Everyone who’s ever had to book a rail ticket knows that the array of prices, tickets and criteria with which you may use them can be a massive source of confusion and in many cases great annoyance.
Following the privatisation of the railways and the corruption of our train tracks by companies like Virgin, First and Arriva, a full suite of ticket combinations have come into the market. Claimed by rail company PR executives to be more flexible for the traveller, it’s well known that there are a plethora of different tickets each with a different price for exactly the same journey: perfectly placed so that people end up buying a more expensive ticket than they need to the delight of the rail company shareholders.
Don’t expect to get a seat, though! Rail companies will sell you a ticket even if all the seats are taken and you pay exactly the same price. You can reserve seats on some trains, sure. But you have to go to the station to do it and it is often the case that once you board the train the reservation system is broken or the train was late and they didn’t have time to set it up.
Not only that, each and every ticket in this age of Whitehall induced public transport loving is more expensive and in most cases takes longer than doing the same journey by car in equivalent comfort.
I was at the barbers earlier and read in a magazine that it cost over £4,000 for a family of four to travel first class by rail from the north of Scotland to the south of England, compared with just £1,000 in a luxury car. As anyone that has used first class rail knows, it’s almost exactly the same as cattle class except you’re away from the plebs, you get free booze and you get some low quality food.
I’m not old enough to remember using British Rail, but what I do know is that it was affordable and far less confusing to travel. You could say with some assurance what the price between A and B was, and you didn’t have to navigate through 8, 9 or 10 different tickets at different prices all taking different routes.
These day’s it’s becoming a business traveller and middle class service. Sure, if you book your ticket weeks or months in advance you get a somewhat reasonable price. But if I wanted a return from Preston to Euston tomorrow I can’t get one for less than £112.00. Even then the pricing system is bollocks because that price is for two separate single tickets; one going there and one coming back. If I want an actual return ticket, it’s £271.00!
It’s not as if you’re even guaranteed to get there either. As we know – although I don’t know why – rail is even more susceptible to the weather than the car and there are service disruptions all the way in this current weather.
All I’d like is for A Journey to cost A Price, rather than for the price to be determined by whether it’s a Wednesday and whether I’m wearing a blue shirt or not. This way at least there would be a viable comparison, whereas currently unless I know miles in advance that I will be travelling, the car always wins. And then in 50 years the planet blows up unless you drive 5 miles less per week.
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I do remember British Rail – and used to travel to university in London and back fairly regularly. There were far more delays to the service (though the timetables did suggest the journey times were less than they do now) and they were always crowded and dirty. I once spent the entire journey up to the North West with 4 other passengers trying to quieten a child who was screeching after a fellow passenger had rather unreasonably complained by shouting at the mother and telling her to smack him (the mother was trying to quieten him down and he was travelling to Great Ormond Street for treatment and she was in a state anyway).
However the trains were certainly more affordable though you rarely got a seat – in fact it was better to travel with a suitcase as at least it gave you something to sit on. If you were delayed the train company tended to tell concerned relatives that the train had got in on time – and this was pre mobile phones and led to some worrying when you had to cross some not very salubrious areas of London at night.
Virgin is certainly a better service – easy to buy tickets in comparison (always buy in advance if you can), clean trains on the whole and much better in dealing with problems when they arise. In fact I’d be happy for them to take over the whole rail network.
P.S. – re the seat reservations – always walk down the carriages and check the labels. A lot are for journies higher up the track that have finished and others are for people who have obviously missed the train. And never be afraid to ask if someone is sitting on a seat with a bag on it.
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