Don't know much about other stuff but from what I experienced in England (London area especially), the public transport is unbelievably expensive. I went there for 2 weeks and maybe the biggest part of my expenses was spent on trains/buses/the tube. Especially trains.
This from the point of view of a tourist, though. I guess English citizens have some preferences/reductions?
Public transport is, however, very expensive, even in Europe.
I can drive the 300 round trip to London and back from my house in England FAR cheaper than the train (£40 of gas versus £50 train ticket - if two of us go, that's £40 of gas versus £100 in tickets - not even counting the cost of getting to a train station). Sure, I could take the coach which would be marginally cheaper than driving (not by much), but it takes 7 hours to get there rather than the 3.5 in the car.
Having moved from Germany to the UK I'm actually positively surprised by public transport which I rely on every day. (living in London). The only thing I've noticed is that it is quite expensive.
I was pretty shocked at how expensive they are in London too. Our public transport isn't cheap compared to mainland Europe, but wow there's no chance I'm paying ~£3-5 for a 10-15 minute ride vs £2.90 for a peak tube journey, £1.50 for 90 mins of bus usage, or £2 for 30 minutes on a bike.
London as more than decent public transportation indeed, plus it has this rather extreme car policy we all know about (which by the way I am sure the super rich actually love!). The thing is, I've always wondered why public transportation is so outrageously expensive there. Actually, even with the Oyster card, the rates strike me as rather extreme. I'd love to hear a Londonese on this.
Tube is ~5 I think, and bus even less. But the expensive train (15GBP, still much less than $99) gets a lot of advertising and is in all the guidebooks, so many people assume it's the only way to go (plus it's owned by the airport so they try to guide you that way). I've never known anyone who'd book a car, I once took a taxi when the tube broke down and I was running late and it was GBP30 to go ~3 miles. That seems like the preserve of the super-rich.
I grew up in the UK and from a late teen until my mid twenties I travelled by train across the country every week or so. I took the train as it was convenient for my route (no changes) and it didn't make sense to have a car for the rare times I used it (I'd commute to work by train or bike). There were long distance busses, but the times weren't convenient and they had even less leg room than aircraft.
The one thing that still makes me wonder is how expensive trains are, or maybe more accurately how cheap budget airlines are. I'd usually pay ~£25 each way, and I'd book in advance and had a youth discount. Full price tickets if I'd just turn up on the day would be over £100, and closer to £200 for first class (which on this route was just a slightly bigger seat, no food). For the same price I could have flown to the other side of Europe for the weekend and paid for a hotel. During peak times often the trains would be completely full up (500 seats, and maybe another couple hundred standing), so the routes are not exactly under-utilised.
Do trains just cost more to build and run than airports and aircraft or what is going on here?
To add to #3, the UK needs sane public transportation prices. It costs more to take a 40 minute train ride from outside of London into London than it does to take a plane ride from Heathrow to the continent.
London is cheaper to move around by public transport than many other British cities.
A bus or tram journey is £1.45 regardless of distance, but in Manchester a tram journey is over £3, in Birmingham over £2, in Edinburgh £1.50.
London's tickets are also much better integrated -- only a couple of express train services to airports have special fares, and they all have non-express, cheaper alternatives.
Yep, train travel in the UK is more expensive than driving under any circumstances by at least a factor of two or three other than when commuting into London, where parking charges make the economics work.
I never understood why trains are so expensive in England: when I lived in Bristol I liked to spend time in Bath, it's just a ~10 minutes ride but it costed 10 pounds each way if I remember correctly... but at least you could bring your bike for free :p
The trains in the UK seem ok in terms of the number of services and reliability, but they're so expensive. It's almost always cheaper to fly or rent a car than it is to use the train for anything approaching long distance.
Yup. I lived in London for a year and pretty much just traveled by train the whole time. I feel like I missed out on a lot of cool trips around the city because train tickets were absurdly expensive.
Train travel in the UK is absurdly expensive unless you're willing to book a few months in advance and travel off-peak. Train travel in Spain is much better and cheaper. AFAIK in terms of price it mostly has to do with how much governments are willing to subsidise rail transport.
We have some pretty excellent public transport. National Rail isn't great when compared to its equivalent in Europe, but TfL is _excellent_ compared to many European cities, if a little more expensive.
As someone who can afford Uber, I feel no real need to use it on a regular basis at all.
Annually my train season ticket costs just over half what my mortgage costs! And I'm talking repayment not endowment here. So while public transport may be convenient, it's certainly not cheap here in England.
Actually, what surprised me most about this article is the percentage of people that use public transport (it's displayed in one of the tables in the article).
The UK has one of the lowest subsidies for public transport compared to other European countries. We also have the highest fares. And yet, more people in the UK travel by public transport than Germany and France - two countries with much higher rail subsidies, modern high-speed rail services and lower fares. That just doesn't seem to make sense!
This would be great, except if the rent doesn't get you, the train fare will. Coming from the U.S., I had to pick my jaw off the floor when I saw what they charge, it's obscene. Say what you will about U.S. public transportation, at least it's cheap. Here in the UK if you so much as glance sideways at a city bus, it'll be five-pounds-change.
Hmm European train rides tend to be quite bit more expensive than in the US, even if you take the craziness of the UK train system which is much costlier than mainland Europe (London to Newcastle costs more than London to Brussels), yearly train tickets in the Netherlands, Germany and France are also quite expensive...
This from the point of view of a tourist, though. I guess English citizens have some preferences/reductions?
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