I was thinking earlier about what I sometimes hear rail passengers say from time to time even in the present era, that 'this is their first time on a train in umpteen years' and 'why don't British Rail do this or that', or 'I'd like to reserve near the buffet car, facing the engine' etc. Is rail travel becoming a luxury form of travel nowadays, or has it been for many years already, possibly not helped by the Beeching cuts?
Some of the public don't seem anywhere near as well-read about the railway system as they do about the buses for example. And as I say it surprises me the number of people who say they haven't been on a train for a long time. Then there are the fares, not exactly priced to attract the average working person onto the train instead of the bus; are rail fares high because the government see the railway as a middle-upper class kind of transport, so they feel they can get away with it and make revenue? There is still a big thing about first class too on the UK railways which really harks back to the Victorian era.
Would you say the railway is a transport of luxury and is it time it was taken down a peg or two?
I don't know what magic buses ya'll are catching, but my experience in Manchester and the Midlands has been they are typically more expensive than the trains, especially per mile.
The reason certain people use trains vs buses is very little to do with pricing, rather the routes they serve. Taking the train is still significantly cheaper than owning a car, and buses are frankly a tossup, in my experience, most bus trips are more expensive than comparable rail journeys.
The reason "working class" people tend to take busses, whereas "middle/upper classes" tend to use the trains is because our rail network most often serves city centres with white collar jobs, vs the buses which serve a wider range of destinations.
The focus on fares is a bit of a misnomer. The main issue is coverage, journey times, reliability.
It's also worth noting the UK rail system has a very commercially competitive price system, similar to airline tickets. Prices have perticularly risen for places like London, due to the fact demand is so high, yet capacity has not kept up. You can see this on many operators who have suffered capacity issues for a while now, especially XC. So if you really want to reduce prices, you should start by investing in the network a bit, so it can keep up with demand.
I think the evidence points to rail users typically being in the higher income brackets - commuters, business travellers. Though like all averages that hides significant variation.
Whereas buses typically have much lower fares and dominate local public transport provision because they have far greater coverage and more routes. Outside of London and the big cities, most small cities and towns have so few rail stations that rail is only useful for regional or national travel and even then it's very dependent on where you want to go, as to whether rail is a viable option. For day to day travel, getting around a town, rail has little to offer in most of the country.
On the costs, well the big difference mostly reflects the significantly higher running costs of rail as compared to buses. It isn't a particularly economically efficient form of transport because it's expensive, inflexible and has a very high costs base so relies on a combination of higher fares and public subsidies to exist. Buses have much lower costs and receive less subsidy, while still managing much lower fares but they benefit from using a road network infrastructure they don't have to pay for.
If the buses ran on their own network, used solely by the buses with only a few using each section of road every hour then the buses would cost a lot as well.
I mean this isn't really true. Rail is a pretty economically efficient form of transport, especially when you compare it to private vehicles.
The rolling stock is used all day, every day for the best part of 30-40 years, with low friction, reducing fuel costs. Each train can use a relatively small number of staff to move a significant number of passengers.
Let's also not forget the speed. The train was the only way I could acess a good college from the small town I lived in - offering comparable journey times with driving at an affordable price. The two carriage train was full and standing every morning - with a pretty consistent number of passengers during the day and quite a few on weekends.
And like you say, bus operators don't have to pay for the road network, which considering the weight of the vehicles I'm sure they have quite an impact. (remember, road wear increases with a square of the weight.)Not to say they should, they do more than enough in providing a public service, but it isn't a good argument against rail. Plus, the road infrastructure is typically of much poorer quality than even the oldest railways, full of congestion and constant stopping/starting.