UK version of Austrian Climatkarte.

[100andthirty]

The Austrians have introduced an annual pass costing circa £1000 valid on all public transport in the country.
Ignoring for a minute the organisational challenges of introducing such a travel card in the UK, how much would people be prepared to pay for a UK version?
Related issue, if there was significant take up of such a ticket, how much might be saved on ticket selling cost?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Something worth bearing in mind here is that Austria is considerably smaller than the UK, so it would be more like a South East pass or one just covering Northern's area, or ScotRail/TfW or whatever. The German "BahnCard 100" would be a more viable comparison.

The answer is that a reasonable price for such a thing would almost certainly cost more than I could justify. What I would do, though, is pay around £100-150 per year, ideally by monthly direct debit, for a National Railcard offering 34% discount.

 

[plugwash]

I think the problem is if you go much above the grand a year or so then few people who are not already heavy public transport users would buy it. So if your goal is mode shift it needs to be around that level.

Even as a relatively heavy public transport user, I would have struggled to justify more than £2K or so a year for such a ticket (I did pay over £1K a year for a GM countycard, but even that was questionablly justifiable once I reduced the number of days I commuted).

But equally there are people who spend thousands a year on public transport, either because they have Long commutes into london or because they frequently make long distance intercity journeys at peak times, any such pass would result in a large loss of revenue from these people.

I suspect such a pass, if priced affordablly, would also result in loadings that were more than the rail network was able to cope with. Fixing that would require a massive change in the attitude of the rail industry and it's goverment funders.

 

[HSTEd]

I suspect such a pass, if priced affordablly, would also result in loadings that were more than the rail network was able to cope with. Fixing that would require a massive change in the attitude of the rail industry and it's goverment funders.

Or crowding would become a major measure for controlling traffic levels.

Passenger capacity could probably increased dramatically within the constraints of existing fixed infrastructure but it would likely need swingeing rationalisations of timetables and service standards.

In the extreme case that everyone in the UK buys one, you would have something like ~£70bn to spend on transport, and ultimately only about ~£85bn is spent on private motoring in the UK each year.
Huge economies of scale likely open up.

 

[Haywain]

Passenger capacity could probably increased dramatically within the constraints of existing fixed infrastructure but it would likely need swingeing rationalisations of timetables and service standards.

I don't know where you think this is the case or how you propose it would be done, but there are many areas where the network was already at capacity prior to CoVid and are not far short of it now.

 

[43096]

The answer is that a reasonable price for such a thing would almost certainly cost more than I could justify. What I would do, though, is pay around £100-150 per year, ideally by monthly direct debit, for a National Railcard offering 34% discount.

The simplest way of doing that would be to extend the current Network Railcard’s area of validity and adjusting the price.

 

[Kilopylae]

Passenger capacity could probably increased dramatically within the constraints of existing fixed infrastructure

I'm not sure how true this is, particularly for heavy commuting routes around London.

 

[JonathanH]

People potentially need flexibility to travel around their own local area. They do not need flexibility to go wherever they want in the country every day of the year for one price.

 

[Bletchleyite]

People potentially need flexibility to travel around their own local area. They do not need flexibility to go wherever they want in the country every day of the year for one price.

In a rare example of agreeing with you, I was going to suggest that regional all-modes tickets (like the PTE ones but covering a larger area) might be a better way to deliver this in a larger place like the UK. This sort of thing could have a genuine impact on car usage. The PTE areas are useful but a bit small, whereas for someone living in the South East a pass covering the Network Railcard area, for instance, would cover the vast majority of travel.

Another thing worth considering would be having a cheaper after-9am version. German PTEs have "CC-Karten", I forget what this stands for, which are valid only off-peak, and Merseytravel used to have such a ticket.

 

[Watershed]

Public transport is held back, to an extent, by the lack of joined up ticketing and journey planning. It's not exactly an endorsement of cross-industry cooperation when most multi-modal journeys is typically best planned by Google Maps!

A national Railcard would undoubtedly cost far more than €1000, both because Britain is a far larger area and because the average taxpayer wouldn't countenance the subsidy increases needed for such a ticket to work in practice.

Really it should be possible to get "PTE" style Travelcards for every part of the country.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Really it should be possible to get "PTE" style Travelcards for every part of the country.

The PTEs are a bit small, though. What you probably want is cards on a less granular level - North West, North East, West Midlands, East Midlands, South East (including London), Central South and South West for England, probably either all Wales or north and south with some overlap along the Cambrian, and for Scotland either all of it or Central Belt and Highlands bits.

Indeed, it's not far off fitting quite well with the current TOC areas.

 

[najaB]

But equally there are people who spend thousands a year on public transport, either because they have Long commutes into london or because they frequently make long distance intercity journeys at peak times, any such pass would result in a large loss of revenue from these people.

I doubt that the Austrian Climatkarte makes sense if you look at it from a purely financial view either. But if we accept that adapting consumption patterns is going to cost some amount of taxpayer money in the short term, the question is if the benefit outweighs the cost.

 

[HSTEd]

I don't know where you think this is the case or how you propose it would be done, but there are many areas where the network was already at capacity prior to CoVid and are not far short of it now.

Well a lot of raw capacity is thrown away from attempts to maintain multiple stopping patterns on the same pair of tracks, which could potentially be recovered if this practice was scaled back or abandoned.

People potentially need flexibility to travel around their own local area. They do not need flexibility to go wherever they want in the country every day of the year for one price.

The problem is "local area" is such a nebulous concept that it is impossible to define in any meaningful sense for most of the country.

Once you place constraints on people they will find journeys where they are not covered by the rail pass, which will rapidly make the possession of a car a necessity regardless.

Once they have a car you are competing against the marginal cost of driving and you've got no chance of making public transport attractive enough to make a dent in passenger miles traveled by car.

People might think people should fully cost every mile of driving using depreciation, but that is not the cost structure people are working to.

 

[yorksrob]

In a rare example of agreeing with you, I was going to suggest that regional all-modes tickets (like the PTE ones but covering a larger area) might be a better way to deliver this in a larger place like the UK. This sort of thing could have a genuine impact on car usage. The PTE areas are useful but a bit small, whereas for someone living in the South East a pass covering the Network Railcard area, for instance, would cover the vast majority of travel.

Another thing worth considering would be having a cheaper after-9am version. German PTEs have "CC-Karten", I forget what this stands for, which are valid only off-peak, and Merseytravel used to have such a ticket.

I think that your original idea of a properly priced national railcard would be preferable. For intercity journeys you might get people upgrading from AP to a more expensive ticket with more flexibility.

Also, with regional cards you're bound to end up with silly cliff edges.

 

[rob.rjt]

In a rare example of agreeing with you, I was going to suggest that regional all-modes tickets (like the PTE ones but covering a larger area) might be a better way to deliver this in a larger place like the UK. This sort of thing could have a genuine impact on car usage. The PTE areas are useful but a bit small, whereas for someone living in the South East a pass covering the Network Railcard area, for instance, would cover the vast majority of travel.

Another thing worth considering would be having a cheaper after-9am version. German PTEs have "CC-Karten", I forget what this stands for, which are valid only off-peak, and Merseytravel used to have such a ticket.

The German regional day tickets (https://www.bahn.com/en/offers/regional/regional-day-tickets) are such good value, so would never work in the UK. Every non IC/ICE train and most buses in Bavaria the largest region (and equivalent in size to Ireland) costs EUR 25. You could do London to Manchester on London Midand, ride the buses then carry on somewhere else. One thing that blocks it in the UK is that I think most IC/ICE services in Germany have an equivalent slower route, which we don't have here.

 

[Class800]

If I understand, it's more or less the equivalent of our All Line Rover

 

[py_megapixel]

If I understand, it's more or less the equivalent of our All Line Rover

ALRs are weekly rather than annual, have a random sprinkling of time restrictions, and are valid only on trains and not buses etc.

It's more like a London Annual Travelcard but for the whole country.

 

[plugwash]

If I understand, it's more or less the equivalent of our All Line Rover

Umm no.

The all lines rover is a one week rail ticket that is too expensive to be of any use to anyone except railfans who plan to spend most of the week sitting on trains and maybe in some causes buisiness travellers who have multiple long distance trips in the same week that can't be made on a regular off-peak ticket but can be made on an all lines rover (the all lines rover has some peak restrictions, but they are much looser than on many regular off-peak tickets.

Totally different from an affordable intermodal annual ticket. This is more like a travelcard, but expanded to cover a whole country rather than just one metro area.

 

[miklcct]

The Austrians have introduced an annual pass costing circa £1000 valid on all public transport in the country.
Ignoring for a minute the organisational challenges of introducing such a travel card in the UK, how much would people be prepared to pay for a UK version?
Related issue, if there was significant take up of such a ticket, how much might be saved on ticket selling cost?

I'll happy to pay approximately £2000 for an annual off-peak rail + bus + ferry pass (including unlimited travel in the whole country on trains arriving a major city after 10:00 Monday - Friday / depart after 09:30 otherwise, and weekends all day), with supplements for peak travel. (I deliberately exclude flying here due to environmental impact)

 

[Wallsendmag]

I paid £2.1k to park at Newcastle station for a year so I would expect the price to be somewhat higher than £2k

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

You can get regional/state Klimatickets in Austria.
They haven't announced the full set yet, but the one for Salzburg (state) is €365 (€1 a day), Styria (Graz) is €580.
The aim was for adjacent states to be included at €2 a day, and the national one is €3 a day (it used to be called the 1-2-3 Ticket).
An Austrian state is usually larger than a UK county, closer to some of our conurbations or PTEs.
There's no concept of peak or off-peak, and all transport is included except some specialist operators (eg mountain transport).
Austria only has one city with a population more then 300K: Vienna is 1.8m, so only Vienna compares to GB commuting intensity.

 

[Wallsendmag]

Still think Luxenburg has the better idea.

 

[XAM2175]

It's more like a London Annual Travelcard but for the whole country.

I'll happy to pay approximately £2000 for an annual off-peak rail + bus + ferry pass (including unlimited travel in the whole country on trains arriving a major city after 10:00 Monday - Friday / depart after 09:30 otherwise, and weekends all day), with supplements for peak travel.

I paid £2.1k to park at Newcastle station for a year so I would expect the price to be somewhat higher than £2k

The nearest comparison for the BahnCard 100 is a twelve month All Line Rover, plus Zone 1-6 London Travelcard, plus all PlusBus areas, plus West Midlands Metro, plus Sheffield Supertram, plus Manchester Metrolink, plus Tyne and Wear Metro, plus Edinburgh trams, and plus Glasgow Subway, and without any peak restrictions. DB currently ask €4027 for this, which is circa £3431 at the time of posting.

There is an argument that for many people this is much more travel than they need, and that for many other people it's far less money than they would otherwise pay for much less flexibility which means of course that to British eyes it is the work of the Devil himself.

 

[miklcct]

Well a lot of raw capacity is thrown away from attempts to maintain multiple stopping patterns on the same pair of tracks, which could potentially be recovered if this practice was scaled back or abandoned.

The UK rail infrastructure can't properly support high capacity operation because there are no passing tracks at smaller stations. For example, there are no passing tracks between Brockenhurst and Poole, so unless all trains stop at all stations, the rail capacity can't be used fully.

So it's either build passing tracks at stations, slow down all the trains, or cancel smaller stations and replace them by buses.

Once you place constraints on people they will find journeys where they are not covered by the rail pass, which will rapidly make the possession of a car a necessity regardless.

Hire cars exist for this kind of purposes.

 

[kristiang85]

Considering an annual season ticket for me on one 50 mile route into London and back is £5,500 or so, I would be a lot happier paying that and getting free rail travel nationwide included as well, at peak times.

Obviously now I have less of a need to use peak trains, so for an off peak version of a national unlimited rail ticket I'd pay up to £2500 probably.

 

[plugwash]

The UK rail infrastructure can't properly support high capacity operation because there are no passing tracks at smaller stations. For example, there are no passing tracks between Brockenhurst and Poole, so unless all trains stop at all stations, the rail capacity can't be used fully.

Another problem is that even when passing tracks do exist, with our current fixed-block signalling setup, it's difficult to make use of them without inserting a long wait in the stopper's schedule.

One workaround for lack of passing facilities is to run everything "semi-fast", so each train serves a roughtly equal number of stations and moves at roughly the same speed, but between the trains all the stations get covered. The downsides of that approach are that long-distance journies are slower, and local journeys will often require double-backing to the nearest major station so it essentially optimizes for those traveling to the nearest major city over everyone else, it may also limit the ability to use high-capacity trains unless selective door operation is used.

 

[HSTEd]

So it's either build passing tracks at stations, slow down all the trains, or cancel smaller stations and replace them by buses.

Ultimately this means one stopping pattern per pair of tracks.

Hire cars exist for this kind of purposes.

People won't use a hire car when they can just keep an old, relatively cheap, car around ......

 

[Bletchleyite]

Car clubs are convenient if you have one nearby. Car hire is grossly inconvenient. I can't think of a single other mode of transport that exposes you to so much faff.

That faff is one key reason I own one. Another reason is that if I hire I can't specify the exact car I am booking, which could be an issue being as I am quite tall and broad and so can't drive every type of car, and it isn't necessarily as simple as "big=good, small=bad", it really depends on the individual model and the layout and adjustability of the dash, driver's seat and wheel.

 

[Austriantrain]

Something worth bearing in mind here is that Austria is considerably smaller than the UK, so it would be more like a South East pass or one just covering Northern's area, or ScotRail/TfW or whatever. The German "BahnCard 100" would be a more viable comparison.

The answer is that a reasonable price for such a thing would almost certainly cost more than I could justify. What I would do, though, is pay around £100-150 per year, ideally by monthly direct debit, for a National Railcard offering 34% discount.

Since the comparison to Austria has been made, I allow myself to weigh in

1. For me, the major advantage of the Climate Ticket (CT) is less the price, but the complete flexibility to use whatever public transport whenever and wherever I want, without taking any additional steps before boarding - buy a ticket (maybe several if I need city transport as well), check whether there are cheap advances available etc. Considering the complexity of the UK ticketing system, that might be one of the major selling point of such a ticket in the UK as well.

2. Arguably, the price in Austria is too low; I would easily fork out € 1500-1800 instead of€ 1000 for the advantages I get, and so would many others. While the ticket per se is an excellent thing, I think that with the low prices, revenue is unnecessarily foregone while I expect no major difference in Modal shift (if you use PT very sparely, even € 1000 is too much; if you use it regularly, € 1500 are easily amortized - my previous season ticket for Vienna and the train to a city 60 km distant was more expensive than that).

3. Even though the UK, population-wise, is approximately 10 times larger than Austria, the price of a British CT would probably not be 10 times the Austrian price, because the average number and length of PT travel will not be 10 times higher. I see the BahnCard100 as a good indicator for pricing too.

4. But I believe there will be two problems
- Number 1 would be easy to solve politically, but probably hard to sell to voters: A CT means lost revenue for transport companies and that will need to be reimbursed; traditionally, while in the UK a lot of tax money goes into PT, railways especially are expected to cover a much larger part of costs from ticket sales, so the amount of state support would be vastly higher than in Austria and Someone would need to pay.

- number 2: train fares historically are much higher in the UK than elsewhere not only because the railways are expected to be self-financing to a larger amount, but for capacity reasons. At least pre-Covid fares in the peak had to be very high to price people off rail because capacity wasn’t there, especially in the South-East and some Intercity routes from London. Now demand might be reduced post-Covid, but there is still the question of whether capacity would cope with strongly increased demand due to lower prices.
If not, there would be a major problem. As can be seen from HS2/NPR, besides its cost, adding new capacity is also a very, very slow process and needs years - whereas the demand induced by a climate ticket will be there almost immediately.

Even here in Austria I am quite concerned that demand on some routes will outstrip capacity - and with a very cheap ticket, there will be less money to add capacity and it would take a very long time.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Even here in Austria I am quite concerned that demand on some routes will outstrip capacity - and with a very cheap ticket, there will be less money to add capacity and it would take a very long time.

This is true, and you lose the ability to yield manage. I recall from 1990s DB that overcrowding on regional services on weekends was terrible because of the cheapness of the "go anywhere" Schoenes-Wochenende-Ticket, which back then was so cheap that it might as well have been free.

Another comparison is the Swiss Generalabonnement which is CHF3860 a year (EUR 3703, GBP3150) for an area which is perhaps comparable with that of the Northern TOC? Though based on the "Big Mac exchange rate" it's probably in real terms maybe GBP2000-2500 or so - the franc is a bit overvalued.