The point of public transport should be simple. It is cheaper and easier than private transport, more environmentally friendly and allows you to get where you need to be at a sensible cost and on a regular schedule. However, a case study by the co-owner of LatestDeals.co.uk shows that in some cases it’s more cost effective to buy a car and drive than it is to pay for a train ticket.
In theory, the idea of buying a car, making sure it is taxed, insured and with enough fuel should not come anywhere near the cost of travelling by train. The sad truth is that some train companies are profiteering on certain routes at peak times to such an extent that this has now become a reality.
London to Bristol – the story
Tom lived in London and wanted to visit another co-owner of the website who lives in Bristol. The quote for a return ticket at peak time from London to Bristol was £218.10. He decided to see if it was possible to buy a car and drive it for less than this quite substantial amount of money for such a short journey.
First, he did some research and found a car – a 1997 Honda Civic that he bought for just £80 with six months left on the MOT. The road tax for the vehicle was £81.38 and the cost of insuring it for a day was £20.43. The car used £25 worth of petrol for the journey. A total cost of £206.81 – saving £11.29 versus the cost of a train ticket.
The bigger picture
Added to this, Tom pointed out that at the end of the experiment he still had the car which could be resold for a similar amount or possibly more. The car ran well, and he was quite impressed with it.
Alternatively, if he wished to do so, he could continue to pay for the insurance and have use of the vehicle for longer. There are added costs to be considered with this, such as servicing and ongoing petrol costs, but ultimately using and driving a car on intercity routes in peak times beats trains on cost hands down.
Of course, this is not the whole picture. For starters, the experiment was based on peak time trains; if you travel at off-peak times, there can be a significant saving in the cost of the rail ticket. The Independent looked at the price and found an off-peak return was just £140.
Then there’s the time factor. Driving wasn’t an easy job because the M25 was very busy and there were accidents and roadworks on the M4. The journey in the car took 3 hours 30 minutes while the trip on the train was just 1 hour 43 minutes.
Other public transport options
While the case study is an interesting one, it doesn’t cover all the public transport options available. The rail journey in question is a straight route from the capital to Bristol. However, if you take a staggered trip, it can make a saving, as frequent rail users know. A journey that went via Salisbury, for example, cost £73.30 for an Anytime fare.
Then there’s the bus. National Express operates frequent services with flexible fares of £48.80 from Victoria Coach station to Bristol. There is a new on-demand service offered by Sn-Ap that has a maximum ticket price of £25 return
A growing problem
Tom’s experiment highlights an increasing problem across the UK, which is the fact that it can be cheaper to run a car than to use public transport and especially trains at peak times. Train fares at peak times are often price matched to plane fares to compete for the business traveller, and therefore the cost has been steadily increasing in recent years.
This rising price has also meant more people are doing just what Tom did, buying a car instead of using public transport. It is why there is a higher number of vehicles on the road than ever and why congestion and pollution problems are at an all-time high.
Figures show that the number of cars on UK roads reached a new highest figure in 2016 of 31.7 million, an increase from 31.5 million the previous year and from 29.9 million ten years before that. As more people turn to inexpensive and often polluting cars to avoid the higher cost of public transport, this figure could continue to grow.
If the Government are serious about tackling road pollution, they need to look at the cost of public transport during peak times and intercity routes. Train operators have been getting away with this for many years now.
Labour is looking at the drastic step of making all rail companies publicly owned again and reducing prices, so they are more in line with other Western European countries, such as France and German, both nationally owned where fares are 30-40% the price compared to the UK. Doing this one could have more environmental benefit and reduce pollution far more than taxing drivers of polluting cars to the hilt.
Do you know of a train route that costs over £200 return? Have you switched to driving because of the expense of rail? How did you feel about the cost of your journey or season ticket? Let us know in the comments.
More to the point is trains are impossible to use if you are wheelchair bound. So I would never travel to my mums by car- a journey of 240 miles but if I did it would be horrendously expensive.
Surely the trains companies have a legal obligation to provide wheel chair accessible carriages. Presumably another example of the profiteering, couldn’t care less about the customer, attitude of most train operators.
I have yet to see a train with provisions for wheelchairs, they make it very difficult for wheelchair users and if train is busy you cannot get on as there is no room to accommodate users chair.
I have on quite a few occasions had to stay on platform as cannot get on the train.
There is also the problem where it would be possible to get on the train if people would move over a little, but a lot will not even when they were asked politely numerous times if they could move over just a little bit. This is the facts as there are very selfish individuals in this world
You haven’t mentioned renting a car for a day. Such a vehicle can be delivered to your door, be a newish car, be insured and be available when needed. Why buy a car?
An incredibly valid point. Or, for that matter, a week/however short a period you would require it. All the benefit for less a cost.
The simple solution is to limit the price differential between least, and most, expensive fares.
Ideally, if we really serious about reducing congestion, there should be cheaper fares during peak times. There used to be, too long ago, workman’s fares, which were valid before 7am journey start I believe.
Whatever is done, government needs a coherent, joined up, policy to tackle roads and public transport. It cannot be left to profiteering companies who are often owned by foreign governments, meaning we are subsidising them.
Using the car is “door-to-door”. Unless you live next to the railway station there is a time and cost factor to consider.
Anothercase of rip off Britain, when it becomnes cheaper to buy a car than it is to travel oin public transport there is something radically wrong with the system.
Days long gone when you could turn up at a station, buy a ticket and travel. Now one has to faf around on the computer, determine which time of day one travels and which route and even differing train companies muddle the system further.
My wife and I travel frequently to St Andrews (nearest station Leuchars) and from our local station in East Yorkshire its £131, each leg, each person – thats £550. Plus the rip off charge of car parking at the station and an 8 mile each way drive to get there. If we drive the round trip of 632 miles, that a max of 22 gallons, which is about £122 in petrol. Thats a savging of £400. The economics of travelling by train just dont add up – all it does is take the strain off your body and the vehicle, but many peopls cant afford to make that decision, so choose the conveninece of traveeling when THEY want to, not being herded like cattle minto overcrowded trains, and saving a fortuine into the bargain!
…totally agree, and if it were a diesel car you drove, you could possibly do that trip on just one tank of fuel, I regularly get 640 miles to a tank in my Golf MK5 diesel…and they wonder why theres so many diesels on the road?
I remember being quoted £250 return from Harlow (Essex) to Manchester fifteen years ago. At that point I decided to stuff the meeting.
Yes, exactly as Robert says, rent a car. And of course the other major benefit, as least for me anyway, would be the direct door-to-door aspect, no standing waiting or even running to catch train or bus, no standing in the rain and cold. Why use public transport on longer journeys, it doesn’t make sense.
I totally agree.
However, because I love the aspect of good old fashioned “InterCity” travelling, I love travelling by train.
On the other hand, I have a beautifully comfortable Peugeot RCZ that delivers “happy hormones” by the bucketload when I’m driving ;O)
I think I’m schizophrenic.
Had a car load of people gone on a ‘car share basis the cost per head would have been even cheaper but he train fares would have been up in the £800.00s.
Sometimes rail can be incredibly cheap I have done Essex/Glasgow return for around £70.00 but that was advanced booking with a railcard at set times which isn’t convenient for some (most?) travellers. Usually the car wins hands down if more than one person is travelling especially in the old Network South East area.
Personally would prefer to make a number of journeys by train but weekends out as we haven’t had a ‘proper’ train service from my part of Essex to London for years as the lines are invariably subject to a 50 min bus ride each way. If I’m forced to go by road I’ll drive myself and have the convenience of door/door transport with no changes and total flexibility on when I can travel.
Labour were the ones who were going to revolutionise public transport until that oaf John Prescott did what all politicians do and lied while running two jags.
what a silly post. What does it have to do with anything?
He had his own car, which he kept, but as a minister had to travel in the govt car. It wasn’t his and would be taken away the day he lost his job – which could be any day for them.
A lot was put into public transport under him but over that period of labour govt, 7 million extra cars went on the roads. That’s not his fault unless you advocate higher taxation on the motorist.
Of topic, I know, but I have to add that GB was an idiot and one of the worst chancellors I’ve seen in my lifetime.
How old are you ?
What”s your inside leg measurement?
If this has been four adults doing this journey >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I am sat waiting for the train. (30 mins late) normally My short trip is better than driving from Huddersfield to Dewsbury, but the walk home means it takes a simlar time, if they are running to schedule. (Dewsbury thugs break into cars too)
But if I was to car share in my 7 seater,
This would actually net me an income of £5,000 a year (5 passengers @ £20 a week)
Cost of fuel etc… I may consider this option in futur
When will the public realise that the govt is there for big business not for the individual. Creating all these “fake” companies or franchises to coordinate govt / nationally required services is all about providing for shareholders and creating more senior management positions who themselves are likely to be right wing voters – and have right wing minded children.
Added to that these companies will borrow lots of money from the banks – who lend based on share price – so the govt can claim to have “grown the economy” without having that debt on its own books.
So yes, your concerns are not its priority especially as you keep voting them in so long as your house price rises.
I’ve often rented a car in Central London and driven to Nottingham and back because it worked out considerably cheaper than the train fare (booking car/train ticket the day before travel)
That journey splitting thing works, if you can be bothered. A couple of years ago I wanted to get myself and push bike from Newcastle up to Thurso. The single fare for a search “Newcastle -Thurso was around £130.
Instead I managed to get a ticket for Newcastle-Edinburgh for around £12.00 and another Ed-Thurso for about £17.00. That’s quite a saving. It was all on the same day and arriving at the same time too.
Splitting tickets simply requires the train to stop where you change from one ticket to the next – you don’t need to get off the train or even out of your seat (slightly different rules apply for zonal and season tickets)
A few years ago my boss wanted to travel from London to Newcastle and back at peak times and was looking at about £250 return – I managed to split the ticket into 4 separate returns and got it down to under £70 (IIRC split at Stevenage, Doncaster and York).
I needed to go to Edinburgh at a day’s notice. The fare was £300, so I went on Easyjet from Luton for £120 plus £40ish parking and £7 tram fare in Edinburgh.
Easyjet always beats the train on price, even when booking in advance unless you sod about with split ticketing – who can be bothered.
That can’t be right!?
That particular journey from Bristol to London also means you very rarely get a seat. Why pay the cost of a flight to anywhere in Europe and have to stand squashed in in conditions that we aren’t allowed to transport animals in?
…and you double, triple, quadruple the saving if you traveling with friends. Public transport prices in UK are joke.. I have saved amazing amounts of money driving which now is in excess of my car price when I got it used 3 years ago (£6500). Few specific examples I can give was London to Bath train during the Christmas total price of £1700 for 4 people, twice the journey to Scotland highlands, again ~£1500 for 4, not to mention I would have had to rent the car in Scotland anyway, because public transport options in Highlands is very limited. Even frequent London>Airport journeys saves significant amount of money, especially if I am meeting friends or family. Trip one way can easily be £100 for 4 and takes 2-3h of tiring travel with luggage whereas in car average cost is just ~ £20 and 20-30 minutes in total comfort. I do on average 8 such trips every year and that is £1200+ saved on airport transfers alone (more then my annual insurance £650 + VED £305 + MOT £49.. and with money to spare for service). Finally, even my travel to work from outskirts of London to Wapping is cheaper in car, surprisingly even considering abysmal traffic situations (which I would describe nothing else but illegal and government complicit for severely under-funding infrastructure) it takes same time as train (~45-55min). On the quiet day I can drive in ~28 minutes. Comparing with train price I save £4 if I am alone in car and almost £20 if my girlfriend needs a lift to university. That is £20 saving a day, after taking away inclusive on the road price with fuel, insurance, tax, parking and maintenance…. driving large luxury car trough London – madness.
It means there’s not enough capacity on the rails or not enough competition on individual routes. Hence, the “luxury item” pricing. When self-driving cars are on the roads, that’ll all change of course.
£11.20 for a return train journey to work vs £6 in the car (and would still need the car to travel the 5miles to the station – no footpaths or public transport) and somehow get the 3 miles to work the other side. Unless public transport costs drop dramatically its a no brained why the roads are so congested. (And no time saving for my journey).
Always go by car. Far cheaper, and convenient at 60…. Yes we need to reduce train fares by 40% in order to stop people in similar situations as myself.
I had always thought about how buying a car would solve all my problems regarding commuting expenses, but then I would need to start worrying about car maintenance. But you did make a great point that there is a degree of uncertainty with public transport compared to a car that can always run whenever you want to. I guess I should start looking for a vehicle dealer now and see what are my options and how prices are looking like nowadays.
https://www.shimkatmotor.net/