UK train travel is said to at times be off the rails? You can box clever, as some RyanAir travellers have been doing for years.
The UK government has recently announced it is considering banning short-haul internal flights and encouraging travellers to use the train instead.
This is an altogether laudable idea, were it not for the complex manner in which the railways are managed in the UK, with many operating under the private tender. Rail travel in the UK has a reputation, both at home and abroad, for its over-complex fare structure, offering very little transparency to its passengers. Originally, all private railway companies in the UK were nationalised in 1947 to become the much, at the time, derided British Rail (BR). The railways were privatised once again in 1997, despite in the interim, it appears that the private companies seem to care more about their shareholders than they do about their paying passengers.
Different train operators manage different sections of rail in the UK, meaning that a journey from, for example, Preston in the North West of the country to London can involve encroaching on several train companies’ domains (the West Coast Partnership), resulting in a train ticket for the journey involving the distribution of the fare paid to several different train operators.
Passengers resort to using train ticket splitting applications, where despite not leaving their seat for the entire journey, the calculation is automatically made, and the journey ticket is then comprised of individual, often cheaper single tickets between some stations on the trip. As an example (and do bear in mind this is for illustration only and may not be the real situation for this particular journey), the seamless, split ticket you purchase could include the equivalent of a single journey from Preston to Manchester, from Manchester to Milton Keynes and then Milton Keynes to London.
Many question why the UK’s national rail does not use this system, considering that not only is the ticket cheaper for the passenger using this system, but the ticket-splitting service provider also earns a commission that could otherwise be passed on directly to the passenger. The entire journey ticket could then be automatically at the cheapest rate available.
There is also the other anomaly that rail passengers to and from London have to contend with, that is “peak” fares, the “surcharge” for travelling during rush hour, and the travel times environmental organisations and even the government are trying to encourage commuters onto public transport. Any train arriving in London before 11.30 am from Monday to Thursday is regarded as being during the peak “hour. And similarly, those leaving London between 3 to 7 pm Monday to Thursday they also face peak hour fares. Fares in these cases can cost as high as three times the price of an off-peak single. And a further irony is that should you wish to travel peak hours out of London, you can find that for part of your journey (in particular London to Peterborough), you may have difficulty in getting a seat if you have not booked one (currently a free service), so will have to stand, despite paying the peak premium.
As for any manner of travel, the altogether very tiresome excuse is always “book well in advance to obtain the best price”, which is no substitution for providing good value for money in the first place. And booking well in advance brings its own problems. And in fairness, with two- or three days’ notice, you will be very unlikely to find an internal airfare from Manchester to London that isn’t eyewatering (not forgetting the £5 ‘entrance tax’ you will have to pay [Falstaff passim] to be dropped off at the Manchester, Gatwick, Heathrow (£7 at Stansted) airport terminals). Add into the mix that many rail fares are refundable, whereas few airline tickets are.
For a short-haul visit to Europe, British travellers cannot, of course, visit Dublin from London by rail. This brings me to a story from a friend. He recently travelled to Dublin for a family wedding long weekend, Thursday through Monday. His flight was at the Sterling equivalent of around €11 outbound and €14 return (admittedly, he had booked in advance). He took hand-baggage only, wearing his casual day jumper, suit jacket and coat, refusing the £5 priority boarding pass (he reported that more people on the flight had one than didn’t, meaning he had a more comfortable sit in the terminal rather than on the ‘plane for the 30 minutes wait for passenger loading prior to departure) as well as purchasing neither duty-free nor refreshments on board. He also has an annual travel insurance plan.
On arrival at Dublin Airport, after paying €3.30 by public bus to the city centre hotel, he was staying where the wedding was also taking place, where he went across the road to the store of that most famous of Irish international clothing brands (beginning with “P” and ending in “k”) for a couple of pairs of casual shirts and trousers (because his hand baggage, thanks to gifts, was up to the 10kg limit, although he mentioned that no one had checked this outbound) to see him through the weekend. All in all, travel to Dublin, including his purchased clothing, came to an approximate total of €85 (and he was able to pack the clothing he had purchased), somewhat less than the equivalent £181 (€206) quoted by National Rail at the time of writing for a Thursday-out Monday-return rail ticket next week from Manchester to London.
