Are the railways fixable?

Rail gets 58% of transport spending for 1% of the trips, or 7% by distance.  Hard to see the justification for even more subsidy.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rail-factsheet-2022/rail-factsheet-2022

Rail gets 58% of transport spending for 1% of the trips, or 7% by distance. Hard to see the justification for even more subsidy.

On the other hand if it was run properly and had a decent ticket system, reliable infrastructure and services etc, it would have more passengers and would require less subsidy.

If you run a public service into the ground, you can't then act all surprised when passenger numbers drop and the funds to run it need to come from the public purse.

See also, buses and trail centres such as CyB...

Train this morning was cancelled because of a fault before I left the station, it was already running a shortened service because TfW don't have enough trains available. You'd think that is a fundamental part of the business model but there you go.

Train was 3.5 hours each way to get from Shrewsbury to Reading, so slower than driving, more expensive than driving for work, even with them paying me 45p/mile if I'd have driven and as I'm on a full green electric tariff higher carbon. But in theory I can work on the train, but not a chance as it was too busy to be able to actually do anything.

I use it because I should not because I want to.

I’m not sure if it’s fixable but what concerns me more than the cost is the 50/50 risk my train will be cancelled. I rarely use the trains. When I do my train either gets cancelled or a I get lucky and all the others but mine get cancelled. Ultimately it’s stress I don’t want

If you run a public service into the ground, you can’t then act all surprised when passenger numbers drop and the funds to run it need to come from the public purse.

Yet so many of the trains I'm on are packed - particularly the Scotland - London trains on east and west coast.

That said, our local electric bus from Dunblane to Glasgow is packed every time I use it, half the price of the train, and 10 mins quicker...

I'm in an FB group for interraillers - it appears that railways all over Europe are a bit of a mess. It seems bizarre, but it looks like we can't afford to run rail services any more.

Costs me £7 a day return to go to the office, so about the same as parking if I drive,  and saves me at least half an hour a day. Was 5 minutes late this morning, which is the worst I've had for a while.

But yes, long distance travel is harder. Though my sons other half can apparently now get from Rugby to Glasgow for work in the same time by train as she can flying.

Yes, but none of us are willing to pay the amount required to catch up with decades of mismanagement, underinvestment, and bodges.

Same as with sewage in the rivers.

It’s reached the point where a super off-peak return is more than the cost of taking a taxi to Newcastle airport and flying to Heathrow.

On the subject of weird pricing incentives, it's cheaper to park your car on a double yellow line in central Cambridge (and pay the fine within 14 days) than use a car park if you're working a full day.

Same as with sewage in the rivers.

Not quite the same, the water companies were allowed / encouraged to invest nothing in infracstructure for decades and award massive dividends to share holders. We paid the right amount in bills to fix everything, they just pocketed the cash with full approval from the regulator.

It would be great if they were better, but I have got a nice little earner in the delay repay payments I claim about once a month, for journeys that were paid for by work 🙂

Not quite the same

I was answering the question about whether it's fixable.

as driverless, electric cars become the norm for longer distance travel, long distance train starts to look pretty inefficient, both in terms of space and cost. Planes are cheap because every seat (of which there are far more per sqft of cabin) is full up - trains are far more spread out and generally half-full (ignoring rush hour) - they're just not a very attractive proposition to most ordinary people.

Rail gets 58% of transport spending for 1% of the trips, or 7% by distance. Hard to see the justification for even more subsidy.
On the other hand if it was run properly and had a decent ticket system, reliable infrastructure and services etc, it would have more passengers and would require less subsidy.

I’d love to use the train to go to gigs in London, but the shitty timetables just won’t let me. Gigs finish at 11pm, with an average 25min run to Paddington. That doesn’t include leaving the venue and walking to the tube station.

The last train to Bristol is 11.28.
The last gig in London I went to I tried parking at Reading and catching the Elizabeth Line in. Going went ok, coming back me and my mate got to Paddington in plenty of time, we sat waiting for the train, it seemed to be a bit late, an inquiry of one of the staff revealed that the last train had been cancelled without any notification! We had to rush back to the mainline station and buy tickets which cost an extra £23 to get back to Reading!
Bloody ridiculous and infuriating. [img] [/img]
Same with trains back from Bristol - all of the venues in the city centre are around a 30 minute walk back to Temple Meads. Which is irrelevant because the last train back to Chippenham leaves at 10.32, while bands are still playing. There’s no bus service to Bristol from Chippenham, you have to catch a bus to Bath, change to a bus to Bristol, a journey of roughly two hours.
And people say we should stop using our cars and use public transport. Yeah, right! [img] [/img]

Railways have almost never been profitable for passenger services, freight is where they have always made their money. Since road haulage is so much more flexible freight has largely moved away from the railways, especially since 44 tonne HGVs became a thing in the late 90s.

Yeah they can with a better investment and less privately owned companies. Cheaper for me to take the train to Newcastle than it is to drive, even 2 of us is especially with a rail card. Means we can also have a few drinks too.

I’m in an FB group for interraillers – it appears that railways all over Europe are a bit of a mess. It seems bizarre, but it looks like we can’t afford to run rail services any more.

Anecdotal, but we did a fortnight interailling at Easter (UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Norway) and the only problem we had with trains was in the UK. Also had to work in Belgium for a couple of weeks, every train was spot-on, the exception being Mrs Pondo's Eurostar delayed leaving London on the middle weekend.

Of course it's fixable - at a cost. Like many other issues it's a case of "is there the political will?"

irc
Free Member

Rail gets 58% of transport spending for 1% of the trips, or 7% by distance. Hard to see the justification for even more subsidy.

It's not really a good metric, this. Most trips are short, even that 7% by distance is made up overwhelmingly of short trips. It includes walking, to put that into perspective. We need to be comparing rail with other comparable journeys, not all journeys.

the water companies were allowed / encouraged to invest nothing in infracstructure for decades

This isn't true at all. Investment in water infrastructure has skyrocketed since privatisation; it was when it was in government ownership that nothing was invested. Investment levels are fixed with OFWAT, which is too scared to increase water bills too much to allow more invetsment.  The water companies are undoubtedly ****ers too.

But this is probably for another thread...

I don't know if I'm well-informed enough to comment with certainty, but I'd guess the answer is "to an extent".

As mentioned above, it's the high likelihood of Northern Rail just cancelling services that puts me off using the trains more.

"It’s not really a good metric, this. Most trips are short, even that 7% by distance is made up overwhelmingly of short trips. It includes walking, to put that into perspective. We need to be comparing rail with other comparable journeys, not all journeys."

Well cars are 80%of travel  by distance with less public spending than rail for 7%.

The high cost of these tickets isn't directly related to the cost - this is demand management. They put the prices up through the roof to deter people who have an alternative. It might be cheaper to travel the night before and stay in a hotel than travel at 7am - and this is done on purpose because almost everyone wants to travel at the same time.  Those trains with £200 fares are still rammed, so what would happen if you reduced the price? They'd still be rammed to the same extent.

What I'm trying to say is that we need more than just subsidised tickets. We need more trains, which means.. more lines.. maybe we could make them higher speed too.. just saying..

OP did specifically reference Super Off Peak (flexible with restrictions) which from Wakefield to London return is £140 vs £320 for the open return ticket.

The  great thing abouts trains is "delay repay", apart from that they are awful. They are uncomfortable, they are unreliable, the food trolley is bloody awful and worst of all they are expensive. What I've never understood and maybe someone can enlighten me, is the reasoning behind partially privatising something? What benefit does that ever bring?

I think the trains are ****ed and we as a country are currently unable to execute a large project like HS2 or similar, so there's probably some other problems we need to resolve before trying to get rail back track, pun intended.

They are uncomfortable, they are unreliable, the food trolley is bloody awful and worst of all they are expensive

That's not really fair. I went to Heathrow on the train recently instead of driving. It took longer, but it wasn't uncomfortable. Also when the plane landed on my return I had a terrible headache and felt awful. I was very glad I didn't have to drive in that state.

What I’ve never understood and maybe someone can enlighten me, is the reasoning behind partially privatising something? What benefit does that ever bring?

The original (and wrong) thinking behind it is that a private company that has bought and owns an asset will want to look after it, invest in it etc.

What actually happens is that a private company buys it, rips as much money out of the system as possible in terms of profit for shareholders then looks to the public part of the company to bail it out.

Rail is a horrifically complicated set of operators, asset "owners" / controllers (so the companies that own the trains don't run them, oh no, they lease them to the actual operator), the trains then run on a system of rails and points and signals owned and run by Network Rail (an arm's length government organisation) and the stations are owned by a mix of Network Rail and the Train Operating Companies that use those stations.

where a super off-peak return is more than the cost of taking a taxi to Newcastle airport and flying to Heathrow.

It’s cheaper for me to lease a bloody Tesla and pay for the electricity and insurance than to take the train three times a month.

What I take from these statements is that car and plane travel is *massively* too cheap. The fact that plane travel within the uk is even a thing is just mental and it needs to be stopped.

as driverless, electric cars become the norm for longer distance travel, long distance train starts to look pretty inefficient, both in terms of space and cost.

I'd always assumed (perhaps wrongly!?) that trains were the *most* efficient form of travel in terms of space?
How much busier would the roads be if trains didn't exist?

Yes with the correct level of commitment and funding to match.

Also an understanding that they're a public service, not a profit making commodity.  Does that work financially .- overall , yes, good infrastructure is a component of good productivity, and a consequence of the UK underinvesting in infrastructure for a long time is low productivity and lagging growth

Here's some objective research on punctuality of passenger trains by European country. The conclusion is that the UK is at the bottom end of midtable, with not much to separate it from the top of midtable.

https://www.epf.eu/wp/10929-2/

I wonder how much of that can be explained by the age of our infrastructure and its inherent bottle necks which are too expensive to fix in any politically acceptable way.

Personally I only use the trains if my employer is paying and the main advantage is the ability to cover a long distance in a state of relative relaxation. If in the future, cars are able to drive themselves, at least on motorways and a-roads, then that selling point disappears.

Was going to comment on this too. The idea that a fleet of driverless cars is more space efficient than a train is laughable.

They're also not becoming the norm for long distance travel as that capability doesn't exist, and isn't likely to in the next few years. In which case impossible to comment on cost efficiency too.

My wife was recently stranded at Gatwick & her car was in Newquay - options for 2 people, get the train at £400 - or a taxi for £350

This excuse about driverless cars is infuriating, it isn't coming any time soon and even if it does, high speed rail is more efficient. The car companies have done the "easy" bit of driverless cars and now they've hit the not easy bit.

That’s not really fair. I went to Heathrow on the train recently instead of driving. It took longer, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Also when the plane landed on my return I had a terrible headache and felt awful. I was very glad I didn’t have to drive in that state.

A car seat reclines, a bus seat reclines, a plane seat reclines, a ferry seat reclines; a train seat? Nooooo, far too difficult. Couldn't possibly have that. I can understand cramming as much into a plane as possible, as ultimately you have to get the thing off the ground. Cramming you into a train like bloody sardines? It doesn't appear to make any sense.

Note: I am 193cm tall and I hate it when my knees touch the seat in front.

Cramming you into a train like bloody sardines? It doesn’t appear to make any sense.

Of course it does for the same reason it does on a plane.  The more passengers you can fit in the more fares you can take.

Sheffield to London last Wednesday was £217 return and I had to stand up for part of it.    Worked out at 80p per minute of travel.

I think a bit like trail centres, if you want public good then it does often need to be subsidised. Railways can't pay for themselves through fares alone. Decent railways in Europe (which apparently aren't so good now) where good and cheaper because they were/are more heavily subsidised for infrastructure and fares. The UK doesn't subsidise to that level (mainly with fares) and so we have the highest fares. It comes down to politics and making the case for spending money on it, and the potential economic benefits it brings, even if - or especially - if it doesn;t directly 'pay for itself'. Also, Covid threw a huge spanner in the works, and the way railways had been geared for mass movement of people at the start and end of the day for 150 years, was completely broken.

Part of the reason trains seem unreliable, is because the system is largely full, hasn't any room for resilience, and so knock-on effects stack up quickly. Also, it being a highly complex mechanical and electronic system, there will inevitably be a failure rate. I doubt it's at an acceptable level at the moment, probably not by a long way, but there is a limit for punctuality and cancellations - you can't achieve 0% of either in reality.  There's a small element of expecting too much, as unpopular as that might seem. I'm on the receiving end of all these issues plenty of times, so i understand all the frustration. PS - i don't work in railways btw!

I have just booked an end of January trip to south coast from central Scotland midweek. I do this trip or London maybe once every 8 weeks or so.

Last year I managed to get the fares for between £100 and £160. January 2025: £280

I checked and tried to book full 12 weeks away, first week of February. £200.

These are exact trains I know will be full having travelled on them before (4:30pm out of London direct or 5pm connection out of Birmingham). They are properly packed.

How, how are trains not making money?

But I am also noticing that the hotel(s) I have stayed in for the last three years doing this are also up 20% for early next year.

Life is getting chuffing expensive,

irc
Free Member

Well cars are 80%of travel by distance with less public spending than rail for 7%.

Sure and that's still not comparable because so many of those trips will be short. Apparently the average car journey is 8.1 miles. What we'd really need is a comparable journeys stat but there isn't one as far as I can see.

 If in the future, cars are able to drive themselves, at least on motorways and a-roads, then that selling point disappears.

If self-driving cars have the same per mile cost as at present, then the motorways will be absolutely rammed at all times. There will be an explosion of car usage as people can have longer commutes and take long journeys more frequently - you can just sleep through it and wake up at your destination. A weekend in Fort Bill every weekend...if you can get through the traffic jams...

I use avanti superfares where poss, half price but avanti nominate the train within your chosen time window, the day before. I reckon in 20 years of train travel i have been refunded 50% of journeys.

The trains in UK seem a bit of a lottery. Talking to my mum she has had refunds for her last 2 trips Edinburgh to London to seem my sister due to delays and the cost of tickets does seem high. The ticket system seems pants too with so many providers.

here in Ireland I have to say the trains, Irish Rail, seem pretty good. I used to commute 30km each way, train was every 30mins and reliable. I had a season ticket via work so got the tax back and it cost about €60 a month after tax relief. Station car park is only €30 a month too or €3 a day. My kids get a young persons fare (19-25] and each return trip is about €5. There seems to be decent investment in the train infrastructure going on with new platforms in Cork etc.

I commute into Manchester, £11 return for 2 x 20 minute trips. When the trains are on time and with seating available then you will get no complaints from me however this ideal is very rare. Mornings isn't too bad as I live less than a 10 minute walk from the station so can check the times before I leave although this isn't foolproof.

Evenings is another matter. Walking into Victoria and the number of trains late or cancelled far outweighs those on time. Actually getting on a train that leaves on time is a very, very rare event. Cancellations and delays are for the most ridiculous reasons. "A member of train crew not being available", "more trains than expected needing repair", "a passenger has fallen ill". The train companies are being either by rank amateurs or crooks - change my mind.

Are the railways fixable? In my opinion, yes but it will need a strategic plan. Is there the will to do it? That's an entirely different question.

Fixable, not sure.  Apparently Great British Railways will go some to address the issues.  Whether it does or not remains to be seen.  I worked as a Project Manager delivering projects between Paddington and Reading for almost 10years.  My biggest issue was track access; you either used mid week/week end blocks (no time tabled trains) which once you took the worksite and isolation would provide you anything from 30min to 3hrs work time; then consider I could be paying a min. of ~£15k for 30min work. Is this value for money?  If you manage to agree an extended block, that provides you for example a 52hr line block, compensation will be paid to the train operating company.  Significant compensation.  Again, value for money?

Following the introduction of the CR service from Pad to Reading, the relief lines (slow lines) became almost a metro service, with the volume of traffic increasing significantly, yet maintenance time reduced.  Hence, I think we are seeing so many faults between Pad and Reading.

If government would settle for long term sustainable investment and a better model for maintenance I believe this would see maintenance and capital investment projects become more economic.   Ticket prices, no idea how to fix this other that government needs to see this as a subsidised system and not a model that can sustain itself.

so what would happen if you reduced the price? They’d still be rammed to the same extent.

Or you could lay on additional services to meet the demand, rather than keep on nudging people towards their cars...

I had the missfortune to need to get to London (from Reading) last week, spent £60 odd of my employer's money (for an 80 mile round trip) and took one of the extra trains laid on around commuter O'clock, got seat, smooth fast journey both ways, it was absolute hell 😉  I suppose all that demonstrates is that the closer you get to the centre of the universe the more resources go into public transport and the easier it gets to use (pricing is of course a big factor)

as driverless, electric cars become the norm for longer distance travel, long distance train starts to look pretty inefficient, both in terms of space and cost.

On what planet?

Planes are cheap because every seat (of which there are far more per sqft of cabin) is full up – trains are far more spread out and generally half-full (ignoring rush hour) – they’re just not a very attractive proposition to most ordinary people.

"Ordinary people" you reckon? TBH I bloody hate driving long distances these days, I love a good train journey. Get a family railcard, book on one of these apparently empty trains well in advance, take your kids to a place they've never been, the journey is part of the trip then, you can be in Edinburgh long before the novelty of UNO wears off... Ordinary people seem to like spending half their bank holidays trapped on the A303...

Or you could lay on additional services to meet the demand, rather than keep on nudging people towards their cars…

The problem is that there's very little space for more trains - not without hugely significant and disruptive signalling upgrades plus other issues like where to store all these extra trains, the lack of platforms at stations for them and all the staff to run them.

That was one of the arguments used against HS2. "The West Coast Main Line is right there, just put more trains on it!"

Yes, there's no more space on that line. Next?

It's what comes of trying to run a 21st century transport system on a 19th century infrastructure system.

(Yes, I know it's not all Victorian now but there are still any number of hangovers from that time like older (smaller bore) tunnels, tight bends, and old infrastructure like bridges and viaducts that are in regular need of expensive maintenance).

The problem is that there’s very little space for more trains – not without hugely significant and disruptive signalling upgrades plus other issues like where to store all these extra trains, the lack of platforms at stations for them and all the staff to run them.

Hence my anecdotal example from Reading, where a huge chunk of investment has happened over the last decade, it can be done, the problem currently is the London-centric focus.

The alternative everyone seems so happy to accept is increasing car use, more roads and more parking are pretty disruptive too, arguably more so than rail upgrades (discuss).

Self driving cars have been cover recently and will not be solving congestion any time soon, if the Johnny Cabs dream ever comes to pass it just means double the infrastructure requirement (roads and carparking), just like rolling stock cars need somewhere to be at all times whether moving or parked, but you can shift a lot more people in one train carriage than you can in the equivalent footprint four(?) Teslas...

I use central scotland trains a fair bit.  Quicker, cheaper and nicer than driving.  Combined with an ebike very flexible as well.

It's frustrating.  I was planning a trip to do a one-way walk on the Knoydart peninsula.  Both ends are accessible by train which is great for a one-way trip, problem is the fare is £290.  Three of us can share a car for £40 each.  I would absolutely love the train but it's not affordable.

I work on the infrastructure side, not with NR but for them.

NR changed the rules around track access recently as to many people were getting killed / close calls and Near misses. Every quarter we get the briefings on trains nearly hitting people. 

Track access is now heavily restricted. Working day shift if I need to access somewhere I frequently take line blocks, I've had many times where I've got to site and been told by the signaller that it'll be an hour before I can get a block to get on track to walk to my worksite. Do the job then request another block to get out. While it keeps everyone safe it also massively impacts productivity. What could be a 6 job day turns into a 2 job day, that's only a 2 person job on one small cog of the bigger picture.

That coupled with maintaining an aging infrastructure where as described by Ernie above jobs can have massively restricted possessions.

We may get possession at 2330, by the time the isolation is on, permits issued, test before touch it can be 0030, then we get on track, walk to site set up, do the job. Pack up at 0330, off track at 0400 to hand back the possession for 0500. So the 9 hour job actually takes 3 shifts. Late running train, picop sending a tamper through your worksite all delay the job and can send you back to the planners to rebook another possession in 13 weeks time.

Safety should be first and foremost but it all has a knock on.

Oh and we all love the Victorian structures,until they need repaired.

as driverless, electric cars become the norm for longer distance travel, long distance train starts to look pretty inefficient, both in terms of space and cost.

Our grandchildren will probably really enjoy it. Meanwhile, in the real world the rest of us actually live in… *rolls eyes*

I use central scotland trains a fair bit.  Quicker, cheaper and nicer than driving.  Combined with an ebike very flexible as well.

So you keep telling us. In the rest of the U.K. that most of us live in, rail and other public transport is hopelessly inadequate. Read again my experience the last time I went up to London with my mate - it shows just how poor the system is when people try to use it an anything other than mid-morning to mid-evening. Outside of that timeframe public transport is taking the piss.