The car is still king! Ridiculous train fares make them look like absolute bargains
When I'm not happily driving cars, I'm a grudging train passenger who's regularly ripped off, let down or disillusioned by this much-hyped strike-prone public transport. The customer experience is so underwhelming that my confidence in, and respect for, Britain's heavily subsidised rail industry has rarely – if ever – been lower. Advertisement - Article continues below
I'm not sure if it's me giving up on the train or the train giving up on me. Either way, the 'alternative to the car' is as implausible now as it was in the nineties, when notoriously hypocritical Transport Secretary John Prescott (a user of two Jaguars) told me to tell you, dear reader, that the train would soon take over as the preferred mode of transport for the average Brit. This was as blatantly untrue then as it is now, not least because the cost of rail travel is exorbitant.
Travel from, say, Cardiff to Aberdeen and the standard single/one-way fare is from £285.50 – more than many flights from the UK to the Far East. People in central London doing short journeys can pay up to £15 per mile. In the Stratford quarter of the capital, passengers can pay up to £2.21 per minute on the fastest trains. A standard annual season ticket from Ebbsfleet, Kent, to St Pancras, 20 miles and minutes up the line, costs £6,000-plus. Add £1,815 for a yearly parking pass and an extra £2,000 for tube or taxi fares and we're talking £10,000 or more per annum. That's enough to buy a used car, refuel petrol tanks for several years, or charge an electric car at home for well over a decade.
If tickets weren't so prohibitively expensive and responsible for preventing freedom of movement among low-paid workers, students, shoppers, holidaymakers and cash-strapped folk seeking jobs, social lives or both, they'd be comical. But current Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander can still deliver some rail-related hilarity – as she proved with her performance on 25 May, when her Government began renationalising rail services.
'Today marks a new dawn for our railways,' she enthused during her away-day on the first renationalised train from London's Waterloo station. Further promises included 'moving away from 30 years of failing passengers', who now get 'higher standards'. She has to be the funniest Transport Sec cum stand-up comedian since Two Jags Prescott.
How so? Because her highly symbolic train ride couldn't be completed by, er, train. It took her four times longer than scheduled. And it was completed only after passengers were embarrassingly turfed off and ordered to complete their journeys in dreaded rail-replacement buses which, in my experience, are even more unpleasant (if that's possible) than iffy trains or railway lines.
If Britain's highest-ranking transport politician believes that this latest fiasco and wallet-busting fares represent 'higher standards', she's more out of her depth than I feared.
Trains too expensive in your area? We can help you find a great deal on a new car instead ...
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
20 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Palestine Action are not terrorists. The RAF is just grossly incompetent
One can see why the Government is proposing to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. That anyone could enter the RAF base at Brize Norton, one of the most significant we have, and smear red paint on planes was deeply humiliating. Once, the commanding officer of the base would have resigned immediately; the security officer would have been moved to the cookhouse, if he was lucky; and the Defence Secretary would have offered his resignation. But no-one resigns these days, so branding the intruders 'terrorists', as if they were some ruthless group trained to outwit military professionals, with death and destruction their aim, makes them sound all the more formidable, and their victims all the more helpless. It is an unconvincing cover for the sort of grotesque incompetence that characterises our public sector and public services. That was the RAF; the next day it was the Metropolitan Police unable to prevent an epidemic of daylight robbery on the streets of the West End; the next NHS maternity services that humiliate and degrade women giving birth. What Palestine Action, however organised and bonkers and loathsome they are, did was not terrorism: it was vandalism. You might as well call football hooligans terrorists, or the groups of louts who on hot summer evenings riot because they are bored and the police upset them by seeking to restore order. Terrorism is a truly abhorrent, lethal, wicked and repulsive thing: chucking paint over planes and ridiculing the RAF and the Government in the process does not even begin to compare with it. This devaluation of a word with a precise meaning is highly dangerous. Lord (Toby) Young, in his excellent work for the Free Speech Union, has disclosed that Prevent – the increasingly preposterous, Left-leaning body that tries to stop terrorism at its roots – has done research that suggests 'red flags' for spotting potential far-right terrorists are people who like, among other things, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, GK Chesterton's poems, The Bridge On the River Kwai, The Dam Busters and Yes, Minister. Where do I give myself up? Many of us remember real terrorism, perpetrated by real terrorists: the Birmingham and Guildford Bombings; the Hyde Park Bombings; murders in Manchester, both by the IRA in 1992 and 1996 and, a generation later, an Islamic extremist who killed 22 at the city's Arena in 2017; the massacre on 7/7, which killed 52 innocent people in 2005; and if that's not enough, Lockerbie. I could go on. Does all that utter horror compare with exposing the pitiful security at Brize Norton and slapping paint on planes? Of course not. This seemed to start in 2016, after the abominable murder of Jo Cox, the Labour MP, by Thomas Mair, a recluse and weirdo unknown to the authorities. He was rapidly branded a 'terrorist' by politicians when it became clear he had a deeply unhealthy obsession with the far-right and its doctrines. He was a member of no terrorist organisation. What he did was appalling, but he was no more a terrorist than any politically-motivated psychopath acting alone. Ms Cox's murder came days before the Brexit vote. Those who branded Mair a 'terrorist' (and the authorities rapidly followed suit) were surely not trying to associate him with the Brexit movement – were they? On Friday, four people were arrested over the Brize Norton incident. If convicted, they must suffer exemplary punishment. However, I hope the Government accepts its responsibilities for such pathetic security. And I also hope that in future it reserves the term 'terrorist' for those who really merit it, rather than diluting it for idiotic troublemakers or lethal misfits.
The Sun
35 minutes ago
- The Sun
PM snubs call to axe powerful No10 chief Morgan McSweeney after welfare backlash
THE PM'S powerful chief of staff Morgan McSweeney is 'not going anywhere' No10 declared - despite calls for him to be sacked over the welfare fiasco. Keir Starmer is battling to shore up his grip on power after being forced to massively water down benefits cuts in the latest screeching U-turn. 4 4 4 Rebel Labour MPs blame Mr McSweeney for the row and had demanded the PM sack the senior aide as part of a 'regime change' in No10. One rumour circulating among a small and well connected group of Labour figures suggested Mr McSweeney was fed up with No10 and wanted to leave. He was planning to return to Labour HQ to lead the party's campaigns and elections team - heading up the fight to beat Reform in 2029, according to a source close to No10. But last night Downing Street insisted the PM's Svengali is going nowhere. A No10 source said: 'Tittle tattle about a change to chief of staff is uninformed nonsense. 'He isn't going anywhere.' Ministers are confident they will get their benefits legislation over the line on Tuesday after 126 Labour MPs tried to derail plans. But they are braced for a significant rebellion with lefty MPs plotting a fresh bid to try and kill the bill. 'It's a mutinous atmosphere,' one Labour MP said. 'There could be 70 of us still against this legislation.' 4 One Government insider said: 'MPs are furious because they feel like they weren't being listened to. The question is, can No10 put that anger back in the box?' The climbdown over benefits and a U-turn on winter fuel means Chancellor Rachel Reeves must find £4.5billion. A Labour MP fumed: 'We can't keep making these U-turns every time we make a big decision. It's so expensive.' Helen Whately Shadow Pensions Secretary Every day it becomes clearer that this is a government without a plan and without any idea about how to run the country. Welfare is one of the most important challenges facing Britain. But still, Keir Starmer has no answers. The chickens of his deeply incompetent time in office are coming home to roost. He is being held hostage in Number 10 by the Parliamentary Labour Party. Having been forced into yet another humiliating U-turn, it is clear he is no longer in control. His authority is completely shot. That's because socialist Labour MPs don't believe in lower spending. Ever since Labour took office, they have been itching to spend more. From day one, they handed out billion-pound bungs to the union barons who bankroll their party. But that is not what the situation requires. After the pandemic, there has been a drastic expansion of people dependent on the welfare state, and it is set to reach boiling point. With 2,000 people being signed off work for good a day, spending on sickness benefits is set to rise to £100 billion by 2030. We cannot afford to support a country the size of Panama on benefits. But even so, this week's omnishambles makes clear Labour MPs are not comfortable with the tighter spending this desperate situation requires. Labour's changes would have seen this dented by £5 billion. It sounds like a lot, but in the context of £100 billion it is a drop in the ocean. We need our government to be a lot more ambitious on welfare spending, not less. What we need is a focus on getting young people into work. Labour has made that harder too, by destroying jobs and opportunities for people across the country. If they can't even deliver this paltry plan paltry for savings from a spiralling welfare bill, we don't have a chance. Britain deserves better. Diane Abbott said Sir Keir should be more like Tony Blair and take the left seriously. In a sign of more rows to come, she told BBC Radio 4: 'Starmer and his people thought they could dismiss Labour MPs, well they know differently now.' In a speech to Welsh Labour on Saturday the PM said fixing the 'broken' welfare system must be done in a 'Labour way'.
The Sun
an hour ago
- The Sun
Most women don't feel safe walking alone at night, poll finds
MOST women do not feel safe walking alone at night, a damning poll has found. 75 per cent said they feel unsafe at night, while 27 per cent said they do not feel safe walking along in the day. Only a third of women feel safe using public transport at night, compared to nearly 60 per cent of men who feel safe. Half of Londoners feel unsafe using public transport at night, according to the poll by Merlin Strategy. The survey of 2,000 adults last week also found 23 per cent of Brits say Nigel Farage's Reform UK would be the best party at handling crime. 20 per cent say the Conservatives and 19 per cent say Labour. Although the Tories were the preferred party to deal with the issue among women. Dr Lawrence Newport, director of campaign group Crush Crime which commissioned the poll, said: 'These results are extremely concerning. 'Governments have given up on voters - they've given up on capturing and prosecuting the criminals that harass and ruin our public spaces. 'When only six per cent of women feel safe walking home at night, government needs to react. 'No one should feel unsafe in their local areas - the streets should be owned by the people of this country, not by criminals.'
