> I don’t consider £25 each way Manchester-London to be brutally expensive to be honest

I think you're citing pretty much a best case there. I just put in the same journey on a morning next week and got £150 each way, which I suspect is still not the worst case.

Before the pandemic, my wife used to pay about £5K/year for a London - Brighton season ticket (a distance of about 50 miles).

Possibly the most infuriating thing is that it's highly unpredictable what's cheap and what's expensive, and long journeys can often be several times the cost of flying. From a social-welfare/cost-of-carbon and oil-crisis perspective, this is nuts, especially when you compare what Germany is doing[1].

[1] https://e360.yale.edu/digest/germany-slashes-summer-train-fa...

£25 each way is a walk up fare, you just need to take the slightly slower train (which is still faster than the car and about the same speed it was in the 90s), arriving in London about 1030.

Peak time commuting tickets are likewise a bargain. Brighton-London for £5,300 5 times a day 50 weeks a year at 65 miles each way is 32,500 miles, or 16p per mile. For a car doing 45mpg that will cost you £6,300 in fuel alone, let alone parking, depreciation, wear and tear, etc.

The car will carry 4 people and luggage. So if you consider car pooling, or you need to be in office 3 times a week, it's not a good deal. Or your car is electric. Even for a couple, a car makes economic sence.

Also consider comfort - have you see how crowded those trains get, sometimes you might have to stand for hours on a long distance train. If you are able bodied man thats one thing, but if you are pregnant or injured, that's tought.

They are not suppose to be close.

Sure, you could spend 3-4 hours driving from Brighton to central London and paying £65 to do it.

It doesn't come close with season tickets, hence the reason so many people chose to commute by train rather than driving. Also why people take the train rather than commuter bus services which tend to be cheaper

Shows as £46.70, which still isn't bad, though off-peak is often less painful. If you have to use the train to commute to work, then things start raking up.

I live 15 miles outside London and 17 years ago was paying best part of £2k a year just to get into central london and back, today it would be the best part of £3k a year to make that same journey. Using the same tracks, (probably trains) and stations all those years ago. Though more people than back then, which was already at levels upon peak work commutes that saw you playing sardines.

Nobody should be commuting from Manchester to London. That's £46.70 return, so £23.35 each way, arriving in London about 1030.

Peak time london commuting is the most expensive part of the network to deliver, as it requires increased amount of capital that's mostly idle, yet peak time commuters get massive discounts compared with occasional use. Compare Reading to London. A season ticket works out to be about £22 return for 5 days a week, a normal peak time ticket is £52.10.

That almost gets you one year of travel in 2nd class throughout the entire Swiss train network (including public transport in cities).

Switzerland has a population of less than london. £3k would get you transport throughout london too - rail and bus.