As someone with significant experience of using the rail networks in both the UK and Spain, I strongly agree with the last point regarding the hybrid reservation model. In addition, there's one further point which I don't think he mentions: the fact that in the UK you can buy a ticket at any station to go to any arbitrary station A from any arbitrary station B (notwithstanding the complexity of determining the best price).
In Spain, by contrast, you simply cannot get a train ticket for the long distance network if you're at a commuter station, nor can you get a ticket to cover a route between two arbitrary stations if the route would combine long- and short-distance trains. You need to buy long distance and regional tickets separately, and cannot buy tickets for commuter services from outside the specific region. And they are all run by the same state-owned operator Renfe!
Meanwhile, in the UK, you can go to Stalybridge on the outskirts of Manchester and ask the ticket office for a return ticket from Edinburgh Haymarket to Bury St Edmunds and they won't bat an eyelid even though it covers God knows how many potential operators.
Note this is not in any way an example of the UK system being superior due to privatisation. The reason it works this well is because it already worked like that under British Rail.
On the price side, Cambridge has 3x the population of segovia, and the same distance. Similarly, London has 3x the population of Madrid. My quick Google says there's 6 million jobs in London and 3 million in Madrid. My napkin math says that the demand for the Cambridge route is likely to be 2x if not 3x the Madrid route.
Youve also missed over the fact that the Cambridge train is more like 45 minutes than 60.
There are also up to 12 trains an hour from Cambridge to London (Liverpool Street, Kings Cross, St Pancras), this is basically as often as some city metros's. Time taken varies between 54 minutes and 1:29 hr.
To be honest, I don't think that's a very fair comparison time:distance wise. Cambridge is infamously time consuming to get to by train and that's a very good route in Spain, they are not all that quick.
For example Peterborough which is quite some miles north of Cambridge runs trains to London in 51 mins.
What about Milton Keynes > London in 34 mins, Reading > London in 30 mins and so on.
> Cambridge is infamously time consuming to get to by train
Why is this?
I know the story about the University insisting that the station be far from the center of town to make it inconvenient for students, and that Peterborough is on the ECML, but I don't see good reasons for Cambridge being hard to get to. There are direct express trains! It's not the North where everyone's trundling around in Pacers.
I suppose it depends on what your definition of express is, what you're used to and so on. I think most people in that part of the country equate express to 125mph trains, that are either direct or 'more or less' direct.. which places like Milton Keynes and Peterborough do have.
I think the reasons are mix of the two above you mention. No ecml which for what can only be described as a decent economic hub is a missed opportunity. Train station a bit of a pain to get to which extends real life journey times, although they are clearly trying to improve that and Cambridge North isn't bad.
But since 2020, short distance commute via train has had an upgrade with new 8 carriage trains along the Fen Line, making situations where you don't have a seat less likely.
Frankly, that pales to what we have here in The Netherlands. A single OV-chipkaart swipe and you can take an NS train to wherever you want without needing to reserve seats and pre-book tickets. When I was in UK I didn't understand why the need for so much complexity when they could make it work like London metro (swipe in/out with a card). Needless to say I am not a fan of the UK system.
As implemented, the OV chipkaart has its own share of problems.
1. For railway travel, you need to top up a minimum balance of 20 € (okay, technically 16 €, because with an anonymous card you're allowed 4 € of credit), which is already a bit on the high side if you're only need to go a few stations by train and are only travelling occasionally.
2. Changing trains has become a bit more complicated, because if the change of trains also coincides with a change of the train operator you now always have to check out and back in again (and the check out/in procedure also potentially makes things more expensive than a true through ticket).
3. Certain offers (including e.g. reduced fares for children!) are only available with a personal chipkaart – for a long time those were impossible to obtain without a Dutch address of residence and/or bank account. These days they're also sold to residents of Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany, but you still have to order them in advance, and everybody else is still left out (e.g. somebody from Lille is actually closer to the Dutch border than somebody living in Munich, but only the latter is allowed to buy a personal chipkaart).
Wouldn't work because you could complete the same trip via a range of different companies. So to keep track, you'd need to be tapping in/off each train so the operators could charge you accordingly. And then you'd never have an idea of what the price would be, as fares change according to how early you book and how busy the trains are.
I'm not saying it's a good system - it's a very bad one, having it split between so many companies is a mistake. But the London metro is not a good analogy since it is all one company.
The Netherlands is a small country though. Reservations are not needed because you're expected to stand if the train is fully occupied. Travel journey is rarely longer than an hour.
The Dutch railway system is more like a giant metro/light rail. Trains between the major cities have a high frequency of every 10 minutes.
Very much this. In Germany the law regulating railway demands that all train companies work together in creating through-fares, but in practice as far as long distance trains are concerned that obligation seems to have been forgotten and we're only saved by the fact that only a small minority of those trains are operated by TOCs other than DB.
IME it’s completely transparent. You load up your suica and you’re off.
The issue’s it’s a bit too transparent: and after a while you realise that your suica is emptying unexpectedly fast, because you’re paying (and resetting your trip counter) every time you pass a gate, and that you probably shouldn’t blindly follow western trip system because you want to limit network switches, at which point you run into the issue that the resources for that are mostly in Japanese.
Then it depends how much the overhead is and how much you care.
No, the existence of the JR pass exactly proves their point.
It only works on JR lines, so in Tokyo you still need to buy tickets for all the private train lines and metro lines (city run and private run). Try getting around Tokyo on the daily using only JR lines; it won't be too much fun for you.
JR pass is only really useful for long-haul, intercity type journeys, primarily by shinkansen
If you’re in Tokyo you get a suica. It works on all lines, and can also be used as a payment card at various vending machines and shops (including I think all the big combini brands and many marts).
> Meanwhile, in the UK, you can go to Stalybridge on the outskirts of Manchester and ask the ticket office for a return ticket from Edinburgh Haymarket to Bury St Edmunds and they won't bat an eyelid even though it covers God knows how many potential operators.
You can even get a ticket to Ryde, Isle of Wight and get the Ferry ticket included too.
> the fact that in the UK you can buy a ticket at any station to go to any arbitrary station A from any arbitrary station B (notwithstanding the complexity of determining the best price).
Mostly true, but not universally so - try Denton -> Manchester Piccadilly ;)
There's no fare set for that pair of stations specifically[0], so no way of buying a ticket. You could get one to Stockport and another from Stockport to Manchester, but that's obviously not quite the 'any station to any other station' mentioned. There may also be some kind of Manchester all-area ticket that's valid, but again that adds a knowledge requirement.
(Denton is mildly famous amongst British rail enthusiasts as it has a 'parliamentary'[1] service of one train a week each way. Useless for actual travel, but (partly because of an unusually pleasant station buffet with good beer at Stalybridge) the regular site of meetups for rail geeks).
Deutsche Bahn's trip planner at https://www.bahn.com/en is fun to play with. I just tried asking for a journey from London to Sofia (Bulgaria) and it finds one instantly. Although it appears DB can't sell a ticket for the route.
I came here to say something of this sort too. I have experience trying to buy international train tickets around Europe, and it's very often a big mess. Prices are different on different websites, they won't sell you regional trains, etc. The EU should intervene and make it easier.
Hmm. Have you tried buying Spanish tickets on thetrainline?
(For a while in the early 2000s the best way to buy UK train tickets was through the Deutsche Bahn website; exogenous ticketing is weird, but presumably they've already done the API work to simplify it for you)
> Hmm. Have you tried buying Spanish tickets on thetrainline?
I've given it a go, but on my phone TheTrainLine is returning "unavailable" on literally any journey for some reason (my radical ad-and-tracker blocking?).
I was trying to search for tickets from Cervera—served by regional trains from Barcelona and Lleida—to Torrijos—served by regional trains from Madrid. If TheTrainLine works for you maybe you can try Cervera-Torrijos.
Best case, I'm guessing it might be able to suggest a reasonable combination (regional to Lleida -> high speed to Madrid -> regional to Torrijos) but I'd be very surprised if it can directly sell you any ticket except the Lleida-Madrid one, let alone the whole route as a single ticket.
EDIT: I finally got TheTrainLine working, and it suggested me an odd bus journey from Cervera rather than the train. So, I decided to check, and in fact TheTrainLine is fully unaware of commuter and regional services around Barcelona or Madrid, and erroneously states "No tickets available" even when searching for routes which I take often. This is almost as bad as Renfe's own website, but at least TheTrainLine includes (some) 3rd party bus services.
> British people love to complain about the state of their railways
I find people have a very different experience with UK rail on whether they're travelling for business or pleasure.
People who commute have to take trains at peak time, at the absolute highest ticket prices, take hundreds of trains a year giving lots of opportunities to get delayed, might get yelled at for being late, and at the end of their journey is... work.
On the other hand, my train travel is off-peak, not that frequent, and almost always taking me to a loved one, a party or a concert. Understandably, my feelings towards trains are very different to my commuter peers!
> British people love to complain about the state of their railways
When British people go to Switzerland or Japan its like they've died and woken up in heaven.
Japanese rail in particular is pure heaven compared to the UK. Trains are always punctual. Trains are always clean. Trains are always frequent.
And that's before we start talking about the amazing food stores that are attached to main Japanese stations. In the UK you get a filthy station full of greasy horrible fast-food stores.
I found it amazing in Tokyo that you could look up on Google maps a really complex set of interchanges to get across town and all of the timings were just perfect. If it said 35mins to get somewhere it would take exactly 35mins and every train Google suggested you’d be on you’d make. It really did feel like magic that everything including walking distances and punctuality were so spot on. It did make it difficult to give reasons if you were ever late!
Having spent the past ~10 years living in London, I disagree.
Rush hour Tokyo trains were a dream, people are polite and queue, but they queue so that they're not in the way, the carriages are surprisingly head-roomy for 6'4 me, unlike the shit show of the central line, they're cooled properly, like the circle/district and the stations were almost universally clean and spacious unlike our tube platforms which are often cramped with tiny exits through archways blocked by people filling the platforms.
I'm not saying the London Tube is bad, but I would take Tokyo subway over it any day.
It may be controversial to say but tourists (local or from afar) are generally the worst part about central London commuting, due to the ignorance of the etiquette, especially when tourist numbers can be overwhelming in some parts.
> It may be controversial to say but tourists (local or from afar) are generally the worst part about central London commuting, due to the ignorance of the etiquette, especially when tourist numbers can be overwhelming in some parts.
This goes for any city that is popular with tourists, who seem to forget that most of the people in a city live and work there, and have their own lives that do not revolve around hospitality or entertainment for tourists.
The tube is pretty bad. Many lines have grime floating in the air that deposits on skin & clothing and turns your snot black. Often a very long walk pavement to platform. Frequent delays from suicide attempts because its old so no track doors and the designs of stations are depressing. Overworked and underpaid staff.
So, did some research. TFL have not released hard figures in recent years, but it appears the delays due to jumpers are significantly down from their past near-daily occurance because of the installation of "suicide pits" to catch jumpers under many platforms and training staff to intervene when they spot a distressed person on the platform.
Could not possibly agree more, they are the worst. System would be massively more efficient and pleasant if everyone followed basic etiquette.
Other annoyances;
When you get to the bottom of the escalators don't just stop in the middle looking at phones and wondering what platform you need. Stand to the side.
Observe the queues next to each door position on the platform and join them. Do not just stand in the clear space in the middle. Following on from that, let people off the train first!!
Walk down the platform don't huddle at the entrance to it.
Don't wait for the gates to close before tapping your card. Just tap and check for green light.
I actually expected people to stand on the "left" of the scalators - just like how they drive on the left and overtake on the right - but they didn't.
They stood on the right.
Stand on the right on escalators, let people off of the carriages before you barge on, don't stop suddenly without checking who's about to walk into you, don't run into tube trains as the doors are closing only to get stuck and hold up the train, DON'T HOLD THE DOORS OPEN, go up and down stairs on the left, corridors etc, stay on the left and don't fuck around at the barriers. Have your card ready, your contactless ready, take your kids, cases, whatever through the wide gate. Don't play whatever shitty video you're watching to the whole train and certainly don't subject others to your music taste.
DO ask people for directions or for help, people may look tired, they may look grumpy they may even be those things, but most will be more than willing to help you.
EDIT: Others covered a few important ones I missed too; backpacks off, walking N-abreast so as to be blocking others from passing are a big no-no; you may be having a leisurely stroll, commuters have places to be, whether at work or at home with their families and their feet up after a long day.
Adding to this: Don't jump aboard wearing your dirty working jumpsuit smeared with paint, cement, oil. Also stop loudly arguing with your partner over phone. Get your shoes off the chairs.
It's like London, but the overly-compressed people are more polite and the air doesn't get quite so.. thick because the carriages are much bigger.
Also, the trains are on time, so there's no waiting on an overflowing platform for 10 mins of no trains then 30 minutes of trains too full to get onto.
Based on the fashion and film grain, that picture is probably 30 years old. I lived in Tokyo recently, for 5 years, and saw this maybe 3 times, all at special occasions, such as on the way to a large fireworks festival. I've experienced train pushers in Vancouver during the 2010 Olympics, too. Yes, many trains are uncomfortably crowded at rush hour but I've experienced the same in Europe. Maybe slightly worse in Europe, because at least the train tends to be on time and the ticket machines and turnstiles always work in Japan.
In Paris train pushers are just a convenient excuse for you to ram the idiots standing clueless in the middle of the carriage towards the aisles where they should have gone from the start while pretending it’s not your fault anyway.
It’s nearly as enjoyable as getting someone out of the way so you can get in said aisles yourself and avoid being compressed next to the doors at rushed hours.
It was a thing before COVID in Tokyo. Don’t know about now. The point I’m trying to make is that this thing NEVER happens in London. Train pushers don’t exist, so even if it’s not an everyday thing in Tokyo anymore I can hardly believe that anyone would say “I prefer the rush hour in Tokyo”, to which my previous post was the response to :)
Even if the trains in Tokyo are more packed (debatable, but I'll concede it for now), there is more to commuting than that. The reliability of the service, the cleanliness or the stations and carriages, the (lack of) pushing and shoving on and on the way to the platform, the temperature and ventilation of the stations and carriages etc. Tokyo wins in all these measurement.
Train congestion has been falling with the decline in population.
Also, the pandemic has really sped up adoption of either wfh, partial wfh, or commuting during “shoulder” hours instead of the peak of peak, from what I’ve heard.
When I lived in the UK, I thought 30 minute delays two days per week were the worst thing ever.
After living in Germany... British railways seem like an enterprise level SLA.
Tickets with a short expiration time (2 hours... why?), hour(s) long delays, sudden last minute platform changes (you need to use the underground passage full of people), trains just disappearing off the screen with no notice after being delayed several times (I mean, come on!), incredibly rude controllers who just seem like they really want to throw you in prison for not having a ticket (oh yeah, that's a thing, take that Brits!), shoddy rail and frequent stops in the middle of nowhere (or 100 meters from your station), trains that make the Pacers seem like Cadillacs (OK that was one time, not sure where they pulled that pos from)...
It’s bad right now. In August only 57% of German long distance trains arrived less than 6 minutes behind schedule. 23% had more than 16 minutes delay. IIRC that’s not even counting canceled stops.
Wait till you get to travel Polish trains - 120 minute delay suddenly becoming 240.
It got better as personnel seems to be more friendly than 10-15 years ago.
Train! You were lucky to have a train! We used to run on the rail, all twenty-six of us, no sitting spots, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
I caught a train in Poland once, trip to Krakow in 2006 - the train froze to the track half a mile from the station at 3am, god knows where with nothing else in sight (may not mean much, visibility was very low), so we all had to walk to the station and wait until another train happened to stop at it going the direction we wanted.
> take hundreds of trains a year giving lots of opportunities to get delayed,
The problem isn't taking lots of trains. The problem is N. About 20-50% of the trains I take are delayed, and another 20% are overcrowded due to... previously delayed or cancelled trains. If N is <10 that just menas I'm unlucky. If n > 200, that means I'm paying >£5000 a year for trains that don't work.
I based that on [1] which says in "2021-22 Q2" nationwide, 3.4% cancellations of trains were cancelled, 74.3% were within 1 minute of their scheduled arrival time, 90% were within 3 minutes and 98.9% were within 15 minutes.
Which is obviously far from perfect - but good enough that a holidaymaker visiting the UK has a good chance of not encountering any severely delayed trains.
I don’t commute for work but get equally annoyed. Off peak services are prime time for engineering works, cancellations, rail replacements (which aren’t even replacements), reduced service etc.
I used to do both on the same line (Bath to London), and it ranged from so egregiously expensive that a small group of us who needed to travel looked into chartering a helicopter as potentially cheaper, to a very pleasant and very cheap trip. All depended on whether you were going on a weekend or not.
Even a first class ticket is not a guarantee of a seat on a weekday morning…
From the looks of it, this chap was travelling around in first class. Which would probably give a slightly different impression of train travel... I suspect he also wasn't travelling at peak times when trains are at their busiest and most unpleasant.
To some extent, I agree that trains get a lot of criticism, and only some of it is deserved. But some of that criticism is very deserved...
And travelling around with the sort of budget that can consider first class and a willingness to book tickets at suitable times (and comparing prices with international sleeper trains in the rest of Europe!) completely misses why British commuters paying 20%+ of their after tax income for an annual rail pass into London consider it expensive.
I've posted this before: a monthly season ticket comparison from 2017 for UK and Continental Europe. The price differences between UK and other countries are stark:
- UK: Luton to London St. Pancras (35 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £387
- UK: Liverpool Lime Street to Manchester Piccadilly (32 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £292
- Germany: Dusseldorf to Cologne (28 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £85
- France: Mantes-la-Jolie to Paris (34 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £61
- Italy: Anzione to Rome (31 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £61
- Spain: Aranjuez to Madrid (31 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £75
> UK workers on average salaries will spend 14% of their income on a monthly season ticket from Luton to London (£387), or 11% from Liverpool to Manchester (£292).
> By contrast, similar commutes would cost passengers only 2% of their incomes in France, 3% in Germany and Italy, and 4% in Spain.
I checked the German rates recently and I wish that were still true. The ticket for going between Dusseldorf and Cologne train stations with intercity or regional trains is 175 GBP (146 if you book for the whole year). The one for regional trains only but including transport within the two cities is 269 (216) GBP.
I can add an extra data point for a country on the continent.
Switzerland: £327 a month with an annual commitment, unlimited use of the swiss rail network, local buses/metros/trams/boats etc, with the exception of mountain tourism railways.
I pay £8 for a 13 mile (~20 minute) train ride, 3 days a week.
Quick maths:
8*3 = £24 per week
24*4 = £96 per month
96*12 = £1152 per year
Which is about 4% of my annual income.
If I would take the train everyday, it would be about 6%. On top of that I also make up about 2.5 miles by foot every single day, to save on bus fares or even worse, cabs.
> UK workers on average salaries will spend 14% of their income on a monthly season ticket from Luton to London (£387), or 11% from Liverpool to Manchester (£292).
these figures are deliberately misleading (well... it is the TUC)
they're using the average UK salary
not the average London or Manchester salary, which are both quite considerably higher (London is almost 100% more)
The median should probably be used - the trains are much more likely to be used by people at the lower end of the wage scale. Charles may live in London and make ungodly income, but he’s unlikely to be found on the train.
I don't think anyone commutes from the Home Counties to a job at Pret. People on lower income still live in London, just in not as great housing. People on the train are people who can afford the choice of a luxury of a home in a village or the countryside instead of London.
The "Stockbroker Belt" is a thing, and Sir Humphrey used to commute in from Haslemere (if only fictionally, but I'm sure he was based on real examples).
My old commute into London was £3,660 per year - standard class. Pretty close to 20% of my net at the time. Plenty of people do it because big cities are where the opportunities are.
And that's not necessarily out of line. Where I live outside Boston which is within a (long--about 90 minute) commute into the city, commuter rail passes (including subway/bus) + parking at commuter rail station would run you about $6,000 per year.
But the point of comparison most people are making isn't with the infamously public-transport-averse USA, it's with countries in Europe where rail travel is state run and heavily subsidised (and the house price savings from living further up the line are smaller)
Season ticket from not that far from Brighton is the best part of £5k a year. My good friend who commutes from there earns £40k before tax from his job in London. So I reckon some people pay 20 percent or more if they have a job they can only do in London, and for various reasons cannot living in London.
Or £8,800 if you choose the "Great Northern and Thameslink" only one rather than the "Any Permitted" one. The former lets you travel on the same services as the latter as well as intercity services operated by LNER. They are somewhat quicker of course by virtue of not stopping anywhere after Peterborough (if they even stop there in the first place!), but as Thameslink services continue through London instead of terminating at King's Cross their slower time to get to King's Cross can pay off with a shorter overall journey by virtue of not having to change trains (for a number of people, this can also mean not needing to pay for the tube either - bringing it down to £7,388 year).
Now undoubtedly £7,388 a year is a significant chunk of cash. But to be clear, Peterborough is very much on the edge of the commuter belt at 60 miles from London. A more typical 'commuter belt' origin on that route would be somewhere like Stevenage, Welwyn or Hatfield - which come in at £4,224/year, £3,300/year and £3,076/year respectively.
Commuting from Peterborough would be absolutely insane. You can't convince me you can't find cheaper housing between London and Peterborough. That radius has got to be the majority of the UK's housing stock?
Peterborough is a commute of around an hour, was a designated New Town for precisely that reason and tops most people's list of least expensive London commuter towns to actually live in.
Sure, you can pay a mere £4k per annum for your rail ticket coming in from somewhere like Stevenage, but then you have to find a mortgage lender that will let you borrow another £100k (and won't have a more exciting locality or fancier house to show for it)
Yes, we're talking about Peterborough, the city whose main attraction is fast trains to Kings Cross in 47 minutes and slower ones around 1hr 10 combined with relatively affordable housing for southeast England. I take it you're not familiar with the place or the line (tbf you haven't missed much...)
It's about the same latitude as Birmingham but due north of London so the distance is a lot less. The property in the fens around is affordable and often comes with land; it is absolutely a commuter station.
It's something people might do for a short period, or while looking for a better option.
A friend commuted from Coventry to London for a year. She moved there with her husband, but had one more year to go on her PhD -- using the labs at the university was essential, but there was also plenty of work that could be done on the train.
I’ve encountered people who commute daily from Worcester - 2hrs from Paddington. (One guy in particular used to get in at the end seat of the quiet carriage and snore quietly all the way into London.)
In the US at least that would get close to the cost of a small car with insurance and gas. However I assume the equivalent in UK would be more especially considering parking and intercity fees.
Sounds like the commuter rail is pricing itself just below the cost of a car.
Many more than that. Pre-pandemic Bath was quite busy in the mornings. Only 75 mins from Paddington, good comfortable trains, and always a seat, so you could work. What's not to like
10% is very believable. 20% isn’t implausible, e.g. Cambridge to London is £6k which would be about 20% of your net income if you were employed earning £40k (and putting nothing into salary sacrifice for pension).
Plenty of young people live in London on that sort of income but it’s obviously more difficult to make it work if you want to live alone or with more space for eg a family and I guess this is a big reason for people wanting to live outside the city. Though Cambridge is a slightly weird option there: the town is expensive and so are the tickets.
A funny quirk of the UK train system is that if you know what you are doing you can get first class upgrade for I think it was £5 on some of the major routes like Edinburgh to London, The author talks about the price differences with advance tickets so it seems like they did their research and didnt necessarily travel expensively
He mentions eating a hot meal in first class, he also has a picture of Trans Pennine Express first class seats. There's two pictures of hot meals. I'm leaning towards mostly first class tickets.
Yeah it can be affordable, but it doesn't give a representative view of train travel...
The author of this post seemed to have struck gold with the trains he went on. This entire summer, my train trips have been troubled with constant delays and cancellations either because of heat or the constant rail strikes.
Travelling to-and-fro Stansted by train was awful compared to taking the National Express up to the airport. The CrossCountry trains were small and crammed to the brim, I had even less leg space in the train than I did with my budget airline flight. Even sitting up completely straight, I still felt my knees rub up against the metal of the seat in front of me. The train stations and trains themselves were filthy with trash lying around. One thing that always bothers me while travelling in the UK, is how there's essentially no cell service along the whole route. You're lucky if you even get to pull up HN reliably.
I suppose it helps travelling first class - but that is not at all realistic for most people living in the UK.
> One thing that always bothers me while travelling in the UK, is how there's essentially no cell service along the whole route
And because the onboard Wi-Fi is primarily 4G/5G driven, it’s equally unreliable. I recently flew from Manchester to Toronto and the in-flight Wi-Fi was rock solid almost the entire way. Meanwhile a few weeks ago I took the train from Manchester to Euston for work and the Wi-Fi wasn’t reliable enough to get anything done.
> The CrossCountry trains were small and crammed to the brim
If it was a Voyager/Super Voyager those things are my second least favourite trains on the network*. They were built with a tilting mechanism like the Pendolinos, requiring they be vertically tapered. This makes them feel oppressive and cramped, and stops you standing up without hitting your head. The worst part is, the tilt was disabled to improve reliability, so it’s all for nought.
*My first least favourite train is the Pacer. Cursed 80s bus on rails.
CrossCountry are the pits. It’s probably not that there’s no mobile reception, it’s that their trains have a coating on the windows which effectively blocks the signals.
> You're lucky if you even get to pull up HN reliably
Funny how you say that, HN seems to be one of those sites that works well even on a really terrible WiFi (i.e. UK train WiFi - LNER/Avanti, looking at you)/data connection - mainly due to how basic it is. Shame it's only a link aggregator so the actual 'content' (other than comments) is hit/miss.
The first time I visited the UK, a train was slightly late and at the far end after I'd disembarked I noticed a man in a bowler hat, absolutely red in the face. "The train was TEN MINUTES LATE", he exclaimed at the station master. "We're still recovering from the storm", said the station master. "The storm was TWO WEEKS AGO. I can't believe you've still got trouble".
I was very impressed by this bowler hatted Thompson&Thomson character's high standards. Of course, eventually I moved to the UK to live in London, and found that he must have been disappointed very often indeed.
Yes, strategically we basically stopped investing Rail Infrastructure in the late Victorian era. So yes, everythin is very picturesque.
>In my experience, looking up schedules, booking tickets, reserving seats and travelling by train was all as straightforward as can be.
You clearly haven't ever bought a ticket. £30 please, unless you want to travel after 10am, then it'll be 25, oh wait you want to go via Reading that'll be 40. Haha, you got through the barrier tapping your oyster card? That doesn't work out here!
>Avanti West Coast and LNER are the pick of the bunch in this regard as both offer quality hot meals and free-flowing drinks in first class, including beer, wine and strong alcohol.
Yes, when you buy a train ticket the cost of a 3 bed semi, they've got some margin. The idea of traveling first class is unheard off for brits.
>5. Train travel in the UK can be expensive, but..
I live in a commuter town to London, I spend more on a single ticket to work than a months unlimited travel on German railways.
>7. Platforms are announced late
Specifically, they're announced far later than they need to be. If you see the 9:15 train to Maidenhead hasn't announced the platform yet, go have a look at the arrivals. Becuase there's almost certianly an arrival at 9:03 from Maidenhead on platform 4. Guess what.
>9. Railway employees are amazing
Yeah, brits actually know this. It's only politicians and millionaire corporate execs that don't.
>>The idea of traveling first class is unheard off for brits.
I mean, that's a weird statement to make. Every time I travel the 1st class is packed, and it's not packed with blog-writing foreign visitors. Also the 1st class upgrade can be very cheap - I've been down to London several times where the upgrade was £40 on the day of the departure. Also Newcastle-Edinburgh on the Azuma LNER train in 1st class can be had for as little as £40-50 total, did this several times too. Hardly an extravagant expense.
> You clearly haven't ever bought a ticket. £30 please, unless you want to travel after 10am, then it'll be 25, oh wait you want to go via Reading that'll be 40. Haha, you got through the barrier tapping your oyster card? That doesn't work out here!
That statement surprised me as well. Isn't "Off Peak" lingo confusing for foreign visitors? I know I used to find it annoying to have to care about that, and how there are different kinds of "Anytime" tickets that do or do not cover multiple rail networks.
> The idea of traveling first class is unheard off for brits.
Bizarre and falsifiable claim. Who do you think is in there? All foreigners? I travel first class quite often if I'm booking in advance, or if I'm travelling on the weekend - and I'm not any kind of money bags foreigner. More space to work, or if you are bringing your family.
> the Caledonian Sleeper has to be one of the railway highlights of the UK
ahh, I've really wanted to like it, but I've found it exceptionally uncomfortable each time I've used it, and also very expensive. I much prefer the sleeper trains in Thailand
> Train travel in the UK can be highly scenic
The UK really is very pretty. It's easy to forget when in countries with blockbuster scenery, but British countryside really is a joy to look at.
EDIT: one day I'd like this to be an overnight Zeppelin route, but it's never going to happen
Thank you very much! I've always disliked it. Uncomfortable, bedding is spare, and overall not that much fun. And people often tell me I'm wrong. I've only ever been twice on it and disliked it both times. I take the day trains now instead.
The Caledonian sleeper is hell on earth. I did it once. The only worse experience I had was a rotten old YHA hostel in the 90s where I stayed in a bunk room with three people with bowel disorders. And it wasn’t much worse.
I only used it twice, and it was fine. Only fine -- it's a train, not a 5 star hotel. But the bed was comfy enough, I slept OK, and the scenery in the morning was really nice.
I did it in about 2019. I shared a sleeper with a friend. Yeah, the sleeper was tight and the dining car was crowded. But getting on after dinner in London and arriving in Edinburgh certainly beat flying IMO (as a tourist).
I'm surprised no one (including TFA) has mentioned Trainline yet, as it addresses a lot of the issues mentioned in the comments here:
- buy tickets (with easy explanations of when/where they're valid)
- see which platform a train will depart from/arrive at
- check delays
- see walking times between platforms
- bus connections info
- handles refunds
- etc.
It works across Europe (elsewhere, I'm not sure), but in my experience it's got the most functionality within the UK.
The app itself is fantastic too. I'm not exaggerating when I say it is one of my favourite pieces of software - it does 1 thing, and does it super well. It's fast: no fluff, no ads. Few apps on my phone are like that anymore.
Nobody I know uses that app. They charge way higher admin and booking fees than the alternatives.
Trainline adds a fee to every ticket sold, apps like TrainPal do the same things as Trainline (book tickets, check delays, see platform, walking times, etc), but only charge a fee if they get you the ticket cheaper than buying it from the station. So, including the fee, the price you pay is still less. And it find way better split-ticket deals than Trainline does.
the fee is usually less than £1. Every single person I know in the UK that travels via train uses it. I wish it didn't fall to a private institution to provide what is a fairly basic service, but I think the fee shouldn't deter people from using it, especially considering they don't even charge it in a lot of cases. Booking tickets directly with a ToC is a terrible experience.
Having both traveled across the country and throughout Greater London on trains, it is actually really convenient. London is its own kind of beast with the tube/overground, but throughout the rest of the country its definitely pleasant. Going through London during peak hours, dealing with trains randomly stopping midway through a journey with a packed carriage, dealing with anti-social teens, or traveling in the middle of summer in the tube isn't super fun. But on the other hand, going through the countryside on a long distance train like going up to Scotland is great; I basically just watched the views go by for 4 or so hours.
That all being said, I can totally see daily commuting by train being the absolutely most miserable thing.
> London is its own kind of beast with the tube/overground
To do well in London you really have to know the city (or at least the areas around your start/end points).
Especially as you get towards the centre of London, there are lots of opportunities for "cheating" (i.e. getting out and walking is much more efficient than going to your actual destination station, or, worse, changing trains).
If you want to go that extra step, memorising the tube map (or at least the central areas) also helps because then you can consider your re-routing options based on the actual live status of the tube (I say "actual status" because London Underground ALWAYS lie about the actual status .... i.e. they will always declare "good service" until they really can't avoid admitting the truth, by which time the service is truly up the spout)
As a London resident I find the app Citymapper pretty invaluable for making public transport decisions, it makes good use of both “shortcuts” and current conditions on the line to give pretty accurate results. Worth downloading if you visit (it’s also available in other major cities but I don’t know if it works equally well).
> The UK has a hybrid model which is also in use in countries like Germany, which means that seat reservations can be made on many trains but aren’t compulsory.
> This optional seat reservation system is so much better as it means that trains can technically never sell out and you can always hop on board of a certain service.
The UK system is starting to move away from this "get up and go" model, unfortunately.
A number of train operators are now setting the "Reservations are mandatory" flag on their services in the timetable data, which means that online journey planners cannot sell walk-up tickets if there is not seat reservation availability (or indeed, if reservations have not yet opened which is increasingly the case for west-coast services until very close to the travel date), even if it would be possible to buy that same ticket from a machine at the station or in-person at a ticket office and it would be perfectly valid for said service.
This is the problem I recently encountered with Avanti West Coast in particular, so often that I am kind of astounded that the author didn't hit it once and instead praises Avanti.
Avanti's ticketing system would flatly refuse to sell me an "anytime single" for virtually any route. I had to scroll through and finally find one that claimed to have a seat reservation available and then I could use the actual train I wanted--which, I might add, had buckets of unreserved seats. Once I got griped at by a conductor for taking the "wrong" train when he missed that I had any anytime (1st!) ticket, which was the only thing their own booking engine would sell me.
This month, every Avanti West Coast train I've tried to use has been canceled, and they seem utterly incapable of running direct trains. I've seen the inside of Crewe quite a few times more than I originally intended.
(I understand that it is partially due to "industrial action"--such a nice phrase for "striking workers because they don't get paid enough"--and partially due to limited overtime by those same workers. That's, frankly, not my problem. Pay your people and run your trains.)
> even if it would be possible to buy that same ticket from a machine at the station or in-person at a ticket office and it would be perfectly valid for said service.
You can also buy a ticket which is nominally for a different train online, which will still be valid so long as it's not an advance ticket. But I agree this has bad UX.
I’m a regular train traveller in the UK. It’s a shit show especially for us hikers. Trying to navigate the mess that is different operators and ticket splits to not get utterly shafted is a nightmare.
Then half the trains go missing or are on strike suddenly.
I have got to the point I prefer the rail replacement busses.
One of the problems with British railways is that they think bank holidays are a great time to do engineering works, close lines and cause confusion and chaos. This is simply madness. On Intercity routes they are the absolute busiest days. They are populated by people who don't go on trains very often so they won't be familiar with alternative routes. People can't go any other time so can't alter their journeys to compensate. It also costs loads more money to hire people to do the work that at other times of the year.
If they closed routes during normal times, people who take the train regularly could see advanced notice saying "the train won't be available on xx days next month, please plan accordingly" and they could plan to e.g. work from home that day, take the car or a Taxi to another station and catch a train from there, find a bus or coach service, or take the Rail Replacement bus, but allowing the extra time it would take. They could be compensated with extra time on their season tickets and could appreciate the improvements in service.
> During my travels in the UK I heard lots of Brits complain about the price of train tickets.
It's that it is often cheaper and faster to drive if you are not taking a train in or out of London.
> This might surprise British readers, but I have nothing but good things to say about the reliability and punctuality of trains in the UK.
The problem is that when the train is delayed, it can end up as cancelled as they have a specific time window to fit in. Again, the comparison here would be a car. You could end up in traffic, but eventually at least you will reach your destination.
As somebody living outside of London, I have zero time for somebody complaining that the tube was 1 minute late. Try waiting several hours, just to find the train won't be coming at all.
Anyway, it is really weird to hear so much positive about the UK rail system. Any good there will likely get demolished in the coming recession and energy crisis. I have no idea how rail will still be viable during the coming rolling blackouts.
My UK rail experience is about 15 years out of date, and mostly focused on commuter trains (with some London<->Manchester travel). I rapidly discovered that timetables were artful fictions, but that if there were supposed to be 4 trains per hour on a certain run, there typically would be 4 trains...just not the ones in the timetable.
I craved a job in the Excuses Department of South-West Trains, who were responsible for announcements such as “The 19:41 train to London Waterloo will now arrive at 20:23, because of a crew member joining the train late in Portsmouth.” The creativity of these announcements was amazing.
That said, I relied on the train service while I was in the UK. I can only think of one time that it ground to a halt, during a snowstorm that paralyzed the country.
Just to counter the “mainland Europe has superior trains” kind of argument. I find the IC in the Netherlands to be old, crowded, dirty and uncomfortable.
I for one like them. They are fast and on-time. The crowd to my destinations is usually during rush hours (before 9) which is now exacerbated due to the lack of NS staff recently.
It shows a lot of technical detail, but the exciting bit is that it has the platform a train is booked to use, shown in light text, before the platform is actually confirmed, when it turns bold. Departure boards and other apps that use the standard feed only show the platform once it has been confirmed. That's obviously sensible from the point of view of crowd management and avoiding mishap, but I would often like to have a provisional idea of what to expect.
For full train nerddom, there's also https://www.opentraintimes.com/maps, which shows the data from the train describer system so you can track the position of trains down to the signal level.
Which unlike HS2 is actually open and running. Unfortunately to get it built they limited it to single-track, and run short trains on it, so inevitably it was overcrowded at peak times from day 1.
I'm sure that one can identify exceptions but I suspect that anyone doing a daily commute at rush hour on public transportation just about anywhere would find plenty to complain about.
I traveled by train around England (in many small hops, London to Newcastle to Carlisle to Portsmouth and back to London) and Germany (in a similar pattern but from Frankfurt to Berlin with a side trip north) and generally found British trains to be as reliable, more pleasant, and less crowded. Although to be fair in Germany I did have to plan my trips and in England I got the all-you-can-ride youth pass that just allowed me to hop on any train I wanted (flashpacking!).
It's a pretty nice way to travel if you don't want to go outside of the network (as soon as I had to go somewhere without a train like Richmond castle or Hadrian wall it was kind of pain). Not sure I would want to commute like that though, unlike inter-city subways whatever trains I happened to take at rush our, in either country, were not so great.
I'd wager that this person wasn't doing a lot of travelling around cities during rush hour commutes.
>I travelled quite extensively throughout Europe by train in the last three months and of all countries visited it was the UK which had the best record when it came to trains running on time as I don’t think I had one which arrived more than five minutes late.
This particularly struck me as odd, as when I used to commute by train from to Manchester just a few years ago, I tracked at least 25% of my trains as being late. The latest train was 1.5 hours late (going from Manchester), constantly being updated as being 15 minutes late... then another 15 minutes... I was about to bite the bullet and pay for a taxi as it showed up.
Only the third point isn’t valid still, and to be honest I’m not sure it was valid 17 years ago either. There are many complaints I have about the British rail system, but I’ve never had a problem booking tickets that cover multiple operating companies.
Advance tickets go on sale 12 weeks ahead of time. They start off cheap and once a certain amount is sold the price goes up. That keeps going until all advanced tickets are sold and you can only buy “anytime” tickets.
I’m sure there’s a system for how many advance tickets there are for each route, but I can’t find any reference to it.
The system is called RARS, the quotas are set by the train operating companies and there's no transparency whatsoever as to how many tickets there are available per train service/journey segment at each price point (commercially sensitive). The most you'll get is a "there's 2 tickets left", I think for all n <= 9
Advance fare tiers are also not regulated by the Govt fares increase cap, so the operators can charge what they like.
Labour commits to renationalisation of the railways. Shadow Teansport Sec:
“Labour in power will bring our railways back into public ownership as contracts expire.”
Looks like someone finally noticed there is something very wrong with John Majors railways privatization.
I am surprised that anyone has anything good to say about Scotrail, yet it seems even their terrible service wasn't enough to dampen his sunny disposition.
Scotrail is terrible. Not one of the last ~6 services I have used has gone well.
My favourite example is when my train was cancelled due to 'weather'.
It was slightly raining.
Only Scotrail could be caught off-guard by rain in Scotland.
I passed through London on my way to and from Barcelona in 2008. I've been riding public transit since I was 8 years old, but this was my first time outside the USA. Of course TFL is legendary and I absolutely fell in love at first sight with the Tube.
I took a few detours just for fun, to see different stations and have a sort of Harry Potter experience. My hotel was two blocks from Paddington Station, but I was unaware of the enormous Paddington Bear monument.
I found it totally simple to purchase tickets as soon as I'd alighted at Gatwick. I hopped on a train going into the city and I immediately began to chat with a local. We crossed a large body of water on a bridge and I did a double-take. "Was that the Thames?" Yep!
I didn't have a lot of time or destinations in London. Just a few restaurants and my hotel. But I'd arrived at Gatwick and I was departing from Heathrow, so that made for a rail adventure. I didn't venture outside the city, and I didn't ride any double-decker buses or hansom cabs.
I think I'd done a bit of research stateside before I departed for the trip. I found the route maps and station signage easy to read; of course since I'm a fluent speaker of the King's English.
I rode a few local train lines with my fiancee in Barcelona, and I'm thankful that she acted as my guide. I would've enjoyed taking an AVE to another city center, but those are far-flung in Spain!
Interestingly enough, 2008 was the year that my hometown established light rail service. When I left for Spain, there was no train in Phoenix; when I arrived home, there was daily train service running through town, and I immediately became a regular!
In Spain, by contrast, you simply cannot get a train ticket for the long distance network if you're at a commuter station, nor can you get a ticket to cover a route between two arbitrary stations if the route would combine long- and short-distance trains. You need to buy long distance and regional tickets separately, and cannot buy tickets for commuter services from outside the specific region. And they are all run by the same state-owned operator Renfe!
Meanwhile, in the UK, you can go to Stalybridge on the outskirts of Manchester and ask the ticket office for a return ticket from Edinburgh Haymarket to Bury St Edmunds and they won't bat an eyelid even though it covers God knows how many potential operators.
Note this is not in any way an example of the UK system being superior due to privatisation. The reason it works this well is because it already worked like that under British Rail.