London has contactless and Oyster, which breaks the psychological link between travelling and paying for travel, although to a lesser extent than car travel. It's less "shall I pay £3.50 for a round trip on the bus, but is a trip to Tesco worth it?" and more tap the magic card and go. In my opinion, this is what the real reasoning behind Project Oval is: the railway can't make fares attractive, so is trying to hide them from the average user.
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The cost of living agenda - how should the railway contribute ?
- Thread starter yorksrob
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That's quite the conspiracy theory.
TfL bus and tram fares are £1.75, and have been frozen for 7 of the past 10 years. These are cheaper than the governments' bus fare caps which have been recently introduced, raised, lowered.
I much more expect that expanding contactless payment is to improve convenience, rather than hide fares which are already published online.
Owning a car in London is a privilege not everybody can afford. Insurance costs are higher, parking charges are steep, and you can't run an old banger because you'll be paying £12.50 in ULEZ every day, let alone the Congestion Charge. While there's clearly work to do to improve air pollution from the Underground, encouraging people to take public transport is doing a lot for local air quality.
The existing network outside of the SE serves where it serves. Having affordable/dicounted fares will clearly increase ridership in these markets.
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Ditto everywhere else. I couldn't afford to run a car and I live in Yorkshire.
If by 'affordable fares' you just mean cheaper than they are at present, then that has a direct cost on the national budget. If the introduction of those reduced fares increases patronage by so much that there is a net increase in the railway's income, that's fair and well.
I have no knowledge of whether such a move would achieve that but I can think of a couple of RUK members who might well know of industry assessments of any proposal to reduce their income per fare wth a possibility of a net gain
Only then can the comparison be honestly made between the NSE success and a similar scheme elsewhere.
Your post refers to these 'markets'. That's an acknowledgment that the railway is a commercial undertaking, albeit (soon) a publicly operated one.
My analysis comes from studying economics at University, working in economics for 30 years, and continuing to follow the subject since I retired. That goes back to the time of the Serpell Report and BR sectorisation, key events that have shaped government policy on the the railway ever since.
I go back to my post on Monday, you don't understand why there is opposition to your National Railcard because you misunderstand two key points:
The competition that matters for the railway is its competition with other public services for funding. Since Monday I have looked up some numbers on railway industry finance, which are here:
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dataportal.orr.gov.uk
Go to Table 2.1 on page 15 and you will see that funding to passenger operators in 2024/25 was £4.2bn, and £2.7bn higher than 5 years ago. That £4.2bn figure needs to be coming down, not going up. It is taxpayers money going on funding the railway that can be better spent elsewhere, and I'll start from the position of not supporting anything that pushes that £4.2bn up not down.
For a policy objective of public transport that's affordably priced for the population, buses are a far more cost effective way of delivering that objective than trains. In the context of the cost of living crisis, that's been addressed through the £2 fare cap.
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Of course, there are always passengers to "sell" the service to. However the passenger railway isn't and shouldn't be solely commercially focused.
I don't think we'll get to European cost train travel through things such as Bahn Cards or climate tickets, but as a society we shouldn't be closed off to modest improvements that a national railcard would bring.
The Scottish off-peak fare trial didn't quite cover its costs as much as it was hoped, however there was a political imperative to go ahead with the policy anyway.
The Scottish giveaways are hemorrhaging money (hundreds of millions a year). That money would be better spent on enhancements and accelerated decarb.
Average fare paid is already lower outside London & the South East (~15p a passenger km on Northern) than in it (20p a passenger km on a typical London & SE TOC including the Overground). Chucking more taxpayers money when there are fundamental demand weaknesses would be fiscally irresponsible.
Average fare paid is already lower outside London & the South East (~15p a passenger km on Northern) than in it (20p a passenger km on a typical London & SE TOC including the Overground). Chucking more taxpayers money when there are fundamental demand weaknesses would be fiscally irresponsible.
@Bald Rick estimated the cost of a national railcard to be around £300m a year (including long distance), and given his position in the industry, I suspect his estimation is as good as you'll get.
That's less than half of the 7% reduction in annual subsidy beetween the last two years from the Government statistics that you yourself have quoted in post 275.
Is it really worth not having a good, easily understandable national discount scheme potentially available to all for the sake of such a small proportion of what we pay already ?
The political benefits, and marketing benefit for the railway long term will outweigh the half a year added time in which to make back that revenue.
7% in the wrong direction is a big number.
It's spoiling the railway fares ship for a ha'porth of tar.
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Their electorates might appreciate the public service, as might ours, given the opportunity.
Of course, a national railcard would be far less ambitious than these.
Maybe us in the south-east should campaign for parity in p/mile for rail travel. It's OK for those on NSE cards, but all those on age, disability or group travel railcards are worse off in the south-east compared to other areas, because we get 33% off ~20p/mile whereas they get 33% off 15p/mile!*
* some railcards have different discounts.
Fawkes Cat
Established Member
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As I am a kind and generous sort, I have just done the research (above) for the Daily Mail/Telegraph article that would follow the public proposal of this scheme.
I'll be even more generous - I will write the headline for them:
RAIL EXPERTS PROPOSE SPENDING HALF OF ANNUAL SAVINGS ON NATIONAL SCHEME 'FAR LESS AMBITIOUS' THAN HUNGARY'S EQUIVALENT.
They almost certainly do / would but are not necessarily willing to cough up the funds needed to sustain it and maintain investment at a level sufficient to keep the network from falling apart.
One would expect those organs to find a negative spin on any pro-public transport initiative.
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Let's see. They haven't stopped yet.
In terms of the network "falling apart" as has been mentioned elsewhere, the likely cost of a national railcard would be orders of magnitude less than the cost of running the railway.
Both Germany and Hungary have significant backlogs of renewals and enhancements.
Revenue funding and 'steady state' renewals and enhancements are pretty similar orders of magnitude. Every little helps, and every little in the wrong direction hurts, and it's not that little.
As a taxpayer and fare payer my personal preference is paying for excellence over subsidised mediocricy.
Indeed. There's no point going anywhere for a quid if you can't actually get there because the trains are up the spout. Germany's network is in a parlour state to the point it has become an international embarrassment.
We have backlogs of maintenance and renewals.
As a taxpayer and farepayer I'd rather pay a little bit more tax for a rail service that is more accessible to people in terms of fares.
" Every little helps" works for passengers budgets as well.
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Is anyone suggesting being able to go anywhere for a quid ?
The trains are up the spout a fair amount of the time already. Is £300m a year really going to move the dial ?
Good for you. Unfortunately you don't have the political coalition on your side.
If you don't mind paying more taxes anyway, why not just accept paying the equivalent in fares?
stevieinselby
Established Member
Where there is one service that is clearly superior to the other, I don't necessarily object to having differential fares – distinguishing between local and intercity services for short journeys like this can be helpful as it encourages people making short journeys to use the local services rather than taking up space on the premium long-distance services where capacity may be more of an issue. But where services are broadly equivalent (eg Thameslink/Gatwick Express) then I agree that having operator-specific fares is untenable.
Well no, it was a figure of speech. The point is you can't laud low fares in Germany without acknowledging the system there needs money - and a lot of it - in order to get back to where it was. At the moment it looks like a 20 year job. Like you, I'd prefer to pay more tax to make the railway accessible but we will have to see where the current PM lands on this. I'm sceptical.
The network falling apart doesn’t necessarily mean infrastructure. It can also mean authorities slashing the train-kms they’re prepared /able to pay for once /if federal funding is withdrawn.
Touché.
Though given the small cost of a national railcard as a proportion of expenditure on the railway, I'd rather it were absorbed into ongoing savings and efficiencies of the railway budget or overall transport budget.
£300m is the sort of cost that can be absorbed without having a major effect on overall taxation.
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All of our railway systems need more money - which is why although I'd love a more all-encompassing climate ticket type offering, I consider myself a realist and recognise that such a thing wouldn't be likely here.
That said, initiatives such as Scotrail abolishing peak fares, or a National railcard in the UK, do have the potential to make real savings for households without being overly expensive.
... but with an age, disability or group travel Railcard,* your already discounted 'non-South-East' fares would get another third off. So if you made 10 journeys a year in the North, the base cost per mile would be ~10p, whereas my local equivalent would be ~13.3p. That's just as 'unfair'.
For those that don't have any railcards living outside the NSE area, with a National railcard, their cost per mile base is ~10p whereas South-East residents cardholders pay ~13.3p for local travel, and unlike elsewhere, that is constrained by a post 10:00 start rule.
The only way to make it what you describe as 'fair' is to level the base cost of all fares across the UK and scrap the NSE card or introduce your 'National' railcard. Be careful of what you wish for in your crusade for fairness.
*(Assuming that you will get one of the national railcards in the future - say a Senior Railcard)
Indeed. We don't want the network falling apart at all.
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But outside of the South East, we have lower average wages, so the 3.3p difference is already embedded.
If we were to level fares across the country, we wouldn't be accounting for income differentials, which wouldn't be fair at all.
The concept of a national railcard has benefits nationwide:
- those in the SE who already have the network railcard can go further afield.
- those who don't live in the south east would get a discount they previously weren't entitled to.
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That's moving goalposts.
Cough up in fares then.
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Address income disparity at source, not paper over it with government giveaways.
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martin butler
Member
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How long though does Hastings to Portsmouth take, I once did Hastings to Fareham by train, and it took quite a long time, I think the actual journey time for what in miles isn't that far, would put a lot of people off,
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If though, we are serious about cost of living, you have to ask what the number one issue people have and that's got to be housing, we don't have enough, and its costs are often too high, for the average person on a low wage,
As i have said my preferred solution is that some low interest home buying schemes set up with government funding, for first time buyers might be the answer, paid back though taxation, over a period of time,
Councils get funding to buy up abandoned houses and turn theses into flats to be let to people on the local council waiting lists, at affordable rents,
These two measures alone should help, and should be revenue neutral possibly making a profit, that can be plowed back into further schemes,
Scrap the National minimum wage, and replace it with a national living wage, that pays a wage that people can live on without the need for state help, help could be given to small businesses to absorb the extra cost, in grants, but only to uk based small businesses,
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It's taken a good couple of hours from my last couple of trips (very pleasurable ones though).
In terms of cost of living, I think it needs to be a range of measures. The bus fare schemes and national railcard have their place. As do long term policies such as housing market improvement, which the PM appears to be instituting as well.
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I don't see what these moving goalposts are ? I'm pretty sure I've been arguing for decent fares on this forum for years.
Affordable rail transport seems to be a decent goal that many European nations seem to manage.
Yes, lets address income disparity at source. I look forward to your balance of payments/wages/prices policy to do so
It's taken a good couple of hours from my last couple of trips (very pleasurable ones though).
In terms of cost of living, I think it needs to be a range of measures. The bus fare schemes and national railcard have their place. As do long term policies such as housing market improvement, which the PM appears to be instituting as well.
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I don't see what these moving goalposts are ? I'm pretty sure I've been arguing for decent fares on this forum for years.
Affordable rail transport seems to be a decent goal that many European nations seem to manage.
Yes, lets address income disparity at source. I look forward to your balance of payments/wages/prices policy to do so
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