Rail travel in the UK can be expensive -especially walk up fares. Train companies will tell you to buy advance tickets (very much like the airline market), where yield management is at play. However, rail ticketing in the UK is dumb at worst and unintelligent at best thank to a mixture of the National Settlement plan that appeared during privatisation, and different companies … [Read more...]
Want to travel by train during Easter in the UK? Good luck with that…
As Easter time draws closer, people are thinking about ways to go and see loved ones for the four day weekend in the UK (yes, we get Good Friday and the Monday after Easter off. It's rather civilised). Virgin Trains and London Midland - two of the operators affected by engineering work. Image, Economy Class and Beyond. However, it seems that Network Rail is making sure … [Read more...]
SNCF (French) Rail Strike rolls into a second week
For those of you who are going to and from France and its major transport hubs, you'll have noticed that getting around France on the train has been more vexing than not (as I found on Saturday when I was in Paris). The action caused by CGT and Sud-Rail has caused major interruption to services, impacting the TGV network, TER regional service and RER services within … [Read more...]
All change at Birmingham New Street – Half time changeover
For those who travel in the UK by rail, there are a couple of stations that can you make you physically scream. One of those happens to be a local mainline station for me - Birmingham New Street. The "Old" New Street Entrance Birmingham New Street is one of the busiest stations outside London, handling 31.2 million passengers and 5.1 million passengers changing … [Read more...]
Easter travel madness on the rails expected
For those of you who are coming to the United Kingdom over Easter, or for those of us who live here, there's some important news that came out about works that are expected on the British Railway network over the Easter period (29th March - 1st April). Firstly for those of you coming into the United Kingdom and into London: Heathrow Express and Heathrow Connect are subject to … [Read more...]
Fare rises hit the United Kingdom
As the new year begins, the only real certainty in life - will be increase in rail and bus prices today. UK National Rail Companies will have their own prices rises depending on the route, with an average increase of 4.2% in England, 3.9% in Scotland for season tickets. Some routes will be going up a lot more than this. It pays to look at the National Rail Web site to see … [Read more...]
Passenger Focus UK: People are unhappy with rail fares. REALLY???
It's time to wander back to the wacky world of the British Railway network, with Passenger Focus releasing it's latest customer satisfaction survey. And if you're a Rail company, you won't care really with the results as you've got an iron cast grip on some travel requirements. Based on a survey of 30,590 Rail Passengers between 1 September and 18 November 2011, only 46% … [Read more...]
High Speed 2 to go ahead in the UK
Well after the government umming and ahhing, it seems that the plans to put High Speed 2 (the second High Speed Rail line) is set to be built. For those of you hoping to do the London to Birmingham run in under 50 minutes though, hold onto your horses for a few years. More like 2026 is when the first train is going to run. The plan for High Speed 2 (HS2) will be to build … [Read more...]
UK Train Fares go up as of today
Well the promised train fare rises have finally hit. The rise which was meant to be inflation +3% (near enough 9% rise), which has been capped to 5.9% Regulated fares such as Long Distance Peak Fares and Season Tickets will be regulated to 6% average. However there are some wonderful discrepancies. London to Glasgow goes up 8.1% Crewe to Chester hits a massive … [Read more...]
Heathwick? What an awful idea….
Hitting the press today in the United Kingdom has been the idea of "Heathwick" (with the Telegraph breaking it first, followed by the BBC The idea is to some simple - slap in a High Speed Rail link to operate between London Heathrow and London Gatwick Airports around the M25, running at 180mph to 15 minutes and create a "virtual hub" between the two airports. Ministers … [Read more...]
