Public transport

Next month, my twin nephews are being christened up in Blackpool. It’s a six-hour drive, which would mean 12 hours of driving in just two days – not great, particularly with small children in the car! So we thought of using public transport. After all, it’s more environmentally friendly, as well as being less stressful. So, off we go to the train website to find that, for two adults (our children are below 5 and so travel free), the trip would cost £150! Checking flying as an option (mostly to compare with the train) shows that it would cost us £180.

Can that really be right? It’s nearly as expensive to get the train as it is to fly? And, what’s worse, driving costs less than £30 in petrol. Even adding “depreciation” and other overheads wouldn’t get it anywhere close to the cost of taking the train.

So our problem is this – it’s too expensive to take the train. It’s cheaper to drive the car. Something’s wrong here, surely?

pax et bonum

Article posted at 4:48pm on 16 October 2006
Category: Life, Struggling, General

Getting good prices on train tickets these days is a highly compex art. It is often cheaper to buy 2 singles, and making small modifications to your journey (in our case getting a taxi to a station 5 miles away) can bring big savings.

Example – we are going from south Essex to Norwich for £5 each each way in a few weeks – but to go to places of equivalent distance can cost 4 or 5 times as much.

I personally find flying or driving more stressful for long UK journeys, so would prefer to pay a bit more to go on the train.

Dave () (URL)
7:05pm on 16 October 2006