UK trains are an utter joke

Worthy said:
20 minute delays in London... meanwhile the whole rail infrastructure in the north collapsed. :D
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That was today, much better. Yesterday going from st neots to kings cross was just a raft of cancellations. Granted i still got in eventually but for 5k a year it's **** take.

Do feel for my northern brethren though.
 
Sasahara said:
Not a very fair comparison. :/

Germany in particular only has 20% more passenger kilometres, but 112% more train line. It would have to get an additional 61 Billion Passenger kilometres to add it's 79.3 for the same level of usage, :)
It might not be quite as good then.
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That's the price of investment over decades though. British Rail was underfunded and now we are paying the price.
 
Moses said:
Railways and not buses? Investing in railways disproportionately benefits richer people, whilst investing in buses helps the poorest. As I said previously,
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Invest in all areas of society, including trains and buses.

I'm a bit confused with what you're saying. The trains are total *****, are you saying we should leave them as they are? I don't think it is acceptable that a third of commuters have to stand on their journey into London. I believe this disadvantages many in this country compared to their European counterparts.

I also feel it is disgraceful the cartel that is the bus companies, which is Stagecoach in many areas. Stagecoach had a monopoly over most public transport services in the South East until they lost the SWT franchise.

So I think I agree with you on the whole but we should invest in the trains for sure.

I think fundamentally services that are for the benefit of the public, shouldn't be for profit. They should be run on the basis of peoples' needs. And besides, the trains and buses don't make money anyway, hence the subsidies. But I don't believe Virgin and co. should profit from that.

And practically, privatisation has failed to solve the problems with the trains. Subsidies are up not down (I believe subsidies have nearly doubled in real terms) and prices are up (the Tories promised they'd rise no higher than the ROI - that looks like a utopia now).

I know less about buses so forgive me for attacking that point, when this thread is about the trains after all. But thank you for making your point.
 
Moses said:
Railways and not buses? Investing in railways disproportionately benefits richer people, whilst investing in buses helps the poorest. As I said previously,
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Busses tend not to go the same distances as trains and don't remove a lot of longer distance traffic from the roads.

Ideally we should probably be doubling up most of the rail network and doing far more links between different lines, as at the moment on many parts of the network there is only one track going in each direction, with the obvious problem that all it takes is for a train to break down, or for there to be an incident on the line for vary large parts of the network to grind to a halt because thee is nowhere for the trains to go.
It's one of the reasons you get a load of delays, if one train is delayed at any point for any reason it can cause a cascade of delays for every other train that day as they have to maintain spacing in distance and time on the network for safety reasons (unlike busses where it's no problem from a safety point of view if you get 3 arrive at the bus stop within seconds).

Theoretically improvements in rail should benefit a huge number of people not just the "richer" ones, as even just taking some of the passenger traffic off the road helps everyone, and taking more of the freight traffic off helps a lot with removing heavy traffic off roads.
 
Gigabit said:
Decades of short-sightedness, as I highlighted.

Compare say Germany and the UK for two countries that had to make nearly identical decisions and yet took completely different views on things. I think it is clear which country is ahead.
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Also the Netherlands railway system is far superior to ours.
 
sneakysnail said:
This is what happens when you live ln a country where people are packed in like sardines. I intend to bail on England tbh. Screw living here in 20-30 years time, can't even imagine how crap it will be.
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Don't move to the states, it's horrible living here lol. And I'm in California! The countries 3 decades behind everyone else. The wife and I are looking at western Europe. Possibly Holland for our future living spot. Neither of us want to return to the UK.
 
itchy said:
Also the Netherlands railway system is far superior to ours.
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Tbh, even Northern Ireland's is superior. I bet not many here know that is publicly owned! I didn't.

I'm not saying privatisation or nationalisation are the answers but for me I don't see what privatisation is supposed to have achieved. It seems to inevitably create a disjointed, fragmented system which works for nobody. And the operators don't care because they make money regardless.

It seems to me you either privatise it entirely, so no subsidies and the companies fail if they run a crap service like they would in any other industry. Or you nationalise it and take the profit out. It is this halfway house that satisfies nobody.

Is anyone satisfied with the railways? I constantly hear people say "ah but you don't remember British Rail do you?". It can't be much worse than constantly late trains, expensive prices and standing for a lot of passengers. At least under BR the German Government wasn't making a profit off the back of it.
 
Gigabit said:
Is anyone satisfied with the railways? I constantly hear people say "ah but you don't remember British Rail do you?". It can't be much worse than constantly late trains, expensive prices and standing for a lot of passengers. At least under BR the German Government wasn't making a profit off the back of it.
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I'm more than satisfied with the railways. I moved to Germany in the 90s and when I returned in the mid 2000s I couldn't believe how much better the UK rail system was when I got back compared to when I left. New stock to replace the BR slam doors units and a much more comfortable experience. Recently my line has been electrified with yet more brand new trains. I get a seat every day on a 30-40 minute journey into London. Yes, it's expensive but I factored the price of commuting into the amount of money I asked for when I got my current job. 99% of my delays are caused by... Network Rail. Who owns them again?

I *do* remember BR, I used to have to use it to get to college and I was constantly late/cancelled, so much so that I couldn't reliably use it on a daily basis, which I do now. Do you commute every day on the train?

Incidentally, I went back to Germany (Munich) and the local rail system there seems to have stood still in the last 15 years, with old 60s/70s stock still on the S-Bahn and U-Bahn. They had started to replace the units when I lived there around 2000 but it looks like they ran out of money or something. Even the 'new' trains were starting to look very shabby.
 
The solution?

More cars, cheap parking, better roads.

It's not sustainable to run a rail system that can cope with the requirements that would mean for 5 days a week 80% of the volume of traffic is needed between 7am till 9am and 5pm till 7pm.

How can they buy and train enough staff and enough trains to give everyone a good service at this time when all these carriages would be empty and loss making for the other 20 hours a day?
 
sneakysnail said:
This is what happens when you live ln a country where people are packed in like sardines. I intend to bail on England tbh. Screw living here in 20-30 years time, can't even imagine how crap it will be.
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The Japanese have very busy but very clean and on time trains with a higher density of population
 
Just thought I'd share my experience, as I'm now a rail commuter. A couple of weeks ago, my office was moved from Orpington to central London, right in the city. Meaning I've had to switch a ~40 minute drive to a ~15 minute ride to the station and then 45-50 minute train ride.

For the train I get in the morning (to Cannon Street), I'm boarding at the last station before it becomes fast to London Bridge. It's busy enough that I can't get a seat, but as it's fast and doesn't keep stopping, I can plonk myself down on the floor near the doors and read a book until London Bridge. It's a 48 minute trip according to the timetable. The home commute is better - it's the reverse journey, but as I'm boarding an empty train at the start, I'm pretty much guaranteed a seat.

First couple of weeks this was fine - I miss the comfort and reliability of driving, but it's not as bad as I thought. Then on Sunday, they made a big update to the timetables which they claimed would lead to more efficient running, more trains, etc etc. But ever since they introduced these on Sunday, things has gotten markedly worse. I'm sure some of you will have seen the news about how Thameslink basically fell over on the first day of the new timetables because they hadn't scheduled enough drivers. There were no changes scheduled to my trains (except apparently cutting 7 minutes off my journey home).

Monday morning, the train I boarded was a little busier, due to cancelled services - no biggy, still found a spot on the floor. In the evening, absolute chaos. "Track connection failure" at Hither Green (which I hear was due to a lightning strike) basically brought London Bridge to a standstill. I swapped trains to a slow Thameslink service which then left the station late because they were due to switch drivers and the replacement was late, apparently. I ended up getting home two hours late. Fair enough, cant account for emergencies like that.

Tuesday morning - morning train arrives with 8 coaches instead of 12. Packed in like sardines, so instead of being able to sit on the floor, I have to hang off a rail for the entire ride - which, for some reason, slowed to a jogging pace for the last half of the journey. Tuesday evening - I was looking forward to getting home 7 minutes earlier due to the proposed new timetable. Result? We got in 10 minutes later than the original time because we were stuck behind another train for the whole journey. This morning, train was busier than usual, although I managed to find a spot on the floor.

So to sum up, commuting by train wasn't too bad, until they changed the timetables to introduce new services and make things better. I'm really hoping this is just teething trouble with the new changes, but given the amount of time they've been planning all this and the amount of effort they've put into advertising it, you would have thought that they might have sorted the basics such as making sure they had enough staff for the new trains. It's things like this which make commuting by train frustrating, especially when you're paying through the nose for it. For me, it's been an annoyance, but for others, who have had services cancelled outright, it can cause chaos.
 
I catch the train every day into Manchester centre. It's 2 stops and £6.70 return for a 10 minute journey.

I haven't had a seat in 4 years as the train is already over crowded when it gets to my station.

50% of the time not everyone can get on at my stop as the carriages are already full. 25% of the time no one can get on.
 
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