Good luck with that one. It was reported recently that HMRC have been investigating the potential impact of removing the ability to salary sacrifice pension contributions.
I would swap out most of my driving for rail travel if such a ticket were offered. I'd make my money back on a 58 EUR regional trains pass in no time.
And not just that - unlimited use of all* trains, tubes, buses, trams, anywhere in London all the way out to zone 6, for a whole year.
Doesn't the travelcard allow you to then travel additional mileage once you've done the 23 or so miles and arrived into London Euston? Having said that, the annual season from Hemel Hempstead just to London Terminals is still almost £5000.
You don’t think 50p per mile is extortionate? Really?
Yes. It's unlimited travel in all inner and outer London boroughs, plus some of the Home Counties, plus any stations between Hemel Hempstead and London on a valid route.
Excellent. Then the subsidy the railway enjoys for having my money up front can also disappear, and I'll also stop travelling as regularly. Which undermines the economics of the railway by removing core predictable demand - as we've seen since 2020.
Yes. When I had one I used it for the additional two miles or so from Euston to Angel or Barbican. Sometimes I used it on the bus from Angel to my office at City University too if it was raining. I was going to work and coming home again, I wasn’t riding round all day on the tube.
Of course the Hemel Travelcard includes the travel though the zones between Hemel and Euston, so you need to take that overlap into account when comparing prices. A Hemel to Harrow and Wealdstone season ticket is about £3,200, so it’s not quite such the bargain in that context- £3,200 for that season + £3,200 for the Travelcard is pretty much exactly what the annual season costs.
Quite.
That is such a ridiculous objection. Rail tickets are often extortionate, and season tickets still so. People don't have to name a price to be able to object to its cost or its impact on or society.
By way of comparison, my evil two ton Land Rover Defender will cost me about 22p a mile to drive.
If that money was spent on imported goods and foreign holidays, it would make us an even less prosperous nation. The transport costs don't currently meet the costs of providing that service so the shortfall would have to come from taxation.
Think that's about right for just the fuel cost. Of course, you've got the cost of road tax, vehicle insurance and servicing on top before you go anywhere. And the outlay for acquiring the Landy in the first place. But these will be sunk costs, so the marginal cost of driving around will almost invariably appear to be less than by rail.
For what it's worth, I don't think rail always needs to be cheaper than driving anyway.
Which is about 1p a mile not a significant cost
But when I decide to travel by car or train, my choice is about the direct cost - fuel and parking. Whole life costs simply aren't part of that calculation.
In the overall cost, yes. But most households already have access to a car. Therefore, including the total cost of ownership is irrelevant because the decision to have a car is one they have already made.
Possibly, though for many it could be the difference between owning one car or two. We recently went down to a single car household because I either work from home or commute by public transport now, and in the event both of us need a car at the same time, like two different trips away on a weekend, one of us can just grab a hire car.
Tyres last 20,000 - 30,000 miles. That's £0.0075 per mile, insurance is a very expensive £0.08 per mile.
