GE 2024

Simplification means higher prices will get the complaints rolling in.

It is a fucking mess tbh. Advance. Advance single. Open return. Advance return. Super off peak return. Super advance peak return. Jesus wept.

Railcards are another example. There's about 20+ different categories. We have one for when it's the wife and I travelling, and another different one for when Little Miss Shady is with us. The bureaucracy is ridiculous. Just get rid of them all, sack the staff that run them and recoup the marketing etc and drop all prices by 0.5% or whatever it is. Do that for 5-6 different schemes and you start to make a difference to process. Same for all the group travel discounts.

Then we come to the huge sums that are paid out as dividends; I presume the idea is that this excess dosh (debt mostly I presume but whatever) could be reinvested instead of going into rich individuals hands.

I don't think it has to lead to higher prices. Just because LNER did.

What happened in Scotland regarding prices when they removed peak tickets? (It's a genuine question, I'm not sure).

My main inclination regarding any of this type of stuff is let's give it a go, cause it sure isn't working currently.

Only two railcards Jim as a family we have 6 railcards

Three Two Together ones for different pairings, a 16-17, a Young Persons and a Network card.

The system is a mess and complicated but you can see how it ended up that way which is why I think simplification means higher price.

Get rid of advance tickets and peak/off peak/super off peak and just have one fare for every journey means peak gets cheaper but the rest more expensive.

Once you move away from one price for a journey you disappear down the complex rabbit hole quite quickly.

Interesting to see what happens. I'd happily pay more if the service was more reliable and comfortable.

It didn't work hugely well before either did it?

My recent investigation into ScotRail found an appalling state of affairs: Grumpy staff, trains from yesteryear, blanket ban on Madri.

Obviously everyone is an armchair expert on rail ticketing these days but isn't the problem that everyone everywhere using the railways wants to travel to London, before 9am and then later that day everyone wants to leave London after 5pm? This lumpy demand is bad for the linear capacity.

Anyway, I'm going from Bingham to the The Big Shed this morning on the choo choo. I'll report back later.

I’m sure the guvnmnt will still do a shit job of running the trains. But at least the money it brings in from doing so will be more evenly distributed than under the private model.

I’m not especially opposed to private bastards running rail services in theory.. but it’s kinda nonsense when really they’re just buying a monopoly on certain routes… not actually competing to provide better services to passengers. You want a train from Nottingham to London… which rail company are you gonna choose? It’s not ‘competition’ when the consumer isn’t having a say. With other transport modes there can be competition.. it just doesn’t work with railways unless you start letting operators bid to run specific routes at specific times so that, at least, you can choose to get the 8.50 run by Ryanairrail or the 9.20 Tesco Express. That’s not happening (and is a shit idea) so just let guvmnt do it and hope for the best.

Unlike Jim and others, I speak with no authority at all on this as I hardly ever take a train. What I am aware of are clear issues around pricing in this country.

Earlier in the year when we were planning a trip to Paris, I needed to find a way to get three of us from the East Midlands to London St Pancras in order to take the Eurostar. My first idea was the train from Parkway which was immediately abandoned when I discovered that open returns for two adults and a child would cost north of £200.

I ended up driving an ageing diesel car more than 100 miles to Watford and renting a parking space on someone's drive near the tube station for about a quarter of the price. And I'd do exactly the same again unless the cost of the train came down significantly, which seems a shame.

We’re doing the same for a weekend in London end of Aug. Driveways in Watford are a decent little earner for people.

Rail fares are ridiculous. My kids regularly travel to away games and never take the train because of the cost. Driving and destroying the planet is way cheaper.

To be fair to whoever is running the show, open tickets are expensive for a reason. You’re expecting services to be running up and down the country with space for you when you decide you want to use it. That shit costs serious coin, m8. So if you want that to work out cheaper then you have to decide who’s paying to make it so.. people who buy scheduled tickets? People who already pay through the nose for peak fares? Ingo and his hard working taxpayer chums?

It’s a pisser, because life means sticking to scheduled tickets isn’t always an option, but that’s just the way of it. Sometimes stuff is expensive.

Bingham to Nottingham update: train on time, cost £7, busy but I've got a seat,albeit sideways on facing the bog.

I use trains about 5 times a year,mostly as an excuse to make Portillo jokes, I don't really want to fund other people's transport if I can help it though.

Welcome to Nottingham. What a city.

The single seat near the toilet is a real weird one. On one hand, it’s the only single seat on the train, which is great when you’re on your own.

In the other hand, if someone goes for a shit. Oh boy.

Plus you have that awkward moment of eye contact when someone leaves the loo and it fucking stinks and you know they did it, and they know that you know they did it.