• ‘Uncomfortable, unpleasant, unsafe’: How London’s Euston Station became hell on earth (The Independent)
• New findings show trains are up to 80% cheaper than planes for domestic travel (Rail UK)
• The Unlikely New Bike Lanes Gracing the Scottish Capital (Bloomberg)
• Highbury & Islington North London Line Station – History of a north London icon: Video (Rebuild Highbury)
• How China’s buses shaped the world’s EV revolution (BBC)
• Car tires pollute, & regulators are finally doing something about it (Slate)
• US Seeks to Heal Community Scars from Interstate Highways, but it’s mostly Bandaids (governing.com)
• England’s railway stations: make them part of a rail renaissance (The Guardian)
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Whilst I fully support getting people off short haul flights, such errant nonsense as the Rail UK report really doesn’t aid credibility. What proportion of airline passengers doing London-Scotland spend £200 on a taxi to Gatwick?
@Herned. I agree, in reality it seems mad how expensive the train is and this Rail UK article has very obviously rigged statistics. Some are outright nonsense; the cab fare from Glasgow city centre to the airport is nowhere near £71 in a black cab, more like £15. If you’re charged £71 by a minicab you’ve been ripped off. No-one in their right mind would take a cab into central London, it takes about twice as long and costs probably 10 times more. Obviously you would get the tube.
I travel from Glasgow to Essex with my family a few times a year and I would really much rather take the train and I used to take the train a lot more. However for my family of 4 (with one 16 year old) it costs about £150 in petrol and tyre wear for the return trip compared to …checks the trainline… £729 next week travelling with a week’s notice with a comparable 8.5 hour journey time. Comfortably over a week’s wages at median income outside London. The trainline doesn’t mention this, but it just so happens that I am geeky enough to know that if I buy a family railcard for £30 I can reduce this to… drumroll…£452 only 3 times the cost. The cost difference between driving and the train being about 2 weeks of food shopping for a family of 4 or a month of energy bills. I feel bad about driving and I really don’t enjoy it but it is unavoidable. Yes, yes I know about booking 3 months in advance but this is not all that practical in reality when trying to coordinate my family and the people we are visiting with school, job and other commitments and it is often not cheaper anyway. Yes, yes I know there are other costs involved with running a car, but because of where I live I have to pay these whether I do this trip or not so they don’t count.
Trains need to be made drastically more affordable in order to reduce carbon emissions; no politician can make driving 3 times more expensive it is politically impossible. However, even if this were done, there wouldn’t be enough capacity to accommodate all these extra long distance passengers because HS2 has been cancelled. From recent experiences driving on the motorway there is not really much capacity left there either, it doesn’t take much to cause a 1hr delay en-route and it has happened pretty much every time I’ve done the trip in the last few years. I don’t know how the economy is supposed to function efficiently if we can’t reliably get to places to do things. Weirdly, it doesn’t look like the next government is going to do anything about any of this either. It is all quite irrational.
@Will
“No-one in their right mind would take a cab into central London”
I agree for the most part; but nevertheless we must accept that significant numbers of people continue to do just that. Some travellers are happy to pay for the (perceived) safety and convenience of a taxi, even if it might take longer and cost more.
When it comes to families and short-haul travel, a minicab to/from the airport is an attractive option – yes it might cost a bit more, but the rail options are often not very luggage/family friendly and also don’t always operate at the right hours, to check-in for morning flights for example. A family in say, Putney, wanting to get to Gatwick faces a journey to the station, then at least one change, with children and luggage, on potentially crowded services, versus an end-to-end ride.
In both cases reducing the cost of rail tickets would not address these markets. It’s the rail experience that’s lacking. And slashing the cost of tickets would simply make all this worse whilst also draining money from the system. Business travellers, lone women and families will not choose a rail option, however cheap, if they can’t board a train without it resembling a rugby scrum.