The fare system was insane under British Rail as well - it's merely got worse because they've been able to vary them this way and that a bit from the British Rail basis but not simply overhaul the lot.

Many European mainland countries have a much simpler system which is basically

rate per mile + additions for 'express' services/sleeper/etc + additions for peak hours

which eliminates much of the complete insanity

Alan

Quote from: NeMo on August 17, 2013, 08:22:03 AM
What something is worth is what someone is willing to pay for it.

Ok yes I think I see where you are coming from (but you didnt get here by rail, ooops, sorry, couldnt resist!;) )

But I think my essential point was that I have neither the time nor inclination to play their pricing games.
I have a car anyway, needed here this far out in the sticks so the capital amortization and other fixed cost dont figure, so I'm left comparing cost to get to the rail, cost of rail, cost of getting from rail to destination and lost time whilst engaging all those functions !
AND a great bonus is that I can call in at friends or shops intermediat with just a small change of direction

Sorry, I'll just continue to jump in my car when it suits me till rail travel becomes so economic that I cant resist it ! Some hope, LOL!

I can see great advantage for mass commuters to to get to their place of work, but that is a commercial decision, why should I pay for them via my taxes. Commuting should be privatised, totally.
(is this getting a bit too political ? then I shall desist , lol !)

/rant

I did look at changing from driving to work to travelling by train.

drive door to door is around 20-25 minutes, and I arrive at work / home dry.

by train - 10 minutes walk to the station, 10 minute train ride, change, wait, another 10 minute train ride, 15 minute walk from station to work. total without cancellations, leaves on the line etc around 45 minutes.

finish a night shift on sunday morning, and you'll hang around for nearly an hour before you can get a train.

cost of petrol was about £20 a set of shifts, and I could leave for home when I got relieved, no rushing to catch a train at a set time, or wait around for ages for the next one.

cost by train was around £40 a set of shifts, took ages longer, and would probably get me to work wet / cold.

I know you have to factor in road tax, insurance, depreciation, but that's there whether I'm driving the car or not.

so overall, it's cheaper, more convenient, quicker, and more flexible to drive than use the train.

and I would imagine there are tons of other people in the same situation as me.

unless you live where the railway wants you to, and travel to where they want you to, and to all intents when they want you to [ie commuters on very overpriced routes at peak times] the railways are not interested.

and as for the idea that the passenger pays today for the railway to then improve services in several years time [when no doubt they'll then increase the fares again because of the improvements in stock etc] is just obscene.

it would not work in any other situation.

they would need to improve their product or service, and then charge more for the better service, not expect the user to pay for the improvements before getting them.

what happened to the idea of firms investing to improve their products or services, rather than holding their customers to ransom while making huge profits which are not invested.

rant over

Quote from: class37025 on August 18, 2013, 02:00:09 AM

cost of petrol was about £20 a set of shifts, and I could leave for home when I got relieved, no rushing to catch a train at a set time, or wait around for ages for the next one.

cost by train was around £40 a set of shifts, took ages longer, and would probably get me to work wet / cold.

I know you have to factor in road tax, insurance, depreciation, but that's there whether I'm driving the car or not.

so overall, it's cheaper, more convenient, quicker, and more flexible to drive than use the train.

Couldnt agree more !
And that is one reason why goods delivery exited rail way back in 50/60s

So why should we in the sticks continue to subsidise bankers (and others ) commuting ? Lets not yet get into the monstrosity (Victorian thinking) of HS2!

or put it another way, what is it with this fixation with railways
? ooops ! Wrong forum lol!

Quote from: class37025 on August 18, 2013, 02:00:09 AM
so overall, it's cheaper, more convenient, quicker, and more flexible to drive than use the train.

In many cases, yes.

Remember that railways were invented to move large quantities of a single good (specifically, coal) from one place to another across medium to long distances. That is what railways do best, and it's still what they do best. With minimal intervention from government, freight of this type remains profitable and privatisation has more or less worked well here.

If you stand at a station on a major main line, you'll likely see quite a few block freight trains carrying just one type of good (or containers) being moved from one location to another. Rail handles this sort of thing competitively with road haulage, which is why rain freight is doing so well. Moreover, just as privatisation was meant to do, the locomotives hauling otherwise similar freight trains could come from one of several different companies.

On the other hand, mixed goods trains were a hassle for railways, uneconomical to handle at the goods yards at every station, and only carried at all because government forced them to do so. This was because of something called the "common carrier" requirement that meant railways had to carry whatever was asked of them, however small and trivial. Hence cattle trucks, pigeon vans, and goodness knows how many different boxes and sacks stowed away in those 12-ton vans.

As for passenger transport, that was always dicey in terms of economics. The big routes with express trains can be profitable because they're a lot like block freight trains: a large amount of something, people, being moved from one place to another very quickly; but a lot of secondary lines that stop all over the place to drop off a few people at a time operate at a loss. Because of that, many shorter trips will be served by infrequent trains, so they aren't always convenient. The need to minimise financial losses means tickets will be proportionally more expensive, so these sorts of trips aren't cheap. Basically, the best bargains are on profitable lines because those are the ones railway companies can afford to "give away" at times of low traffic, hence your £10 returns between London and Manchester, albeit not during peak hours and by advanced booking only.

In any event, travelling by train has never really be cheap, and even if the ticket price seemed lower in the past, don't forget that your taxes were subsidising that (including, of course, car tax and petrol duty, so in a sense motorists were subsidising, and continue to subsidise, train travel).

Most of my commuting is done by train and bus. In fact I'm only just learning to drive, aged 42. If you live in or around London, cars are a bit of an expensive luxury and you can get around car usage very easily. Now I'm married and living out in the country, learning to drive is a bit more important. But I do enjoy train travel, and if nothing else, train travel has other benefits beyond cost, including being more environmentally friendly (though this aspect is sometimes overstated by "greens" that are hostile to cars on principle).

Cheers, NeMo

Quote from: NeMo on August 18, 2013, 07:49:40 AM
Remember that railways were invented to move large quantities of a single good (specifically, coal) from one place to another across medium to long distances.

No they were not.

Railways were invented to move all sorts of stuff more rapidly from A to B than by horse or canal and in the early days of rail many of the lines carried a wide mix of goods and passenger services.

The very earliest railways came out of plateways and thus from edged waggonways many of which were tolled and took any traffic from any merchant whose waggons were with the specifications laid down by the company operating the waggonway.

It wasn't until 1803 that the notion of a "public" tramroad obliged to serve all customers emerged. The first approved being the Surrey and the first in operation being in Llanelli.

The early railways operated on the same principle. In the beginning the Stockton and Darlington had a variety of operators and actually ended up buying out the rights of various horse drawn operators as steam improved and they became a nuisance.

Several early railways were built primarily and profitably for passenger traffic - the North London Railway by 1863 was a commuter railway running through braked fixed formation trains on a clockface timetable that wouldn't look out of place today. Likewise while the Metropolitan considered freight part of its business most of the underground did not. An unfortunate mistake for modern congested London.

Note that
- the government meddles intensively in both road and rail freight (even extreme fans of the private sector like Thatcher did so)
- all but one of the main 'private' operators isn't in fact private. Your freight is hauled by DRS (the UK goverment), EWS (The German government) or Freightliner (actually a real company)

Mixed goods is a complicated story. For far too long the state set tariffs on freight. In the early days this was needed as most railways were basically monopolies. Unfortunately they didn't adjust those tariffs sensibly which meant that as handling costs rose (mostly due to wages) the railways were forced to charge bogus amounts. It reached the point that stuff was driven down the motorways and then offloaded into trains for the final local delivery. Had they not messed this up then the same would have occurred as in telecoms where there was a gradual shift in fixed line costs from distance to end points (ie your mileage went down and your per item cost went up). Had that been done right then there would have been a far more optimal balancing.

(The same btw is happening now and destroying the Royal Mail - politicians never learn)

Prior to nationalisation all the big four companies saw themselves as transport companies not railway companies. They owned bus and coach services, they owned air services. They were not naïve and were trying to integrate road, rail and air despite the broken government inflicted tariffs. In 1928 the government had another meddle to stpo the railway companies owning the bus companies to ensure competition. By 1933 the railway companies owned things like Pickfords (which is why it ended up nationalised for so long). They owned Railway Air Services (except the LNER). They owned chunks of Thomas Cook.

Nationalisation broke this completely by splitting all the rail parts off from the road freight parts from the passenger coach services. More broken state meddling with good intent.

So it's important to remember
- The railways were in the road freight and coach businesses. Indeed the GWR had done things like replace some passenger services with a bus when it made more economic sense
- It's silly to look at the early days of the railways compared with today. In 1860 the alternative to the railway was a horsedrawn coach. It wasn't until the end of WW2 that diesel or petrol based road vehicles were actually reliable.

(and the government flogged off lots of war surplus lorries just post war thereby bu**ering up things even more by combining broke tariffs with state funding the road freight industry)

What has happened since then is containerisation which revolutionised all sorts of handling - especially shipping. That keeps your handling costs way down but at the cost of higher per milage bills (as you are paying to move metal boxes round and round without delivering the box)

The other reason any simple analysis is flawed is externalities. The commercial value of many rail links isn't the train fares, it's the vast money saved on more road building, compulsory purchase and demolition of paths through towns and cities, pollution, deaths, crime etc...

Block freight makes good money, but if you look at the USA you'll see that most US traffic is not block freight, its mixed wagons. High speed rail can also make good money. The intensive commuter network probably would make reasonable money too if someone removed the overhead of all the franchise nonsense.

It was always regional rail in BR days that lost money hand over foot but even chunks of that were beginning to turn around by privatisation, both as numbers rose and as the infrastructure got vastly more efficient - centralising signalling, using things like hydraulic points, electronic radio tokens, cctv based level crossing monitoring and so on.

Entertainingly we are now going back to the 1920s model sort of. Transport for London and 'Overground' and the like are integrating transport the passenger side of things the way the big four were doing. The proposals for giving other cities more control are much the same.

We have some other problems too - much of the network is maintained to very high standards and required to be by all sorts of over-reaching legislation. There isn't a good process for saying 'this is a 25mph freight only link for god sake get a clue'
(EWS for example reckoned they could save a ton of money on such freight only end links if they were allowed to maintain them directly and manage them in an appropriate manner)

Alan

Quote from: EtchedPixels on August 18, 2013, 02:41:43 PM

Quote from: NeMo on August 18, 2013, 07:49:40 AM
Remember that railways were invented to move large quantities of a single good (specifically, coal) from one place to another across medium to long distances.

No they were not.

I stand corrected!

Quote from: EtchedPixels on August 18, 2013, 02:41:43 PM
(The same btw is happening now and destroying the Royal Mail - politicians never learn)

How so? I don't really understand why Royal Mail does badly when the amount of stuff being mail ordered is going up all the time! I've never had so much stuff delivered to my door in my entire life!

Cheers, NeMo

The Royal Mail is obliged to do door to door delivery of mail that is bulk processed by other parcel and courier type commercial businesses, and at extremely low prices.

Quote from: RChook on August 18, 2013, 01:21:40 AM
I have a car anyway, needed here this far out in the sticks so the capital amortization and other fixed cost dont figure, so I'm left comparing cost to get to the rail, cost of rail, cost of getting from rail to destination and lost time whilst engaging all those functions !
AND a great bonus is that I can call in at friends or shops intermediat with just a small change of direction

A common temptation (to ignore the costs) but still incorrect. 

Quote from: RChook on August 18, 2013, 01:21:40 AM
I can see great advantage for mass commuters to to get to their place of work, but that is a commercial decision, why should I pay for them via my taxes. Commuting should be privatised, totally.

Regardless of the politics you are forgetting the social utility of rail travel, or the impact of having X commuters dumped on the road etc.  If you could present a convincing case looking at all the economic, social and environmental factors then we might be able to evaluate whether your statement is fair or not. Given that commuting is largely on the well-used lines I doubt you are subsidising those parts of the network very much, as historically it was the regional operations which needed subsidising...

A lot of the cross country operations are now very successful. British Rail ran few services and used hand me down stock as it was seen as a necessary evil and loss maker.

Virgin for all their faults realised that running a crap service with ancient stock might be the cause not the result and from that the voyagers and the regular cross country services were born. They actually wanted to run on a 15 minute pattern with short trains but Railcrack couldn't deliver that.

The fact most voyagers are stuffed like sardine tins is a testimony to how successfully they turned around the services.

Likewise other poor irregular services were turned around with regular decent services. The Birmingham cross-city services being a fine example. When I was young Sutton Coldfield was an hourly (at best) slow trip in a cold damp empty DMU. Now its about every 8 minutes, electrified and busy.

I do agree with other commentators on that fact trains don't make sense for everything. Some of the routes that were lost make vastly more sense as coach and bus services and a well loaded coach is actually very good on carbon footprint, if not so good on particulates.

Another awkward problem is that there is some evidence that trains are now way more popular because the fares are higher. They priced a certain class of people off the train which made the better off use them.