https://www.channel4.com/programmes/ben-elton-the-great-railway-disaster "Live" on Channel 4 26th June 23, 8PM On Channel 4 streaming service from then on
Even though Ben Elton is a raving commie I think I'll give this a watch tonight. Cheers for the heads-up.
I watched it and yes Ben Elton is correct, Britain's railways are in a terrible state. Cancelled services, noisy trains - and by noisy I don't mean the ride itself but the amount of announcements when you are on the train, they are endless - "mind the gap, take your belongings with you, if you see anything suspicious please report it" played on a loud loop that ruins any journey. Then there's the price, I recently had to attend a meeting in Portsmouth, the train from my local station in the North West (Lea Green) would have cost me almost £300 return. I took the plane in the end, flew from Manchester-Southhampton and got a taxi, it cost me less than £100. It's just mental.
Not that I disagree that the railways are in a shocking state- they are, but I've never understood people complaining about too many announcements. I'm very familiar with the British rail network so I don't need them, but I really don't find them all that intrusive. I also know people who are much less familiar with trains than myself, people who only travel once or twice a year by train, and they find them reassuring and helpful. Regarding that journey, is that really the best price you could get? That's absurd if so. Did you use advance tickets, or try split tickets?
Get on a Thameslink train at Rainham and go to London Bridge, then come back to me. You start with 32 station stops being listed (reduces by 1 station per stop obviously), then you have the "shortly arriving at", and so on and so on. Because the train stops very frequently up to Dartford and again from Charlton the announcements are hardly ever OFF Long distance trains far less of course See, to me that your comment is required in the first place is absurd. We live in an age of computers so ALL tickets should be the cheapest possible without the end user having to hunt them down or risk stupid questions from guards and barrier monitors etc. If split ticketing can be done by a website not affiliated with BR then BR can do the same.
The whole split ticketing thing in the uk confuses the hell out of me and I had to ask my sister about it (And I‘m from the UK originally). It did indeed save me a lot of money, but it shouldn’t be necessary. I also don’t understand the difference in prices depending on which train you get and the whole peak / off peak thing. If I want to go from Birmingham to London In my mind there should just be one price. Here in Switzerland we just have an app that you start when you get on the train and stop when you get off. It automatically charges you the cheapest price. It’s never gone wrong for me yet. You just have to remember to keep your phone charged and remember to check in and out. No faffing around with 3rd party websites. You can of course use the ticket machine as normal if you are afraid of being tracked.
Peak/ Off- Peak really isn't that hard to understand. As a rule, peak time is just any time on a weekday before around 9am. And peak time tickets do serve a purpose, they're there to combat congestion so leisure travellers aren't clogging up the network travelling at a time they don't need to be. You're right that split ticketing shouldn't be necessary though. But unfortunately we've just got to work with what we've got. An app like what you described would undoubtedly be useful, however I have still have three family members without smartphones so it would be no use to them. I wouldn't use it either, partly because I like collecting physical tickets and want ticket offices to remain open as long as they can but also because I don't trust stuff like that. I was stuck with a digital railcard for a year and I hated it. It was slow to load and when it did load my picture sometimes wouldn't appear, causing confusion from the guard and making me start to panic. I gladly switched back to a physical one when the time came to renew. I still refuse to buy e- tickets.
