Why is public transport in England so expensive, when in the rest of Europe it is very cheap?

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timsdad

PROFIT first customers last.

Frank

Perhaps it is because it was all deregulated and privatised and everyone wants profit,

When we had British rail and other state operated systems at least the costs were down and all profit was ploughed back into the industry and not the shareholders and management.

We need to take back ownership of many crucial operators into state hands, like the trains and some bus services. That would help i think.

Jojotraveller

What a great question!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I travel into Europe several times a year and am always amazed how cheap it is over there. I wish someone in Government would get off their lazy bottoms and do something about it. Although quite a few of you have got it right - and this is a theme across the UK in all industries now - it's all about the profit for the shareholders. Forget about the customers and even those staff who often carry the load of two people's work as it saves even more money!! We are slowly turning into a country of two extremes, those at the top who earn 10 times they should and those at the bottom who actually do all the hard work who earn 50% less than they should!

Anchor Cranker

Easy - Rip off Britian.....Why do you think that som many of us have left or are leaving....Sick to the back teeth of it.

ascoile

In Europe public transport is run by governments. In UK it is private and shareholders want profits.

richard_beckham2001

The government want to get cars off the road and get people on public transport, what a joke.
They do nothing about the ever spiralling costs. The bus company where i live uses the excuse of rising petrol prices to put up the fares everytime.

If public transport was cheaper and ran on time and at the time you needed it them more people may use it too.

enigma_variation

its because its privatised. Public transport should be owned by the public for the public and not for profit

assassin

scumbag Blair and co have made public transport far too expensive by their tax strategy

womble

all for making money!!
the government wants us to cut down the use of our cars to help the enviroment but wont force the train and bus companies to drop their fares cos they get money in their coffers. in fact our local bus company is cutting services in our area. makes no bloody sense

marky mark

tell me about it . They harp on about people to use public transport and when you do the big wigs who own these bloody things put the cost of travel up , but it is only to line their own pockets ( PURE GREED )

Mental Mickey

Bus fares depend largely on the operator. I remember moving from Suffolk to where I am now in the North West. A 6 mile bus journey into town in 1990 used to cost me 65p, when we moved up north the comparable journey cost Â£1.50. Now it is Â£3.25 for a single. The really bizarre thing is that a "day rider" costs 10p less!! It's all a question of working through the bizarre ticketing strategy.

The same goes for the trains - turn up on the day and buy a ticket at the station and you'll pay a fortune, travel after 9am and you can get a cheap day return, book well in advance and you can get 'apex' tickets, 'saver' tickets and 'super saver' tickets. You can get the fares down to something more reasonable, but it takes some understanding of the system. I'd rather there was just one price fits all, but there isn't. I tried booking a ticket to Inverness and there were so many pricing options as to be unreal, but none of them would have been cheaper than a car or even the coach.

The biggest rip-off of all though has to be taxis!

nettyone2003

It is profit 1st and customers last! I never used the bus until last week. This was because where I used to live there was only one bus a week! - A long wait if you miss it!
My friend convinced me to take a bus trip with her. It was only 8 miles but I have 4 kids. (My friend, who uses the busses regularly, said it would be a fiver return). To get there and back cost Â£14.95 so I couldn't afford lunch. It wreaked our day out!
The government keeps wanting us to use public transport but at these prices it's a joke!

Excellant question!!!

lt_glenn

Good question, and I can think of a number of factors affecting this:
1) we are a small overcrowded island, therefore land is at a premium making rail and road transport costs high compared to say France where there is an abundance of land.
2) As a nation we like our own space and privacy, and this means we prefer to travel in private cars than on public transport. This has led to it being used mainly by those who have to for many years leading to underfunding.
3) We have a relatively huge benefit system, which means many people have subsidised fares, which although is contributed to from the govt, is not as effective as private investment.
4) In terms of rail in your question, have you tried to buy a ticket recently? The fare structure is wildly confusing. I went on line to by a return Preston to London on a fixed train last week, then went back and asked for 2 x tickets for the same trains and it gave me a different price. Out of curiosity, I went back and put 1 ticket in and I got a different quote again. I am not surprised most people dont have the right ticket, there probably isn't one!
5) As roads become more congested, and people need to arrive at a certain place on time, rail or air is the only alternative, therefore the companies capitalise on this by charging what they can during peak periods.
By the way an open return during the week from Preston to London costs my company around Â£240.

Gerbil

Because us Brits meekly accept the state of things in this country instead of voting with our feet. We're too polite for our own good. We moan about things by writing to newspapers but we never take decisive action. It is high time we stood up to the rip-off merchants. Remember the petrol blockades in 2000? It showed what can be achieved by way of mass protest.
The French don't take any cr*p in their own back yard so why should the British?

Seungyong W

i know. why the hell is it so expensive? and moreover, the service is not that satisfying as well. transport is old (most of it). in other parts of europe, the transport is all modern and new and yet you pay a good cheap price. here it is so damn expensive!!

chico

Because this country is now governed by greed not need

Pearl

Transport is privatized that is why everything is so expensive compared to the rest of Europe where public transport is really PUBLIC transport. What we need is mass demonstrations here, as I think we are all being mugs just giving our money endlessly to the she stakeholders.

speyhawkzamek

The railways were privatised by the tory goverment because they needed to pump millions of pound in to them to update them because of under investment.
Public transport in this country is a joke many parts of Britain are not accessable by P.T. thank God for cars.

johnny

Hi,
its because of privatisation to the transport sector when conservatives government was in control when Margaret Thatcher was in power, so basically the government have no say on what transport companyâ€™s can charge, but in the rest of Europe the transport sector is run by the governments.

hope that helps you.

katysamalfie

i paid Â£10 for a return ticket for a 30 minute rail journey the other day in italy i paid Â£5 for a 50 minute rail journey and the train was cleaner and good god i actually got a seat. no english person will ever die a virgin ,we all get screwed all day every day especially by rail comapnies

CLIVE H

The reason why public transport in England [UK] is expensive, is because it is all run by private companies. Back in my childhood and youth [born 1941] the transport network was 'state owned' and therefore received a very heavy susidy from central government. This is not the case today, even though public transport is subsidised up to a point, it is no where near enough to make ticket prices cheaper.

Meanwhile on the Continent, France and Germany in particular, always had state owned railways and for this reason everything, the track, rolling stock, the lot, is owned by the state [the people] this means subsidy is no problem. The French as a result have the best national railway network anywhere in the world.

Last summer my partner and me met a French couple at a beachside cafe at Brighton. They told us they came from the south of France, the Cote d'Azure. I asked how long had it taken to get to Brighton? I was amazed to be told that they had left the south of France that very morning, at about 6am. It was then 1pm in Brighton. How? They took a high speed train to Lyon and from Lyon to Paris the train raced at speeds approaching 300 mph. We have nothing like that here in UK. The journey from Paris to Waterloo was only about a couple of hours then a one hour run to Brighton. I guess in all around 6 or so hours. Blimey.

Everything here in UK is in private hands, trains and buses. Nothing we can do.

Thankfully I am a pensioner living in London and have the Freedom Pass which means I can go anywhere in the six London travel zones for free, after 9.30am anyway.

There are ways of saving on train fares, but you'll need to buy one of those family travel cards which cut about one third or so off the usual price per journey. Still not cheap but better than nothing. I get one every year and save quite a lot because we go to the coast quite frequently from May to September.

You may also be able to get money back on the fares you pay during your working day, that is if you have to travel from B to C and so on. The taxman will not pay to go to and from work, but will pay for second, third and fourth etc journies during your working day. This usually amounts to about Â£4.20 in London. You have to claim this on your tax return and keep all your travel receipts. If this applies to you, go for it. I heard that cycle messangers in London can get a subsidy from the taxman of about Â£0.80 a mile, blimey, if true they must be quids in.

sparman20

Totaly agree, I pay over 70p per mile to travel by bus, just to go shopping cost Over Â£4.50 return for a 6 mile round trip. If we use the car Â£5.00 of petrol takes 4 people on a twenty mile journey, where is the sence in that. If the next election was based on public transport I would vote for the party with the best solutions, what on earth Prescot has been doing for the past 10 years I have no idea!

delph

'Young people under 16 do not have to pay'

Since when? I'm under 16 (just), and I still have to pay the same as an adult.

Also the goverment are going on about not using cars ect, but the public transport prices are so expensive, that its a whole lot cheaper to just use the cars. I would use public transport more often if it was cheaper, but whoese going to use Public Transport when its a whole lot more cheaper to use the car- which is alot more comfortable

babyfela2

I totally agree with you. The service is wack, yet so so so expensive its a total joke... I would prefer to pay the right price to get on the bus or train, but i dont whenever i have the chance not to, i do not feel guilty about it cos its an absolute rip off, the government should do something about it.
I bet ppl will pay the correct fare if it was cheaper

LYN W

The simple answer here is because it is no longer state owned. There are shareholders that have to be satisfied. If it was state owned then there is no need to make a profit, simply pull even to cover costs.

This is why things like the utilities, transport and communications are so expensive in the UK. Its all about profit!

Topshopcitybeachbabe

Everything in britain is so expensive where I livewhich is in bourne end is a problem for me so I can sympathise with you because I do not have a car i have to pay to go onto town and that means public transport.

if I want to go the citizens advice bureau jobcentre i have to .pay to go there by public transport. I have to pay to travel to get into town to go the shops to go the hospital job cebtre ridiculious i have cionsidred moving for me i live near high wycombe it is Â£2.80 return to go form whre I live to high wycombe the same going to marlow and maidenhead. it is a knioght mare because the spublic transport system here is so bad.. This country is arip off as well where profit comes first people come last .

Do you know what I do I walk so instead of taking the train or bus to marlow it is just as easy to walk to marlow as it takes half an hour to an hour plus the trains are every one hour and 15mins why wait when you can walk .

In my opinion Try walking much easier and you dont pay anything.

deep in thought

Because we do not stand together and be heard!

robb086

Noy sure what public transport everyone is using, but around me on a bus Â£2.50 can take you all over the city, unlimited travel for the day. As for trains, its even cheaper, Â£12 can take me the 2 hour journey to my parents house and then back again.....hardly expensive. As for abroad, not so sure about their prices, but dont forget we have a strong economy making lots of prices look cheap to us

treving 42

Ultra pricey and set to get more and more expensive in the next few years as different stealth taxes kick in and subsidies (shareholders fave word) come too an end.
Here where I live in deepest Cornwall if you don't have a car then you are at their mercy.(and they know it)

I would feel less annoyed about it all if they - the bus companies - with their veneer of smugness - stopped trying to force feed us their local success stories and how life without them would be unbearable when we all know only to well that they really don't give a monkeys about us and would cancel the bus to my grannies funeral if they thought that they would end up out of pocket.

Rip-off UK is a legitimate business - the rich get richer, the poor? well that's what we are here for isn't it?

fisherman

simple answer the government doesn't like to run the transport system so they gave to the private sector who have to make a profit and allowed and the government allows them to increase fares well above the rate of inflation and then wonders why people use there cars more

Why is public transport in England so expensive, when in the rest of Europe it is very cheap? pic 1
Why is public transport in England so expensive, when in the rest of Europe it is very cheap? pic 2
Why is public transport in England so expensive, when in the rest of Europe it is very cheap? pic 3
Why is public transport in England so expensive, when in the rest of Europe it is very cheap? pic 4
Why is public transport in England so expensive, when in the rest of Europe it is very cheap? pic 5
Why is public transport in England so expensive, when in the rest of Europe it is very cheap? pic 6

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