So much for trains

[bellinghman]

I was just attempting to get train fares for a journey from Sierre (Swiss Alps) to London.

Holy crap! How do they expect anyone to use trains? I can get from Sierre to Paris at a reasonable price - a very reasonable price for a direct TGV that takes 5:20. But that's no use whatsoever, if it then costs THREE TIMES AS MUCH for the Paris to London link, which is only 2:40.

</rant>

EDIT: Many thanks for the purpletigron/purplecthulhu's advice on getting round Eurostar.

EDIT: OK, I can do Sierre to Paris-Lyon for 113 CHF, if I buy it from the Swiss, and using the halbtax card. That's just under £48. And going via the "I am American" part of the Eurostar site allows me to buy the single/non-flexible fare at $89 each - which is roughly £45. That's compared to the insane £300+ it was trying to do me for originally for the Paris to London leg!

So, Swiss Alps to central London for £93 isn't too bad. I just wish it wasn't such an incredible hassle finding this all out. If I was a PA doing this, and factoring in the cost of my time, it'd be another matter.

EDIT: Ooops, forgot time zone differences. That was 2:40, not 1:40

Comments

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I'm going to sympathise with Shelley somewhat here. Yes, there could definitely be an equality in fuel taxation between the airlines and the trains, but the low-cost airlines are burning much less per passenger mile than the traditional airlines, by dint of carrying more passengers per weight of aircraft.

Personally, I think taxes are the better way. And the easiest one to make directly proportionate to fuel cost/carbon release is a tax on fuel itself. (Charging SUVs extra for parking is totally silly - that's exactly when they're not causing all that damage!)

I really do wish the trains could be more sane, price-wise. Travelling on Swiss or German trains is very civilised, and although the London-Basel route would take longer than flying, it's not that much worse. Returning from Leukerbad is going to require a fair bit of train travel anyway, so we should be able to do it in much the same time.

[megabitch.livejournal.com]

Current muttering re the latest UK rail price hikes are that it's one way of dealing with the congestion on the trains :/

[korenwolf.livejournal.com]

Forcing people back onto the roads where they can be charged per mile and they wonder why we don't trust what they say and assume it's all about taxation.

[knell.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, the reason behind the incessant chorus of "The trains on the continent are much cheaper!" is that the per-passenger subsidy for rail travel and local transport (i.e. the Tube) is generally less than half in the UK of what it is in, say France. Of course, the Daily Mail says that tax is bad, mmmkay, so the average Mail-reading commuter on their daily train journey from, say, Bournemouth to London and back generally wants lower fares *and* lower taxes. Can't have it both ways.

The added scam is that tabloid comparisons of, say, Easyjet from Luton to Glasgow with Virgin West Coast invariably seem to compare the cheapest possible fare available by air with the price of a standard walk-up flexible return ticket by train. Rock up at Stansted and ask Ryanair for a ticket on the next flight and you'll be paying hundreds of quid.

(Incidentally, 150 quid for a Paris-London single on ES is pretty outlandish. There are way better fares out there.)

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Yes, expecting those low prices for travel-now on the cheap airlines would be foolish - those pricing models are designed to get the aircraft as full as possible (a laudable aim if you're going to be flying it at all).

What I was trying to do this evening was do the similar with a train. I'd gone to http://bahn.de (the site for working out how to get from a to b) and was trying to get from Leukerbad back to Royston. The timing was sane - about 12 hours is not that bad at all, departing from a high Alpine valley. bahn.de couldn't actually quote me tickets, though (part of the trip is by Swiss bus ...), and I was trying to break it down into chunks.

http://www.voyages-sncf.com will give me a ticket from Sierre to Paris-Lyon for the 2nd March for €176. Or http://www.raileurope.co.uk/lyria/ for £131 for the same train.

It now looks like the sanest fare from Paris to London is the £59 return, and just not take the other half at all. If there's a better fare than that, I'd be interested, but that is was, way better than the initial one I got quoted, and which caused the rant.

[drplokta]

I just checked. A return Ryanair flight from Stansted to Dublin on the first flight tomorrow morning (or indeed any flight tomorrow) is £80 including tax. Hardly hundreds of quid.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

For more advance booking of short haul travel the comparison is interesting...

Cheapest EasyJet - London (Gatwick) to Edinburgh on 1/3/07 is 18.99 per person including tax (London (Luton) is 21.99, London (Stansted) is 18.99).

GNER London (Kings Cross) to Edinburgh on 1/3/07 is 12.50 per person including tax.

These prices are so similar that I think the real difference will be the cost of getting to/from the station/airport at either end. For most people rail stations are easier and cheaper to get to/from, but your milage will vary.

I think the moral here is that advance booking of both air and rail is much the same price for a similar route.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I think one needs full train-fu to do these!

Having knocked the Sierre-Paris down to under £50, and that's a long TGV ride, it does seem to be doable. I'm just bemused by the Eurostar one.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Eurostar is weird because whether you get subsidies depends on whether you're British or not. I think everyone else in the whole world gets them except for us. So by pretending to be from somewhere else you get cheaper tickets.

Not that this can last. As more and more people find out about it. Its already an open secret if you talk to Eurostar UK people.

Tonight's lesson in train-fu is hereby ended, Glasshopper!

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

'tlain-fu'?

One of the interesting things about attempting to learn Japanese is that distinction, or lack of it, between the 'r' and 'l'. When I'm expecting to hear the 'r'. I hear it, but if I concentrate, sometimes the native speaker seems to produce the 'l' sound instead. It seems to be a personal accent type of thing, a little like (but milder than) an English speaker having a lisp.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

And hmm, at that price, I'd be very happily popping up to Edinburgh all the time. Now, we just need someone with a spare room who's willing to put us up for a night or two.

[knell.livejournal.com]

That's still pre-booking. Turn up at the airport tomorrow and it'll most likely be more. Plus, it's all based on demand management, and right now the post-New Year slump is on as everyone recovers from the last few weeks. (Damn, the office was quiet last week.)

[korenwolf.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think taxes are the better way. And the easiest one to make directly proportionate to fuel cost/carbon release is a tax on fuel itself. (Charging SUVs extra for parking is totally silly - that's exactly when they're not causing all that damage!)

but SUVs are evil incarnate! Our mate the nodnol mayor says so.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Well, they may be. When they're moving. On narrow British city streets.

Almost anything can be inappropriate. The SUV is the multi-generational derivative of inappropiate use, to the extent where many of them would now struggle when taken off-road.

[korenwolf.livejournal.com]

You'll not find an argument from me there, SUVs are just the latest "got to have because they're large, impressive and cost lots... look at the size of my..."

[evilshell.livejournal.com]

Without a halbtax, a round trip ticket from Basel to Zurich would be just a little less than that plane ticket to the UK!

[uitlander]

I just booked holiday flights for later this year. Before buying I didn't a price breakdown - this was provided on the receipt.

Return flight - 2x £73.
Taxes - £103.
Admin Charge - £10.

I note the taxes were 125% of the overall flight charge from the carrier. The flight itself is more than cheap, the local Govs involved seem to be taking their pound of flesh which I assume in part at least is done under the 'climate' banner. The recent UK increase in them certainly is.

[evilshell.livejournal.com]

Good point - on the Basel - Luton return flight I've mentioned charges were half taxes, half fare.

[knell.livejournal.com]

Be careful - a lot of what the airlines call "taxes" is actually "fuel surcharges" and "insurance surcharges" and so on - the airline pulling big chunks of its own costs out of the ticket price and calling it tax. This kind of manipulation of headline ticket prices has got them in trouble in the past. The "admin fee" is effectively part of the fare as well.

[uitlander]

I am fully aware that the total fare is the sum of all those figures. I can't tell what the breakdown is between airport taxes, local taxes, fuel surcharges any more than anyone else. What interested me was the way the ticket costs were broken down.