Given the large amount of people you can place in a large vehicle, one would hope that a private car is significantly more expensive than public transport without having to convince anyone to pay for bizarre things like being able to pick a seat. The fact that it isn't is, in fact, utterly bizarre.
In the case of the dates we have to travel for a conference, the bus is £150 pp, and flights are £300+ pp - with no flexibility whatsoever in either case. Trains come out to £400 pp or more, which is bizarre given the passenger density of long-distance rail.
Anyway, the point was, the cheap option only exists if you know how to look for it - it's really, really not obvious, and the only reason I know how to do it is that public transport is my full-time hobby. And then once you pick the cheap option and suffer a delay - which is almost guaranteed to happen on a regular enough basis to make the cheap option actually more expensive in many cases, given the state of the country's transport infrastructure - you're stuck on your own, because we have no concept of a joined-up multimodal journey in this country, unlike the rest of Europe. Hell, if you go for the cheap option, staff may even treat you with suspicion and assume you're lying about what your ticket allows you to do, and what you're entitled to.
If you go to the National Rail Enquiries site today and ask for a ticket from London to Manchester tomorrow, you'll be sold a completely non-flexible ticket totalling about £100 if it matches up with your schedule, or up to £169 otherwise. Compare this to e.g. Switzerland, well-known for having an exceptionally high cost of living - where I can book a train from Zurich to Geneva for £54 tomorrow with nothing but a quick google search for "trains zurich to geneva", or £24 if I want to travel in a couple of days. (And on much more comfortable trains, I might add.) There's no need to worry about booking weeks in advance or poring over whether the bus or the plane will be cheaper or whether there's a split ticket that works - the infrastructure exists to allow fast, cheap, somewhat flexible travel on comfortable services.
The problem is the marginal cost of transporting is very low. The train industry is there to extract the maximum amount of money from those willing to pay, while allowing those not willing to pay the chance to travel.
A walk up simple London to Manchester ticket is £86 return, unless you're travelling before 9:30am. Those willing to buy from https://trainsplit.com/ can get a return for £47, or buy the tickets manually and it drops to £39. That's just like those who know going to Aldi will be cheaper than shopping at harrods.
That "slow train" which costs £20 each way, in the peak, and is still quicker than a car.
The money made from open tickets is pumped back into the rail industry to subsidise rural branches in Cornwall. It also subsdises the frequency, where trains are running with say 20 people per carriage (with 80 seats), but are running every 20 minutes. Some people are willing to pay a lot for that frequency - hence the reason they sell £500 returns.
I would like to see thetrainline shut down, but they advertise their inferior product heavily and people use it.
Given the large amount of people you can place in a large vehicle, one would hope that a private car is significantly more expensive than public transport without having to convince anyone to pay for bizarre things like being able to pick a seat. The fact that it isn't is, in fact, utterly bizarre.
In the case of the dates we have to travel for a conference, the bus is £150 pp, and flights are £300+ pp - with no flexibility whatsoever in either case. Trains come out to £400 pp or more, which is bizarre given the passenger density of long-distance rail.
Anyway, the point was, the cheap option only exists if you know how to look for it - it's really, really not obvious, and the only reason I know how to do it is that public transport is my full-time hobby. And then once you pick the cheap option and suffer a delay - which is almost guaranteed to happen on a regular enough basis to make the cheap option actually more expensive in many cases, given the state of the country's transport infrastructure - you're stuck on your own, because we have no concept of a joined-up multimodal journey in this country, unlike the rest of Europe. Hell, if you go for the cheap option, staff may even treat you with suspicion and assume you're lying about what your ticket allows you to do, and what you're entitled to.
If you go to the National Rail Enquiries site today and ask for a ticket from London to Manchester tomorrow, you'll be sold a completely non-flexible ticket totalling about £100 if it matches up with your schedule, or up to £169 otherwise. Compare this to e.g. Switzerland, well-known for having an exceptionally high cost of living - where I can book a train from Zurich to Geneva for £54 tomorrow with nothing but a quick google search for "trains zurich to geneva", or £24 if I want to travel in a couple of days. (And on much more comfortable trains, I might add.) There's no need to worry about booking weeks in advance or poring over whether the bus or the plane will be cheaper or whether there's a split ticket that works - the infrastructure exists to allow fast, cheap, somewhat flexible travel on comfortable services.