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.

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)

So two in the car is cheaper, and with the sunk costs of car ownership most people will find it cheaper to drive alone.

Very often I don't want to return. I can fly to Manchester, visit family, take the train to Derby, visit friends, continue to London and fly home.

I can't book advance tickets as the plane might be late, and I can't use a return journey ticket.

It's all ridiculous, and I don't understand how anyone can defend it.

Here in Denmark I can travel tomorrow (leaving at 02.35 if I want to, good luck trying that in England...) to Århus for about £50, any time of day. That's 300km, London to Derby is only 200km.

Booked in advance I can roughly halve the fare, but I don't feel punished if I'm unable to commit to that.

> It's all ridiculous, and I don't understand how anyone can defend it.

it's a ultimately a difference in philosophy

UK governments over the past 30 years have decided that passengers should pay to run the railway, rather than the taxpayer out of general taxation

if you look at the distribution of earnings of those who use the railways you could even call this a progressive policy

meanwhile most European countries chose the other way round

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.

I don’t understand. Wouldn’t most fare dodgers buy no tickets, not just buy a single ticket for part of a return journey?

What’s the reason that people try to dodge fares by buying a single ticket? Is it because they know when and where tickets are likely to be checked?

I believe the PC is hinting about station barriers. Major stations need you to scan a ticket (or con a guard) to get off the platform or out of the station. Minor stations sometimes don't - and if it's your station you'll know.

I think the real reason is less sensational: trains that go full in one direction still have to go back in the other direction whether they're full or not.

The real reason is the government has set return fares and let private companies freely set the price of single fares.

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.

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)