Planes, Trains and Automobiles

This weekend, Steve and I were up at my Mum and Dad's for a nice extended weekend break over Easter. We flew up on flybe who offer an excellent low cost service out of Manchester. Despite this being Easter weekend we managed to get return flights for two people for just over £200: Bargain!

Conversely, a friend of mine who recently moved to Belgium has invited us to visit in July for a bit of a get together with a couple of other friends. As a result I have spent some of this afternoon (in between working, while waiting for the slowest database in the universe to respond) looking at travel possibilities. I've looked at a number of different ferry routes, driving our own car, hiring a car and using the Eurotunnel as well as combinations of the above. I haven't yet looked at flights, but this has made me stop dead in my tracks....

I'm hoping that you can read the above price on from thetrainline.com, in case you can't, let me fill you in... £253.00!

"Ah, but surely that's first class or business class", I hear you cry. Nope... if I wanted business class it would be a whopping £404.00! Perhaps it's a flexible fare? Nope... flexible fares come in at £393.00! OK, so maybe that's for two of us? Nope... just little old me! And that's just the fare to St Pancras - it doesn't even include the Eurostar part of the journey!

Even more amusing, the thing is that the site cheerfully suggests that two single tickets may be cheaper, so I check, hopeful that's how you get these great deals for train trips to London. So I go and check and it is cheaper... by less than £15. The total cost if booked as two single journeys: £194.70. And that's just for one person!

Something is very wrong here. The distance to Inverness from Manchester is about 375 miles; the distance to St Pancras from Manchester is about 200 miles. How can it cost me more than double to go a shorter distance by train than it does to fly?

Furthermore, if I was to use a good, economical car (say, a Mini Cooper D, which does about 70 mpg with emissions of 104 g/km) to make each journey I would only spend around £48 return to Inverness and about £26 return to London! I could cover the return distance to St Pancras and back more than 7 times before I'd equal the cheapest possible train fare and could easily carry three further passengers for the same money. Even a gas-guzzler, which might have room for five or six people, or even a sports car, could do the return trip for less than the cost of the train!

We are always being told to use public transport and leave the car at home - save the environment, go green and all that jazz - we're even told that flying is an environmental evil, but where's the incentive? Why would I ever choose to make this trip by train, indeed, how could I afford to? This certainly brightened my day. I'm still laughing heartily at the absurdity of it all!