The railways in Britain are a huge, huge ripoff and have been for quite some time. As a personal example, the Poorhouse reguarly travels from Sheffield to London. At "standard" (i.e. the cheapest - no food, no drink, no entertainment, often enough no seat) class, this can cost £185 for a return trip. This is equivalent to wages for about 33 hours of hard graft at the UK minimum wage, a salary the Government presumably expects it to be reasonable to survive on. Yes, if you book weird train times half a year in advance you can get far better deals, but sort of cash is what you can expect to pay should you not have the staff / luxury / wherewithal to plan trips in advance down to the precise minute of the precise day. And even that goddamned £185 ticket had date restrictions on it!

The Poorhouse was therefore disgusted to hear before Christmas about yet another average train fare rise this year. And yesterday's revelations in the Times are just disgusting:

Rail fares will more than double from tomorrow on some routes under new ticket restrictions being quietly introduced by train companies.

As part of whatever sort of licensing goes into this messed up market, the train companies must offer "off-peak" travel at a cheaper price, perhaps even one affordable by those with even semi-decent jobs. Off-peak generally means "not commuter rush hour" because enough companies must be paying for enough business-people to travel that the train guys rake in enough profits to effectively exclude anyone without corporate backing from travelling. The latest trick then is to reduce the days and times that off-peak travel actually counts for. The differences between these sort of ticket prices dwarf even the huge-enough 6% general increase.

Passengers catching early morning Virgin West Coast trains between London Euston and Glasgow will have to pay £252 for a standard-class return, up from £102.90. Those travelling before 9am from London to Lancaster will pay £238, up from £69.30.

And it's not just minor 5-minute changes in consequential cheap times. To take the aforementined lengthy Euston to Glasgow route:

Under the old rules, passengers travelling from London to Glasgow with off-peak tickets could arrive just after 10.30am. Under the new restrictions...the earliest arrival time using a cheaper ticket will be just after 2pm.

Just after 2pm is clearly no good for most business or leisure day trips, so factor in a stack of wasted time and the also-generally-exhorbitant-for-normal-people cost of a hotel.

The Poorhouse did vaguely think in the name of environmentalism there was supposed to be some encouragement to travel by public transport like trains, but when a car journey is cheaper, more reliable and way more flexible than our cutting edge over-crowded crappy-seat and the right-to-buy-a-horrible-sandwich-for-£5-if-you're-lucky-service why is anyone going to bother doing anything else? In fact it might actually be cheaper to buy a crappy car and drive it around if you're going more than once.

Well, except for those with no alternative of course, who will be forced to choose between, if privileged enough to have the option, committing life-savings to a grotty train trip cross-country or, failing that, never leaving one's own city. Boo.

PS: National Express and Megabus still have some cheap cheap coach rides available to London that no doubt will get more and more popular. It's just a shame that the experience is usually a minimum of twice as time consuming, even more time-inconvenient and more torturous than even the cattle-class rail misadventures.