Why are our railways so bad?

[robjh]

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The cost to travel all day to any station in the Netherlands was 17 Euros or a bit over £12, on one of the days it was just 13 Euros.
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Single fairs were half the cost of returns.
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Do they still do the system where the same bus tickets can be used anywhere in the country? I think they were called 'strippenkaart' (or similar).

Of course these fare structures point to a strongly interventionist state policy on public transport, on behalf of the travelling public. The ideological stance of successive UK governments explains why we have something different here.

 

[postman]

Sunday night was chaos here in Leeds.Our youngest had been in Manchester Saturday and Sunday visiting Dan,so Sunday night trains from Manchester terminated at Huddersfield,it was a farce,we told our youngest to stay inside the station and my wife and i headed off to pick her up.Good thing was we went our for a meal together that night.I was told Leeds Station was eight ten deep and spread out down under the Dark Arches,that is a long way out of the Station.poor commuters.

 

[growingvegetables]

This is the bike carriage on the lower deck of the train I take to work every day. Clean spacious and quiet. It takes about 25 minutes to cover the 45km into Hannover. My fare is also really good value and as long as the bike is folded it's free. On the whole German trains are reliable, though delays of up to 30 minutes can be common. The older regional express trains though can be very scruffy and slow, you can easily lose the will to live travelling on them. View attachment 111128

Damn it - I came back, just to look at this again, in disbelief. I wonder which of the UK's rail companies are providing the profits that pay for that kind of investment ... in Germany and Holland.

Hell - I'm used to the reality of hauling a bike round the Northern Rail network. But look! T'aint just bikes that are catered for. It's REAL people!









You know ... those ones that have kids, and pushchairs. Ordinary. Real life. ........ except on British trains. Having kids, and travelling with them? What a disgusting perversion.

 

[PhilDawson8270]

Do they still do the system where the same bus tickets can be used anywhere in the country? I think they were called 'strippenkaart' (or similar).
.

I liked the method when I visited Prague. You bought 1 ticket, and paid for time of travel not distance. You could use it on any bus, metro, or train line, anywhere in the country.

Buy 1 ticket from the airport, get a bus, and 2 metros with 1 ticket. All was cleaner and quicker than the UK, and the ticket only cost about £2.

 

[vernon]

Dutch and German trains are great at showing up the 'deficiencies' in the UK train services but you aren't really comparing like with like. The Germans Austrians and Dutch have huge numbers of cyclists to cater for and the rolling stock designs reflect this. Things aren't all sweetness and light though. I had an instance where the small bicycle bay on a German train was partially filled with a family's luggage which took up the remaining free cycle spaces. A friendly German intervened on my behalf and quietly but insistently made a belligerent bull necked Teutonic patriarch remove the luggage. The argument conducted in German was bewildering and culminated in the aggressor calling the interdictor a 'Bürokrat' and the quiet response was "At least I can read" while the interdictor pointed at a sign 'nur Fahrräder' -bicycles only.

No-one appears to have mentioned that bicycles are not carried free of charge on the continental trains. Here in the UK bicycle carriage is free and familiarity with the vagaries of the train booking systems helps to obtain a problem free carriage of bicycles subject to the limits of the bicycle capacity of the train being booked. Buying a ticket on demand does place you at the mercy of lady luck and available bicycle spaces on the train that you want to travel on. This makes spontaneity a risky business for the cyclist. Having said that, I have had no problems getting back from Hull, Southend and Brighton - the endpoints of FNRttC rides. I also have not had problems with rail companies that do not offer bicycle bookings e.g. Northern Rail whose rail staff are quite accommodating when it comes to carrying more bikes than the nominal capacity of their trains. The only problems that I have witnessed are on the Inverness to Thurso/Wick trains in either direction where it is absolutely essential to have a bicycle place reserved as the trains staff are totally inflexible in their refusal of non-reserved bike travel I witnessed cyclists being turned away from the train even though I was the only cyclist on the train for the entire route.

 

[vernon]

Sunday night was chaos here in Leeds.Our youngest had been in Manchester Saturday and Sunday visiting Dan,so Sunday night trains from Manchester terminated at Huddersfield,it was a farce,we told our youngest to stay inside the station and my wife and i headed off to pick her up.Good thing was we went our for a meal together that night.I was told Leeds Station was eight ten deep and spread out down under the Dark Arches,that is a long way out of the Station.poor commuters.

To be fair that's not a regular occurrence and there's not many commuters on a Sunday night.

 

[mjr]

Damn it - I came back, just to look at this again, in disbelief. I wonder which of the UK's rail companies are providing the profits that pay for that kind of investment ... in Germany and Holland.

IIRC Abellio (Greater Anglia, Scotrail, half of Northern and Merseyrail) are Dutch national railways, while Arriva, Chiltern and Cross-Country are German. Then London Midland, Transpennine, Southeastern and the Thameslink group are part-French, London Overgrown is Hong Kong's MTR and most of the rest are owned by bus companies or airports. With all those obviously harmonious interests, it's amazing it doesn't work perfectly, isn't it?

When you get into the freight companies, you can make even stranger links, such as: Colas Rail is owned by France's Bouygues, which also controls TF1 Group, which owned 49% of Eurosport, "the home of cycling," until it sold it to Discovery Channel back in July...

No-one appears to have mentioned that bicycles are not carried free of charge on the continental trains.

Maybe none of us would mind paying a few pounds for a bicycle if it meant we were never treated like an unwelcome infestation?

 

[vernon]

Maybe none of us would mind paying a few pounds for a bicycle if it meant we were never treated like an unwelcome infestation?

I've never been treated like an unwelcome infestation. With the exception of the behaviour of the Scotrail guards on the Inverness - Thurso/Wick service, all other staff that I have encountered on my UK wide train travels with my bicycle over the past ten years have been great.

 

[chriswoody]

To be fair, the train I travel on, is part of the creeping privatisation of the German railways. It's run by a company called Metronom. So I don't think anyone in Britian is subsidising my luxury travel. Also I took the picture in September, by October the middle of the carriage has two banks of seats installed to reflect the reduced bike traffic. I really don't want things to go the way of Britian here though, with the ever increasing privatisation I'm seeing, though I doubt it will.

Vernon is right though, on an IC train (I'm not sure you can take your bike on an ICE, the ultra fast cross country service.), the faster services, the bike spaces are much smaller and all across the network you pay 5 euro's a day for normal bike carriage. Folded bikes are free and none of this pre booking nonsense. We also have quite complicated ticket machines here, they are so frustrating to use, that there was a spate of firebombing attacks on them! All in all transport here, whilst far from perfect is still much better than the UK.

 

[screenman]

I seldom use the train, but last time I did I was suprised that the toilets at the stations I used had gone, turned into cafe's and the suchlike.

 

[mustang1]

I think parts of our rail network are crap... but other parts are very good.

And, of course, a large chunk of our rail network is effectively operated by Dutch Railways (Nederlandse Spoorwegen).

This is supposed to be a complaining thread. Stop being positive would you?
Just out of interest,which bit is good?

 

[Lonestar]

As a railway worker I came onto this thread expecting our railways to get a real bashing as usual,generally helped on by the media,but have been pleasantly surprised.

Thailand Railways nowadays reminds me of BR of the 1980's.Found the Japanese Railways and Metro very good but am under the impression the Japanese Metro is very new unlike our underground system...Also found the Spanish Railways very BR like except for the prices which must be subsidised by the public.Hong Kong Metro which I traveled on seemed very modern as did the Sky Train in Malaysia although their railways were slightly ore ancient.Didn't really stay there long enough though to really compare them to our railways.

 

[totallyfixed]

Apparently it seems our railways are not as bad as I thought, just the trains we have been unlucky enough to travel on. It is not even any fault of ours, all down to the Dutch, French, Germans and no doubt the Chinese in the future, well thank goodness for that. I expect the late, expensive, dirty trains are a figment of my imagination, or the train conductor that told the young couple that boarded the train we were on to Cambridge also with their bikes that the train is only authorised to carry two and a half bikes, leaving us all somewhat bewildered.
Not travelling by train in the Netherlands again, 3 days of unlimited travel for 2 people for £65. Pure luck I guess.
Thank you to those who defend our railways, we will try and use them more often when we have saved up enough money.
It's always someone else's fault.

 

[Paulus]

No, the lines there were already third rail electrified, as they are now. I think the problem was the loading guage made them very cramped and slow to board.

Double deck trains on the Southern. 1949 they were introduced. gone by the late 60's.


View: https://youtu.be/22FWR3MmBIg

 

[vernon]

Apparently it seems our railways are not as bad as I thought, just the trains we have been unlucky enough to travel on. It is not even any fault of ours, all down to the Dutch, French, Germans and no doubt the Chinese in the future, well thank goodness for that. I expect the late, expensive, dirty trains are a figment of my imagination, or the train conductor that told the young couple that boarded the train we were on to Cambridge also with their bikes that the train is only authorised to carry two and a half bikes, leaving us all somewhat bewildered.
Not travelling by train in the Netherlands again, 3 days of unlimited travel for 2 people for £65. Pure luck I guess.
Thank you to those who defend our railways, we will try and use them more often when we have saved up enough money.
It's always someone else's fault.

No it's just that quality and value for money are subjective measures.