Ticket to Ride
Although ostensibly based in Cardiff this week I was today required to attend a meeting in London.
This morning I travelled to London Paddington. Inevitably the train was late. The advertised 10 carriage train also turned out to have only 5 carriages and was crammed; there were no seat reservations.
The meeting I attended was quite productive, and I had a nice walk back to Paddington in the warm sunshine.
Now I’m on the return train which also has only five carriages. It seems like Late Western policy to run trains with a short formation in order to maximise the discomfort of passengers. I do not know yet know if we will arrive on time in Cardiff.
My ticket (a one-day ‘off peak’ travelcard) cost £109.10, roughly the cost of two return flights between Cardiff and Dublin.
As a bonus though I got this:
I’ve always wanted to go there, but I’m not sure I want to visit four times. (For those of you not familiar with British geography, ‘Void’ is a place in the Midlands..)
If anyone thinks the pricing of UK train tickets would be reasonable even if the trains ran on time please explain your reasons via the comments box.
My own view, for what it’s worth, is that the travelling public are being fleeced.
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In the Dark 
May 9, 2018 at 9:26 pm
I used to fly quite often on the 6:40 am Easyjet flight from Liverpool to Schipol, and thought at the time that there were people who would get off that flight, and immediately head for departures because they had a flight booked to Gatwick or Luton for a meeting in London. Its a bit of a risk of course, but Easyjet’s early morning flights were rarely late. The evening flight back, thats another matter.
May 9, 2018 at 10:12 pm
The budget airlines have their planes on a tight schedule that they can rarely keep to, and delays accumulate through the day.