stonerblue
Well-Known Member
I once travelled from Nice to Manchester using mainly trains and it cost me the price of a single from Stockport to Piccadilly.
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Railway system in this country
- Thread starter Blue Smarties
- Start date
tidyman said:hilts said:Anyone who thinks a passenger should actively seek out a guard or look for a vending machine to purchase a ticket lives in cloud cuckoo land, in my experience they leave the station unmanned after peak time, a lot of guards cannot be arsed to issue tickets and i have walked out of piccadilly tons of times without being asked for my ticket
The amount of money lost must be enormous
A few people could be in for a shock soon. As they are bringing in an £80 standard fine for people caught traveling without a ticket, when they have had an opportunity to buy one.
cheaper than the fricking ticket quite often
I want to travel on the train not buy it ffs
Pieblue said:That might be interesting as there are no laws that say you have to buy a ticket only statutes or regulations which are only enforcable if you contract by giving your name when requested.
They've been issuing penalty fares down South for years and I'm sure if there was a legal way of avoiding them, someone will have found it.
I'm no legal expert but my understanding is that railway by-laws are as enforceable as any other law and by entering railway property, you legally speaking, have agreed to comply to them.<br /><br />-- Sun Jan 06, 2013 1:16 pm --<br /><br />
Balti said:tidyman said:hilts said:Anyone who thinks a passenger should actively seek out a guard or look for a vending machine to purchase a ticket lives in cloud cuckoo land, in my experience they leave the station unmanned after peak time, a lot of guards cannot be arsed to issue tickets and i have walked out of piccadilly tons of times without being asked for my ticket
The amount of money lost must be enormous
A few people could be in for a shock soon. As they are bringing in an £80 standard fine for people caught traveling without a ticket, when they have had an opportunity to buy one.
cheaper than the fricking ticket quite often
I want to travel on the train not buy it ffs
I'm not talking about gibbing to London or Edinburgh. It's a local thing to clamp down on the sort of free journeys people have been talking about on this thread and people paying short by claiming to have traveled from a nearer station than they actually have.
It won't take many £80 rides from Stockport to Manchester for people to suddenly find the ticket office, I wouldn't imagine.
ifwecouldjust......
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 11 Jan 2011
- Messages
- 503
tidyman said:ifwecouldjust...... said:(Sale to Bury St Edmunds) First Class. Even with advance booking the price was over £400
I think you were either mistaken or chatting shit.
I think that if you check this morning an Anytime first class return from Manchester to London is£440 then from London to Bury St Edmunds is £139.
Total of £579
FFS thats why people go by car
ifwecouldjust...... said:tidyman said:ifwecouldjust...... said:(Sale to Bury St Edmunds) First Class. Even with advance booking the price was over £400
I think you were either mistaken or chatting shit.
I think that if you check this morning an Anytime first class return from Manchester to London is£440 then from London to Bury St Edmunds is £139.
Total of £579
FFS thats why people go by car
Well if you want to find the dearest possible way of making a journey, then I'm not disagreeing you could pay more than £400. But you claimed that price was with advanced bookings not anytime.
The recognised route is via Peterborough and it's about £80 for a return.
stonerblue
Well-Known Member
Good read here;
Liberal Democrat under-secretary of state for transport Norman Baker must struggle to know what to say sometimes. He's in a difficult position: part of a government many of whose policies he probably disagrees with, and not in charge of his own bit of it. And, even at the best of times (which, the overwhelming consensus tells us, is not now), transport is a subject which elicits more complaint than praise. People are vocal in their hatred of traffic jams, trains that are crowded or late or expensive – or crowded, late and expensive – bus services that are irregular and cycle lanes that are basically a bit of pavement repainted to fulfil some sort of quota and only result in the cyclists, after years of maltreatment from cars and lorries, taking it out on pedestrians in what I like to call a "cycle of abuse". We are apt to blame politicians for these things. We are less apt to praise them after a pleasant train journey or a surprisingly clear bit of M25. People notice the cones but are bad at spotting the no cones.
So it must be tricky for Norman Baker to know what to say. Particularly on a day, like last Wednesday, when there's been a big, above-inflation hike in rail fares. He must have been worried that he might say the wrong thing – something that would make things worse – so presumably there was a lot of thought and discussion between him and his aides before he decided to go with: "We're not doing too bad."
It didn't go down too good – largely because it's so obviously incorrect (factually as well as grammatically). Britain's railway network is by far the most expensive in Europe, incredibly overcrowded and not very fast. It is a crap railway network, on which millions of us glumly rely, where the season tickets have such astronomical and inexplicable price tags you'd think they were modern art – and certainly the 7.44am Henley-on-Thames to Paddington service is more crowded than the trendiest private view, even if it doesn't have quite the same buzz.
I'm not sure what Baker should have said instead, and of course he had to say something – "being available for comment when rail fares go up" is at the top of an under-secretary of state for transport's job description, along with "being available for comment when there's been a train crash due to poorly maintained safety equipment". So maybe he should have said: "At least there hasn't been a train crash!" But where does that leave him come the next train crash? "I hope it will come as some comfort to the families of the dead that their loved ones are no longer being overcharged for travel."
Obviously what he can't say is: "Look, if you were happier to pay more tax, the railways would be cheaper and better – that's how other countries like France manage it. There's no magic Mediterranean rail aptitude like there is for having a lunchtime drink without wanting to get pissed." That would lead to people talking about the waste in government and why money currently spent on Trident or bureaucracy or benefits couldn't be used instead – and to other people complaining that they don't use railways and why can't the subsidy go towards roads, or off fuel duty, or to maintain their local museum – and to a general awakening of our ongoing national dividing-up-the-bill discussion in which the middle classes moan about having to pay for the unemployed's starter while the super-rich magnanimously make a contribution towards the mineral water.
The main point Baker was trying to make was, as he told BBC Radio 5 Live: "Once you take the basket of fares, include early advance and off-peaks, we are not nearly as expensive as has been presented." In other words, once you factor in the cost of tickets that no one wants, the picture is not so bleak. As Baker said: "You could argue that the people who are travelling in the rush hour are using the premium product and therefore ought to pay something which reflects that premium product which they are buying." By "the premium product", I presume he means the early morning smell of a stranger's armpit.
As well as putting a premium on premium product, he also conceded that "walk-on fares" were expensive. That means tickets for people who haven't planned ahead – who've just gone to a railway station and got on a train without scouring websites months in advance to spot bargains. They're a slow-moving target, those guys (particularly after a signal failure). If you haven't got your shit together to buy a ticket in advance, what are your chances of getting it together to complain about pricing? The number of lobbyists campaigning in the interests of the unprepared is zero.
Most of us seem to have accepted the notion that, post-privatisation, there is no longer a fixed price for a particular train journey – that the cost must necessarily vary according to how much the train operator thinks it can extort at time of purchase. If you're buying it on the day, or even on the train, they've got you over a barrel (not literally – many of the seats are less comfortable than that). Maybe this is just an expression of market forces, although this is still a market heavily subsidised by the state, but it has always seemed to me like a tax on spontaneity. A railway station is no longer a place of possibility – where hundreds of destinations flicker on the departures board to tempt you. It's just the way to work, or the place you go for long pre-arranged journeys. Your pre-bought internet tickets are the papers that allow you to travel, like in – just to get totally over-dramatic for a second – Hitler's Russia.
Those who plan ahead get ahead – that's the rule. It is the wise, conscientious, evolutionarily sound approach to life. It's true for bees, for squirrels and for humans. But do our various railway companies have to contribute further to the woes of the slapdash? Anyone organised enough to book a ticket months in advance – to have all their movements so precisely planned – will surely die rich in any case. Does it really help society for someone like that to have their travel costs subsidised by forgetful idiots and spendthrift romantics? But even Norman Baker's spin doctor isn't stupid enough to stick up for them.
David Mitchell's autobiography, Back Story, is out now
Article history
Liberal Democrat under-secretary of state for transport Norman Baker must struggle to know what to say sometimes. He's in a difficult position: part of a government many of whose policies he probably disagrees with, and not in charge of his own bit of it. And, even at the best of times (which, the overwhelming consensus tells us, is not now), transport is a subject which elicits more complaint than praise. People are vocal in their hatred of traffic jams, trains that are crowded or late or expensive – or crowded, late and expensive – bus services that are irregular and cycle lanes that are basically a bit of pavement repainted to fulfil some sort of quota and only result in the cyclists, after years of maltreatment from cars and lorries, taking it out on pedestrians in what I like to call a "cycle of abuse". We are apt to blame politicians for these things. We are less apt to praise them after a pleasant train journey or a surprisingly clear bit of M25. People notice the cones but are bad at spotting the no cones.
So it must be tricky for Norman Baker to know what to say. Particularly on a day, like last Wednesday, when there's been a big, above-inflation hike in rail fares. He must have been worried that he might say the wrong thing – something that would make things worse – so presumably there was a lot of thought and discussion between him and his aides before he decided to go with: "We're not doing too bad."
It didn't go down too good – largely because it's so obviously incorrect (factually as well as grammatically). Britain's railway network is by far the most expensive in Europe, incredibly overcrowded and not very fast. It is a crap railway network, on which millions of us glumly rely, where the season tickets have such astronomical and inexplicable price tags you'd think they were modern art – and certainly the 7.44am Henley-on-Thames to Paddington service is more crowded than the trendiest private view, even if it doesn't have quite the same buzz.
I'm not sure what Baker should have said instead, and of course he had to say something – "being available for comment when rail fares go up" is at the top of an under-secretary of state for transport's job description, along with "being available for comment when there's been a train crash due to poorly maintained safety equipment". So maybe he should have said: "At least there hasn't been a train crash!" But where does that leave him come the next train crash? "I hope it will come as some comfort to the families of the dead that their loved ones are no longer being overcharged for travel."
Obviously what he can't say is: "Look, if you were happier to pay more tax, the railways would be cheaper and better – that's how other countries like France manage it. There's no magic Mediterranean rail aptitude like there is for having a lunchtime drink without wanting to get pissed." That would lead to people talking about the waste in government and why money currently spent on Trident or bureaucracy or benefits couldn't be used instead – and to other people complaining that they don't use railways and why can't the subsidy go towards roads, or off fuel duty, or to maintain their local museum – and to a general awakening of our ongoing national dividing-up-the-bill discussion in which the middle classes moan about having to pay for the unemployed's starter while the super-rich magnanimously make a contribution towards the mineral water.
The main point Baker was trying to make was, as he told BBC Radio 5 Live: "Once you take the basket of fares, include early advance and off-peaks, we are not nearly as expensive as has been presented." In other words, once you factor in the cost of tickets that no one wants, the picture is not so bleak. As Baker said: "You could argue that the people who are travelling in the rush hour are using the premium product and therefore ought to pay something which reflects that premium product which they are buying." By "the premium product", I presume he means the early morning smell of a stranger's armpit.
As well as putting a premium on premium product, he also conceded that "walk-on fares" were expensive. That means tickets for people who haven't planned ahead – who've just gone to a railway station and got on a train without scouring websites months in advance to spot bargains. They're a slow-moving target, those guys (particularly after a signal failure). If you haven't got your shit together to buy a ticket in advance, what are your chances of getting it together to complain about pricing? The number of lobbyists campaigning in the interests of the unprepared is zero.
Most of us seem to have accepted the notion that, post-privatisation, there is no longer a fixed price for a particular train journey – that the cost must necessarily vary according to how much the train operator thinks it can extort at time of purchase. If you're buying it on the day, or even on the train, they've got you over a barrel (not literally – many of the seats are less comfortable than that). Maybe this is just an expression of market forces, although this is still a market heavily subsidised by the state, but it has always seemed to me like a tax on spontaneity. A railway station is no longer a place of possibility – where hundreds of destinations flicker on the departures board to tempt you. It's just the way to work, or the place you go for long pre-arranged journeys. Your pre-bought internet tickets are the papers that allow you to travel, like in – just to get totally over-dramatic for a second – Hitler's Russia.
Those who plan ahead get ahead – that's the rule. It is the wise, conscientious, evolutionarily sound approach to life. It's true for bees, for squirrels and for humans. But do our various railway companies have to contribute further to the woes of the slapdash? Anyone organised enough to book a ticket months in advance – to have all their movements so precisely planned – will surely die rich in any case. Does it really help society for someone like that to have their travel costs subsidised by forgetful idiots and spendthrift romantics? But even Norman Baker's spin doctor isn't stupid enough to stick up for them.
David Mitchell's autobiography, Back Story, is out now
Article history
Dalian Blue
Well-Known Member
i like trains, I think it is fantastic that this 200+ year old pre Victorian technology is still around. I also appreciate that Liverpool road station in Our City was the first and therefore the oldest, passenger railway station in the world (opened 1829? may be wrong but not far off)
I've just had a weekend in Manchester, arrived
friday evening, got to see my lad's band playing at the Blind Tiger in Bolton on Friday night, into town on Saturday, Colin Bell level 3 for 3 o'clock then met my daughter for her birthday lunch at the Trafford Centre earlier today. I'm now on my way back to Reading in first class on the train and my taxis around (Greater) Manchester cost me more than the train tickets.
Or to put it another way, I like a drink and it's probably for the best that I don't drive in this country.
commuter trains do get a bit minging though
and no, I don't have an anorak and notepad
I've just had a weekend in Manchester, arrived
friday evening, got to see my lad's band playing at the Blind Tiger in Bolton on Friday night, into town on Saturday, Colin Bell level 3 for 3 o'clock then met my daughter for her birthday lunch at the Trafford Centre earlier today. I'm now on my way back to Reading in first class on the train and my taxis around (Greater) Manchester cost me more than the train tickets.
Or to put it another way, I like a drink and it's probably for the best that I don't drive in this country.
commuter trains do get a bit minging though
and no, I don't have an anorak and notepad
tidyman said:Pieblue said:That might be interesting as there are no laws that say you have to buy a ticket only statutes or regulations which are only enforcable if you contract by giving your name when requested.
They've been issuing penalty fares down South for years and I'm sure if there was a legal way of avoiding them, someone will have found it.
I'm no legal expert but my understanding is that railway by-laws are as enforceable as any other law and by entering railway property, you legally speaking, have agreed to comply to them.
-- Sun Jan 06, 2013 1:16 pm --
Balti said:tidyman said:A few people could be in for a shock soon. As they are bringing in an £80 standard fine for people caught traveling without a ticket, when they have had an opportunity to buy one.
cheaper than the fricking ticket quite often
I want to travel on the train not buy it ffs
I'm not talking about gibbing to London or Edinburgh. It's a local thing to clamp down on the sort of free journeys people have been talking about on this thread and people paying short by claiming to have traveled from a nearer station than they actually have.
It won't take many £80 rides from Stockport to Manchester for people to suddenly find the ticket office, I wouldn't imagine.
Ey up Tidyman
Plenty of people have found a way of avoiding them and lots of other revenue raising scams. It is just that the powers that be keep it quiet.
Are you and other Bluemooners aware that Regulations and Bylaws railway or otherwise are not laws? Are you and other Bluemooners even aware that statutes passed by parliment are not laws? None of the Statutes, regulations, by laws, etc etc are enforceable unless you agree to being bound by them. Including Council tax, Parking fines, TV Licencse etc etc.
Does anyone on here know and understand that the United Kingdom is a registered Company/Corporation as is every Magistrates Court, Police Force, County Council, Local Council, in fact all aspects of "Authority" and writer's of Regulation, by law, Statute etc have one goal, which is to raise revenue (like all business) from you. Or more accurately your Legal Fiction sometimes known as your strawman.
I will leave it at that for the moment as I do not want this thread to spin off away from the OP's original intent.
Bit busy at the moment to start another topic as I am off out for a pint in a minute.
ifwecouldjust......
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 11 Jan 2011
- Messages
- 503
Re: Railway system in this country - MP'S latest Scam
Right ...so Network Rail want to upgrade the network at a cost of £37.5 billion. To do this they have agreed funding of 50% with the government (from the taxes raised from you and me). The remaining 50% will have to come from ticket price increases and 'efficiencies'. (Ticket price increases will come from you and me and the efficiencies (jargon for fewer staff) will impact you and me. Which means for the next few five years or so we will be paying more for a shite service. (Won't affect the ministers though cos they will be travelling in their limos)
At the end of the upgrade there will be big improvements to the Network which means that the operators will be able to run more trains with more seats.
Now I may be thick but why are we (the taxpayer and rail user) paying for the upgrades so that the operators can sell more tickets (at higher prices cos they will have been increased over the next five years and you can bet your bottom dollar that they wont reduce once the upgrades done) and make more profit to pay their shareholders.
Am I missing something here? Or are we being screwed so that the rich can line their pockets with even more of our hard earned cash.
Right ...so Network Rail want to upgrade the network at a cost of £37.5 billion. To do this they have agreed funding of 50% with the government (from the taxes raised from you and me). The remaining 50% will have to come from ticket price increases and 'efficiencies'. (Ticket price increases will come from you and me and the efficiencies (jargon for fewer staff) will impact you and me. Which means for the next few five years or so we will be paying more for a shite service. (Won't affect the ministers though cos they will be travelling in their limos)
At the end of the upgrade there will be big improvements to the Network which means that the operators will be able to run more trains with more seats.
Now I may be thick but why are we (the taxpayer and rail user) paying for the upgrades so that the operators can sell more tickets (at higher prices cos they will have been increased over the next five years and you can bet your bottom dollar that they wont reduce once the upgrades done) and make more profit to pay their shareholders.
Am I missing something here? Or are we being screwed so that the rich can line their pockets with even more of our hard earned cash.