medwaymark

Fair enough.....thats just my experience. Maybe I have been lucky & found good suppliers....

medwaymark

Although you wouldn't think it if you heard the Aussies complain about fares

Seneca21

Bristol - London day return: £159. Cheapest monthly standard Bristol > London on any route: £904.

So that's $1465 for a monthly ticket. Here it costs me under $100 for a monthly rail ticket.

JenniGee

OH commutes daily from Kent into London City - cost of a standard monthly season ticket: £345.00
Equivalent distance & travel time once we've moved to Eltham, Melbourne into the CBD - cost of a standard monthly season ticket: $73.00

Mmmm

Seneca21

$560 down to $73. What the hell do they do with the money on the UK rail networks?

bcworld

I think you've read the fare table wrong JG.

Eltham is in zone 2, so to get to the CBD you need zone 1+2...I think you're quoting just zone 2.

Zone 1 + 2 would be $169ish a month I think.

I'm in zone 1 only and pay about $110 month.

Seneca21

But $560 down to $169 is still a good deal, and this is with a collapsed sterling remember. A normal rate of 2.5 would make the saving much bigger, $862 down to $169. Again I wonder where the money goes on the British railways.

Sally Redux

To greedy shareholders.

Seneca21

That and salaries maybe. I don't know about train companies but I did read yesterday about a council chief in Kent I think who is on £310,000 per year. This is a pitiful £14,218 per month after tax. How on Earth do some people manage?

No wonder the roads are so shit there if this is where council tax is going.

bcworld

I'm not saying rail fares in the UK aren't expensive. But I'm not sure the comparison is valid.

Eltham is about a 20km train journey from the CBD. People I know living a similar distance from the city in London pay a lot less than 300 quid per month.

Sally Redux

Private Eye usually has some good exposés on things like this. They recently ran an article about rail fare rises, don't forget these companies are still pulling in more government subsidies than the old nationalised system was.

Seneca21

20 kms from Central London is Hounslow or Pinner or Barnet though - all inside the M25, so they're probably paying London Underground prices which are much more reasonable, at least they always used to be.

Seneca21

Railways started out private remember, but the mess they have made of it today is shocking. I don't know what's gone wrong, but unilt they slash prices down to what people in other countries pay they will continue to slide into disaster.

bcworld

Fares aside, I have to say the last few times I have gone through London that the system has run like clockwork & often on brand new rolling stock. They even in some cases seemed to have managed to employ decent staff to keep people moving - it was better than I remembered it.

My local station here in Melbourne doesn't even have a single information screen, in fact there isn't even a working clock in the station! We sometimes get a handwritten sandwich board up at the street advising us of today's cancellations and to go get the tram instead!

I think commuters in SE England do get a bad deal - the story in London itself is much better - you get a heck of a lot of transport infrastructure for your money.

Seneca21

Aside from night buses, which have to be experienced to be believed (at least in my part of London) I found London transport to be really good as well. Different story out in the shires though.