Rail trips are often more expensive than driving. We should tax fuel and driving more fairly and invest in our railways (and other alternatives to driving) making the green options the easiest and cheapest options - ThreadSky

gazza-d.bsky.social • 1 day ago

Rail trips are often more expensive than driving.

We should tax fuel and driving more fairly and invest in our railways (and other alternatives to driving) making the green options the easiest and cheapest options

Reposted from The Green Party of England & Wales

📈 Today rail fares rise by 4.6%.

✈️ Rail trips are on average twice as expensive as domestic flights.

🚆 We could tax air travel fairly, raising billions to invest in our railways and bring down fares, making the green option the easiest and cheapest option.

Comments

mounsey.bsky.social•1 day ago

"3 return tickets Liverpool to Sunderland please"...

£210. Ish.

360 miles in an EV, home charged... Less than a tenner. Driving has got SOOOOO cheap.

gazza-d.bsky.social•1 day ago

And would only be about forty quid in fuel for an ice car.
As you say driving is stupidly cheap.

mounsey.bsky.social•1 day ago

Yeah. I don't think there's any easy fixes, but I can see us sleepwalking into ultra-cheap driving and then never being able to reign it in.

Door to door too - so in example much faster from suburbs of Liverpool to suburbs of Sunderland.

gazza-d.bsky.social•1 day ago

I think we are already there in terms of cheap as chips driving and I'm not sure we can escape that without road pricing.
Things like cheap monthly and family passes on trains could help a lot though.

paulluton.bsky.social•22 hours ago

The logic of road charging is irrefutable - just the politics is tricky.

chrisdg.bsky.social•20 hours ago

Sometimes rail is more expensive than flying

greensully.bsky.social•1 day ago

Removing the subsidies from the fossil fuel industries and redirecting it to green transit options would be a good start. Probably wouldn't need to raise taxes to subsidise rail travel then. That way a carrot rather than a stick approach could be adopted.

cpgarghan.bsky.social•5 hours ago

Over Christmas, my partner and I travelled to Cornwall for the week. If we had gotten the train, the tickets were £350 EACH return, involving at least 3 transfers.

Or, we could spend £60 on a tank of petrol in our little Fiesta, knowing that we wouldn't end up stranded due to delays.

dkahn400.bsky.social•1 day ago

I used to live in Hatfield and work in Old Street. There is an excellent rail service between the two. It was cheaper to drive in and pay for car parking than to use the train. Mostly I cycled it.

gazza-d.bsky.social•1 day ago

I often work a day a week about 35 miles away. It's probably a tenner or less in fuel and between £12-14 on the train.
I prefer the train though as it's much more relaxed and predictable than an hour's drive on a busy motorway.

dkahn400.bsky.social•18 hours ago

The train was usually packed, and the drive into London was a traffic nightmare. Apart from psychopathic drivers trying to kill you, biking in was heaven.

coolbikeart1.bsky.social•1 day ago

Especially if you're traveling as a family.

mr-blogberry.bsky.social•8 hours ago

I travel a lot outside the UK and am always envious of their public transport systems and lack of traffic.
The big challenge here is to make the switch without disadvantaging the poor.
EVs are not the answer. Starting with a good network of Ebuses would be my choice.

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