Train Fares Too Expensive For Network Rail

As set out here:

Network Rail is transporting 200 staff by coach from Reading to Coventry for a conference because of the high cost of train tickets, it has emerged.

The rail operator has opted to shun train travel for road transport as it is more than £24,000 cheaper.

If open return tickets were bought for all the staff it could cost up to £27,000 - £135 each. But coach travel, at £12 a head, will cost just £2,400.

The firm said it made no apologies for getting the "best value" for taxpayers.
Network Rail said it looks at cheaper options for journeys as part of cost-cutting, as its workers do not get free travel or discounts.

A spokesman added: "Whilst we have no role in setting train fares, we use rail for the overwhelming number of business journeys.

"Occasionally, if there is a cheaper alternative, we will use that."

I have a cheaper alternative. We need to renationalise the railways, uniquely without compensation in view of the manner of their privatisation, as the basis for a national network of public transport free at the point of use, including the reversal of bus route and (where possible) rail line closures going back to the 1950s.

Only public ownership can deliver this. Public ownership is of course British ownership, and thus a safeguard of national sovereignty. It is also a safeguard of the Union in that it creates communities of interest across the several parts of the United Kingdom. Publicly owned concerns often even had, and could have again, the word "British" in their names.