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.
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.
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
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...