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I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

metro.co.uk

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Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#181

Post by yungporko »

dghughes wrote: post #168

>I decided to live on a train when I was 16 years old. My school days were behind me and the whole world was open to me. That alone is amazing. Is 16 normal in Germany or did this guy graduate years earlier than normal? Answering my own question, seems maybe they went to a "Realschule"? If I understand it correctly kind of a trade or technical school for those whose path leads into a job right away. Otherwise it's Gy…

back when i left school (2010) i was 16, there was no requirement to stay in further education in UK, so wouldn't be surprised if it was similar elsewhere. i believe it has changed in UK since then though.

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#182

Post by gspetr »

petercooper wrote: post #161
pera wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why trains are so expensive in England: when I lived in Bristol I liked to spend time in Bath, it's just a ~10 minutes ride but it costed 10 pounds each way if I remember correctly... but at least you could bring your bike for free :p

Public transport in the UK is trapped in a vicious cycle. The system is poor, so people buy cars, which means fewer people use the system, which means less investment, which means the system gets even worse, so more people buy cars. Despite all its ills, driving is, for enough people, a more pleasant experience than tackling strikes, standing on a train for two hours, or being unable to travel at certain times at all…

> or being unable to travel at certain times at all.

This is all fine and dandy until enough people decide to travel by car, and eventually there are traffic jams making you virtually unable to travel (by car) at certain times as well.

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#183

Post by _visgean »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #169
ithkuil wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he didn't pay for hey, he paid for it! They gave him an unlimited ticket in exchange for euros. You're free to say that the train company shouldn't have created an unlimited ticket but it's unfair to paint a person who uses what he legally bought as a thief.

Read the comment again - he pays for one seat, he sleeps across 3 or 4.

if they are empty what is the deal? If somebody books the ticket he will be asked to move to his seat.

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#184

Post by treme »

alismayilov wrote: post #180

By the way, student dormitory cost around ~200-300 euros per month. And semester fee costs 300 euros per semester (6months). In total, it makes 3900 euros. So, the train is not the most cost efficient solution, if you are young.

Adventure is priceless

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#185

Post by ant6n »

RamblingCTO wrote: post #121
JonChesterfield wrote: post #84

Sounds alright really. Less dystopian than living in Google's car park. Doesn't work with dog or family and I'm not sure about being stuck near train stations at destinations, folding bicycle would improve things. Not remotely surprised that he's a programmer. This is essentially living subsidised by the train company who didn't expect someone to take an unlimited train ticket quite that literally. One guy doing this…

He's not the only one though. I read about a guy that spends his whole days in trains, driving the whole day through Germany. They accounted for that, I'm sure. It just these people are in, what, the 0.000001% or something? He's subsidized by the state and other passengers, not the company.

DB Fernverkehr which sells the tickets and operates the long distance trains is not directly subsidized by the public (even if ultimately the public owns the company), by EU and German law. There may be some subsidies coming in indirectly via the infrastructure, but that would be more so the case for buses.

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#186

Post by curtisblaine »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #165
carlmr wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It just these people are in, what, the 0.000001% or something? Exactly. It's not comfortable, it's not safe and cozy, it's not that cheap that homeless people would buy the BahnCard 100 that you couldn't find some form of cohabitation for a similar price. And then there's the constant strikes as of now, so you might go days without shelter or need to pay for hotels which adds up quickly. I'd say this is a rounding e…

> it's not safe and cozy What's unsafe about it?

He sleeps in public train coaches (sometimes under the seats, if you look at his blog). This means he spends at least 6 hours a day unconscious - and vulnerable - in a public place that anyone can enter. Arguably less safe than sleeping at home behind a locked door.

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#187

Post by Zetobal »

safety1st wrote: post #114
JonChesterfield wrote: post #84

Sounds alright really. Less dystopian than living in Google's car park. Doesn't work with dog or family and I'm not sure about being stuck near train stations at destinations, folding bicycle would improve things. Not remotely surprised that he's a programmer. This is essentially living subsidised by the train company who didn't expect someone to take an unlimited train ticket quite that literally. One guy doing this…

This kid is 17. What a chad! As long as he doesn't let less interesting people beat the creative spirit out of him, he's going to go places in life. I mean he's already doing so, about 800 miles worth of places per day

Or he just dwells on this one thing for the rest of his life like many others did before him...

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#188

Post by pjc50 »

williamdclt wrote: post #159
philipwhiuk wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple, they're run by European train operators to subsidise their national networks.

> to subsidise their national networks Do you have a source? That's an extraordinary claim, the sort of thing I'd expect to find in Nigel Farage's bag of lies

"to subsidise their national networks" is a framing, but "for profit" is the simple truth of train operators in a privatized system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arriva_UK_Trains : subsidiary of DB

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C2c : subsidiary of Trenitalia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avanti_West_Coast : part owned by Trenitalia

And so on.

(Don't forget that the real profit ends up with the "train landlords", the ROSCOs: https://www.leasinglife.com/features/who-owns-the-trains-ros... ; all of them are parented in Luxembourg for tax reasons)

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#189

Post by lupire »

unglaublich wrote: post #148
627467 wrote: post #112

There are so many possible perspectives for such story but in this day and age the focus is on how much this cost. So let's talk about cost: I don't know how often he sleeps in this way[0] but clearly at £8500/year no one is discussing the externalized cost of taking up (arguably empty) seats he didn't pay for and setting the stage for future "nomads" to do the same and turning first class night trains into a substan…

People overusing their subscriptions are compensated by people underusing them.

People who exercise are overusing their share of air. People with more children are overusing their share of sunlight.

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#190

Post by ta1243 »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #84

Sounds alright really. Less dystopian than living in Google's car park. Doesn't work with dog or family and I'm not sure about being stuck near train stations at destinations, folding bicycle would improve things. Not remotely surprised that he's a programmer. This is essentially living subsidised by the train company who didn't expect someone to take an unlimited train ticket quite that literally. One guy doing this…

The marginal cost of the journey is tiny. If he didn't pay the £8500 then the trains would still run.
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