The Man in Seat 61 Blog, UK does not have highest fares, most of the time

[overthewater]

Did Anyone else see this blog? and how we only have the highest fares for about 15% of the tickets sold?

There's been lots of fuss in the papers about the UK having higher rail fares than Europe. So much so, I decided to do a test myself.

Long-distance inter-city or short-distance commuter?

First, I believe that any sensible discussion of fares must be clearly divided into long distance or short distance/commuter, as the issues are totally different. It makes no more sense to discuss rail fares all in one go than to discuss 'bus fares' without saying whether you mean National Express Victoria coach station to Leeds, or the number 13 from Baker Street to Oxford Circus. Commuter/short distance fares are largely subsidized, and broadly-speaking it's a political choice between higher taxation, higher subsidy, lower fares, and lower taxation, lower subsidy and higher fares, which we Brits have tended to make lower down the tax/subsidy range and higher up the fare price range than other countries, for better or for worse. But here, I'll look at long distance fares.

The test... The results even surprised me...

I picked four fairly-similar routes: London to Sheffield 265Km, Paris to Dijon 287Km, Rome to Florence 261Km, Nuremberg to Kassel 265Km. Actually, I didn't pick the first three, a journalist who contacted me had already identified these as comparable, so I simply re-used them, no pre-selecting particularly-cheap UK routes or particularly-expensive Continental routes on my part. The fourth route was simply the first inter-city German route of about 265Km I came across flicking through the German part of the Thomas Cook European Timetable. So, nothing up my sleeve, no funny business in the choice of routes, I was doing this for my benefit as much as public consumption. I then simply used www.nationalrail.co.uk for UK prices, www.tgv-europe.com for French prices, www.trenitalia.com for Italian prices and www.bahn.de for German prices. All very simple to do.

1. Booking a month in advance...

OK, so first test. We try booking a train at midday, exactly one month ahead

rest here: http://www.seat61.com/uk-europe-train-fares-comparison.html#.UOc7vG82ZZo

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[Goatboy]

Yes, I did. And I thought it was a very misleading article and as a result posted this in another thread:

Trouble is though thats just ONE route. I've often made the point that some of the rail network has great fares whereas other parts have terrible fares.

Lets repeat the excercise for another route of similar type and distance. We'll also pick another route of much shorter distance. Lets go for Birmingham to Newcastle and Birmingham to Bristol.

12pm, 1 month out:

Birmingham to Newcastle. A big variation in fares. The closest to 12pm is the 12:03 at £46.50 one way. So, this is more expensive than any of the examples in the Seat61 article. It is as much as £87 on the 13:03 and £97 on the 15:03.

So, in this example, all available Advance fares are considerably more expensive than any of the chosen examples in the article and 4 times more expensive than the London to Sheffield example given.

Birmingham to Bristol. Less than half the distance, remember. Closest to 12pm is the 12:20. It is £42 one way. Despite being less than half the distance of any of the examples in the article it is more expensive than any of them. But in sake of fairness, the following train is currently £19. So, similar price to the fares in the article. But HALF the distance and it doesnt even involve a capital city.

Lets move onto the perhaps most important example - most people dont know they want to travel a month in advance but most do know at least the day before. It's this one that really dictates how much things cost.

12pm, tommorrow.

Birmingham to Newcastle: £77.50, cheapest fare. The UK fare is therefore more expensive than any of the other continental examples in the article.
Birmingham to Bristol: £47 on the closest train to 12pm, though the subsequent train has a £24 fare. Not bad, but still more expensive than the London to Sheffield example showing how unrepresentative the chosen example was.

Walkon, outside peak

Birmingham to Newcastle: £100 offpeak single. Nice. Triple the cost of two of the continental examples given. TRIPLE. £102 for an offpeak return, so better value I guess.

Birmingham to Bristol: £50 one way - so more expensive than all continental examples - but £50.40 offpeak return. Makes the Advance fare offered look frankly pathetic but it's still 50 quid for a return trip between two cities not even 100 miles apart.. £47 for an Advance non flex ticket or £50 for a far more flexible Offpeak RETURN? No prizes for guessing who sets the fares on this route. Quite why anyone would buy the Advance is beyond me.


So there we go. Depending on the routes you pick the entire article gets given a totally different slant. In the examples I've given, the UK journey is considerably more expensive in every example. A rather different picture. On some routes you can get some stunning Advance Fares that offer fantastic value. The Sheffield line is one of these. However on others there are either no Advance tickets available or so few allocated you never see the lower fares.

 

[Arglwydd Golau]

Hmm - thanks for posting, just read it and it's very interesting, have we been brainwashed into thinking that our fares are the highest in Europe, then? (I've just read another poll - not to do with railways - which indicates how easily the general public can be influenced)

 

[Goatboy]

Hmm - thanks for posting, just read it and it's very interesting, have we been brainwashed into thinking that our fares are the highest in Europe, then?

No, he just got lucky and picked one of the routes hilariously cheap Advance tickets are offered on.

 

[TUC]

The rail industry is sio incompetantly bad at getting over the message that fares are much cheaper in most cases than those that get into news articles. No one judges budget airline fares by the levels they are if you book on the day of the flight. Its the advance fares that get the publicity. Why does the rail industry find it so difficult to communicate a similar message?

 

[Goatboy]

Because the railway is not like the airlines when it comes to ticketing. Advance fares are not universally available on every route as is the case with airlines. There is a huge amount of routes for which no advance ticket of any description is available.

Air travel is also very rarely on impulse and very rarely considered to be a turn-up and go service. Railways, by contrast, are. I accept your point for ultra long distance travel - nobody wakes up and realises they need to travel 400 miles with no notice - but for medium distance journeys of up to say 150 miles that is exactly what a great many passengers do.

 

[TUC]

Because the railway is not like the airlines when it comes to ticketing. Advance fares are not universally available on every route as is the case with airlines. There is a huge amount of routes for which no advance ticket of any description is available.

Air travel is also very rarely on impulse and very rarely considered to be a turn-up and go service. Railways, by contrast, are. I accept your point for ultra long distance travel - nobody wakes up and realises they need to travel 400 miles with no notice - but for medium distance journeys of up to say 150 miles that is exactly what a great many passengers do.

But they are available for most high profile routes-more than enough to build a marketing strategy around.

 

[overthewater]

Maybe the railways could operate like Megabus, during off peak?

 

[Flamingo]

Well, has the author of the piece got any reason to have a bias in one direction or another?

If not, what he says is probably as valid as all the comments about how you have to mortgage your granny to catch a train.

 

[Goatboy]

Well, has the author of the piece got any reason to have a bias in one direction or another?

No, not at all - infact he didn't pick the routes in question, a journalist did.

However, that doesnt stop the article then being a tad misleading as a result. The route chosen for the UK - Sheffield to London - is very fortunate in that it has a wide range of very well priced ticket options. The same cannot be said for a great deal of other routes, so using this one route to suggest only 15% of UK rail fares are more expensive than the Continent is very misleading, in my opinion.

Hence my two Birmingham examples.

This is the difficulty really. Everyone is right - our network is both great value and a complete ripoff. It just depends where you are. Some of the fares are very well priced and offer a fantastic incentive to not bother with your car. Cornwall for example has a fantastic fare structure which offers excellent value walkon fares and an excellent local residents railcard, too. If you live in Cornwall the only good reason not to use a train is if it doesnt go where you want or if you've got lots of stuff to carry! However, some of the fares elsewhere on the network though are quite the opposite.

Nobody seems to think about this. Either the railways are a total ripoff or they are great value. Everyone ignores the middle ground...

 

[radamfi]

He also didn't make any allowance for railcards. For example, the Bahncard 50 gives 50% off all train fares in Germany (except zonal tickets in PTE-type areas). That is available to people of all ages, not just people under 27 or over 60.

 

[lemonic]

For example, the Bahncard 50 gives 50% off all train fares in Germany (except zonal tickets in PTE-type areas). That is available to people of all ages, not just people under 27 or over 60.

I thought that you couldn't get 50% off Sparpreise (Advance tickets) with the Bahncard 50 (whereas you can get 25% off Sparpreise with the Bahncard 25)?

 

[Flamingo]

Nobody seems to think about this. Either the railways are a total ripoff or they are great value. Everyone ignores the middle ground...

Reading the article, I think that the author is saying this as well.

Everybody can pick routes that are eye-wateringly expensive, and ridiculously cheap (the Swansea-Cardiff corridor for example).

However, the comparisons with Europe are always wearing such rose-tinted glasses, that it was nice to read something that was more realistic about it.

 

[yorkie]

It's a good article for comparing those specific 3 routes, and as radamfi says, for infrequent passengers (as regular users would have discount cards in other countries that are not available to all passengers here).

But if you want a full comparison for the overall picture in each country, I would say you'd need perhaps 10 routes from each country. You could get away with less for a rough idea (maybe 3 - as long as they weren't chosen too carefully to manipulate the results!)

For example I could compare London to York with London to Liverpool and get massively different results. York is better for booking far in advance, we do have faster trains and greater choice, but if I want to travel to London the next day it is unaffordable, I simply will not travel, and will rule myself out of making such a journey. But people from Liverpool can get a cheap ticket for immediate travel with London Midland, at a third of the price of a ticket for immediate travel with Grand Central.

However I don't think the author was attempting this, I think he was more trying to say that the arguments he has read are simplistic and don't tell the full story. And he's right!

 

[radamfi]

I thought that you couldn't get 50% off Sparpreise (Advance tickets) with the Bahncard 50 (whereas you can get 25% off Sparpreise with the Bahncard 25)?

Yes, sorry. I was referring to walk-up tickets.

I notice, also, he glossed over making any comparison of shorter distance journeys, and didn't mention season tickets at all. No doubt a comparison of journeys under 30 miles would show the UK in a particularly poor light, other than in PTE areas.

 

[bb21]

However I don't think the author was attempting this, I think he was more trying to say that the arguments he has read are simplistic and don't tell the full story. And he's right!

I believe we are reading too much into it.

His message is simple, that the UK don't always have the most expensive fares, and I agree.

 

[eastdyke]

But we are in the UK, yes?

Comparisons with any other country are utter tosh.

Just like the price of a coffee in another country is tosh when you want one in Bolton (other towns and cities are possible).

We are where we are - UK.

Get from A - B as quickly and conveniently for you - simples.

Rail is good for lots - commuting into London proves it.

Others can do quite well, including peeps like me that do it off peak!

 

[radamfi]

We are where we are - UK.

Not necessarily. Thanks to freedom of movement within Europe, we can move to a country which we may find more attractive. For people who are interested in transport, a comparison of transport systems is critical.

 

[cuccir]

A good article, making a clear point. Goatboy is right to question the reading off directly of the 85-90% for this route to the whole country, but the point is that train travel can both be very cheap and very expensive.


However, what the blog does prove is that the most expensive fares exist in the UK. I do think that it's unfair that I can split or book in advance and travel dirt cheap, but that others who through no fault of their own have to make a snap travel decision may have to pay the most expensive fares in Europe.

 

[kieron]

Well, has the author of the piece got any reason to have a bias in one direction or another?.

I don't know, and nor do you. That said, most people who decide to write an opinion piece have a pretty good idea what they want to say before they start.

He says a journalist suggested some of the routes, so there's also a question of whether that journalist chose them to give a particular impression, or even thought they were suitable for an article like this.

All I know is that the article's "Conclusion" goes far beyond anything mentioned in the rest of the article.

 

[Oscar]

The big picture is that Britain has the most commercially aggressive fares in Europe, with the highest fares designed to get maximum revenue from business travel, and some of the lowest fares designed to get more revenue by filling more seats.

This is in my opinion the significant difference between fares in Britain and fares in most other European countries. The price difference between walk-up fares and fares booked three months in advance and between Off-Peak and Anytime fares is generally far less in most other European countries than in Britain. On the other hand, many other European countries such as Germany and Italy offer cheaper tickets for slower than for faster trains.

In Germany Sparpreise (Advance tickets) are only available when an IC/EC/ICE/ICE Sprinter train is used for at least part of the journey and start at 19€ for journeys up to 250 km and 29€ for longer journeys.
In France there are generally very limited numbers of TGV fares equivalent to Advance available for 15€/20€/25€ and prices are otherwise significantly more.
In Italy Super Economy fares from 9€ are available in very limited numbers for journeys with Le Frecce and Super Economy/Economy fares are otherwise generally available for 19€/29€.
In Spain the lowest fare available for most medium/long-distance AVE/Talgo/Alvia journeys is generally around 20-30€.
By contrast, there are a good number of Advance for long-distance journeys available for under £25/30€ on many routes in Britain.

Yet as the article also says walk-up fares are generally sold as singles and are valid at anytime and are typically priced at a similar rate to long-distance Off-Peak Returns in Britain so are generally significantly cheaper than Anytime tickets and Off-Peak Singles in Britain and offer a lot of flexibility.

Fare structures are also radically different in each Continental country and ticketing options available vary between routes.

 

[Greenback]

I believe we are reading too much into it.

His message is simple, that the UK don't always have the most expensive fares, and I agree.

I completely agree. The conclusion is that the UK doesn't always have the most expensive fares, and that is true.