against other European countries.

>I suspect the UK could maintain it for a lot less if it could pay Malay wages for the track maintenance and train staff.

They could probably also do it by whacking the extremely wealthy landowners surrounding major train stations with an extra tax.

After all, if the train station made your land valuable, you should be paying for that. In Japan this helps pay for infrastructure. It's practically criminal that in the UK it does not.

Indeed, a land value tax would be very equitable. If society needs to build a power plant near you, which lowers the value of your land, then at least you don't have to pay as much in tax. If they build a new transport hub nearby, which triples the value, then you have to pay more.

Fair points. What would be the benchmark country in your opinion?

I'm hardly an expert, but Germany and Japan are the obvious examples to look for best practices. Really the UK comes off badly compared to most European countries. Worth noting that Abelio (Dutch state-owned) and DB Freight (German state-owned) operate in the UK.

(anyone in the age range eligible for InterRail, I would highly recommend spending a month travelling the railways of Europe)

Germany subsidies its rail network by €17b a year. The UK subsidises by €4b.

In the UK we have decided to go for lower taxes and lower subsidies. We do that while still subsidising lines that are good for the country but not profitable (old mining towns in south wales which would collapse if people couldn't commute to Cardiff etc, cornish rurual lines which attract tourism and offer transport for local residents who may not have 1 car per adult, etc). This means that on the profitable lines which would make commercial sense (say Manchester to London, or some London commuter lines) we have to charge more.

Remember commuter tickets are twice the price of business tickets - as they are paid after income tax (which varies from 33% to 60%). When I was offered a job based in the office, I wanted an extra £10k a year for the commute -- £2200 for the ticket, £3300 for the extra tax to pay for that ticket, and £5k for the time out of my day. They decided that I didn't actually need to be based in an office after all, and I go (to that one) about once every 3 months, which costs them £20 return (but would cost me £45).

This is offset by the massive discounts. A season ticket from Nuneaton to London, 206 miles a day, about 1 hour in each direction, is £9000 a year, for 230+ days of travel, or 47,000 miles. 19p per mile. If you're willing to take a little longer and travel on London Midland it's £6500 per year, 14p per mile.

On the other hand, a day trip from Nuneaton is £154 in peak time, £104 on the slower train. That's 74p per mile - 3.5 times the price of the commuter.

I don't think many people are happy with the way that Abelio has been operating Scotrail.

There's a constant claim from the left that train fares in the UK are overpriced because the train operating companies take a profit of about 3% of the revenue.

There is a profit margin to be made on any savings, I'm sure that if Stagecoach or First or whoever could cut costs enough to make more money they would. We have very old infrastructure, laid down in the mid 19th centuries, and very crowded lines. Building a new line is a mammoth task, and expensive, as we've seen from HS2. Rail staff are hardly cheap too - a virgin trains driver earns £51k, top 10% of earnings in the country.

I pay £11 per day for my 35 min commute into central Edinburgh (I work from home a lot so season tickets don't make much sense) and given that parking in Edinburgh would be £25 a day £11 a day looks like a bargain given that the station I commute from in Fife is 10 mins drive away from where I live and has free parking always available.

That doesn't sound too bad, but I don't think that's representational of most routes and hence most travelers, in that if you stand outside Euston, Glasgow or Edinburgh before 8.30am and ask people what they paid to get to work and if they considered it value for money you would likely get a lot of expletives

However they don't take commuter bus services, or drive, or ride a bike, or move closer to the office, or change job location, or change job times.

The media has driven this culture of people believing in 'rip off Britain'. If people were commuting 100 miles a day for the cost of a cup of coffee they'd still say it was a rip off (although oddly it would be the commute, not the £4 latte)

I suspect I would be much less happy with the service if it wasn't for the fact that I am far enough out from Edinburgh so that the train is relatively empty so I can pretty much always get a seat (and a window seat on the side with the best views).

Two stops in from where I get on the train fills up dramatically and there are often people standing.

free parking what socialist paradise is this - a while back I looked at buying a flat near my local rail station - I reckoned I could have covered all my property taxes or a large chunk of my mortgage from renting out my unused parking space

The Kingdom of Fife!

> the operating companies take about 3%

I've heard this before but I'm not sure I believe it. They have a pretty huge incentive to make it seem like they aren't making a lot of profit, and it is easy for them to do so (just like Hollywood accounting).

Well if you believe that Labour, Coalition and Tory governments have all conspired with all the train companies to somehow hide profits from the public and from their shareholders, that's not really something I can argue with.

I could fly Glasgow-London for far cheaper than the train ticket. Yet an airplane is far more expensive to operate.

I wonder why that is.

No, the railway "permanent way" is far more expensive to operate. That's the problem. The UK railway network has rather a lot of 100+ year old bridges in it, along with some less ancient but still pretty old signalling equipment.

(extremely high detail PDF on costs: http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/4933/toc-bench...)

The airplane gets tax-free fuel to burn and doesn’t have to pay for environmental damage it creates.

That (plane operating costs > rail operating costs) may not be the case when you take into account the cost of maintaining the physical infrastructure (hundreds of miles of railroad) compared to that of airports (a few hundred metres of tarmac).

Not to mention that there are only two stopping points (London / Glasgow airports) where as a train needs to stations all over the place.

True. But if Heathrow you'll pay 20gbp (or is it 25gbp now?) on Heathrow Express to get from central London to the airport unless you take the slow tube.

From Heathrow the options are

Heathrow Express - Heathrow Connect - Bus to Hayes+Harlington then train - Picadilly line - Coach - Uber - Taxi

Only one of those options is for mugs, and it's not the Heathrow Express.

However from Glasgow you can also fly to Gatwick, or City if you want to avoid thiefrow.

However comparing the cost of a non-flexible ticket from Glasgow to London with a flexible train ticket is ingenuous at best.

> unless you take the slow tube.

That's competition, no?

Is the slow tube the one that takes an hour?

> A train from Washington to New York will set you back $1.14 per mile, with less flexibility.

The trip is approximately 226 miles. With sufficient advance purchase, the Northeast Regional coach fare is $49 each way and the Acela is $168 each way. I have never seen an NER fare greater than $200 each way. How did you arrive at $1.14 per mile at all, let alone thinking it's typical?

I looked at the next train they were selling a ticket, which was the closest I could come to the flexibility you get on a £182 ($240) London to Glasgow ticket that came close to the "$300" mentioned by the OP.

I've checked again for tomorrow morning, $295. Perhaps I'm using the site wrong: https://imgur.com/TnuOGt3

295/226 is $1.30 per mile.

I'm ignoring the slower trains, non flexibile, booking in advance etc, as that wasn't what was raised. There are slower options for London-Glasgow that are nowhere near the full price (for example £57 tomorrow morning if you go via Edinburgh - saving £130).

I've just checked my emails - last time I took this train (albeit from NY to Washington), in March 2013, it was $498 for 2 tickets - $249 each.

This is for a far less flexible ticket than I get in the UK. For my $240 I can travel London to Birmingham, have the day there, and then continue to Manchester, have a meal and stay in a hotel overnight, then get a train from Manchester to Glasgow the next morning.

Washington to New York is half the distance, and nearly twice the price, as London to Glasgow.

> I've just checked my emails - last time I took this train (albeit from NY to Washington), in March 2013, it was $498 for 2 tickets - $249 each.

That price is far from typical for this service. The prices I quoted are what I just pulled off amtrak.com for a Friday NY-DC train on 12JAN18. A couple months ago I purchased a ticket from Fredericksburg (south of DC) to NY with only a few days in advance for only $130. Thee ten-trip option my sibling poster mentioned gives you the same flexibility you mention there. Please do not base your idea of the cost of rail travel in the NE US based on one very overpriced trip.

Edit:

Just saw your screenshot. That $295 is for the Acela (which is premium service). I just ran the same search, and midday trains are running about $152 for the NER and $168 for the Acela. The one you chose is literally the most expensive non-first class ticket you could book tomorrow.

If I was going at midday I'd get a $80 London to Glasgow ticket. The comparison was as close as possible to the fully flexible any train any time Glasgow/Euston high speed route that sitepodmatt brought up. It's still not as flexible as a UK train - you can't stop off in Phillidelphia for a few hours on your way you New York for example, can you even buy a ticket 5 minutes before the train leaves on that train?

I still don't see his $300 ticket, the only thing I can think of is that he's looking at a return ticket, but then that doubles the price on the Accela.

I was about to chime in similarly; a ten-ride ticket for NYP->POU is $0.38 per mile and you can take any train without reservations; an off-peak MTA ticket for the same leg costs $0.21 per mile. $1.14 per mile sounds high.

Those prices are a bit high for typical UK season tickets. 85 miles Poughkeepsie to NY 90 minutes, similar distance + time and number of trains per day to Salisbury to London (88 miles). A weekly season there (so 10 trips) will set you back £131, or $175, 20c/mile, half the price of Poughkeepsie to New York.

$0.38 / mile is the long-distance rail (Amtrak); the commuter rail line is $0.20 / mile (off-peak 10-ride or 10 rides on a weekly pass anytime).

"a ten-ride ticket for NYP->POU is $0.38 per mile"

I'm only going on what you said.

MTA.info says this ride is 247.50 for a 10 trip ticket, with a trip of 85 miles that would be 247.50 for 850 miles, or 30c/mile.

From what I can see when doing a like-for-like comparison between the UK and the northeast US, the US is surprisingly pricier than the UK.

Now to be fare the Salisbury weekly season is valid for 10 journeys (or even 40), but only over 7 days, where as the Poughkeepsie one is a carnet, you can do 3 days one week, 2 days the next, and that's better, but for the Monday-to-Friday person, I'd rather be paying the Salisbury-London fare than the Poughkeepsie-NYC fare. (I'd rather be going into NYC, just without the fare)

NYP is New York Penn Station, the Amtrak station. Metro North leaves New York out of Grand Central Terminal. Sorry; the phrasing, while unambiguous to someone commuting from the Hudson Valley, was definitely confusing to most everyone else.

Metro North also sells a weekly pass for $166.75. Unlimited rides during a calendar week. The 10-ride ticket has two prices, for peak and off-peak. Peak-hour 10-ride is $247.50, as you said; off-peak is $157.25.

Very few people actually buy a weekly pass on Metro North; either you are commuting infrequently (eg, weekend commutes) in which case you want a 10-ride ticket, or you are commuting daily, in which case you want a monthly ticket. A monthly pass between Poughkeepsie and GCT is $521. If you commute 20 days per calendar month, your per-mile cost is $0.16 / mile.

(Metro North fare information here: http://web.mta.info/mnr/html/planning/faresMar2017/hhfares_m...)

Actually, since there is confusion, going back to the very beginning --

For the train route I myself am familiar with, the line between New York and Poughkeepsie, two different train systems serve the route, Amtrak (the company that does the nation-wide train service in the United States) and Metro North, a commuter-rail line associated with New York's MTA, via their Hudson Line.

I started with the Amtrak costs because the New York <-> DC train is an Amtrak train; most daily commuters will be using the Metro North, as it is cheaper.