Just trying to get on the telley, and of course Look East loves a Railway bash ! but I have found a single ticket for £38.50 taking 3 hours 10 mins, and booking a few more days ahead £30.00 3 hrs 9mins.......and I would have thought to get the 'cheap' air fare he must have booked in advance ?? Obviously he had nothing better to do than roam Europe !
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Sheffield to Shenfield Cheaper to Fly
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RichmondCommu
Established Member
As far as I know the Schengen Agreement (which I assume is what you are referring to) is be suspended for two years and you do have to wonder whether it will have ever be re-introduced. I also can't help but feel that the fact we as a nation are not part of the Schengen Agreement has gone a long way to prevent members of ISIS based in Belgium travelling to our country and carrying atrocities.
In terms of prices not reflecting environmental costs than yes of course you are right but the very fact it doesn't means taking the train from London to Nice (something that I looked at two years a go) is not financially viable. The train isn't even close to competing on price and indeed track access charges on the LGV network are still increasing making TGV travel even less competitive.
And even if you were able to remove the passport checks at Lille the journey from London to Nice (or London to Barcelona) would still come woefully short against air travel. I think its interesting that DB have gone very quiet on their proposed services from London to Germany which suggests that they don't think the potential market is big enough to make it viable.
northwichcat
Veteran Member
I think he wanted two things:
1. Publicity.
2. A tour of Berlin.
Waiting for the last EMT service wouldn't have given either.
Concerning the comment about XC selling cheap tickets for already busy trains. Alan Williams in his Modern Railways column explained the commercial logic. XC run no booking offices, and just about all their routes are shared with other operators. That means that ORCATS hands over serious chunks of ticket prices to those other operators, on just about all walk-on fares. They only get 100% of a fare for Advance tickets sold for one of their trains. That means that even discounted Advance tickets will bring in more income to XC than most walk-on tickets. The logical extension of that is 'Same Day Advance'. That maximises the income that XC gets. Yield management is probably a long way down their priorities! Just another benefit of the super-efficient franchised railway!
northwichcat
Veteran Member
If you pay by PayPal unsurprisingly Ryanair passes the cost on the transaction on to you which could result in a strange figure.
atillathehunn
Established Member
Yesterday I flew from Edinburgh to Dublin and then to Manchester for the same reason; to save money.
Virgin wanted £91 the other day when I looked. Ryanair on the above route cost <£20. Booked 5 days in advance, which is about as much notice I can ever give. And the best part? Most of that train journey was a bus with the WCML closed.
It's a no brainer.
I had to travel, and I do so regularly. At this stage, me going by train or plane makes no difference to overall climate change performance. At this stage, Starmill, no suggestion of penalizing individual behaviour in the name of climate change to the extent that you suggest has ever been successful. Impinging on the operations of airlines in this manner will result in a (successful) complaint in various European institutions for breach of legitimate expectations of trading. The cost to the environment of builing a new network of high speed railways will outweigh the costs now sunk into building new aircraft. As for my right to a cheap flight? None. This is not, and never has been, a question of rights. I am at liberty to accept a contract with an airline assuming various conditions are met. If the airline wishes to offer me a flight from Dublin to Manchester for the same price as a meal deal at M&S that is their problem, not mine.
Virgin wanted £91 the other day when I looked. Ryanair on the above route cost <£20. Booked 5 days in advance, which is about as much notice I can ever give. And the best part? Most of that train journey was a bus with the WCML closed.
It's a no brainer.
I had to travel, and I do so regularly. At this stage, me going by train or plane makes no difference to overall climate change performance. At this stage, Starmill, no suggestion of penalizing individual behaviour in the name of climate change to the extent that you suggest has ever been successful. Impinging on the operations of airlines in this manner will result in a (successful) complaint in various European institutions for breach of legitimate expectations of trading. The cost to the environment of builing a new network of high speed railways will outweigh the costs now sunk into building new aircraft. As for my right to a cheap flight? None. This is not, and never has been, a question of rights. I am at liberty to accept a contract with an airline assuming various conditions are met. If the airline wishes to offer me a flight from Dublin to Manchester for the same price as a meal deal at M&S that is their problem, not mine.
Surely a decision to fly rather than get the train (errr, bus) does have an impact on climate change (albeit a small one). It takes some fuel to get a person and luggage 30,000 feet into the air (twice) and accelerate to 500mph!
Well probably just under. There's currently 1016 flights on http://www.easyjet.com/en/flight-tracker/flights going to or from
That's two-way flights though, and includes domestic flights which seems beyond a trivial grep/sed to extract.
*thinks more about grep*
OK, perhaps not
There's 1016 with you're standard
$ cat ezy|sed -e 's/.*EZY/EZY/'|grep -e Aberdeen -e Belfast -e Birmingham -e Bristol -e Edinburgh -e Glasgow -e Jersey -e Isle.of.Man -e Inverness -e Leeds -e Liverpool -e London -e Manchester -e Newcastle |wc -l
However using -o comes up with 1216, which I think would mean 200 domestic flights, so 816 non-domestic.
Knock off those to Iceland and that's down to 802 going over the north sea/channel/biscay in one direction or another
Heathrow airport has 1873 flights listed leaving today, many of these will be codeshares (I hate code shares), but at least 611 aren't (based on the departure time and destination), to 146 destinations.
There are 31 flights to Ireland, 19 to England, 26 to Scotland,
There are 316 to Europe, including Moscow and Istanbul, with the most common destinations being Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, Munich, Zurich, Geneva, Madrid, Milan, Stockholm, Dusseldorf and Copenhagen (all have more than 10 flights a day)
atillathehunn
Established Member
No luggage, if that helps.
I would contend that the individual contributions to climate change are minimal to negligible, when taken in comparison to the contributions of government and industry. As has been demonstrated, my train journey uses 'dirty' energy rather than cleaner energy such as that generated in France. Until there is a real effort to truly change the way we live, my plane choice vs train choice is truly unimportant.
Further, both flights were 100 or 99% full, and the alternative would, with the bustitution happening, have been driving not the train.
Real effort has to be made, but it has to be made at the supply side level more than anywhere.
The Daily Mash sums it up nicely http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/...-the-arse-says-consumer-expert-20160128105740
You are wasting your time on this or prety much any forum going down that argument. In the end it is all about the spoilt, over-pampered, over-entitled wealthy population of the world thinking they have the right to do what the hell they like whilst externalising the costs on others. I'll be dead so I don't care, blah, blah, blah. :roll::roll::roll:
I originally had sympathy with the view that the expansion of air travel is undesirable for environmental reasons. So for a while I didn't take advantage of cheap air travel when it started. However, the temptation was too great and I have since been on countless flights. However, I am very price sensitive (aka tight) so I have reduced my flying in recent years as fares have gone up.
The one thing I would say about air travel is that there is currently little alternative to burning fossil fuel to power planes, but for many of the other environmental ills, there are alternatives. These alternatives are generally not being fully developed due to financial and political reasons, rather than technical reasons. So if we exploit those alternatives to the full, for example generating all electricity without burning fossil fuels and using that electricity to power all transport, eating less meat, having fewer children etc. then we can "get away" with excessive flying whilst still keeping emissions at a low level.
The one thing I would say about air travel is that there is currently little alternative to burning fossil fuel to power planes, but for many of the other environmental ills, there are alternatives. These alternatives are generally not being fully developed due to financial and political reasons, rather than technical reasons. So if we exploit those alternatives to the full, for example generating all electricity without burning fossil fuels and using that electricity to power all transport, eating less meat, having fewer children etc. then we can "get away" with excessive flying whilst still keeping emissions at a low level.
I'm not sure why he doesn't have a railcard. He clearly travels enough to warrant one when he does his couponing seminars.
You are otherwise being a bit harsh though. The £47 fare between Sheffield and Shenfield is definitely an advance fare. You are right, though, in that this is ultimately a story promoting his blog.
All Line Rover
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I agree with Starmill that air fares should reflect the environmental cost of air travel. I would say no different of rail fares.
I agree with the multiple posters who explain that the MSE blog is not a news story: a Megatrain fare or coach travel would almost certainly have been cheaper. In any case most people want to minimise their travelling time.
Finally, the fact that the BBC picked up on this 'story' is only further evidence of their deteriorating journalistic standards, which has been occurring over at least the past year. Advertisements masquerading as news stories, social media scrapings masquerading as news stories, videos with no audio commentary and genuine, but outdated, news stories (for example, the headline story for most of today was the decision to postpone the Lloyds share sale, but this has been informally known for weeks). All of this I would expect from a blog or almost any newspaper, but not from a national broadcaster.
I agree with the multiple posters who explain that the MSE blog is not a news story: a Megatrain fare or coach travel would almost certainly have been cheaper. In any case most people want to minimise their travelling time.
Finally, the fact that the BBC picked up on this 'story' is only further evidence of their deteriorating journalistic standards, which has been occurring over at least the past year. Advertisements masquerading as news stories, social media scrapings masquerading as news stories, videos with no audio commentary and genuine, but outdated, news stories (for example, the headline story for most of today was the decision to postpone the Lloyds share sale, but this has been informally known for weeks). All of this I would expect from a blog or almost any newspaper, but not from a national broadcaster.
Plus, the whole point of forums like that are to save money. To me, I'd expect someone who is blogging about saving money to not look for clever, but somewhat exaggerated, ways to save money - but ways to save on existing things.
If he's so clever, why wouldn't he have found the cheapest tickets for people who will want to use the train, not fly hundreds of miles and really get stuffed if there was any disruption along the way.
I agree - for BBC read Broadcasting Basket Case. The PM programme, just for instance, is now little more than a personal indulgence for the presenter, involving little matters of moment , just frippery and superficiality.
The relevance to us who are interested in transport policy, is that we now have to wait for a monthly injection of real news and comment from Modern Railways.
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Starmill - as this thread has shown, there's a democratic consensus not to act on climate mitigation to the extent required to prevent what the science says are likely to be major changes. A couple of people's thoughts on what this may mean are here:
http://greenhousethinktank.org/files/greenhouse/home/Paris_-_final2.pdf
http://kevinanderson.info/blog/category/quick-comment/
Modelling of the level of taxation required to keep emissions to current targets/trajectories compatible with 2C average temperature increase suggest that a return flight to Berlin should cost about £150-£400 in tax by 2050 (gradually increasing taxation until then). Of course there are questions about whether the actions demanded by the models to achieve the outcomes are realistic (see Anderson article for an example) but I don't want to go into that here.
I agree that the article was light-hearted and not particularly newsworthy but the issue it highlights is significant (whatever your point of view).
http://greenhousethinktank.org/files/greenhouse/home/Paris_-_final2.pdf
http://kevinanderson.info/blog/category/quick-comment/
Modelling of the level of taxation required to keep emissions to current targets/trajectories compatible with 2C average temperature increase suggest that a return flight to Berlin should cost about £150-£400 in tax by 2050 (gradually increasing taxation until then). Of course there are questions about whether the actions demanded by the models to achieve the outcomes are realistic (see Anderson article for an example) but I don't want to go into that here.
https://www.theccc.org.uk/archive/aws/IA&S/CCC_IAS_Core_ScopeOfBudgets_April2012.pdf, p. 39Committee on Climate Change said:
I agree that the article was light-hearted and not particularly newsworthy but the issue it highlights is significant (whatever your point of view).
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There has been no specific deteriation in the last year or to
This has been going on for far longer than a year.
ITV http://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2016...home-from-sheffield-via-berlin-to-save-money/
This French coverage of it
http://geopolis.francetvinfo.fr/bur...eur-prix-un-britannique-passe-par-berlin.html
States that Sky News actually covered it on TV
"Interviewé par la chaine Sky News"
Some meritless stories go "viral". It's a sad indictment on the population, not the news industry. More people will be aware of this than will have any idea about the Zika Virus, more people (like us) are talking about it, more people are sharing it on facebook. If your news site doesn't cover it, you go elsewhere, and that risks losing that person, so you have to cover it, despite it being dreck.
Here's Austrialia covering it
http://www.news.com.au/travel/trave...k/news-story/b0bf743be44517cda9de6598c7cced50
And Holland
http://www.metronieuws.nl/nieuws/ko...cht-via-berlijn-voor-brit-goedkoper-dan-trein
This isn't the first time young Jordan has played the global media
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22418225
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...rdan-Cox-did-whole-Christmas-shop-for-4p.html
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/1...roceries-for-6-with-coupons-donates-food.html
"Meet Britains youngest extreme couponer who, despite failing to get an A or A* in his maths GCSE, runs a fearsome financial operation from the bedroom of his mothers house in Brentwood. Next door is the box room, currently storing 50 bottles of shampoo, 80 toothbrushes, washing powder and a range of breakfast cereals all free."
Too many links to quote them all, but you get the idea.
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Congratulations on finding someone arguing for more than $220 a ton, with your link suggesting 4 times that.
"£200/tCO2e in 2050 in a central case, global modelling we commissioned from UCL suggests carbon prices upwards of £500/tCO2e, and estimates in the literature are often £100s/tCO2e in 2050 for global emissions trajectories consistent with limiting warming to 2°C."
The value I've used upthread was £137 a ton, at todays prices, based on the "social cost" that has been suggested (5 times that suggested by http://costofcarbon.org/). This £137/ton value actually comes out to be about the value APD is at for the trip.
With an 85% load factor £500 a ton would be about £100 in tax for Manchester to Berlin return (it's currently £20), see my previous post for the calculations (which worked out to be £21/person return based on 100% load factor), so where would this £400 value come from? With an 85% load factor that would imply a carbon cost of £800 per ton. At that price, Sheffield to London (540km return) on a high speed train with tony_mac's figures would be 6.5 tonnes over the train on the return trip, or £3,250, With a typical load of say 200 people, it would cost £16 return in carbon tax for taking the train just to London and back, let alone to Berlin - which with 200 people would cost £80 return. For a train that runs a maximum of 125mph.
The only way to significantly drop that would be to use nuclear power, like France does. I assume environmentalists are in favour of nuclear power?
The Greengauge report you link to is interesting but page 13 doesn't appear to mention the additional climate-forcing impacts of aviation emissions at high altitude (generally considered to have an impact 2 to 3 times greater than other sources emitting the same amount). Your figure with an 85% load factor would thus go up to £200-£300. There is also evidence to suggest that planes cause more potent short-term (and therefore more dangerous) climate impacts, e.g. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/sep/09/carbon-emissions-planes-shipping
There is a huge variety of views amongst environmentalists. I'm personally open to it as a possibility. I agree with you that rail's climate impacts are not neglibile.
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Agree.
German coverage:
http://www.welt.de/vermischtes/arti...socialmedia.socialflow....socialflow_facebook
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SNCF seems to be starting to change fares drastically according to season like the airlines, particularly on international services, Ouigo and I think IDTGV services. Sometimes fares go down as well as up (I recently experienced this about a week before) and it is often cheaper to go further. There are also a lot of low season sales.
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muddythefish
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This story illustrates perfectly the stupidity of rail privatisation.
ExRes
Established Member
I'm sure we all have our negative views on privatisation, but are you claiming that a nationalised BR would have lower fares and be able to match free market airlines ?
muddythefish
On Moderation
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£10 Manchester - London return 1981.
Yes easily.
Yes easily.
dcsprior
Member
This trip has just got a mention on BBC Question Time
The point is absolutely right. Whether we prefer to reduce flying or exploit alternatives in other areas (e.g. eating less meat or a rapid energy transition) depends on value judgements. Whether we still have the luxury of making such decisions or whether we should be doing everything possible as quickly as possible is another question (of course, we're not doing either).
I was only referring to Co2 emissions as an easily quantifiable 'headline' figure - at least it's in the right ballpark. As well as high-altitude emissions there are also other aircraft emissions that are higher and may have more of an impact on climate.
As far as I can tell, typical (all-day) load factors on UK intercity rail are around 35-45%. Low-cost airlines are at around 90%. SNCF aim for around 70%.
The incentives for privatised TOCs is not to increase load factors, but to increase revenue, and these can result in wildly different outcomes (e.g.; Virgin's almost-empty 'peak' time trains).
Perhaps the most significant thing that could be done relatively easily would be to introduce more comprehensive yield management to the UK network. It wouldn't be popular, but probably better than introducing large taxes. And a lot easier than electrifying everything and building nuclear power stations.
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