A slight correction, ianzin, there are 3.8 litres in a US gallon (they are smaller than UK gallons), so using 83 pence per litre I see locally and the 1.46 exchange rate, it comes to $4.60 per US gallon.
Here’s a couple hypothetical travel scenarios: I live about 40 miles outside London. Imagine I need to be in Central London for a 10:00 am meeting. By car, I’d want to leave by 7:30 to beat the traffic. My car would use about 2 US gallons of petrol to get there in stop&go traffic. Depending on where I was going, parking could vary from free to £20, so lets say £10 ($14.60). So the round trip cost estimate is $33.00, and travel time could be 5 hours. A peak rate rail travel card is about £20 ($30) which includes the Underground and buses. If I walk to my station (40 minutes), round trip travel time would be about 3.5 hours. In this case the train clearly wins.
Now imagine a spur of the moment business trip to Edinburgh, leaving this Friday morning and returning Saturday. An open economy rail fare is £196 and travel time is 7 hours. An open economy flight from Heathrow is £326 and travel time (including to/from airports and arriving 1 hour early for the flight) is around 4.5 hours. This one is closer, the 2.5 hour savings may be worth the extra cost. Data supplied by travelocity.co.uk and thetrainline.com
Imagine now that you go outside, hop on your motorcycle and do the same trip. No/little stop and go traffic because bikes are allowed to go between cars in London. Parking is free, or a lot cheaper, you use one gallon of gas, less really, and are then almost before you get to the train station by walking. You’ve now saved a lot more time, tons of gas, you think a train runs on air?, and you’ve left a parking space for some other smuck driving.
The problem is that in Europe they have trains that only go back and forth for commuters, here the lines are used for everything. One delay can mean sitting for hours. I take the train from Point of Rock MD to Wasington DC every day. Why because it beats trying to drive there, but only for stress. But when something goes wrong you can sit on the train for a long time, and if you need to be someplace you might be screwed.
I don’t think commuter trains are the answer one bit. They might help in some places, but how much faster do you really get there? I havne’t ever tried to drive to work during rush hour, though I used to commute by motorcycle. I could probably beat the train in starting at the same time, it’s just too much wear and tear on the car, plus I get to read on the train. I also have half my train ticket paid for by the Gov.
Trains are not the way to go, they cost a lot of money, they are the second most costly way to ship/travel. Trains haven’t ever been very good for personal travel. Why don’t more people take the bus? I can get to NYC by bus faster and cheaper than by train, yet I don’t see anyone talking about more bus routes.
I think we need to have more smaller cars, or motorcycles really, since they use a lot less gas then a train, they are smaller, and cheaper.
Don’t know, how far is it by roads? I confess I don’t know distances from London to the rest of the UK, though I might still be able to get there faster by car/motorcycle and have it cost less. If it’s less than around 400 miles I can make it in 7 hours easy, and that’s without speeding, especially in the UK highways with 70mph limit.
Price comparison for my typical weekend travel from New York City to Boston (Friday evening) and back (Sunday evening):
Amtrak Acela regional: $72 NY-Bos + $57 Bos-NY = $129; 4 hrs rail time ea. way, no pre-departure waiting, plus local transportation to and from my apt. in Queens/the train stations/my friend’s apt. in Boston
USAir Laguardia-Boston Round Trip: $158; 1.5 hrs airtime ea. way, plus 1 hr. pre-departure waiting, plus local transportation to and from my apt. in Queens/the airports/my friend’s apt. in Boston
Driving my car: $25 gas + $8 tolls NYC + $4 masspike tolls = $37; 4 hrs driving time ea. way, no pre-departure waiting, no addl. intracity connections.
So, you see, as long as I need to own a car–and, therefore, pay its upkeep costs–anyway (I do: for cargo purposes, rural trips that would never be serviced by public transporation), there is no economic or time incentive for me to take a train. The prices aren’t much better than a plane, and the amt. of time required for the situation I’ve given is possibly more for a train trip.
If that NY-Boston train trip were cut to 2.5 hours and the roundtrip price cut to $50, it would be tempting. Otherwise, it’s not worth it.
You’ll need something good to convince me, esp. to convince me that advances in car engine technology won’t pace or outstrip rising petroleum costs.
This last post hits the nail on the head. As long as you need to maintain a car for *something, it makes little economic sense to use most forms of mass transit, for all but very specialized purposes.
Here in Edmonton we have a light-rail transport system that loses big money. It’s always packed for hockey games, because it makes sense to use it for that (you can park at an LRT station somewhere for free, it’s a ten minute ride (or less) to the stadium from anywhere, and it only costs $2.00. If you drive there, it costs something like $10 just to park, and you’re always snarled up in traffic jams after the game.
For other very specific groups, the train works well. If you work downtown and live near an LRT station, riding the train makes a lot of sense (it costs me $85/mo to park downtown).
But for the vast majority of commuters, the train simply doesn’t meet their needs. If your job and home aren’t within walking distance of a station, taking the train means catching a bus to the train station, riding the train, then catching a bus from the arrival point to your job. This can turn a 20-minute commute into an hour and a half. And monthly transit passes for all this will cost you almost as much as operating a car.
Then of course, if you ride the train it’s pretty hard to stop at the grocery store on the way home, pick up the kids from school, run out at lunch hour for errands, etc.
If you look at the history of light rail transit or passenger trains in general, you’ll see that most of these experiments are big failures.
Let me add a final clarifier: I DO use mass transit every day–inside NYC. You couldn’t pay me to drive into Manhattan every day.
This is where I think public transportation works best, within a metro area. But unless prices and transit times are vastly reduced, I don’t think inter-city trains hold any advantage for car owners. They–and buses–are great if you don’t own a car (I’ve been there), but if you do, why bother?
Edward, The train route I plotted included the 1.5 hours it takes for me to get from my local station to King’s Cross in London where the fast train to Edinburgh starts. When the tracks are in good repair and there are no delays (which is a rare event recently!), the trains will run at 125 mph. It will do the 380 miles from London to Edinburgh in between 5 and 5.5 hours depending on the number of stops in between. Motorcycles are an excellent way to commute in the urban areas. A former co-worker would cut his 40 commute from over an hour to about 30 minutes when he switched from car to bike. But he was a bit of a nutter on his Fireblade and regularly saw triple digit speeds on his way in.
so 5 hours to do 380 miles comes out to be 65mph average, not hard to do for only a few hours really, so I don’t see you saving much time. though I don’t know the traffic towards Edinburgh so there might be lots of it. I have driven in the UK, put about 1500 miles or so in two weeks. I drove back and forth between London and Cambridge a number of times and really had no problems, though I didn’t drive during rush hour much. Plus for parking I stopped mainly in the West Ham area and caught the bus/metro. there were three of us and the train would have cost a lot more than to drive so we drove.
Here in the states though we can’t do what they allow in the UK, we have to stay in line etc, except CA, though we are allowed to use the HOV lanes. As I said I never drove to work during rush hour, but I can make in by motorcycle at the same speed as those around me, NOT at 100+, in 45-60 minutes depending on how stupid people are. It would probably take more than 1.5 hours by car. I still don’t think that mass transit does much good outside of the Urban areas, though inside they can work nice. I just wish DC would get an outside ring or something or I would ride the Metro more, but it takes 50 minutes to get to work because there is no direct line to where I work even though the station is right out side.
