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Train Travel in the UK: A Foreigner’s Perspective

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Re: Train Travel in the UK: A Foreigner’s Perspective

#81

Post by notahacker »

bombcar wrote: post #71
notahacker wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Annual season ticket to London from Peterborough, at the edge of the commuter belt with relatively affordable housing is £9,500 (including Tube) That's 20% of your after tax income if you're on more than double the median UK salary

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.

Commuting into central London by car is the sort of thing that makes using the British railway system sound appealing

Re: Train Travel in the UK: A Foreigner’s Perspective

#82

Post by timthorn »

chrisseaton wrote: post #80
notahacker wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fanci…

Are we talking about the same Peterborough? It's north of Birmingham?

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.

Re: Train Travel in the UK: A Foreigner’s Perspective

#83

Post by notahacker »

chrisseaton wrote: post #80
notahacker wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fanci…

Are we talking about the same Peterborough? It's north of Birmingham?

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...)

Re: Train Travel in the UK: A Foreigner’s Perspective

#84

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

johnwalkr wrote: post #67
dustedcodes wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be trolling. In London even during the rush hour you get a seat when you are disabled or pregnant. In Tokyo you end up pregnant when you enter the train: https://noisebreak.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/oshiya.jpg

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 Euro…

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.

Re: Train Travel in the UK: A Foreigner’s Perspective

#85

Post by dan-robertson »

blibble wrote: post #16
notahacker wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 doubt many people are paying 20%+ of net income to commute in you'd have to be on minimum wage and a reasonable distance out (in which case you might as well just work locally) 10% however I can believe

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.

Re: Train Travel in the UK: A Foreigner’s Perspective

#86

Post by Stevvo »

alias_neo wrote: post #74
imnotlost wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Tokyo subway during rush hour is anything but heaven.

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 oft…

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.

Re: Train Travel in the UK: A Foreigner’s Perspective

#87

Post by michaelt »

SilverBirch wrote: post #34
michaelt wrote: post #4

> 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…

> 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 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.

[1] https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/popular-statistics/how-many-tr...

Re: Train Travel in the UK: A Foreigner’s Perspective

#88

Post by benbristow »

GOATS- wrote: post #54

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…

> 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.

Re: Train Travel in the UK: A Foreigner’s Perspective

#89

Post by jefftk »

lol768 wrote: post #43
Mordisquitos wrote: post #33

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 p…

> 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 ;)

For those of us less familiar with the British rail network: why would Denton to Manchester Piccadilly be a challenge to book a ticket for?

Re: Train Travel in the UK: A Foreigner’s Perspective

#90

Post by ClumsyPilot »

chrisseaton wrote: post #72
bombcar wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> people at the lower end of the wage scale 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.

> 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

And spend 3 hours a day on a hellish commute 5 days a week?

Thats not luxury, that's torture.

I do know folls on lower end salaries that commute far, its not rare.

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