The cost of living agenda - how should the railway contribute ?

[yorksrob]

The whole premise of this thread is wrong, if you want to relieve an income distribution problem you achieve that by giving poor people money or by taxing them less.

Trying to do it via anything else just results in distortion of markets and inefficiencies like paying someone’s fare that they would have happily paid for themselves or having a user take a seat for frivolous purposes that would previously be used for a socially or economically more useful purpose.

Trains are not an underutilised resource where additional capacity can be created.

Ultimately rail’s best contribution to cost of living is to get cheaper. That’s either achieved by making existing operations cheaper or by putting far more passengers and trains through the same infrastructure.

I must say I’ve seen relatively little from the GBR project explaining how it will incentivise cost reduction. Though were it to do so I suspect that it would be of the cut things and apply more aggressive negotiation techniques than it would be to go look at how other industries do similar things at a fraction of the cost.

"Ultimately rail’s best contribution to cost of living is to get cheaper."

That's precisely what the above options aim to do.

Obviously it would be nice to get loads more capacity all of a sudden, but that's not likely on a short timescale.

Also, a lot of overcrowding issues are caused by short term diagramming/availability issues. I was on a Calder valley service on Saturday evening formed of a 2 carriage 195 and unsurprisingly was pretty rammed. There would likely have been reasonable capacity if the service had been four 9r five carriage (which is quite often for the route).

 

[Dr Day]

"Ultimately rail’s best contribution to cost of living is to get cheaper."

‘Cheaper to the taxpayer’ is very different from ‘cheaper fares to a certain subset of users’.

Fairly clear to me the poster was referring to the former, and from the responses on here by known railway professionals there is not necessarily a positive relationship between the latter and the former anyway.

 

[AM9]

Why are you not comparing London to Brighton with Leeds to Manchester ?

Because one journey is c.40 miles long and the other around 50 miles. I also started with standard off-peak SVR tickets which are supposed to be based on the actual distance travelled which appears to be lower per mile in the north than in the south-east.

You're picking and choosing examples to suit your thin argument.

You chose to compare a SVR ticket with a severely restricted weekend only ticket to present an invalid comparison. I am comparing common fare types for equivalent distance journeys, to make your case. The bottom line is that fares in the south-east are generally more expensive than elsewhere, - a point that has been mentioned by many on RUK for many years.

 

[Merle Haggard]

Brighton (and Hove) is a city, and by my count the 21st (out of 76) largest in the UK - sourced from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_United_Kingdom. So not necessarily a small one either.

A city isn't designated on the basis of population numbers.

 

[Haywain]

standard off-peak SVR tickets which are supposed to be based on the actual distance travelled

I'm not sure where you get that idea from.

 

[Egg Centric]

Because one journey is c.40 miles long and the other around 50 miles. I also started with standard off-peak SVR tickets which are supposed to be based on the actual distance travelled which appears to be lower per mile in the north than in the south-east.

You chose to compare a SVR ticket with a severely restricted weekend only ticket to present an invalid comparison. I am comparing common fare types for equivalent distance journeys, to make your case. The bottom line is that fares in the south-east are generally more expensive than elsewhere, - a point that has been mentioned by many on RUK for many years.

I'm not sure that "per mile" is a reasonable way of comparing fares in the south east and the north east. 10 miles is a huge distance in London, absolutely nothing up here. I don't know what a reasonable way would be though, it'd somehow have to take into account catchments, time, etc...

 

[Fawkes Cat]

A city isn't designated on the basis of population numbers.

Indeed. That's why B&H only became a city on 31 January 2001 (again, per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_and_Hove, which tends to be accurate on this sort of thing), and why (to draw a couple of non-random examples) no one is discussing Northampton or Reading.

 

[bavvo]

I think for a 'quick cost of living win with the railway' the government should create and distribute a 'Rail Voucher' (like a book token or gift voucher as used extensively in retail). Potentially each adult/child UK resident would be given a single voucher, time limited to say 3-6 months, for maybe £20 to £30 to be applied exclusively to rail travel.
Ideally you would restrict it so that it has to be used within a certain time period (probably a few months), and can not be exchanged for cash etc, although unused vouchers could be passed on to others within the time period. Probably also with a stipulation that it's only for off peak travel.
This would have several advantages.

1. Families and individuals could use them to make a day trip, or put it towards the cost of a UK holiday.
2. This in turn would feed into local economies around the UK, boosting them, and the money spent would continue to circulate around the economy.
3. The initial cost would be partly recovered from the economic stimulus that results, people would spend money at their destinations, in pubs, cafes, attractions etc.
4. Any unused vouchers would expire at the end of the offer period, at no cost to the treasury.
5. It would put the rail service in a better light, as some people who could not normally afford it would now get the chance to use it for leisure travel.

This way the railway could do what it does well, which is providing mass transit travel, and families could be encouraged to use it for their own leisure and well being in the holiday season, and the economy would be boosted by extra activity that might not have otherwise happened.
In terms of who should get this voucher, and how much it's for, that's arguable. I'd ideally give it out to everyone, as that is obviously more inclusive and would create a bigger stimulus, however if that seems too expensive, then restricting it to families only, or those on lower incomes might be a good start.

 

[yorksrob]

Because one journey is c.40 miles long and the other around 50 miles. I also started with standard off-peak SVR tickets which are supposed to be based on the actual distance travelled which appears to be lower per mile in the north than in the south-east.

You chose to compare a SVR ticket with a severely restricted weekend only ticket to present an invalid comparison. I am comparing common fare types for equivalent distance journeys, to make your case. The bottom line is that fares in the south-east are generally more expensive than elsewhere, - a point that has been mentioned by many on RUK for many years.

Google has the distance of London to Brighton as being 47-54 miles. You yourself quoted the London - Brighton CDR at £23.80, which compares very favourably with walk on tickets from Leeds to Manchester.

Also Sheffield Manchester - off peak return at £29.10 (about 40 miles) and Leeds to York CDR £20.10 (about 30 miles).

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Jul 2026 ==

‘Cheaper to the taxpayer’ is very different from ‘cheaper fares to a certain subset of users’.

Fairly clear to me the poster was referring to the former, and from the responses on here by known railway professionals there is not necessarily a positive relationship between the latter and the former anyway.

That wasn't how I interpreted it.

Even if the railway was to hand back lots of money to the government, what's to say that it would be spent on reducing the cost of living ?

 

[speedy1]

People signing on to JSA should immediately get a 50% off Railcard and not have to wait until month 3 and beg for it. Will make up for the pathetically low JSA rates (and having to pay full council tax if you have the audacity to have some savings)

 

[yorksrob]

. 10 miles is a huge distance in London, absolutely nothing up here.

You'll have to explain that one for me.

 

[Bald Rick]

An extremely shaky assumption, given the increase in casual gig work, high housing costs etc.

Hence my use of the word “average”

Additionally, how come a two income household who will likely have more disposable income get a railcard, whereas someone on a single income keeping a roof over their head, does not.

You’re confusing people who live together with people who travel together. My sister has 3 seperate two together railcards, none of them with the person she lives with.

The reason for the two together railcard, as ever, is market segmentation and the competition. The competition for mkst rail travel, as we know, is the private car. The cost of two people travelling by rail, ordinarily, is twice that of one person. The cost of two people travelling by car is (to the nearest approximation), the same as one person.

Hence the Two together railcard (and family railcard, and groupsave, etc) is there to reduce the price comlared to the competition.

 

[eldomtom2]

Almost the entire network requires government support (subsidy), and much of it is at capacity or nearly so.

Which is indicative of problems with the railway, since lines at full capacity and that use dynamic pricing to control crowds should be making enough money to break even. That they aren't suggests that something is costing more than it should - profitable passenger railways do exist in the world!

 

[cactustwirly]

The fares freeze appears to have been an appropriate cost of living measure.

Not really a fares freeze for everyone when some TOCs increased fares by 15% before the so called fares freeze

 

[Merle Haggard]

Indeed. That's why B&H only became a city on 31 January 2001 (again, per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_and_Hove, which tends to be accurate on this sort of thing), and why (to draw a couple of non-random examples) no one is discussing Northampton or Reading.

A cynic would say that the only advantage of being designated a 'city' is that the City Hall civil servants have a higher pay grade, purely because of the 'City' status than similar ones in Towns Halls.

 

[Bald Rick]

Which is indicative of problems with the railway, since lines at full capacity and that use dynamic pricing to control crowds should be making enough money to break even.

No part of the UK railway uses proper dynamic pricing, with the exception of Eurostar.

 

[Egg Centric]

You'll have to explain that one for me.

If you start off in Camden High Street, imagine where you can get to in 10 miles. How many millions of people, tens of thousands of notable places, piles of cultural and financial and land usage wealth and diversity - in other words destinations. And also imagine how damn slow it can be to get that 10 miles by the fastest available form of transport.

Repeat the same exercise for Malton High Street (picking somewhere vaguely in your area rather than the proper north east up here ). There are not millions of people. While there are definitely very notable places such as Castle Howard, there aren't thousands of them. While the upper and lower bounds of 'getting somewhere' are probably about the same, the average time to get somewhere you'd want to go is much quicker while each mile also has less 'going for it'. So you're also very likely to want to travel more than 10 miles, while there's plenty of people in London who are content pretty much never leaving Zone 6 except for holidays and not even that. In other words if you're going to be comparing fares on a per mile basis then a mile down south gets the passenger a lot more value than a mile up north and so if you accept that fares should be priced on something like a "value of distance to the passenger" basis (I don't, but that's not the point here) then a simple "per mile" basis isn't right, you need to make fares much cheaper in the sticks.

Unfortunately that would be against basic good sense economics but that's not really relevant...

 

[Haywain]

No part of the UK railway uses proper dynamic pricing, with the exception of Eurostar.

Because fares regulation means that they can't.

 

[AM9]

Google has the distance of London to Brighton as being 47-54 miles. You yourself quoted the London - Brighton CDR at £23.80, which compares very favourably with walk on tickets from Leeds to Manchester.

Also Sheffield Manchester - off peak return at £29.10 (about 40 miles) and Leeds to York CDR £20.10 (about 30 miles).

OK, so consider cities outside London:
Basingstoke to Southampton 31miles SVR £38
Guildford to Portsmouth 31 miles SVR £40.10
These are basic walk-up fares with a morning peak restriction costing well over £1 per mile, - compare those with a Leeds to York journey at half those prices.

 

[Haywain]

OK, so consider cities outside London:
Basingstoke to Southampton 31miles SVR £38
Guildford to Portsmouth 31 miles SVR £40.10

Why are you not using the Day Return fares for this comparison?

 

[yorksrob]

Hence my use of the word “average”



You’re confusing people who live together with people who travel together. My sister has 3 seperate two together railcards, none of them with the person she lives with.

The reason for the two together railcard, as ever, is market segmentation and the competition. The competition for mkst rail travel, as we know, is the private car. The cost of two people travelling by rail, ordinarily, is twice that of one person. The cost of two people travelling by car is (to the nearest approximation), the same as one person.

Hence the Two together railcard (and family railcard, and groupsave, etc) is there to reduce the price comlared to the competition.

I think the word "average" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Market segmentation is just an excuse for the country's usual discrimination against those with little alternative. Or do they ? Perhaps I ought to start using the coach more.

The two together card is also a bit stingy when you think about it, only coming into action if the same two people happen to be travelling together.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Jul 2026 ==

If you start off in Camden High Street, imagine where you can get to in 10 miles. How many millions of people, tens of thousands of notable places, piles of cultural and financial and land usage wealth and diversity - in other words destinations. And also imagine how damn slow it can be to get that 10 miles by the fastest available form of transport.

Repeat the same exercise for Malton High Street (picking somewhere vaguely in your area rather than the proper north east up here ). There are not millions of people. While there are definitely very notable places such as Castle Howard, there aren't thousands of them. While the upper and lower bounds of 'getting somewhere' are probably about the same, the average time to get somewhere you'd want to go is much quicker while each mile also has less 'going for it'. So you're also very likely to want to travel more than 10 miles, while there's plenty of people in London who are content pretty much never leaving Zone 6 except for holidays and not even that. In other words if you're going to be comparing fares on a per mile basis then a mile down south gets the passenger a lot more value than a mile up north and so if you accept that fares should be priced on something like a "value of distance to the passenger" basis (I don't, but that's not the point here) then a simple "per mile" basis isn't right, you need to make fares much cheaper in the sticks.

Unfortunately that would be against basic good sense economics but that's not really relevant...

Interesting point. In spite of what people try and argue on here, fares aren't considerably cheaper in the sticks. Sometimes they're more expensive.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Jul 2026 ==

Because fares regulation means that they can't.

Thank goodness. I winder how long that will last if the industry gets its way.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Jul 2026 ==

OK, so consider cities outside London:
Basingstoke to Southampton 31miles SVR £38
Guildford to Portsmouth 31 miles SVR £40.10
These are basic walk-up fares with a morning peak restriction costing well over £1 per mile, - compare those with a Leeds to York journey at half those prices.

How about Hastings to Portsmouth, 74 miles by train, yet a bargain day return of £21.20 is available. Only in my wildest dreams could I imagine such a good value fare from Leeds to Whitby (70 miles, £57 return) for example.

My point is that this old canard of the North supposedly always having dirt cheap fares compared to the South East is always trotted out to justify the lack of railcard or even group save availability up north, but it is by no means always true.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Jul 2026 ==

OK, so consider cities outside London:
Basingstoke to Southampton 31miles SVR £38
Guildford to Portsmouth 31 miles SVR £40.10
These are basic walk-up fares with a morning peak restriction costing well over £1 per mile, - compare those with a Leeds to York journey at half those prices.

How about Hastings to Portsmouth, 74 miles by train, yet a bargain day return of £21.20 is available. Only in my wildest dreams could I imagine such a good value fare from Leeds to Whitby (70 miles, £57 return) for example.

My point is that this old canard of the North supposedly always having dirt cheap fares compared to the South East is always trotted out to justify the lack of railcard or even group save availability up north, but it is by no means always true.

 

[mike57]

Sometimes they're more expensive

Take our Local line:

Cottingham > Hull, 4 miles, Undiscounted any time day return = £7.90 = 98p per mile
Seamer > Hull, 50 miles, Undiscounted any time day return = £23.70 = 23p per mile

Seamer passengers to Hull would possibly be sharing their train with people who got on in Cottingham. Why the huge disparity, it really doesn't make sense. Until the whole fares mess can be sorted and simplified rail travel is going to be viewed as expensive and complex. It may not directly affect 'cost of living' but it does affect peoples perception. Making fares cheaper or giving people more disposable income ends up in the same place, the calculation is how long does someone on an average salary have to work to be able to pay for a specific train ticket, and do they have that amount of money to spare if its a discretionary journey

 

[squingo44]

From working in the rail industry…

How can a railway that’s full also require subsidy? There’s clearly demand for tickets…

 

[AM9]

How about Hastings to Portsmouth, 74 miles by train, yet a bargain day return of £21.20 is available. Only in my wildest dreams could I imagine such a good value fare from Leeds to Whitby (70 miles, £57 return) for example.

My point is that this old canard of the North supposedly always having dirt cheap fares compared to the South East is always trotted out to justify the lack of railcard or even group save availability up north, but it is by no means always true.

Hastings to Portsmouth is about as obscure a journey as I can imagine, - it also takes 3 hours and three or four trains each way. You really are combing online sites for unlikely journeys that might be had for a special low fare. I doubt whether there are more than a handful of passengers that cover such a ramble, even in the high season. Whitby is a very special service, and is probably mainly there because of enthusiast interest in the NYMR.
If you want to compare fares where there is a significant flow of major routes as I have done, you will find that 20% or more lower fares outside the South-east are not uncommon. I've given examples between London to Reading, Guildford tp Portsmouth and Basingstoke to Southampton, all along main lines similar to Leeds to Manchester, Leeds to York and even Manchester to Southport (a typical non-city destination for a day out). These routes have measurable flows confirming that there is demand with undiscounted fares halfway approaching Network Card Area fare discount using a card.

 

[eldomtom2]

Until the whole fares mess can be sorted and simplified rail travel is going to be viewed as expensive and complex. It may not directly affect 'cost of living' but it does affect peoples perception.

And of course from the perspective of politicians, perception matters just as much as reality.
Personally I think that fares being seen as complex is worse than fares being seen as expensive when it comes to the railway's reputation.

 

[Magdalia]

How can a railway that’s full also require subsidy? There’s clearly demand for tickets…

As it happens, DfT have today published new data on passengers and crowding, which is being discussed here:

New passenger numbers and Crowding figures published

Just been released by DfT, rail passenger numbers and crowding in major cities...

www.railforums.co.uk

Only bits of the railway are full, and those are only full some of the time.

I particularly recommend a look at the RAI0202 spreadsheet, which has hour by hour capacity and passenger numbers for arrivals and departures at various major stations. This is reached by a link at the bottom of figure 1 of the statistical release.

Much of the railway has spare capacity most of the time.

 

[yorksrob]

Hastings to Portsmouth is about as obscure a journey as I can imagine, - it also takes 3 hours and three or four trains each way. You really are combing online sites for unlikely journeys that might be had for a special low fare. I doubt whether there are more than a handful of passengers that cover such a ramble, even in the high season. Whitby is a very special service, and is probably mainly there because of enthusiast interest in the NYMR.
If you want to compare fares where there is a significant flow of major routes as I have done, you will find that 20% or more lower fares outside the South-east are not uncommon. I've given examples between London to Reading, Guildford tp Portsmouth and Basingstoke to Southampton, all along main lines similar to Leeds to Manchester, Leeds to York and even Manchester to Southport (a typical non-city destination for a day out). These routes have measurable flows confirming that there is demand with undiscounted fares halfway approaching Network Card Area fare discount using a card.

Basingstoke to Southampton and Guildford to Portsmouth are hardly in the top twenty passenger flows.

As I mentioned, you can get a day return from London to Brighton for a similar price as Leeds to Manchester, however the Southern journey has the potential of a network card discount.

I think we've gone round in circles enough with our favourite passenger flows, ultimately it adds little to the discussion.

 

[AM9]

I think we've gone round in circles enough with our favourite passenger flows, ultimately it adds little to the discussion.

There never was a true discussion, most down south just pay as (relatively) few travel enough in the north to notice the lower prices.
You might like to look at the latest Government study of overcrowding Here, table 1 clearly how the difference between peak and off peak demand is much greater for London than all other major cities. This is the reason why infrastructure and investment is so geared to peak flows result in that it goven to London travellers and cynically denied to others, - more a commercial decision to maximise revenue that is needed for the peak flows.

 

[Bald Rick]

How can a railway that’s full also require subsidy? There’s clearly demand for tickets…

Because railways are very expensive to build and operate.

 

[NCT]

This is the wrong framing.

What we have is a stagnant productivity problem and a shrinking tax base problem. Throwing subsidies at things with money we don't have will just make misallocation of resources even worse. The railway needs to reduce its ask of the public coffers.

Interesting point. In spite of what people try and argue on here, fares aren't considerably cheaper in the sticks. Sometimes they're more expensive.

Why let data get in the way of some obscure anecdotes eh.

A London & South East TOC earns >20p per passenger km (Elizabeth line 30p). Northern erns 14p per passenger km.