Train vs. plane fares

Rocket · Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2003 1:07 pm

I've never read so much blithering rubbish written by people that obviously don't have families and have never travelled long distances with kids and most certainly wouldn't have the first clue of the expenses involved in carting them around. The fact is that the ONLY cheap way for a family to travel is by car where the cost of the fuel is less than one adult train ticket. Add a motel for say Melbourne-Gold Coast and you are still hundreds of dollars ahead. Trains in this country are expensive, uncomfortable and slow and that is why they are not being used. Not to mention the lack of services to choose from and the lack of co-ordination of the pathetic services that are on offer. I get a FREE rail pass anywhere in Australia when on leave and I wouldn't go near the rotten things unless I wanted to go up the East Coast from Brisbane on the tilt trains ; QR seem to be getting it right. IF we had a government in Canberra that didn't have smeg for brains we would get a high speed train from Melbourne to Brisbane via the major centres and people would use it in droves for business travel and to some extent for tourist travel if the price was right . I recently toured Japan by rail. The shinkansens are packed with businessmen in the morning and evening periods and are well patronised throughout the day. Fares on them are high with the cost of a guaranteed seat ( reservation ) being very high by comparison to the 'just get on ' fare . However tourists can purchase a Japan Rail Pass and travel for a fraction of the cost with a reserved seat for free ( if available ). I'm not suggesting that we could ever provide the same level of service in Australia but the east coast corridor could certainly be upgraded to high speed and give the airlines a real run for their money. Melbourne to Sydney in 3 hours at the same cost of a plane in a much better seat with facility to use mobile phones, computers fax machines etc would provide business travellers with the opportunity to get things done whilst travelling in a high level of comfort and safety and that is something that the airlines cannot do! As for carting a family of kids on a train------it aint gunna happen, the economics just don't add up and they never will.

ROCKET
http://rodsrailpage.fotopic.net/

mjja · Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2003 5:16 pm

"Never" is a big word. Here's my rationale.

Per seat/km, rail is by far the cheapest way to travel. If, in the current situation, air or road (including private car) is cheaper than rail, there is something unbalanced. Either rail us underutilised so the capital costs are being spread over too few people, driving ticket costs up, or there is something eating up a lot of costs. Either situation can be remedied. All that is needed is a truly level playing field and no hidden taxes or subsidies for any mode over another.

Happy Gunzelling and remember, "Go by rail!"

Michael Angelico
President, Smart Passengers Inc
(My opinions are my own unless specifically stated.)

BlueBird 255 · Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2003 2:23 am

i agree with ROCKET

its cheaper for our family to drive to melb than catch the train
costs excluding taxi
train, 2 x adults 1 x student
114+40=154 one way

car = commodore
about 70 dollars in fuel
half the cost!

Gazza · Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2003 8:32 am

I'd agree with the above arguments up to a point. I need to travel soon from Tweed Heads to Sydney.
Train from Murwillumbah too expensive & too long, done it before.
Car cheap, but takes about 10 hours plus stops. (add an extra 2 hours)
Plane - picked up cheap tickets for my wife & I. 2 people, return Gold Coast to Sydney, total cost $154.00 !!!!!

At that price, it was no argument. We'll fly.

pennoes · Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2003 4:30 pm

There have been VFT proposals for a long time now - going back 30 odd years. I read a document from the federal parliment detailing the history of all the parlimentary discussion on the issues.
Each time a good proposal has got up (and there have been a number of them) it has had the support of the government, and major industry willing to sponsor/build the line, then mysteriously it somehow gets scrapped. Most recently (I think around 1998-9) there was a serious proposal to built a VFT between Sydney & Canberra which was APPROVED by the government and even the group to build it was approved - a French company that built the TGV lines (can't remember name right now).
You can be sure that they would have done a number of patronage, environmental, geological etc studies to ensure the route was viable and reasonably cost effective, but again for some mysterious reason, even after John Howard's approval, it was scrapped! What a shame.

I believe that a VFT is something that is certainly viable between Sydney & Canberra (perhaps initially) and also Melb-Syd & Bris Syd. The Melb-Syd route would probably be the most likely to be cost efficient connecting the two largest cities in Aust.
What we need is governments with FORESIGHT - even tho initially the project may not be profitable, it most certainly would be in the future, providing the service was fast and reliable. If it was reasonably expensive, this wouldn't matter too much I don't think, as long as it was comparable or not too much more expensive than air travel.
The more reliable, fast and efficient a service is, the more people will use it - for example, the motorway toll system in say Sydney, people still use the motorways, even despite the toll increases. Recently there was a survey in the NRMA that said that ~50% or more people would pay more on road tolls to save time on the road. I think the same could be said of rail-travel, but I stress it must be reliable, fast and efficient.

Are there any lobby groups that lobby the government(s) about VFT's?

p.s. I would have thought that a VFT would get fantastic patronage between Wollongong/Sydney/Gosford/Newcastle. Along this stretch of coastline you have ~ 5 million people - yet it takes 2 1/2 hours at best to get from Sydney to Newcastle by train. Whilst the service is relatively cheap, it is SLOW!! Surely you could easily get a service that was Sydney to Newcastle in 1hr or less... a distance of ~150km.
I know there is an existing proposal to upgrade the lines between Wollongong & Syd, Newc & Syd, but I was under the impression that it is not going to make the service all that quicker (maybe 30mins faster?)

Any thoughts/suggestions?

John of Melbourne · Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2003 11:55 pm

aus&serbian_rail · Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2003 1:47 am

What's the reason for rail fares being so high?

In Europe rail is the cheapest way of traveling. I don't get it.

City Rail appologise any inconvinience caused!

http://www.geocities.com/boce_ribljacorba

mjja · Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2003 11:48 pm

Like I said above, something is out of balance.

Happy Gunzelling and remember, "Go by rail!"

Michael Angelico
President, Smart Passengers Inc
(My opinions are my own unless specifically stated.)

Thomas the tank engine · Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2003 8:48 pm

Even with the high price, the rail system isn't making a profit! What chance have they got if they lower the price?

I once heard that for each passenger the Manly ferry carries, it makes a loss of $3. I wonder how much Cityrail/Countrylink is losing per passenger!

mjja · Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2003 10:25 am

The fundamental concept is that it costs heaps to run a train (track access, crew, fuel, and buying and maintaining the train) but once it's running it costs almost nothing to have another passenger aboard. So when patronage is falling a railway does very badly and ticket prices go up.

Of course when it's cheap to run a car it makes the railways' job harder. What we need is car rego fees up several hundred percent (to cover 100% of the costs of maintaining roads) and fuel up a heap too. Then the efficiency of railways can come through and passenger numbers increase, bringing ticket prices down, bringing more passengers, etc.

Of course there is a big problem in trying to compete with car ownership - people don't always think about the relative costs. They just fill up with petrol every week, pay the bills for insurance, rego, repairs etc when they come, and don't think how much cheaper it would be just to go by train. Also since they drive themselves they aren't paying for crews, which makes it look cheaper until they get stress disorders from being stuck in traffic jams.

Happy Gunzelling and remember, "Go by rail!"

Michael Angelico
President, Smart Passengers Inc
(My opinions are my own unless specifically stated.)

aus&serbian_rail · Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2003 10:41 pm

The thing is that rail operators are unable to offer fast, frequent and reliable services and that's why customers avoid them.

Nearly every railway on this globe makes loss, that's why we have governments to subside them, because railway is made for sake of ordinary people not rich ones who use fast jets and expect rail to make profit for them.

City Rail appologise any inconvinience caused!

http://www.geocities.com/boce_ribljacorba

mjja · Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2003 1:41 pm

And yet the per-seat/km and per-tonne/km costs of running a train are so much smaller than for a plane that it's ridiculous. What's the difference? Airlines know how to:
1) Cut unnecessary costs
2) Chase customers and get the volume of business
3) Give the service quality their customers want
So do road transport companies. That's why I'm glad Toll got NR and Freightcorp - they might put some sense into the railways.

Happy Gunzelling and remember, "Go by rail!"

Michael Angelico
President, Smart Passengers Inc
(My opinions are my own unless specifically stated.)

John of Melbourne · Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2003 11:49 pm

aus&serbian_rail · Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2003 12:13 am

I'm sorry I wasn't more specific on this matter. I didn't think of Vline services and QR partly. Of course, we can't compare with Eurotrain or Berlin-Warshaw-Berlin express because they are much more faster.

Railways make losses because it's expensive to run basically, but there is a lot of bad mangment of course.

City Rail appologise any inconvinience caused!

http://www.geocities.com/boce_ribljacorba

John of Melbourne · Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2003 12:29 am