You haven't taken into account all the other costs incurred in running a car.
But once you've bought a car most of those costs will still apply even if it's sat there on the drive going nowhere: Car Tax, insurance, loan repayments, depreciation, etc.
Even if you go by public transport you're still paying for the possible use of your car, so you might as well use it if the public transport journey is much more expensive then the fuel + parking, or more time consuming than driving.
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Don't forget also the mileage allowance paid for business travel - I get 19p per mile home to work (taxable) & the same for any business travel (not taxable). I was supposed to have a meeting in London a couple of weeks ago, earliest train got into London for 8.53 (I think) at a cost of £110 return.
The only way to get there any quicker would have been to drive to somewhere like Warwick/Birmingham and pay to park there, plus an additional £10 to £20 of fuel to get there.
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But once you've bought a car most of those costs will still apply even if it's sat there on the drive going nowhere: Car Tax insurance loan repayments depreciation etc.
What about more wear and tear, more depreciation because of the higher mileage, more servicing, etc.
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>>costs incurred.
Adjusting the cost of fuel as my car runs on LPG @ 52.9ppl: tinyurl.com/22t9a
Edited by Tron on 10/10/2008 at 10:55
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Adjusting the cost of fuel as my car runs on LPG @ 52.9ppl: tinyurl.com/22t9a
I don't think you've given us enough information to calculate your running costs.
However, if you took the car running costs as (say) 22 pence per mile x 220 miles = £48.40. Add £8 for parking gives £56.40 total.
And according to the AA route planner, the road journey of 220 miles return takes 4 hours 34 minutes.
I'd sooner let the train take the strain and pay another £7 for 2 hours 23 minutes travel time.
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03 1.6 16v Astra Elegance dual fuel (lpg/petrol) estate.
Mileage 'door to door' is 189.7 (as per my satnav) if TMC does not divert me off the given route!
Edited by Tron on 10/10/2008 at 12:20
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I regularly travel to Manchester from Stevenage at weekends. I pay £9.80 single each way and change at Doncaster or York. You have to book weeks in advance to get that sort of deal though.
Watford to Manchester is £13 each way at best, but they currently dig up the trains most weekends. Whilst doing so you can get cheap weekday tickets for £8 single between Euston and Manchester if you get an E-ticket (print your own) or an M-ticket (sent to mobile).
Being able to relax with a beer on the train is far preferable to enduring the motorway for several hours and much cheaper too.
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Usually car is always cheaper if you are 2+ on cars. More the passenger, cheaper it is.
Also, if you have at least 2 drivers, you can share the driving.
Some advance train tickets are ludicrously cheaper but only when you buy in sufficient advance - which is not always possible.
Edited by movilogo on 10/10/2008 at 14:40
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£5.50 return here tinyurl.com/28tddo
Just don't expect very helpful (overseas call centre) advisors...
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Just been to USA for 8nights.......wife & I live 70ish miles north of Heathrow near convenient rail station. We would have liked to have used public transport but long term carpark plus say 20p per mile driving cost [I do my own simple servicing] much cheaper than trains. And less hassle, even with a blocked M25 that morning.
I hardly ever travel by train and resent subsidising those that do. If they had to pay the real cost they'd soon convert all the lines to roads apart from those carrying coal/oil to power stations. Rails only make sense if you regularly need to shift at least 100tons of matter [animal vegetable or mineral] between two specific points over poor terrain.
It was interesting to see from the top of the Sears tower in Chicago the vast area available for road vehicles in and out of the city - being fully used - and the vast area available for rail vehicles.....hardly any activity at all.
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If the tracks were developed and maintained, like the roads, at public expense, the "subsidy" would not be required. Far too much of what we do pay goes to finance the contractual absurdities that characterise out privatised railway.
Trains are absolutely the only way to shift millions of people fast and safely into London and other big cities. We simply don't have the vast area for road vehicles, either moving or parked, that a US city can provide.
Edited by Bromptonaut on 11/10/2008 at 22:45
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we actually don't have the train carrying capacity iether! thats why the trains are so expensive. There isn't the required rolling stock to meet demand & the stations & signalling couldn't cope.
One of the lines I travel on had a train director on board & he said at a million pounds a carrige they do not have the funds to increase capacity & the station platforms are not long enough so prices are kept high to keep capacity reduced!
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we actually don't have the train carrying capacity iether! thats why the trains are so expensive
No, they're expensive because that lack of capacity to meet demand is being met with a business logic of maximising profit on a scarce resource by increasing the price, rather than a public service logic of keeping fares realistic and affordable. It's the inevitable result of privatisation.
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Its the old bugbear of vehicle useage... you could increase the capacity of the trains fairly easily by adding more coaches in most parts of the country... but then those extra coaches would be sat around for most of the day doing nothing... and as said before the way the railways have been privatised and subsidised means thats not an option...
As for: "Rails only make sense if you regularly need to shift at least 100tons of matter [animal vegetable or mineral] between two specific points over poor terrain" - if that was the case then railways would have disappeared years ago, but they haven't - if there is ever a national rail strike for any length of time (unlikely - seems to be one of the few advantages of the current set-up!) then watch for the immediate gridlock on the roads. I suggest you look at that "subisdy" you are giving the railways as money well spent to prevent you grinding to a halt as soon as you leave your drive!
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>>Rails only make sense if you regularly need to shift at least 100tons of matter [animal vegetable or mineral] between two specific points over poor terrain"<<
Yes that is twaddle.
I work half the week in London and sometimes do the journey from Mancheter twice a week and will be doing so tomorrow morning. I'll leave my house at 6am and be at my desk in Holborn by about 9.20, having driven 30 minutes to the station and having read the paper with a cup of tea and done a good hour's work, probably more and then I'll go on to do a full day's work.
If I drove to London I'd arrive at my desk about 10.30 if I was lucky, knackered and having achieved nothing.
Price of full price single £115 + £15 parking or 230 miles (@40p per mile) + C-charge + parking, probably about the same.
Edited by Nsar on 12/10/2008 at 21:11
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The summary is that if you can book early you can get some real bargains, with or without a railcard. The cheap seats on any given service are available on line on a Thursday 12 weeks before the date of travel and it is possible to take out insurance for each journey, @ £1, thru Mondial Insurance (no connection - I just happen to use them).
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The summary is that if you can book early you can get some real bargains with or without a railcard.
AS is spot on here. There are also deals like group save and (towards London) kids for a £. As I've posted before group save got us 3 adults and four kids Northampton to London off peak travelcards (ie including tube/bus) for under £50. Alternative was 2 cars to Stanmore/Cockfosters and back, say 220 vehicle miles and still have to pay for the travelcards.
PS for AS - have you seen this month's Aeroplane (or possibly Flypast??) magazine about BA Strikemasters in the Omani Air Force?
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BA - thanks for that pointer. I flew Jaguars there but it is all of interest to me. I'm obliged to you
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Yes that is twaddle.
Twaddle or not, you are not paying the full cost. The taxpayer is helping you out.
Railways are only still around because they are already there. Imagine if they weren't, and someone came along and said, 'hey guys - I've got this great idea. Let's put down a network of steel rails all over the place at taxpayers' expense ['cos otherwise no-one would pay the transport prices] with million pound coaches and miles of billions of pounds-worth of signalling and power stuff......]
In the 21st century you can get six wheel coaches with wings from Manchester which instead of hundreds of miles and thousands of tons of high maintenance metal prone to accidental or deliberate damage and theft require a mere couple of miles of wide concrete road at each end and a bloke with radar who can talk to the driver........at no cost to anyone but yourself. Quicker and, all in all, cheaper. Much as I admire the workings of a Stanier or a Deltic, railways are an expensive anachronism.
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John
Aeroplanes also require the bloke with radar who can talk to the driver to maintain separations from other aircraft that make railway headways look like the Holloway Road at 08:45. And, since nobody wants a runway near their house, still less in the centre of a city travel to the airport also involves a train.
The modern concept is the guided busway where rubber tyred diesel buses are guided by concrete tracks. But then it would be even better if you could couple a dozen busses together with one driver and use steel rails/tyres which are much easier to guide...................
Edited by Bromptonaut on 12/10/2008 at 21:56
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Railways are only still around because they are already there.
Yes, and they formed the cornerstone of the industrial revolution in this country, transporting goods and people at speeds not known before and with technology which could not be applied to highways and stagecoaches. It shaped the mining, tourism, textiles, industries (to name but a few).
The train is, true, not quick if you measure the time from start to destination, but only rail travel can take you from the centre of one city and drop you off smack in the middle of another, without check-in, bag drop, inter-terminal transport, etc.
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> Yes and they formed the cornerstone of the industrial revolution in this country transporting goodsand people at speeds not known before and with technology which could not be applied to highways and stagecoaches. It shaped the mining tourism textiles industries (to name but a few
So did canals!
but only rail travel can take you from the centre of one city and drop you off smack in the middle of another without check-in bag drop inter-terminal transport etc.
But many people don't start from the centre of one city and often don't want to be in the centre of the one it goes to. That's why most of us drive. And as for check - ins, have you been on Eurostar? [next time we go to Paris, we're flying..it will be quicker and cheaper!]
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So did canals!
I've not seen a narrow-boat beat a stagecoach in a race, nor transport a dozen wagon loads of goods using a 3 man crew.
But many people don't start from the centre of one city and often don't want to be in the centre of the one it goes to.
How can that be true - the majority of people live in towns and cities. Where would you like your station, on the edge of town? What happens if you live the other end? Housing estates were built up around railway stations for just that reason.
And as for check - ins have you been on Eurostar? [next time we go to Paris we're flying..it will be quicker and cheaper!]
Eurostar being the only exception. You still need to find your way into the centre of Paris from the airport.
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Twaddle or not you are not paying the full cost. The taxpayer is helping you out. Railways are only still around because they are already there.
If you think that you air travellers pay the full cost, you've not been doing your reading on all the massive hidden subsidies. Aviation fuel is heavily subsidised by tax breaks, and the huge costs of the noise pollution caused by planes at circling around Heathrow comes nowhere near the accounts of the airlines. Similarly, the airlines pay nowt for the environmental damage caused by their huge emissions at high altitudes, which are much more destructive than low altitude emissions.
The main reason that railways are hard to finance is that the infrastructure generates its returns over a much longer timespan than our current accounting models are comfortable with. Alignments, bridges and tunnels constructed over 150 years ago by Brunel are still in use today, and commercial business models find it very hard to accommodate such long-term paybacks. But we all benefit from the massive investment the Victorians made in trainlines in the 19th century.
Edited by NowWheels on 12/10/2008 at 22:25
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Not so much that aviation fuel is subsidised as the tax on road fuel is a rip off. Although I have seen that HMG proposes to tax jet fuel used for private flights. I would imagine that the amount collected will not pay for the wages of kleptococrats involved.
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Ho ho.
As if the road network isn't subsidised by 'the taxpayer'. Would the road network exist if it wasn't? Not likely. You only need to look at the state of 'private roads' to see what happens: nobody wants to pay.
And of course the airlines are subsidised through a favourable tax regime. Do you really think Ryanair would exist without that?
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sq
Baskerville, the roads are more than 'subsidised' by the motorist who pays far more in the way of fuel, licence and vehicle tax than the roads actually cost. They require no funding from any other type of tax.
And people do pay for private roads - French motorways and the Birmingham toll are good examples.
Edited by Pugugly on 12/10/2008 at 23:03
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Baskerville the roads are more than 'subsidised' by the motorist who pays far more in the way of fuel licence and vehicle tax than the roads actually cost.
Do vehicle and fuel taxes not count as taxes then?
And people do pay for private roads - French motorways and the Birmingham toll are good examples.
The French state until recently had a massive stake in the companies that built and run their toll roads. They would not have been built without it. And without the publicly-funded link to the Birmingham toll from the M6, that road would be utterly useless--the company running the toll road refused to pay for this link. The idea that this road has no taxpayer liablility is utterly wrongheaded.
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John F
Anyone who flies Manchester - London for work in central areas really needs to have their bumps felt - it takes forever door to door and you never get more than 30 mins when you're not being prodded about like cattle.
When they build Holborn International Airport I might give it the once over it would be a nice view of the British Museum as you come into land.
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John F Anyone who flies Manchester - London for work in central areas really needs to have their bumps felt - it takes forever door to door and you never get more than 30 mins when you're not being prodded about like cattle.
Clearly many do [google London city Airport]. The principle is sound, it's the details of the painfully inefficient boarding and turnaround procedures that need to be improved. Sizeable safe STOL planes are a reality now so runways do not need to be very long. Things will doubtless improve in future as we begin to see air coach travel as mundane as road/rail coach travel.
As for noise, how many tens of thousands of people hear your rail coaches rattling down from Manchester while the air coaches pass for the most part unnoticed?
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As for noise how many tens of thousands of people hear your rail coaches rattling down from Manchester while the air coaches pass for the most part unnoticed?
The train noise is localised, but the aircraft drown out conversation and sabotage sleep over hunks chunks of South London, where millions of people live.
That's unavoidable with airports: either they are a huge distance from the city or they cause a huge noise problem for its residents.
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I've just had an exchange with someone who has to get from Newport Pagnell to Haywards Heath on a day trip. I suggested the train. Answer, "No":
* Wouldn't use the free time on the train and therefore doesn't value it.
* Likes driving, except on motorways . . . but it's all motorways, I pointed out. Seems immune to stress and hassle from driving.
* Claims to have suffered more delays by train than by driving . . . I don't believe him.
* Won't acknowledge accountable costs beyond those of train ticket and petrol.
So, a fairly typical result in my experience, which has taught me that time is money, even time spent on non-business activity. His day in Haywards Heath is going to be tiring; that alone would make me tick the train box.
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For those of who state "I arrive energetic after a train ride, increases productivity as I can work on my laptop on train etc." - please take a note that often (especially peak hours) it not even possible to get a seat on trains!
Standing for an hour smelling another man's armpit is less enjoyable than being stuck on M25 :)
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I've done my share of commuting, so I know what you are talking about. Even in those unpleasant conditions, not all time is lost and the alternative would have been 1.5 hours and more completely dead time on the road compared with 30 minutes in the train.
The case I've illustrated is a Saturday journey.
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I think anyone who has been through an airport in the last 20 years will agree that air travel has long since lost any air of magic or mystique. Perception isn't the issue, it's the reality that causes problems if I fly to London and taking out the time it takes to get from door to airport car park, I've got probably 15-20 mins to get from car to check-in desk, 10 minutes check-in, 50 mins getting from check-in to gate, 15 minutes to baord and push back, 1 hour flight and taxi-ing, 15 minutes "deplane" and get out of airport, then 40 minutes to Paddington then 15 minutes to Holborn tube, 5 minutes to desk
Let's round it down to 200 minutes of tiresome shunting around or as this morning arrived at station at 6.30 on train at 6.45, Euston 9.07, desk 9.20 with two hours of lolling around reading the paper with a cuppa sitting at a table, snoozing and emailing and working in the middle of it.
I can recommend a good phrenologist if you want!
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I wish more people would use public transport. There are far too many of them trying to use my roads and clogging them up.
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Another reason not to use Public Transport: tinyurl.com/4j8kmc
Even worse than the fact that on peanuts left out on a bar, there will be urine from at least 7 people .....oh, the great 'unwashed'.
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Apologies, the tinyurl does not work. Here it is again:
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7667499.stm
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I was a bit surprised, in an operating theatre in the main hospital of an African capital city (albeit a small and devastated one), to find pools of dried blood and what looked remarkably like cigarette ash present in quantity. I was told among other things that Medecins sans frontieres, who were running the place, were inspired by Albert Schweitzer who apparently was a firm believer in the maintenance of 'local immunities', essentially by not being too obsessive about cleanliness.
It is said that overprotected modern children are flimsier than their forebears and more given to allergies, in part perhaps because of the toxic cleaning products their mothers splash about the place so freely.
Mouse, steering wheel... there's no escape. Best not to think about it too much.
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The talk of avoiding cars or trains because of bacteria is just nonsense. The human immune system has evolved to take account of normal levels of bacteria in our environment. The majority of trains and cars meet normal levels of cleanliness, and pose not the slightest problem.
As for car v. train - why not just assess the journey on its merits? If I'm going to London then I can spend 75 minutes having a coffee and getting some work done on a clean and efficient train that has power for my laptop and a table. It goes from within a couple of miles from my door (can get a Taxi there for £3.50) and costs £34. I can also have a beer with friends before coming home in the evening. I'd be a complete moron to drive.
On the other hand, many destinations are not on a direct, fast line. Then it's a factor of distance, what I need with me, where I'm going at the other end, time of day etc. I drive most of the time, take the train when it makes sense. Works for me.
As an aside, It's a real shame what the (entirely necessary) bail out of the banks could have done for us as a country. I believe it could pay for 20 years of the NHS, or proper high speed rail links across the country, or proper integrated public transport to free the roads up for people who don't have a good alternative. What a waste...
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I can either drive to work, for which I have to allow 30 minutes, plus 10 minutes to find a parking space, plus 10 minutes to walk to the office. Cost: high.
Or take the tube: 15 minutes walk; 10 minutes sitting comfortably reading the paper, and 5 minutes getting on/off in/out of the stations. £1.50.
>>As an aside, It's a real shame what the (entirely necessary) bail out of the banks could have done for us as a country. I believe it could pay for 20 years of the NHS,
Errr, well, not really. It's going to be paid for by tax for the next 50 years.
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The trick with getting really cheap rail travel is to book two singles. Book early for cheapest deals! I work for Networkrail and have free leisure travel ( i have been there for 15 years and new people don't get the same privalge) but i have just got my colleague a single from Paddington to Oxford for £4.00 on the 27th October. I also got a First class single from Swindon to Paddington for £18.50, with that you get free tea/coffee. I have also got a friend a First class single from Norwich to Tring via London for £26.50.
I am the first to admit rail travel isn't always the most attractive, especially for journeys going round London (I can drive Tring to Horsham in 80 to 90 odd minutes but rail would take a good 120-150 minutes) but if you can be specific about your journeys then you will get good deals. The same with airlines apply I think, if you want a fully flexible ticket it will cost, but if you want a cheaper one you have to be rigid as to what you want!
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I think what was meant was that it could have been spent on something constructive rather than bailing out the incompetent 'real world' private sector.
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I think what was meant was that it could have been spent on something constructive rather than bailing out the incompetent 'real world' private sector.
something constructive:
which sucks in the money but gives no returns.
bailing out the incompetent 'real world' private sector:
which the Treasury does by borrowing at a low interest rate, and buying preference shares at a knockdown price in the Banks and guaranteed to be repaid a preference dividend a high fixed interest rate, thereby producing a an income stream for the Government to spend on "something constructive".
Seems that Gordon Brown knows how to milk the private sector in order to keep NuLab enjoying the high spending style it has got accustomed to. [No wonder one of the conditions imposed is to keep Bank lending levels at the boom 2007 levels, otherwise the boom will be well and truly bust for ever. Why do you think Gordon is so keen to save these private sector incompetent Banks? To save the country or to save his skin, by any chance?]
Edited by jbif on 15/10/2008 at 21:07
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Do you think the banks have done a great job then? Quite a lonely position I would have thought.
>which the Treasury does by borrowing at a low interest rate
Yes. It makes no sense to borrow at a high one.
>and buying preference shares at a knockdown price in the Banks and guaranteed to be repaid a preference dividend a high fixed interest rate
Yes. It makes no sense to pay too much or charge too little.
You would do the same, wouldn't you?
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