Fook yes! Council tax is less than I paid 10 years ago in Leeds on a minging terrace, utility costs are all the same despite miles of ropey overhead electricity cable supplying us, mains gas is laid on, water pressure is better, postal service is MASSIVELY better, schools are [mostly but not all] better, you can get a GP appointment without threatening the receptionist with a firearm, fibre broadband is being laid on [thanks again, London taxpayer], et cetera ad infinitum. Fair enough we have no police, but then again there is no crime - and you can really get your boot down if you're one of those peculiar road-going types.
But we might be off-topic here...
Perhaps it is a little bit off topic since it's not about train services, however, given that we simply can't leave swathes of the population without basic services and we have to have things like doctors surgeries and electricity lines in the countryside, perhaps you have moved from an area where there are so many people, it is difficult to provide enough capacity in these services, to one where there is spare capacity, therefore, you might actually be helping the situation.
I'm not sure that's really true. We could obviously pluck examples out of our arses all night long without advancing the argument - but a pair of non-PTE examples I've looked at recently of roughly similar length and distance:
Burnley to Buxton, 60 miles, £22 or £27 return depending on route. 7DS £92.60.
Colchester to London, 65 miles, £49.20 return. 7DS £117
Well, London does tend to distort the issue. From my personal experience, you can get some very reasonable fares along the South Coast, for example, and Great Western does some very reasonable fares in Cornwall, so as someone who travels by train around the Country, I don't find fares in the Northern area particularly cheap. That's before we get to relatively short hops such as Leeds - York which seem very expensive.
It would help very much to have more data about where the costs really are; would a crash programme to introduce DOO help? Are there some lines with very high costs that need to go? Is extra capacity for the commuter peaks a big cost?
This is something I agree with.
I very much suspect that the sort of routes which people have in mind when they talk about "lines that have to go" are most likely not the ones that cost a lot to run. I doubt very much that shutting a rural route with unstaffed stations and minimal signalling is going to save you a lot of money in reality, but the way artificially created costs such as track access charges and rolling stock leasing costs are apportioned, means that the relatively low cost of the infrastructure, isn't reflected in the day to day running costs of those routes.
With regard to 40ppm is that cheaper than running a car ? Have you taken into consideration all the upfront costs of buying and maintaining the car, tax etc, rather than just the cost of petrol, which doesn't reflect the whole cost (genuine question as I don't drive, so have no idea).
As a taxpayer, I pay for all sorts of things that I will never use, so I'm not convinced that this a bad use of money. As someone who works in Leeds, for example, I'm well aware that the City and it's economy would simply not function without its commuter railway, so "expensive" it may be running all those trains, but they are a necessary thing to have.
I also have a nagging suspicion that the subsidy costs are under-stated - for example accounting for both railway pensions and Network Rail's debt is what I would with my investor hat on describe as "outrageously fraudulent".
Network Rail debt is an interesting one. Would it be better for the taxpayer to have paid outright for various investments from it's own books, rather than having the debt on Network Rail. Anyhoo, this was a political decision, not of the railways making, however, one thing to bear in mind is that the majority of investment has been in the InterCity and South Eastern areas. These are the areas that require lots of multiple trackwork, lots of expensive signalling lots of expensive fast new trains, new tunnels (in the case of London). This is where the majority of NR's investment has been, yet this is not where you are pointing the accusing finger.
