It's nonsense. Most fares are set by the government, and the low level of government subsidy compared to many European countries is why the prices are so high.
And why isn't everyone in the country aware that our high fares is what is paying for subsidies in European countries as vast amounts of our network is run by companies literally owned by other countries governments.
It's like if the NHS owned a private hospital brand in the USA and used the profits charged over there to make services better here. Yes, great idea for the home country, but definitely seems shit for the worked-in country.
This should be the first thing mentioned in ANY rail debate but it's never there.
>And why isn't everyone in the country aware that our high fares is what is paying for subsidies in European countries as vast amounts of our network is run by companies literally owned by other countries governments.
The dividends paid out are literally pennies per ticket. Privatisation is a meme answer but it's a red herring.
No, but taking out a few pennies per ticket for providing a better service than BR ever did is way, way, way down the list of causes of problems with passenger rail in the UK, if it even is a cause of problems.
You are attacking the strawman of BR, when we have comparable nationalised rail operators in the current world who provide a comparable or better service than out dysfunctional privatised system for a far cheaper price.
The service is better in much of Europe because they subsidise passenger rail more.
The government running day-to-day passenger rail services wouldn't make them suddenly subsidise it more - they could subsidise it more today and they don't.
Having a better, more frequently used and subsidised service would boost profitability and value of rail operators, once again aiding them to reinvest that back into their own countries subsidisation of rail.
If we followed their models we'd not only subsidise rail more but use our operator to fund those subsidies via foreign capital.
There's a car only town that I sometimes work in and it's literal hell, on a lunch break I can either walk for 40mins to/from a supermarket, or burn diesel and actually eat my lunch in time. And if I wanted to get the train to work, I'd have to walk 40mins each way along and A road. Utter dystopian shit is car-only.
Right, but that's substantially less than France, Germany.
In terms of subsidy per passenger km travelled, the UK is the lowest of all but one in the list of 13 European countries [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_subsidies). Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Belgium are all around double the UK. Germany and Spain around 1.5 times.
We could have something similar running the length of the country, but we spent all the money building tunnels in flatish, easy to build in landscape so some rich people didn't have to see the trains in the southern section.
I'd like to know what train service you have regularly used/are using in UK.
Southern has been a consistent fuck-up, but I used to hear SouthWestern used to be absolutely worse.
When I used to commute daily, my top record was 5 trains from London Bridge to Brighton in one journey.
It depends.
Commuting - yes. London trains are a mess and rail commuting to regional cities is a joke.
Long distance train across the country - UK all day long.
Id take my chances compared to DB. Been burned too many times.
Speaking of being burned: I have a Swiss season ticket. Train was cancelled for the first time in 4 years - I was so angry , thought Switzerland was going to the dogs.
The excuse was the next station (more accurately an old wooden storage shed type building adjacent to it and the line) was burning down - fair enough really!
They haven't been doing well financially for the past decade with a steady decline of their economy. Maybe it isn't fair to call them a poor country but they aren't exactly rich either. Unlike the UK where everything is going *so* swimmingly. /smh
We used train to travel through Europe last year and used German, Italian and French trains- the prices were very reasonable to go from city to city crossing borders
And there are the profits of the various companies, which get taken out of that subsidy. The above countries don't have that kind of money leaking out of the system.
In fact, a lot of our private TOCs are actually owned by the same groups that run a lot of European rail, so they're almost getting double subsidised by the profits they get from running our rail.
Not really. Apart from the fact several TOCs are directly government-ran (including all three that serve the town I live in), dividends account for a tiny fraction.
For 2022-23, dividends paid out by TOCs were [£76 million](https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/algdbizg/rail-industry-finance-uk-statistical-release-202223.pdf). In that same period, [1.3 billion passenger journeys were made](https://www.statista.com/statistics/304957/total-historical-national-rail-passenger-journeys-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/).
That's less than 6p per journey. Even if we presume all those journeys were made on return tickets, that's no more than 12p per ticket.
Personally, I don't take an ideological position on the often infantile public private debate but privatisation clearly hasn't worked for anyone. "Several" TOC's as you say but, as you well know, the vast majority are privately run.
6p per journey is misleading.
From your link, the 406 million pounds in dividends paid out to the ROSCOs goes unmentioned for a start. Goodness knows what else is being taken out where. If the taxpayer is forking money out, why should shareholders get dividends? Then there is Network Rail's £4.1 billion in "legacy costs" (PFI?) "including financial instruments issued to investors before the company’s reclassification to the public sector"... We could go on forever.
>"Several" TOC's as you say but, as you well know, the vast majority are privately run.
7 of the 17 franchises are government-run for day to day operation.
>If the taxpayer is forking money out, why should shareholders get dividends?
Because the government doesn't want to run the day-to-day operation of passenger rail itself, and frankly services have improved since the days of British Rail. I don't see the problem with the operators making a profit.
Speak of which, the level of profit is heavily contrained by the franchise agreements. Where more than 3% revenue above expected is generated, at least half goes back to the Treasury anyway.
>We are so scared to spend money on anything in this country,
Well, not so scared to spend it on cars and roads it seems. A certain type of person (we all know one) gets very uppity at the idea of trains being subsidised but then has no problem with the fact that everyone is essentially paying subsidies to roads and thus a highly polluting and inefficient form of travel.
That "subsidy" also includes the money being paid towards capital investment in the railways as well - such as building east/west rail, the Trans Pennine Route Upgrade, HS2 etc, which makes up the majority of the subsidy.
In 2022-2023 the subsidy was £11.9 billion, £7.5 billion of which went to Network rail. i.e. for all the maintenance and construction projects that are going on under their banner. Only £4.4 billion went to operators.
There are ways we can fix this, or at least improve it.
For example, currently TOC (Train Operating Companies) pay £3.1 billion a year to lease rolling stock from the real criminals of the rail system: ROSCOs (Rolling stock leasing companies). Many of the trains that we're paying an arm and a leg for every year are old BR era ones that were once owned directly, but now have been paid for multiple times over due to this bizarre ownership model of selling them and leasing them back.
Basically, privatisation has resulted in increased subsidy. If British Rail had this level of subsidy (They only got £1 billion or so on a good year) the amount of work they could've done for it such as new trains (actually built here in the UK!), better maintenance, electrification and improving/opening routes would've been astounding.
Not really, we spend tens of billions on roads every year - the entire rail industry subsidy pales in comparison.
You don't see many people bitching about tax payer money being spent on publicly owned roads though. Why should the rail network be any different?
But I'm not complaining about it being spent on rail as a principle, I'm complaining about the god awful service we get in return for that investment. I'm pro-railways, I'm just anti-privatised mismanagement of the railways.
Used by tax payers, benefitting tax payers. It’s a worthwhile investment, even just getting that many people out of their cars and onto public transport.
If the train companies are getting £8B subsidies then someone is pocketing a heap of money. I'm not going to discuss the quality of trains, they are fine. But service is awful and is really the most important component of running a railway. Trains need to be predictable, they need to be on time and not cancelled. They also need to be affordable. The fact that so many people fly longer distances rather than go by train is criminal. My niece lives in Aberdeen and visits my dad in Surrey and I don't think she has gone by train in a decade.
Why should I pay for your hospital/doctor/dentist, I'm not sick. Why should I pay for your state pension or benefits, I'm not retired. Why should I pay for schools, I don't have kids. Why should I pay for roads, I don't have a car.
Why? Because that is how a functioning society works. We pay taxes so that society can benefit from the services and infrastructure it pays for.
Indeed. A level of debate about what should be included in general taxation is healthy. Most people agree a certain minimum level of health provision, education and old age pension is reasonable.
This does not necessarily extend to giving you free trips to the seaside in the train.
Either you think rail transport should be partly paid for by taxation or you don't.
If you think the principle of taxation for this is ok, you are really going to struggle implementing a system where those using the train for recreational purposes have to fund 100% of the cost and those using it for other purposes don't. What do you propose? Different ticket types depending on the purpose of your journey, and ticket inspectors authorised to search your luggage for Speedos?
As to your last paragraph, customers never get "free" tickets. It's just subsidised in part
Indeed and there is a difference of opinion as to whether people’s transport should be funded from general taxation.
If am all for road pricing per mile and rail users paying the full cost.
If the passengers were not on the train, they would either
A) Not make the trip, so they would lose their job or not make their leisure trip, making the economy smaller and you poorer, or
B) Be sharing the road with you, making your journey longer.
Everyone benefits from public transport, including those who *don't* use it.
Maybe I shouldn't have to pay for the motorways you use either, given that I cycle, walk and public transport everywhere, and given that we currently subsidise roads a lot more than rail (and it's a more polluting and less efficient means of transportation).
Man, it'd be hilarious to see motorists actually have to pay the true costs of that form of transport. If only.
Oh, sounds wonderful, loads of toll roads you have to stop at and pay. And on longer journeys you'd need to mull over what route to take to make sure the journey isn't too long but also not too costly, how efficient. That sounds like a terrible and frustrating system, no thanks.
You're also not considering externalised costs. Cars cause pollution (from petrol, or electricity generation for electric cars, huge energy and material costs for production of the car in the first place, and tyre particles), a terrible amount of noise, danger to other non-motorists, are unsightly, and use huge amounts of public space. Not all of this is reflected in the actual cost of building roads etc.
Because:
* Allows people of less means to travel, which is beneficial for welfare and economic purposes.
* It reduces traffic on the road, improving the experience of those who need to drive, and reducing ware subsequent maintianance cost.
* It's the most environmentally-friendly common means of travel that's beyond walking or cycling distance.
* Other means on transport - especially cars - are massively subsidised by the taxpayer. This is often overlooked as so many of the costs of mass car travel are externalities.
* Objecting to tax funding services you don't personally use is a bit pathetic - some of my tax money goes towards roads in Coventry, schools in Ipswich, and the healthcare of people I'll never meet. That's not an injustice; that's how society operates.
I don't use trains, so why should I have to pay more tax to subsidise those who do? Unless of course you would like to pay my road tax for me?
Didn't think so...
To quote myself from another comment:
Because:
* It allows people of less means to travel, which is beneficial for welfare and economic purposes.
* It reduces traffic on the road, improving the experience of those who need to drive, and reducing ware & subsequent maintianance cost.
* It's the most environmentally-friendly common means of travel that's beyond walking or cycling distance.
* Other means on transport - especially cars - are massively subsidised by the taxpayer. This is often overlooked as so many of the costs of mass car travel are externalities.
* Objecting to tax funding services you don't personally use is a bit pathetic - some of my tax money goes towards roads in Coventry, schools in Ipswich, and the healthcare of people I'll never meet. That's not an injustice; that's how society operates.
> I don't use trains, so why should I have to pay more tax to subsidise those who do?
When you typed this out it didn’t cross your mind for even a second to apply this logic to other tax expenditures, did it.
Is it a 'subsidy' or an 'investment'.
Same thing different nuance. Do you subsidise private companies or invest in national transport infrastructire?
Either way, it's not enough investment.
I would typically use "subsidy" as a technical term when referring to an ongoing govt. expenditure that meets the costs of service provision. It's not a negative word in that sense! Its just a spending choice!
I would use investment when the funding is used to improve quality, provide new/ better assets or expand the service - i.e. you end up with something better than what you started with.
agreed, public utilities can't be run at a profit, at best you can provide a sub par service for massive amounts of money charged to the public and then still get state subsidies on top
Why can't public utilities be run at a profit?
They need to be paid for somehow. Either the people who use them can pay for them directly, with a small cut taken for profit, or we force everybody to pay through taxation and has a cut taken by the bureaucracy.
The money still gets to the people who run the rails somehow, so why can't it be direct instead of indirect?
Theoretically, yes, but in practice, it’s really hard. Most privatised railways run at a massive loss, especially in Europe, because they’re a public service so they have to run even at times the trains aren’t popular so can’t recoup their costs.
Contrast this with Japanese railways, for example, which do make a massive profit and provide great service. It’s because they have diversified so make their profits in other businesses (eg the shopping malls built around rail stations) and use that to fund the railway portion. Running a public service for profit just doesn’t work in the system we have and the passenger levels we have here (another reason Japanese railcos are successful – over 70% of distance travel is by rail. Lots of demand, plenty of competition=thriving free market)
The other key part about Japanese railways is that their investments are not random; they are adjacent to the railway. To use a UK example, it's as if LNER owned all the new office and shopping developments around Kings Cross, but also owned shops and housing estates in Farringdon, Hertford, Peterborough, etc. So it's in their interest to have people living in the commuter towns, working in London, and commuting by rail. It's a virtuous circle.
Everyone complains at shareholders for making profit, when all that is happening is they are getting a return on their investment.
Everyone understands that if the bank loans the railways money to buy some carriages, interest on the loan needs to be repaid.
Sure the railway could make no profit. No one would invest in it, and instead the investors would be lenders. They would be paid interest instead of dividends.
If the money is paid out as interest or divide it makes little practical difference, but the daily mail reader seems to think profit=bad and interest=fair.
Why? Shareholder profit ensures there's a link between the investments into the system and the benefits to the customer, and also increases the probability of investment being made at all (see who built the railways versus who dug up the railways).
That nice, simple, explanation of how capitalism "works" that we are taught at 13 that ignores the reality.
Companies work to maximize profits and any benefits to customers are merely accidental and unintended.
As for your juvenile commentary, ownership wouldn't have mattered the railways still would have massively shrunk post-WW2 even if still privately owned - the shrinkage was due to changes in the world and not ownership (note for example how the US rail system shrunk despite being privately owned).
In practice it's also the case, half the issue is that the passengers are not the customers of the railway. The government gets to decide who runs the railways and its significantly reduced their initial outlays (which is all politicians care about because we have short sightism as a point of our national identity).
The government set the fees passengers pay, they set who gets to ride what trains where, so it's not really privatisation or running for profit that's caused this
If shareholder profit truly did that, why are the top rated countries by railway all nationalised?
(Except JR, who seems to be the only company that did Privatisation correctly)
Exactly: rail transport works best when decoupled from funding source.
Profit driven ventures are a race to minimising cost, not maximising satisfaction. Imagine if something like your homes water supply was a profit only business where companies were only incentivised by lining their own coffers
What he means is that, when a company is incentivised by profit, they are directly rewarded for minimising the amount they spend and maximising the amount they charge. In other words, providing the least service they can while charging the highest price the public will tolerate.
If it was non-profit and the excess funds were spent back into improving the service, that would be one step in the right direction.
Fun fact; SouthEastern is back under public ownership after they were found taking £80m of government funding as "profits" rather than doing anything with it to improve the service.
True. Yet in New York the subway is $2.60 or something similar and you can literally take any journey on the network for that and they still have a massive amount of people who don’t pay their fare. They lose millions of dollars a year because of it.
A lot of it is just pure selfishness. If you are genuinely struggling to the point that you can’t afford it I understand but the vast majority of people aren’t.
Also NYC's MTA system has several discount programs available to those of lower incomes, disabilities etc. (should be better publicized). In any case, the now $2.90 systemwide train fair is vastly cheaper proportionally than the Tube or Railway lines in the UK. But at least as much fare evasion in NYC as London (most likely far more).
It’s easy to jump the barriers in and don’t need to out. Police aren’t looking to get involved with the tramps that do it.
NY subway is terrible and not something to aspire to.
It’s an interesting point but at what point do you become rich enough to stop fare evading? I mean it wouldn’t matter how much someone earned, they would still think “those damn poor people are not paying and I’m not subsidising them so I will skip my fare too”.
I currently live in CT, in NYC fairly often. It's fairly common to see obviously wealthy people fair hop—the kind with nice corpo backpacks clearly earning a good 6 figure amount. They do it because they can, and enforcement is minimal.
There are two reasons for high fares:
1.The current government believes those that use the railway should pay the full cost of using it,
2. The DfT stated earlier this year that due to the type of privatisation inflicted on the railway by the John Major Conservative government, the railway currently costs at least 4x, and probably 4.5x the amount of money, allowing for inflation, than it did when it was fully nationalised and run by British Rail.
These extra costs being that:
* We changed from giving BR money to design and build or buy rolling stock, to the system we have now where we lease rolling stock and pay per month to use it, never owning it and so unable to reuse it. And,
* British Rail used to employ thousands of staff, now most staff work for other companies and are contracted in, this means extra costs for UK rail to provide profits for all these companies. In addition, there are many more staff employed around the periphery who just get paid to move paper around with, for example, each one of those 9,000+ contractors has written their own policies, and procedures on things like diversity and equality.
The current model also has 17 franchises, with 17 sets of backend computer systems, 17 outsourced IT providers, 17 catering contracts, etc.
It loses a significant economy of scale by having to reinvent the wheel for every franchise.
But it has been designed this way deliberately. This system introduces layers of middlemen running 'services' to the rail network, extracting profits at every step. These sub-contractors often use sub-contractors who in turn use sub-contractors and so on. It's perfectly designed to extract profit at every opportunity.
Now, pay attention to how the NHS is being gradually privatised, you'll see a similar structure beginning to form.
I don’t believe fair evaders are the sole reason for high ticket prices but it has to contribute to it, same as it does with any other service or product that suffers from theft. It is theft, it is extremely selfish as they expect everyone else to pay for a service they want to use.
All the time rail services are run by companies and not publicly/govenment owned subsidies should be kept to an absolute minimum. Why should tax payers money prop up these companies. The subsidies should only be used to stop the collapse of the rail system to ensure a vital service continues to be available. These subsidies are tax payer money. Reducing revenue (fare evasion) is as I said before, extremely selfish as they expect a service to be there but don’t want to contribute.
So you agree that private companies shouldn't be allowed to run the trains in England and Wales and it should not look at economic cost but social cost when running public transport.
I believe public services should be run by the public for the public. Private companies and shareholders should not be running them. You only have to look at other countries to see how it should be done. However, that is not the situation we are in and private companies and their shareholders should only receive the minimum subsidies possible.
All trains (except open access operators) are run as management contracts, where the operator gets paid a fixed amount and all ticket revenue goes to the treasury. The whole franchise system was scrapped a few years ago.
Something like half the operators are run by the DfT anyway, the railway is the closest It's been to publicly operated since British Rail.
The fares are also set by the DfT, the only way to lower them is for the government to accept that railways are a public service and should not be profit making.
Personally on the fence on this one but you'll recall that it wasn't the public sector who actually built the railways. They were only nationalised in 1948 and from then on they declined steeply..Now that was for an number of factors including the rise of the car but it was also because of neglect and short sighted government decisions - the same sort of short sighted politicians we have today
Putting aside the morally of fare evaders, if everyone paid tomorrow those profits would go straight into shareholder pockets.
The profit they make now doesn’t get put into maintainance or upgrades, becuase that’s spending money they don’t need to.
Nonsense. Profitability of these companies is basically regulated. If more money from tickets was recouped mostly it would go to better service & less subsidy
That's not true since the pandemic. There are now new contracts where the fares go directly to the Treasury. The DfT pays the TOCs to costs of trains plus a fee (with bonuses for things like punctuality).
If the operators get paid more money, they can't decide to upgrade the service. All those decisions are made by Ministers now.
(Except at LNER which is still under the old contract.... because it had already been nationalised before the pandemic. So the 'private' operators have less commercial freedom than a state-owned one. 🤯 The whole privatisation era has been full of this kind of bizarre illogic.)
That is an opinion but what evidence is there to support it as fact? My commute has some newer trains added in the last couple of years and there has been some work to the stations I use and other nearby stations. So there is definitely maintenance and upgrades happening. Now for the price paid I really would prefer to seen this on a larger scale but on the lines I use I cannot say there is no investment.
Stealing a service from these companies reduces the cash/revenue they have the option to invest. Fair evasion is theft and incredibly selfish regardless of what anyone thinks of the rail companies. What the thief does not contribute has to come from others in one way or another.
The real reason rail fares are so high in the UK is the insanely expensive fragmented railway system we have. Why do we need all these train operators and ROSCOs and the ridiculous duplication of effort involved? I reckon if BR had been all the (much larger) subsidy the privatised industry has been given we'd actually have a reasonably efficient modern railway now.
We have high ticket prices because there are no alternatives.
If I want to go into London for a meeting there’s no way I can drive in to our office and park nearby. I could drive and take a bus maybe but that would be so hard to do with finding parking for a full day etc.
There could literally be a guy who slaps me in the face every time I get on a train and I’d still not have the option of not taking the train. No matter how bad the service you can’t get away from it for some journeys
@uktrains To be FAIR I would evade FAIRS too if I had to pay a train FARE to get to one.
That sounds too far away and would be an expensive FAIR visit.
I rather stick to FAIRS in the city I live and just pay the bus or tube FARE.
I solely recommend you all write to the MP for transport... I'm sure they'll soon get sick of people complaining.
There is something in the works (Great British Railways) that's supposed to consolidae ticketing and the whole system but whether this materialises and results in cheaper fares is anyone's guess
Tomorrow morning I can take a train from:
London to Edinburgh (4h 22m) for £113 - 630KM
Helsinki to Oulu (5h 53m) for £48 - 600KM
Paris to Bordeaux (2h 5m) for £85 - 580KM
Madrid to Seville (2h 40m) for £62 - 530KM
This proves absolutely nothing, but it was an interesting exercise.
So basically if people who don’t buy tickets but took the train, continued to not buy ticks but didn’t take the train, but the cost of running the train stayed the same because it’s still running, they could charge the people who did buy tickets less?
How does that work?
Trains have basically been government owned and ran since the start of COVID and prices haven't gone down. So why is privatisation the only reason for high prices?
We do still have a privatised railway, 10 of 17 rail franchises are still in private hands, and DfT OLR Holdings runs the ones they own as if they were privately owned operators, also many services are operated by privately owned Open-access operators. Train are leased from privately owned Rolling Stock Companies.
The railways are owned and operated by Network Rail, a public body. All current franchises are run under management contract with the details specified entirely by the DfT.
That's a nationalised system in all but name
By that metric the train operators have never been privatised as details of the rail franchising contracts have always been specified by the government, first by the Strategic Rail Authority in-till 2005 when it was transferred to the DfT. In real terms all Emergency Recovery Measures Agreements did was get rid of the commercial risk for train operators as the government has used rail franchising contracts to enforce reforms on train
operators since the early days of rail franchising.
You did not mention the Rolling Stock Companies and Open-access operators which are still privately owned. The Open-access operators are not bound by contracts (They just buy individual train paths from Network Rail.) with DtF yet their cheapest prices are still in line with the cheapest prices offered by the rail franchise operators.
No it's because the rail companies done own their rolling stock, the umbrella companie of the rail company or the same investors will.
The rail companies rent their rolling stock from only 3 companies.
The government sets the ticket price based on the rail companies expenses and the adds a sensible profit on top.
But the prices for renting rolling stock are not controlled.
So you want to make more money as an investor in both these companies, put rolling stock costs up, in your next review of prices by the government include that expense and bang more money for bugger all.
It's a disgrace and should be on the front page of every national newspaper.
Look into who owns our railway. Then consider they want a profit.
https://weownit.org.uk/who-owns-our/railways
There is undoubtably a huge amount of many left on the table with regards to fair evaders. I see it day in day out. Sadly though, anyone who thinks that this would result in lower fares under the current structure are very much mistaken.
I’d love to see the data for this - it’s 94% for London Underground but I can only find a 60% for national rail services which is still by far the predominant single income source.
When government own utilities, employees think its a bottomless money bank. Wages / expectations of rotas / prohibitive working practices wouldn't be tolerated if it was truly privatised. As it stands the companies are paid for doing xyz, rather than charging 10% to make 10% extra profit.
Look at the M6 toll road, privately build, paid to use, but insufficient numbers to generate anticipated revenue.
What's fair for the level of responsibility and unsociable hours train drivers have? In the scheme of things it's not their pay that determines the price of a ticket.
Oh I don't know being in charge of a vehicle with 100's of people on board, watching out for people straying on to the track, that sort of thing. I'm amazed you couldn't come up with that on your own.
I have friend who's a driver and he admits that the pay is good but why shouldn't it be? IMO lots of jobs should get better pay, bus drivers for example have a really shitty time with similar responsibilities for half the pay whilst someone who can code can sit at home drinking latte's all day and earn £100k+. Why not moan about them?
Really?
An average road driver has more direct responsibility. The railway is so controlled. Movement in one dimension only - can’t go left/right, up/down. Just stop start. The environment is benign ( ie stop and get out if things get tricky) and full of professionals looking out for you. The technology has all but replaced all their responsibility. Do something wrong … the tech will probably intervene and save the day. Driver Only Operated? Nah. No driver required. Look at DLR, etc. Loco issue? “Not my problem mate”.
A road driver, however, has hazards from everywhere. Get it wrong and can easily cause those x2 coaches to overturn… that’s your 100s. Tired, overworked, subject to strikes… that’s real responsibility that should be rewarded.
Train drivers are the last breathing dinosaur. Way overpaid for what they do. Hope they enjoy the Gravy Train while it lasts because it is coming to an end. Strikes will have no positive impact.
IMO, everyone should be better paid but economics, and the real world, doesn’t work like that.
if they didnt charge so much for a sub par service less people would train dodge..
its the same thing with game piracy.. company be like pirates hurting our sales... but time and time again the good games oversell and the bad ones flop. but doesn't stop the company's blaming pirates when the truth is the thing provided sucks so bad that no one is willing to try it let alone buy it XD
I don’t think “horse wallop” is a thing. You can say “codswallop” or “horse shit”, but not a combo of the two. Unless you have some regional dialect thing that I’ve not come across before.
We frame this by taking about rail “subsidy” but don’t talk about the road “subsidy” which is the amount the govt spends on road infrastructure. It’s mad that it’s cheaper for me to drive long distances than to get a train - environmentally it’s a classic perverse incentive - the govt should rebalance this by pumping way more cash into trains - make them cheaper- and less into cars - stop the car subsidies- make the cost reflect the true impact on the environment.
Our fairs are high because of privatisation (the ridiculous way it has been done) and the government's belief that train riders rather than the taxpayer should bear the brunt of the costs of running a railway. In other countries, railways are seen as a public good for the benefit of the country. Not in this one it seems.
Genuine question though, would people be supportive of a significant increase in taxes in order to bring down rail fare prices? This could be used either to pay Network Rail directly as opposed to NR gaining revenue through track access charges from TOCs and FOCs meaning that the TOCs and FOCs keep more profits, or to pay more money directly to the TOCs directly allowing them to reduce fares. Without significant and time consuming overhaul of the rail system I don't see that a real fare reduction of the kind most people need would otherwise be feasible.
I would imagine this wouldn't be a well liked option and that there would be some outrage if the government chose to invest any increase in taxes on something that not everyone uses at all, never mind regularly?
Yeah that's total BS, unfair evaders are the real problem /s
(That is indeed BS. £240m a year lost to evasion according to the industry, they lost more on the political decision not to settle the pay dispute and allow strikes to go ahead. They just like picking on easy targets.)
If every fair was paid for they would still hike prices up beyond inflation because shareholders need to be kept happy and want higher and higher returns.
They need more money…… fair evaders don’t pay hence they are losing that money which they should have……….
Seems pretty clear to me.
Unless you know how much their operating costs are, none of us really know what the answer is except them.
Well the issue is people try to fare evade because they know they can just buy a ticket on the train if the conductor comes.
You shouldn't be allowed to buy tickets on the train and if caught without a ticket, you're fined.
There's a conductor on 95% of my trains, he just sells tickets to everyone that asks and makes me wonder why I'm paying for the train in advance.
Read the title, that was enough for me to open with the intention of calling it bollicking rubbish but then read the full description. (I work on the freeLr)
It's nonsense. Most fares are set by the government, and the low level of government subsidy compared to many European countries is why the prices are so high.
And why isn't everyone in the country aware that our high fares is what is paying for subsidies in European countries as vast amounts of our network is run by companies literally owned by other countries governments. It's like if the NHS owned a private hospital brand in the USA and used the profits charged over there to make services better here. Yes, great idea for the home country, but definitely seems shit for the worked-in country. This should be the first thing mentioned in ANY rail debate but it's never there.
>And why isn't everyone in the country aware that our high fares is what is paying for subsidies in European countries as vast amounts of our network is run by companies literally owned by other countries governments. The dividends paid out are literally pennies per ticket. Privatisation is a meme answer but it's a red herring.
So dfb own Arriva and run the London Overground as a philanthropic venture?
No, but taking out a few pennies per ticket for providing a better service than BR ever did is way, way, way down the list of causes of problems with passenger rail in the UK, if it even is a cause of problems.
You are attacking the strawman of BR, when we have comparable nationalised rail operators in the current world who provide a comparable or better service than out dysfunctional privatised system for a far cheaper price.
The service is better in much of Europe because they subsidise passenger rail more. The government running day-to-day passenger rail services wouldn't make them suddenly subsidise it more - they could subsidise it more today and they don't.
Having a better, more frequently used and subsidised service would boost profitability and value of rail operators, once again aiding them to reinvest that back into their own countries subsidisation of rail. If we followed their models we'd not only subsidise rail more but use our operator to fund those subsidies via foreign capital.
Well yeah, we need to subsidise it more. It's seems sensible to all but the car-only crowd.
There's a car only town that I sometimes work in and it's literal hell, on a lunch break I can either walk for 40mins to/from a supermarket, or burn diesel and actually eat my lunch in time. And if I wanted to get the train to work, I'd have to walk 40mins each way along and A road. Utter dystopian shit is car-only.
I think it’s a bit misleading to call it a low level of subsidy. It’s c. £8 billion a year, paid by taxpayers.
Right, but that's substantially less than France, Germany. In terms of subsidy per passenger km travelled, the UK is the lowest of all but one in the list of 13 European countries [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_subsidies). Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and Belgium are all around double the UK. Germany and Spain around 1.5 times.
And their services are fair superior - that’s another major difference. Spain has a version of a bullet train that will do ~300km/hr
We could have something similar running the length of the country, but we spent all the money building tunnels in flatish, easy to build in landscape so some rich people didn't have to see the trains in the southern section.
Tbf I’m all for building new railways but I think a tunnel would be better for the environment
They aren’t the amount of extra energy used digging and the amount of concrete needed to build them produces a massive amount of CO2
Building as many new railways is the best thing for the environment. Adding unnecessary tunnels adds to cost so acts against that.
At least German trains are worse, unless you are on southern. Reliability is appalling. (I live near the France / Germany / Switzerland triborder)
I'd like to know what train service you have regularly used/are using in UK. Southern has been a consistent fuck-up, but I used to hear SouthWestern used to be absolutely worse. When I used to commute daily, my top record was 5 trains from London Bridge to Brighton in one journey.
German trains are still better than the UK
It depends. Commuting - yes. London trains are a mess and rail commuting to regional cities is a joke. Long distance train across the country - UK all day long.
You’ve never met CrossCountry, have you?
Id take my chances compared to DB. Been burned too many times. Speaking of being burned: I have a Swiss season ticket. Train was cancelled for the first time in 4 years - I was so angry , thought Switzerland was going to the dogs. The excuse was the next station (more accurately an old wooden storage shed type building adjacent to it and the line) was burning down - fair enough really!
Hope you like being compressed into a pulp north of Birmingham New Street, and being stranded in Leeds when you need Dundee
What you mean "even Spain" as if it was a poor country?
Don’t take that personally - just a poor turn of phrase. My parents live in Spain so I’m well aware it is not at all a poor country.
They haven't been doing well financially for the past decade with a steady decline of their economy. Maybe it isn't fair to call them a poor country but they aren't exactly rich either. Unlike the UK where everything is going *so* swimmingly. /smh
We used train to travel through Europe last year and used German, Italian and French trains- the prices were very reasonable to go from city to city crossing borders
And there are the profits of the various companies, which get taken out of that subsidy. The above countries don't have that kind of money leaking out of the system.
In fact, a lot of our private TOCs are actually owned by the same groups that run a lot of European rail, so they're almost getting double subsidised by the profits they get from running our rail.
Not really. Apart from the fact several TOCs are directly government-ran (including all three that serve the town I live in), dividends account for a tiny fraction. For 2022-23, dividends paid out by TOCs were [£76 million](https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/algdbizg/rail-industry-finance-uk-statistical-release-202223.pdf). In that same period, [1.3 billion passenger journeys were made](https://www.statista.com/statistics/304957/total-historical-national-rail-passenger-journeys-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/). That's less than 6p per journey. Even if we presume all those journeys were made on return tickets, that's no more than 12p per ticket.
Personally, I don't take an ideological position on the often infantile public private debate but privatisation clearly hasn't worked for anyone. "Several" TOC's as you say but, as you well know, the vast majority are privately run. 6p per journey is misleading. From your link, the 406 million pounds in dividends paid out to the ROSCOs goes unmentioned for a start. Goodness knows what else is being taken out where. If the taxpayer is forking money out, why should shareholders get dividends? Then there is Network Rail's £4.1 billion in "legacy costs" (PFI?) "including financial instruments issued to investors before the company’s reclassification to the public sector"... We could go on forever.
>"Several" TOC's as you say but, as you well know, the vast majority are privately run. 7 of the 17 franchises are government-run for day to day operation. >If the taxpayer is forking money out, why should shareholders get dividends? Because the government doesn't want to run the day-to-day operation of passenger rail itself, and frankly services have improved since the days of British Rail. I don't see the problem with the operators making a profit. Speak of which, the level of profit is heavily contrained by the franchise agreements. Where more than 3% revenue above expected is generated, at least half goes back to the Treasury anyway.
But the economic benefits are huge. We are so scared to spend money on anything in this country, and it's harming fucking everything
>We are so scared to spend money on anything in this country, Well, not so scared to spend it on cars and roads it seems. A certain type of person (we all know one) gets very uppity at the idea of trains being subsidised but then has no problem with the fact that everyone is essentially paying subsidies to roads and thus a highly polluting and inefficient form of travel.
There are problems with cars, but Fuel duty and VED more than pay for government spending on roads.
That "subsidy" also includes the money being paid towards capital investment in the railways as well - such as building east/west rail, the Trans Pennine Route Upgrade, HS2 etc, which makes up the majority of the subsidy. In 2022-2023 the subsidy was £11.9 billion, £7.5 billion of which went to Network rail. i.e. for all the maintenance and construction projects that are going on under their banner. Only £4.4 billion went to operators. There are ways we can fix this, or at least improve it. For example, currently TOC (Train Operating Companies) pay £3.1 billion a year to lease rolling stock from the real criminals of the rail system: ROSCOs (Rolling stock leasing companies). Many of the trains that we're paying an arm and a leg for every year are old BR era ones that were once owned directly, but now have been paid for multiple times over due to this bizarre ownership model of selling them and leasing them back. Basically, privatisation has resulted in increased subsidy. If British Rail had this level of subsidy (They only got £1 billion or so on a good year) the amount of work they could've done for it such as new trains (actually built here in the UK!), better maintenance, electrification and improving/opening routes would've been astounding.
In the grand scheme of government spending, that’s not much though.
In the grand scheme of shitty public services, that's too much though.
Not really, we spend tens of billions on roads every year - the entire rail industry subsidy pales in comparison. You don't see many people bitching about tax payer money being spent on publicly owned roads though. Why should the rail network be any different?
But I'm not complaining about it being spent on rail as a principle, I'm complaining about the god awful service we get in return for that investment. I'm pro-railways, I'm just anti-privatised mismanagement of the railways.
Oh right, well yeah I totally agree with you then - I want to see a return to public ownership as well.
Used by tax payers, benefitting tax payers. It’s a worthwhile investment, even just getting that many people out of their cars and onto public transport.
8 billion sounds like a lot, but then so does 1 billion and 20 billion. Context is important.
Tax payers include corporations. For which the UK rate is low.
If the train companies are getting £8B subsidies then someone is pocketing a heap of money. I'm not going to discuss the quality of trains, they are fine. But service is awful and is really the most important component of running a railway. Trains need to be predictable, they need to be on time and not cancelled. They also need to be affordable. The fact that so many people fly longer distances rather than go by train is criminal. My niece lives in Aberdeen and visits my dad in Surrey and I don't think she has gone by train in a decade.
Indeed. Why should the taxpayer who is not on the train pay for your train journey?
Because society as a whole benefits from cheap and reliable public transport.
Not sure how I benefit from your trip to the seaside. You could have stayed at home for all I care.
Do you think all train movements are passenger trips to the seaside or are you just pretending to be that thick?
Freight can pay their own way.
“Not sure how I benefit from your trip to the seaside…” That’s because you don’t understand how taxation works.
Why should I pay for your hospital/doctor/dentist, I'm not sick. Why should I pay for your state pension or benefits, I'm not retired. Why should I pay for schools, I don't have kids. Why should I pay for roads, I don't have a car. Why? Because that is how a functioning society works. We pay taxes so that society can benefit from the services and infrastructure it pays for.
Indeed. A level of debate about what should be included in general taxation is healthy. Most people agree a certain minimum level of health provision, education and old age pension is reasonable. This does not necessarily extend to giving you free trips to the seaside in the train.
Either you think rail transport should be partly paid for by taxation or you don't. If you think the principle of taxation for this is ok, you are really going to struggle implementing a system where those using the train for recreational purposes have to fund 100% of the cost and those using it for other purposes don't. What do you propose? Different ticket types depending on the purpose of your journey, and ticket inspectors authorised to search your luggage for Speedos? As to your last paragraph, customers never get "free" tickets. It's just subsidised in part
Why should my taxes go towards schools when I don't have any kids?
Because that's the point of taxes... We all pay in and benefit from some things, but not necessarily others, for the wider public good...
Indeed and there is a difference of opinion as to whether people’s transport should be funded from general taxation. If am all for road pricing per mile and rail users paying the full cost.
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Careful, he'll start telling you about "road tax".
They shouldn’t, we should have road pricing by usage.
If the passengers were not on the train, they would either A) Not make the trip, so they would lose their job or not make their leisure trip, making the economy smaller and you poorer, or B) Be sharing the road with you, making your journey longer. Everyone benefits from public transport, including those who *don't* use it.
Maybe I shouldn't have to pay for the motorways you use either, given that I cycle, walk and public transport everywhere, and given that we currently subsidise roads a lot more than rail (and it's a more polluting and less efficient means of transportation). Man, it'd be hilarious to see motorists actually have to pay the true costs of that form of transport. If only.
Yes indeed. A company can invest in infrastructure and then charge the users. Like the M6 Toll or the Second Severn Crossing.
Oh, sounds wonderful, loads of toll roads you have to stop at and pay. And on longer journeys you'd need to mull over what route to take to make sure the journey isn't too long but also not too costly, how efficient. That sounds like a terrible and frustrating system, no thanks. You're also not considering externalised costs. Cars cause pollution (from petrol, or electricity generation for electric cars, huge energy and material costs for production of the car in the first place, and tyre particles), a terrible amount of noise, danger to other non-motorists, are unsightly, and use huge amounts of public space. Not all of this is reflected in the actual cost of building roads etc.
Yes toll roads very much like most of the continental Europe. How awful!!
Indeed. Why should the taxpayer who is not on the train pay for your train journey?
Why should the person on the train pay for the roads/motorways the person driving a car uses?
Seems a bit silly to act like car and train users are two completely separate groups. A lot of people use both to get around the country.
I agree. Car and lorry users should pay per mile, as should train users.
Because: * Allows people of less means to travel, which is beneficial for welfare and economic purposes. * It reduces traffic on the road, improving the experience of those who need to drive, and reducing ware subsequent maintianance cost. * It's the most environmentally-friendly common means of travel that's beyond walking or cycling distance. * Other means on transport - especially cars - are massively subsidised by the taxpayer. This is often overlooked as so many of the costs of mass car travel are externalities. * Objecting to tax funding services you don't personally use is a bit pathetic - some of my tax money goes towards roads in Coventry, schools in Ipswich, and the healthcare of people I'll never meet. That's not an injustice; that's how society operates.
So you are allowed a strong view on what should be included in general taxation, but any one else’s view is stupid? Righty oh.
it's almost as if we live in a society or something.
I don't use trains, so why should I have to pay more tax to subsidise those who do? Unless of course you would like to pay my road tax for me? Didn't think so...
To quote myself from another comment: Because: * It allows people of less means to travel, which is beneficial for welfare and economic purposes. * It reduces traffic on the road, improving the experience of those who need to drive, and reducing ware & subsequent maintianance cost. * It's the most environmentally-friendly common means of travel that's beyond walking or cycling distance. * Other means on transport - especially cars - are massively subsidised by the taxpayer. This is often overlooked as so many of the costs of mass car travel are externalities. * Objecting to tax funding services you don't personally use is a bit pathetic - some of my tax money goes towards roads in Coventry, schools in Ipswich, and the healthcare of people I'll never meet. That's not an injustice; that's how society operates.
> I don't use trains, so why should I have to pay more tax to subsidise those who do? When you typed this out it didn’t cross your mind for even a second to apply this logic to other tax expenditures, did it.
Because other people using trains keeps the roads quieter for you.
Is it a 'subsidy' or an 'investment'. Same thing different nuance. Do you subsidise private companies or invest in national transport infrastructire? Either way, it's not enough investment.
Responsibility for infrastructure investment lies squarely with the government.
I would typically use "subsidy" as a technical term when referring to an ongoing govt. expenditure that meets the costs of service provision. It's not a negative word in that sense! Its just a spending choice! I would use investment when the funding is used to improve quality, provide new/ better assets or expand the service - i.e. you end up with something better than what you started with.
They could have a special tax assessment for people flying in their supercars from the Middle East and bridge the gap pretty quickly.
agreed, public utilities can't be run at a profit, at best you can provide a sub par service for massive amounts of money charged to the public and then still get state subsidies on top
Why can't public utilities be run at a profit? They need to be paid for somehow. Either the people who use them can pay for them directly, with a small cut taken for profit, or we force everybody to pay through taxation and has a cut taken by the bureaucracy. The money still gets to the people who run the rails somehow, so why can't it be direct instead of indirect?
Theoretically, yes, but in practice, it’s really hard. Most privatised railways run at a massive loss, especially in Europe, because they’re a public service so they have to run even at times the trains aren’t popular so can’t recoup their costs. Contrast this with Japanese railways, for example, which do make a massive profit and provide great service. It’s because they have diversified so make their profits in other businesses (eg the shopping malls built around rail stations) and use that to fund the railway portion. Running a public service for profit just doesn’t work in the system we have and the passenger levels we have here (another reason Japanese railcos are successful – over 70% of distance travel is by rail. Lots of demand, plenty of competition=thriving free market)
I had never considered the comparison between Japanese railway systems and UK/European systems, quite an interesting idea tbh
The other key part about Japanese railways is that their investments are not random; they are adjacent to the railway. To use a UK example, it's as if LNER owned all the new office and shopping developments around Kings Cross, but also owned shops and housing estates in Farringdon, Hertford, Peterborough, etc. So it's in their interest to have people living in the commuter towns, working in London, and commuting by rail. It's a virtuous circle.
Paid for somehow = run the business at cost rather than for shareholder profit
Shareholder profit encourages investment. It's sad but true. That's why the ROSCOs exist.
Everyone complains at shareholders for making profit, when all that is happening is they are getting a return on their investment. Everyone understands that if the bank loans the railways money to buy some carriages, interest on the loan needs to be repaid. Sure the railway could make no profit. No one would invest in it, and instead the investors would be lenders. They would be paid interest instead of dividends. If the money is paid out as interest or divide it makes little practical difference, but the daily mail reader seems to think profit=bad and interest=fair.
Why? Shareholder profit ensures there's a link between the investments into the system and the benefits to the customer, and also increases the probability of investment being made at all (see who built the railways versus who dug up the railways).
That nice, simple, explanation of how capitalism "works" that we are taught at 13 that ignores the reality. Companies work to maximize profits and any benefits to customers are merely accidental and unintended. As for your juvenile commentary, ownership wouldn't have mattered the railways still would have massively shrunk post-WW2 even if still privately owned - the shrinkage was due to changes in the world and not ownership (note for example how the US rail system shrunk despite being privately owned).
In theory that could be the case but in reality it has meant fees continue to rise and service remains the same or deteriorates.
In practice it's also the case, half the issue is that the passengers are not the customers of the railway. The government gets to decide who runs the railways and its significantly reduced their initial outlays (which is all politicians care about because we have short sightism as a point of our national identity). The government set the fees passengers pay, they set who gets to ride what trains where, so it's not really privatisation or running for profit that's caused this
If shareholder profit truly did that, why are the top rated countries by railway all nationalised? (Except JR, who seems to be the only company that did Privatisation correctly)
Because national ideology wants public trains and are happy to pay more through obfuscated taxation to pay for it
Exactly: rail transport works best when decoupled from funding source. Profit driven ventures are a race to minimising cost, not maximising satisfaction. Imagine if something like your homes water supply was a profit only business where companies were only incentivised by lining their own coffers
What he means is that, when a company is incentivised by profit, they are directly rewarded for minimising the amount they spend and maximising the amount they charge. In other words, providing the least service they can while charging the highest price the public will tolerate. If it was non-profit and the excess funds were spent back into improving the service, that would be one step in the right direction. Fun fact; SouthEastern is back under public ownership after they were found taking £80m of government funding as "profits" rather than doing anything with it to improve the service.
That its literally not how return on investment works. In fact, the larger the investment, the larger the return.
Because bureaucracy costs can be capped or decreased at will, but profit seeking has no upper limit because it’s an end, not a means.
Some public utilities can. Railways is not one of them. My favourite factoid is that Margaret Thatcher believed we shouldn’t privatise railways.
Really? Do you have anymore information on this?
High ticket prices leads to high levels of fare evasion
True. Yet in New York the subway is $2.60 or something similar and you can literally take any journey on the network for that and they still have a massive amount of people who don’t pay their fare. They lose millions of dollars a year because of it. A lot of it is just pure selfishness. If you are genuinely struggling to the point that you can’t afford it I understand but the vast majority of people aren’t.
Also NYC's MTA system has several discount programs available to those of lower incomes, disabilities etc. (should be better publicized). In any case, the now $2.90 systemwide train fair is vastly cheaper proportionally than the Tube or Railway lines in the UK. But at least as much fare evasion in NYC as London (most likely far more).
It’s easy to jump the barriers in and don’t need to out. Police aren’t looking to get involved with the tramps that do it. NY subway is terrible and not something to aspire to.
It’s an interesting point but at what point do you become rich enough to stop fare evading? I mean it wouldn’t matter how much someone earned, they would still think “those damn poor people are not paying and I’m not subsidising them so I will skip my fare too”.
I currently live in CT, in NYC fairly often. It's fairly common to see obviously wealthy people fair hop—the kind with nice corpo backpacks clearly earning a good 6 figure amount. They do it because they can, and enforcement is minimal.
There are two reasons for high fares: 1.The current government believes those that use the railway should pay the full cost of using it, 2. The DfT stated earlier this year that due to the type of privatisation inflicted on the railway by the John Major Conservative government, the railway currently costs at least 4x, and probably 4.5x the amount of money, allowing for inflation, than it did when it was fully nationalised and run by British Rail. These extra costs being that: * We changed from giving BR money to design and build or buy rolling stock, to the system we have now where we lease rolling stock and pay per month to use it, never owning it and so unable to reuse it. And, * British Rail used to employ thousands of staff, now most staff work for other companies and are contracted in, this means extra costs for UK rail to provide profits for all these companies. In addition, there are many more staff employed around the periphery who just get paid to move paper around with, for example, each one of those 9,000+ contractors has written their own policies, and procedures on things like diversity and equality.
The current model also has 17 franchises, with 17 sets of backend computer systems, 17 outsourced IT providers, 17 catering contracts, etc. It loses a significant economy of scale by having to reinvent the wheel for every franchise.
But it has been designed this way deliberately. This system introduces layers of middlemen running 'services' to the rail network, extracting profits at every step. These sub-contractors often use sub-contractors who in turn use sub-contractors and so on. It's perfectly designed to extract profit at every opportunity. Now, pay attention to how the NHS is being gradually privatised, you'll see a similar structure beginning to form.
The NHS is almost certainly the least-privatised of the European healthcare systems.
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That's unfare.
Chortle...
Stop talking a load of old horse wallop
I don’t believe fair evaders are the sole reason for high ticket prices but it has to contribute to it, same as it does with any other service or product that suffers from theft. It is theft, it is extremely selfish as they expect everyone else to pay for a service they want to use.
But its not anywhere as much as reduction in subsidies and the similar. Its a white lie to focus attention away from the bigger reasons.
All the time rail services are run by companies and not publicly/govenment owned subsidies should be kept to an absolute minimum. Why should tax payers money prop up these companies. The subsidies should only be used to stop the collapse of the rail system to ensure a vital service continues to be available. These subsidies are tax payer money. Reducing revenue (fare evasion) is as I said before, extremely selfish as they expect a service to be there but don’t want to contribute.
So you agree that private companies shouldn't be allowed to run the trains in England and Wales and it should not look at economic cost but social cost when running public transport.
I believe public services should be run by the public for the public. Private companies and shareholders should not be running them. You only have to look at other countries to see how it should be done. However, that is not the situation we are in and private companies and their shareholders should only receive the minimum subsidies possible.
All trains (except open access operators) are run as management contracts, where the operator gets paid a fixed amount and all ticket revenue goes to the treasury. The whole franchise system was scrapped a few years ago. Something like half the operators are run by the DfT anyway, the railway is the closest It's been to publicly operated since British Rail. The fares are also set by the DfT, the only way to lower them is for the government to accept that railways are a public service and should not be profit making.
Personally on the fence on this one but you'll recall that it wasn't the public sector who actually built the railways. They were only nationalised in 1948 and from then on they declined steeply..Now that was for an number of factors including the rise of the car but it was also because of neglect and short sighted government decisions - the same sort of short sighted politicians we have today
Putting aside the morally of fare evaders, if everyone paid tomorrow those profits would go straight into shareholder pockets. The profit they make now doesn’t get put into maintainance or upgrades, becuase that’s spending money they don’t need to.
Nonsense. Profitability of these companies is basically regulated. If more money from tickets was recouped mostly it would go to better service & less subsidy
That's not true since the pandemic. There are now new contracts where the fares go directly to the Treasury. The DfT pays the TOCs to costs of trains plus a fee (with bonuses for things like punctuality). If the operators get paid more money, they can't decide to upgrade the service. All those decisions are made by Ministers now. (Except at LNER which is still under the old contract.... because it had already been nationalised before the pandemic. So the 'private' operators have less commercial freedom than a state-owned one. 🤯 The whole privatisation era has been full of this kind of bizarre illogic.)
That is an opinion but what evidence is there to support it as fact? My commute has some newer trains added in the last couple of years and there has been some work to the stations I use and other nearby stations. So there is definitely maintenance and upgrades happening. Now for the price paid I really would prefer to seen this on a larger scale but on the lines I use I cannot say there is no investment. Stealing a service from these companies reduces the cash/revenue they have the option to invest. Fair evasion is theft and incredibly selfish regardless of what anyone thinks of the rail companies. What the thief does not contribute has to come from others in one way or another.
Mate the trains already going there why can't I just hop on?
Tax evaders are the problem in the UK. . But as they're all Tories nothing ever gets done.
Tax evasion is a problem but if you think that’s ‘the problem’ you’re horrifically blinkered.
5 to 1. I win😂
The real reason rail fares are so high in the UK is the insanely expensive fragmented railway system we have. Why do we need all these train operators and ROSCOs and the ridiculous duplication of effort involved? I reckon if BR had been all the (much larger) subsidy the privatised industry has been given we'd actually have a reasonably efficient modern railway now.
We have high ticket prices because there are no alternatives. If I want to go into London for a meeting there’s no way I can drive in to our office and park nearby. I could drive and take a bus maybe but that would be so hard to do with finding parking for a full day etc. There could literally be a guy who slaps me in the face every time I get on a train and I’d still not have the option of not taking the train. No matter how bad the service you can’t get away from it for some journeys
Lmao can I be that guy
It's just not fare.
Why would you want to evade the “fair”. I love the rides that go upside down!
OP just invented a quote so he can argue with himself
@uktrains To be FAIR I would evade FAIRS too if I had to pay a train FARE to get to one. That sounds too far away and would be an expensive FAIR visit. I rather stick to FAIRS in the city I live and just pay the bus or tube FARE.
I solely recommend you all write to the MP for transport... I'm sure they'll soon get sick of people complaining. There is something in the works (Great British Railways) that's supposed to consolidae ticketing and the whole system but whether this materialises and results in cheaper fares is anyone's guess
Uk train services run by foreign companies who subsidise their own networks at home is why train services are priced so insanely high in the UK.
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Who pays for that though? Londoners? Visitors? The whole of England/UK?
Tomorrow morning I can take a train from: London to Edinburgh (4h 22m) for £113 - 630KM Helsinki to Oulu (5h 53m) for £48 - 600KM Paris to Bordeaux (2h 5m) for £85 - 580KM Madrid to Seville (2h 40m) for £62 - 530KM This proves absolutely nothing, but it was an interesting exercise.
Kent to London. £31 - 40km.
I think it’s the other way round. If we had pricing similar to Belgium we would have less dodging.
So basically if people who don’t buy tickets but took the train, continued to not buy ticks but didn’t take the train, but the cost of running the train stayed the same because it’s still running, they could charge the people who did buy tickets less? How does that work?
Privatisation is the sole reason why we have high ticket prices.
Trains have basically been government owned and ran since the start of COVID and prices haven't gone down. So why is privatisation the only reason for high prices?
Not so. The govt took over the operators contracts but still pays the leasing cost for the trains. We need to get the ROSCOs out of the system.
We don't have a privatised railway anymore, why are ticket prices still high?
We do still have a privatised railway, 10 of 17 rail franchises are still in private hands, and DfT OLR Holdings runs the ones they own as if they were privately owned operators, also many services are operated by privately owned Open-access operators. Train are leased from privately owned Rolling Stock Companies.
The railways are owned and operated by Network Rail, a public body. All current franchises are run under management contract with the details specified entirely by the DfT. That's a nationalised system in all but name
By that metric the train operators have never been privatised as details of the rail franchising contracts have always been specified by the government, first by the Strategic Rail Authority in-till 2005 when it was transferred to the DfT. In real terms all Emergency Recovery Measures Agreements did was get rid of the commercial risk for train operators as the government has used rail franchising contracts to enforce reforms on train operators since the early days of rail franchising. You did not mention the Rolling Stock Companies and Open-access operators which are still privately owned. The Open-access operators are not bound by contracts (They just buy individual train paths from Network Rail.) with DtF yet their cheapest prices are still in line with the cheapest prices offered by the rail franchise operators.
So if everyone dodges fares, you think services will continue without any changes or disruption?
No it's because the rail companies done own their rolling stock, the umbrella companie of the rail company or the same investors will. The rail companies rent their rolling stock from only 3 companies. The government sets the ticket price based on the rail companies expenses and the adds a sensible profit on top. But the prices for renting rolling stock are not controlled. So you want to make more money as an investor in both these companies, put rolling stock costs up, in your next review of prices by the government include that expense and bang more money for bugger all. It's a disgrace and should be on the front page of every national newspaper.
Look into who owns our railway. Then consider they want a profit. https://weownit.org.uk/who-owns-our/railways There is undoubtably a huge amount of many left on the table with regards to fair evaders. I see it day in day out. Sadly though, anyone who thinks that this would result in lower fares under the current structure are very much mistaken.
All of these conversations need to be informed by the fact that farebox recovery isn't the predominant source of income for most rail operators.
I’d love to see the data for this - it’s 94% for London Underground but I can only find a 60% for national rail services which is still by far the predominant single income source.
what about unfair evaders? fares are too high anyway...
They say that while their crocodile tears rain onto their profits…
Lynch the fare evaders *raise up people!*
Mike will lynch them
When government own utilities, employees think its a bottomless money bank. Wages / expectations of rotas / prohibitive working practices wouldn't be tolerated if it was truly privatised. As it stands the companies are paid for doing xyz, rather than charging 10% to make 10% extra profit. Look at the M6 toll road, privately build, paid to use, but insufficient numbers to generate anticipated revenue.
Who says this?
ROSCOs are the reason you have high ticket prices 😂
Who is supposed to have said this?
If the prices weren’t so high, I’d probably pay!
If they bothered to check tickets perhaps people would be more inclined to buy one.
Overpaid drivers….😗
What's fair for the level of responsibility and unsociable hours train drivers have? In the scheme of things it's not their pay that determines the price of a ticket.
“Responsibility”? Please explain. As for unsociable hours . . Yeah. So?
Oh I don't know being in charge of a vehicle with 100's of people on board, watching out for people straying on to the track, that sort of thing. I'm amazed you couldn't come up with that on your own. I have friend who's a driver and he admits that the pay is good but why shouldn't it be? IMO lots of jobs should get better pay, bus drivers for example have a really shitty time with similar responsibilities for half the pay whilst someone who can code can sit at home drinking latte's all day and earn £100k+. Why not moan about them?
Really? An average road driver has more direct responsibility. The railway is so controlled. Movement in one dimension only - can’t go left/right, up/down. Just stop start. The environment is benign ( ie stop and get out if things get tricky) and full of professionals looking out for you. The technology has all but replaced all their responsibility. Do something wrong … the tech will probably intervene and save the day. Driver Only Operated? Nah. No driver required. Look at DLR, etc. Loco issue? “Not my problem mate”. A road driver, however, has hazards from everywhere. Get it wrong and can easily cause those x2 coaches to overturn… that’s your 100s. Tired, overworked, subject to strikes… that’s real responsibility that should be rewarded. Train drivers are the last breathing dinosaur. Way overpaid for what they do. Hope they enjoy the Gravy Train while it lasts because it is coming to an end. Strikes will have no positive impact. IMO, everyone should be better paid but economics, and the real world, doesn’t work like that.
*fare
What is horse wallop?
It's like if a cod grew legs.
if they didnt charge so much for a sub par service less people would train dodge.. its the same thing with game piracy.. company be like pirates hurting our sales... but time and time again the good games oversell and the bad ones flop. but doesn't stop the company's blaming pirates when the truth is the thing provided sucks so bad that no one is willing to try it let alone buy it XD
Stealing from a business or dodging tax. The end result is the honest people pay more.
I don’t think “horse wallop” is a thing. You can say “codswallop” or “horse shit”, but not a combo of the two. Unless you have some regional dialect thing that I’ve not come across before.
It's the unfair evaders that really piss me off.
We frame this by taking about rail “subsidy” but don’t talk about the road “subsidy” which is the amount the govt spends on road infrastructure. It’s mad that it’s cheaper for me to drive long distances than to get a train - environmentally it’s a classic perverse incentive - the govt should rebalance this by pumping way more cash into trains - make them cheaper- and less into cars - stop the car subsidies- make the cost reflect the true impact on the environment.
Our fairs are high because of privatisation (the ridiculous way it has been done) and the government's belief that train riders rather than the taxpayer should bear the brunt of the costs of running a railway. In other countries, railways are seen as a public good for the benefit of the country. Not in this one it seems.
It's "fare".
100% people love to have a single group to blame instead of the companies that are making record profits in these times
I've never seen anyone make that statement. I think you're building a bit of a straw man there.
Genuine question though, would people be supportive of a significant increase in taxes in order to bring down rail fare prices? This could be used either to pay Network Rail directly as opposed to NR gaining revenue through track access charges from TOCs and FOCs meaning that the TOCs and FOCs keep more profits, or to pay more money directly to the TOCs directly allowing them to reduce fares. Without significant and time consuming overhaul of the rail system I don't see that a real fare reduction of the kind most people need would otherwise be feasible. I would imagine this wouldn't be a well liked option and that there would be some outrage if the government chose to invest any increase in taxes on something that not everyone uses at all, never mind regularly?
Yeah that's total BS, unfair evaders are the real problem /s (That is indeed BS. £240m a year lost to evasion according to the industry, they lost more on the political decision not to settle the pay dispute and allow strikes to go ahead. They just like picking on easy targets.)
If every fair was paid for they would still hike prices up beyond inflation because shareholders need to be kept happy and want higher and higher returns.
They need more money…… fair evaders don’t pay hence they are losing that money which they should have………. Seems pretty clear to me. Unless you know how much their operating costs are, none of us really know what the answer is except them.
What has hair colour got to do with ticket prices?
It's because of greed
Fare evaders? I regularly manage to go from London to Glasgow without a single ticket checking happening and the fault is of the fsre evaders?
Well the issue is people try to fare evade because they know they can just buy a ticket on the train if the conductor comes. You shouldn't be allowed to buy tickets on the train and if caught without a ticket, you're fined. There's a conductor on 95% of my trains, he just sells tickets to everyone that asks and makes me wonder why I'm paying for the train in advance.
It’s bullshit, fares are extortionate purely through greed
Yes and no. Loss of revenue doesn't help but barring cancellations all trains run as timetabled whether they are carrying 1 or 1000 passeangers.
Read the title, that was enough for me to open with the intention of calling it bollicking rubbish but then read the full description. (I work on the freeLr)