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Freezer posted:So how come airlines (specially the budget ones) have manage to reduce their costs so much below Rail travel? Or is it just Rail's costs that are bloated? I suspect that a lot of it is that there is competition for airlines that doesn't exist with the rail network. Wikipedia tells me that 5 companies run flights from Edinburgh to a London airport, so they need to fill a niche to get customers and for the 'budget' airlines, that will mean fighting over the lowest fares. This is not the case with trains.
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May 8, 2012 06:53
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The worst train in Britain is the one used by South West Trains on its commuter lines. The seats were designed by a powerful supercomputer to be as uncomfortable as humanly possible. I went on the Watercress Line (heritage steam railway thing) a couple of years back and was amazed to find little headreasts on the side of the seats in the carriages. Truly progress has gone into reverse in the past 40 years.
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May 8, 2012 07:24
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Jet fuel is also massively subsidised by the government if my memory serves me correctly. Mostly though, the perception of cost with a flight is a lot lower than it actually is, the perception of cost with a train is a lot higher than it actually is. When you consider the time and money it takes to get to and from the airport relative to the railway station, the cost of the ticket and the time taken, they are actually fairly comparable (rail is still more expensive). Rail is expensive generally because you have lots of fixed assets the length of the network which require looking after, whereas in air travel, you just base all your maintenance guys and their equipment at a couple of airports. If they plane is knackered, it won't even take off, but a train can get hundreds of miles before it hits a fault or fails.
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May 8, 2012 08:11
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Bozza posted:However, there are other things afoot. We are about to see the electrification of the Great Western Main Line, from London to Cardiff, over the next 8 years, with the first electric services starting to run as soon as 4 years from now. Mind you, Swansea's in a weird position anyway because it's a terminus station: through trains have to go into the station, then back out again to continue their journey. And as I understand it, the high speed rail line doesn't go into the station, but bypasses it, and therefore never gets used (could someone confirm/deny this? Just something I heard talking to someone on the train). What Swansea really needs is a new station on that bit of line. Call it Swansea Parkway or something. It'd be out of town, but at least it'd be near the motorway. But I guess there's no money for anything like that now  .
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May 8, 2012 10:03
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Bozza posted:Jet fuel is also massively subsidised by the government if my memory serves me correctly.
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May 8, 2012 11:25
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Bozza, are trains designed to discourage people falling asleep on them? I ask as all the window ledges are slopped or not wide enough for an elbow and I know every is like me and would love to get a bit of shut eye just before or just after work.
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May 8, 2012 11:40
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Bozza sell me on the benefits of hs2 or I'm going to remain vaguely opposed to it because I've seen the route and it goes through some lovely countryside.
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May 8, 2012 12:01
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Mr Cuddles posted:Bozza sell me on the benefits of hs2 or I'm going to remain vaguely opposed to it because I've seen the route and it goes through some lovely countryside. http://demandnothing.org/high-speed-2-white-elephant-or-national-investment/
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May 8, 2012 12:03
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notaspy posted:Bozza, are trains designed to discourage people falling asleep on them? I ask as all the window ledges are slopped or not wide enough for an elbow and I know every is like me and would love to get a bit of shut eye just before or just after work.
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May 8, 2012 12:11
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There's no point whining about the cost of the trains. Uncomfortable fact number one is that the railway is already relatively a rich man's toy – the whole railway. People who use the railway on average have significantly higher incomes than the population as a whole – simple fact. Even then, if you are a factory worker from Manchester you might never get on HS2 but you will certainly be benefiting from it, if the sales director of your company is routinely hopping on it to meet customers, to jet round the world from Heathrow in a way that brings in orders to keep you employed.
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May 8, 2012 12:12
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Canada's rail system is a sad state of affairs as well. The passenger service is managed by VIA and freight and other rail traffic is Canadian National (CN) or Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). Since CN and CPR own all the rail lines, VIA trains have to pull over to let freight trains pass. This can mean big delays, even on the Toronto-Montreal corridor that see's the majority of rail traffic. Not to mention huge cutbacks in service, to the point where only a handful of cities and very few towns have rail service. VIA also has a history of massive cost overruns and service cuts, while the price keeps going up. This includes the "Renaissance" trains, which are European trains that were refitted for Canadian use at a very high cost. It's also really difficult to take a train to the United States now, because Amtrak has also gone through some big cuts. I think you have to take a train to Buffalo or Albany and then switch to an American rail line.
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May 8, 2012 12:55
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Paul.Power posted:While this is cool, I do wish they were planning to electrify out to Swansea. From now on I get the feeling I'm going to have to change at Cardiff every time I want to head to Bristol or London. You shouldn't, because some of the new Intercity Express Trains the government is ordering should be electro-diesels - that is, once they stop at the edge of electrification the pantograph comes down and they go on into non-electrified territory. Of course, this means they have to lug around big diesel engines and fuel for the majority of their electrified journey, but this government doesn't have to pay for that so pffff.
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May 8, 2012 13:11
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I had to go into university for an exam today. My train was cancelled, then an express train whizzed past, then the next train (4 coaches - half the length of the one that was cancelled) showed up, absolutely rammed full of passengers from the other 4 stations my train stops at. Thankfully, conditions on the train were so unutterably awful that one unfortunate young woman had to push through the peoplejam to get to the open door where she promptly spewed all over the platform, sending every potential passenger except me dashing away (I got splashed by lovely orange/pink spots). She was persuaded to leave the train, leaving just enough space for me to squeeze myself into so small a gap I literally could only move my right hand for the next 10 minutes. Also, despite it being about 30 degrees with everyone crammed in, the heating was still on. Greater Anglia:  That counts as Trainchat, right?
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May 8, 2012 15:19
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This cancelling of trains etc is lovely because it's mostly a statistics fudge. Better to cancel one late train than to let it delay several others because that costs money in penalty fares. Signallers often moan (a lot generally...) about having to make late running trains even later in their regulation decision because if they delay an on-time service they get a bollocking - due to causing Network Rail further penalty fares. It's a total bullshit situation based that has arisen out of the contractual way the industry is now run.
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May 8, 2012 17:47
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Zephro posted:The worst train in Britain is the one used by South West Trains on its commuter lines. The seats were designed by a powerful supercomputer to be as uncomfortable as humanly possible. South-West Trains doesn't even have a bloody wi-fi connection on what is supposedly one of the country's busiest commuter lines (From Bournemouth to Waterloo via Reading)
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May 8, 2012 18:53
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Thank you for this thread, I’ve wanted to learn more about the history of UK rail privatization mostly because of the large number of politicians who think privatization is the final solution to our economic ills. I don’t know if you follow American politics but about this time last year Republicans proposed that we should copy the success of the UK and privatize Amtrak. Some people countered with how privatization hasn’t gone as well as described (all the Republicans said is that the Virgin West Coast Line doubled ridership, is profitable and Amtrak isn’t so kill it) but didn’t go into the details you did. Could you elaborate on why there were such increases in ridership during this time dispute the increase in fares? I understand that the relationship between fare and ridership is inelastic, especially more so for people who have no choice but I don’t know enough about how people get around in the UK.
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May 8, 2012 21:02
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Bozza posted:It's a total bullshit situation based that has arisen out of the contractual way the industry is now run. Isn't this also true in flight schedulling for airlines, incidentally? You elect to massively inconvenience one set of travellers while trying not to spread the pain...
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May 8, 2012 21:07
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As an American this is really interesting to me and it blows my mind that you run so many different trains on a single unified rail network. Here we have some rail sharing between commuter and long distance trains, but it's really minor for the most part.
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May 8, 2012 21:33
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This might be slightly off topic (as it doesn't concern glorious Albion), but deregulation has left rail in an equally sorry state of affairs in Sweden too. Not very surprisingly it was pushed through, here as in other places, as a means of getting things done in a more cost efficient and reliable manner. Even less surprising is the fact that it made things more expensive and less reliable, as per usual with these sort of things. It's no longer uncommon for trains to be canceled or delayed because of bad weather and/or snow. In loving Sweden, of all places, where snow is very much a thing. It boggles the mind.
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May 8, 2012 21:50
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Zephro posted:Like I said, if you ever get to sit in a carriage from the 60s or so you will find little headrests on the sides of the seats, so that both the person next to the window and the one next to the aisle can have somewhere to rest their heads and - presumably - sleep. Modern ones are presumably designed to cram the highest number of seats into the smallest amount of space and drat any discomfort that results. I miss the old A-stock Metropolitan Line trains that also ran on the old East London Line, with the 3+2 bench seats. Most comfortable train ever run on the Underground (allegedly because the high speeds and crappy track on the Metroland sections meant they had to have big bouncy seats to avoid breaking peoples spines). Anyway - making the ridiculously large assumption that we ever get a non-poo poo Government in, how tricky would renationalising the railways be? Can we, like with Metrolines and Railtrack, just let the whole thing fall apart and then pick up the pieces? Also, Bozza, did you ever do that big effortpost on signalling and ATO you threatened?
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May 8, 2012 22:37
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Hot Dog Day #60 posted:Could you elaborate on why there were such increases in ridership during this time dispute the increase in fares? I understand that the relationship between fare and ridership is inelastic, especially more so for people who have no choice but I don’t know enough about how people get around in the UK. It also has to do with suppressed demand. The London Overground, which is a mish-mash of reopened and formerly neglected lines, is incredibly popular; one stretch of it, which opened two years ago, is probably going to need major works in a few years to cope with the demand. Several other lines across the country have risen from the grave in the past several years and people are using them.
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May 9, 2012 00:16
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goddamnedtwisto posted:Anyway - making the ridiculously large assumption that we ever get a non-poo poo Government in, how tricky would renationalising the railways be? 
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May 9, 2012 00:34
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Rust Martialis posted:Isn't this also true in flight schedulling for airlines, incidentally? Airline scheduling is it's own special madness that I'm very glad I no longer have to worry about due to a change in job. Imagine a worldwide booking and scheduling system that was incredibly forward thinking in the 50s and hasn't really changed to make use of the internet.
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May 9, 2012 01:06
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goddamnedtwisto posted:Can we, like with Metrolines and Railtrack, just let the whole thing fall apart and then pick up the pieces? Nicking from Bozza's short-lived blog quote:So, getting to crux of this history lesson, I propose a new approach to nationalisation. Network Rail is a great place to start; it currently owns all the infrastructure and has built up in the last several years a lot of engineering expertise. This needs to be expanded on and grown back to the levels BR had, with contractors used to prop up big engineering jobs, and also return to their more natural environment of developing new technologies (lots of money in this if anyone is interested!) with central guidance.
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May 9, 2012 01:17
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Bozza posted:This guy came and spoke at our Maritime Union national conference here in Australia, he is well tied with our National Secretary Paddy Crumlin... quite passionate on the issues and sounded like they were having to put up an enormous struggle. I take my hat off to him for his passion and enthusiasm. He made the flight from London to Sydney and gave a raving speech even though he was suffering glandular fever, literally started foaming at the mouth with rage.
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May 9, 2012 05:12
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Benito Hitlerstalin posted:This might be slightly off topic (as it doesn't concern glorious Albion), but deregulation has left rail in an equally sorry state of affairs in Sweden too. Not very surprisingly it was pushed through, here as in other places, as a means of getting things done in a more cost efficient and reliable manner. Even less surprising is the fact that it made things more expensive and less reliable, as per usual with these sort of things. It's no longer uncommon for trains to be canceled or delayed because of bad weather and/or snow. In loving Sweden, of all places, where snow is very much a thing. It boggles the mind. Sweden is an odd one because it's privatisation wasn't quite as extreme as the UK (I believe it split all its operations into seperate companies but a majority are still owned, though may not be operated, by the Swedish state). This all stems from a rather obscure and misunderstood EU directive, namely EU Directive 91/440. It asks for the seperation of accounts so nations can be determined to be anti-competitive against new operators, with the theory being it will stop SNCF, who were by and the far the most militant about keeping others off their network, from blocking international freight. The whole thing is based around trying to allow North-South, East-West freight transit more than anything. There have been other developments for passengers, but these are based around the Trans-European Network lines, which have a mandated set of standards for how they are constructed/signalled/electrified to allow international passenger travel without load of different signalling systems etc on the same train. Poor old EU gets blamed for this one by left and right by people that don't really understand it.
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May 9, 2012 08:16
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I don't think this has been covered yet but does anyone know why the fare structure on the rail network is an absolute clusterfuck? Is there any reason why two tickets on the same train cost less than one? (EG going Westbury to Newbury and then Newbury to London is cheaper than Westbury to London even though its the same train.) Why could we not adopt a Japanese fare system where you pay a flat rate to ride the train and then pay for the distance travelled? That said there are some train companies that run a fantastic service. I'm lucky enough to be able to take the C2C line into work and I really can't fault it for reliability. I understand its basically one simple line and therefore probably really easy to run but I'm always impressed that you can pretty much set your watch by it. Its certainly an improvement after First Great Western who have improved greatly but still have their moments!
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May 9, 2012 09:41
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Venmoch posted:I don't think this has been covered yet but does anyone know why the fare structure on the rail network is an absolute clusterfuck? Is there any reason why two tickets on the same train cost less than one? (EG going Westbury to Newbury and then Newbury to London is cheaper than Westbury to London even though its the same train.) My personal example is that you can get a Birmingham -> Edinburgh student ticket for £30*, but to take the same train from a few stations after Birmingham is £45. It's that way because they can get away with it. If you don't have a car, the only options you have for long-distance travel are trains and megabus, and with the latter you get what you pay for. As most most people don't check multiple routes, they never find the alternatives. *twice what it was 4 years ago. gently caress you CrossCountry.
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May 9, 2012 09:50
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In a move that should surprise nobody (well, apart from being absolutely loving retarded) there is a proposal to break up Network Rail that thankfully appears to be meeting some stiff cross-party opposition. For those who have forgotten, in the clusterfuck diagram in the OP Network Rail is responsible for the upkeep of 95%+ of the railway track, tunnels, bridges and signals; and operating a good few stations as well. The Grauniad posted:
Lets take a break here and look back at the OP, specifically the McNulty report analysis as provided by Christian Wolmar: Wolmar posted:The first seemed a no-brainer. McNulty correctly identified the lack of co-ordination in the industry as one of the generators of unnecessary costs. However, nowhere in his report does he suggest any overall coordinating body. Instead, we get the madcap idea that since the problem was created initially by fragmentation, lets have more of it by creating a plethora of diverse bodies, whose functions will be unclear and whose power will be unlimited. Back to the news. Grauniad posted:The signatories say that proposals to break up the track operator, Network Rail, will make the railways more complex and less efficient and ignore the experience of European counterparts. Now lets cut back to Wolmar. Wolmar posted:
Government in "missing the entire bloody point" shocker. Continuing... The Graun posted:The motion, tabled by the Labour MP John McDonnell, has attracted cross-party support including the former Liberal Democrat leaders Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell. It urges the government to run the railway as a "public service" with "affordable fares and proper staffing levels". I dont have the time to dig the figures up but the cost per mile of rail travel in the UK is many many times that in mainland europe. Im glad that such a proposal is meeting stiff opposition since the reality is really anything other than the government position. Bob Crow brings up the Potters Bar and Hatfield rail crashes, both of which were directly attributed to the private companies taking over maintenance from Railtrack and not having adequate maintenance records. "Wikipedia, Hatfield Crash posted:A preliminary investigation found a rail had fragmented as trains passed and that the likely cause was "rolling contact fatigue" (defined as multiple surface-breaking cracks). Such cracks are caused by high loads where the wheels contact the rail.[2] Repeated loading causes fatigue cracks to grow. When they reach a critical size, the rail fails. Over 300 critical cracks were found in rails at Hatfield. The problem was known about before the accident, and replacement rails made available but never delivered to the correct location for installation. The implication that other rails might be affected led to speed restrictions on huge lengths of railway, causing significant delays on many routes, while checks were carried out on the rail condition. The incidence of cracks similar to those found at Hatfield was alarmingly high throughout the country.[citation needed] Wikipedia, Potters Bar rail crash posted:The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) report released in May 2003 found that the points were poorly maintained and that this was the principal cause of the accident.[6] The bolts that held the stretcher bars that keep the rails apart had come loose or gone missing, resulting in the points moving while the train passed over them. The points had been fully inspected on 1 May by a team working for the private railway maintenance firm Jarvis and there had been a further visual inspection on 9 May the day before the crash, with no problems reported.[citation needed] However, that evening, a rail worker was travelling on the line northbound and reported "lethal vibrations" on the track at Potters Bar whilst going over that same point on the track, point '2182A'.[citation needed] Jarvis employees did make an inspection of the points but, due to an inadequate incident reporting system, they were sent to the wrong end of the platform to check the track and points[citation needed] and did not find the 'loose nuts' that subsequently led to the accident. And if you go a little further back in time you run into the Ladbroke Grove crash.. Wikipedia, Ladbroke Grove crash posted:The Ladbroke Grove rail crash (also known as the Paddington train crash) was a rail accident which occurred on 5 October 1999 at Ladbroke Grove, London, England. 31 people were killed and more than 520 injured. This was the second major accident on the Great Western Main Line in just over two years, the first being the Southall rail crash of September 1997, a few miles west. Both crashes would have been prevented by an operational ATP (Automatic Train Protection) system, but wider fitting of this had been rejected on cost grounds. This severely damaged public confidence in the management and regulation of safety of Britain's privatised railway system.  Safety costs too much!Like Bozza said, the rulebook is written in blood. Plasmafountain fucked around with this message at 10:27 on May 9, 2012 |
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May 9, 2012 10:23
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HTJ posted:The increase in ridership can partly be attributed to the end of white flight (to use an Americanism). Taking London as an example, many of the areas inside Inner London that were considered 'undesirable' for decades, such as Hackney and Brixton, are now being gentrified because fleeing to horrible commuter towns like Milton Keynes is no longer the dream; professionals want to live and work in urban communities (even if gentrification destroys said communities), where trains are almost always the most convenient way to travel. The london overground owns. It was always really useful as the silverlink but the run down stations and infrequent trains put a lot of people off. Now with the extra lines, walk through trains and more frequent service it's a fantastic way to get between places that used to involve a long journey into central london and then another back out. Only issue i have with it is if i use it to go to northwest london at peak times i have to walk to highbury and islington instead of canonbury which is round the corner as it can get so packed i can't get on.
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May 9, 2012 10:26
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Bozza posted:I can give more in-depth analysis of technology or the structural/organisational issues within the network. In addition to this, my actual day to day job is signalling design for Crossrail and the aforementioned Western Mainline Electrification programme. Don't get me wrong. Dealing with commuters who expect that the massive clusterfuck that is the British rail network is something that one person at a desk in Paddington Station can solve immediately for them is something no human being should ever have to do. But it is totally endemic in the problems of that system to think that the right response to increased numbers of comments, problems and complaints is to get yet another subcontractor involved. What is that subcontractor going to do with the problems and complaints they get? Well, by and large, they're going to stick them in an electronic record somewhere (having mined complainers for whatever personal information they can) and do nothing else with them; after all, you can't risk offending the company paying you to answer their phones. Since they're not part of the actual operation of the trains, people at the other end have a very restricted information flow and limited powers anyway. So passenger feedback stops (except through independent rail groups, which are great), companies stop talking to their passengers (except through their big advertising and PR budgets, which are completely misused by overpaid city graduates), and since train contracts are basicaly monopolies for as long as the company holds them, individual passengers are stuck with whatever they're given. Yet more Privatization goodness.
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May 9, 2012 11:04
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Porphyrogenitos posted:South-West Trains doesn't even have a bloody wi-fi connection on what is supposedly one of the country's busiest commuter lines (From Bournemouth to Waterloo via Reading)
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May 9, 2012 11:38
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Hot Dog Day #60 posted:Could you elaborate on why there were such increases in ridership during this time dispute the increase in fares? I understand that the relationship between fare and ridership is inelastic, especially more so for people who have no choice but I don’t know enough about how people get around in the UK. Also, London's population started growing again in the 1980s after decades of falling, and its economy has done very well over the past 25 years, sucking in even more workers from the surrounding towns. A huge proportion of UK passenger rail traffic (like a third or more I think) is people commuting into and out of London. Each commuter generates 10 trips on average (2 a day, 5 a week), so population growth in London will boost rail usage disproportionately. London has also implemented a fairly expensive congestion charge that means only the truly plutocratic can afford to drive in the city on a regular basis. The Republicans might be interested to know that, for all that people defend railways as a social service, they are used overwhelmingly by the middle class and the rich because the fares are so eye-wateringly high. Even the rail minister has admitted that the railways are basically a "rich man's toy". This probably makes them attractive to the Republicans, of course, since it'll help them keep the poors in their ghettos. quote:The increase in ridership can partly be attributed to the end of white flight (to use an Americanism). Taking London as an example, many of the areas inside Inner London that were considered 'undesirable' for decades, such as Hackney and Brixton, are now being gentrified because fleeing to horrible commuter towns like Milton Keynes is no longer the dream; professionals want to live and work in urban communities (even if gentrification destroys said communities), where trains are almost always the most convenient way to travel. Zephro fucked around with this message at 11:51 on May 9, 2012 |
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May 9, 2012 11:43
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I think it's a bit a bullshit to call the railway a "rich mans toy". Commuting certainly is, but travel in general is not. Far be it for me to defend ATOC, but there are cheap fares out there and it is by far and the way the best method of travel if you are willing to vary your travel time or date. The major issue is that economically, these are two seperate groups of customers who are in no way really linked. The broadly inelastic commuter will always travel and will always pay the maximum fare, the highly elastic leisure or casual traveller will broadly travel whenever is cheapest but whatever transport delivers it. So rail competes in two very different markets which generally conflict with each other. This is what I alluded to with the competing by socio-economic class in the OP, if you want to go from London to Birmingham, you have three rail options: Virgin trains, fastest but most expensive. London Midland, slowest but cheapest. Chiltern Railways, middle ground but goes to/from different stations. Virgin filter off the LM customers by higher prices (thus driving down demand so they can deliver a higher quality service... supposedly. Similar to how business/first class works on a plane). LM offer cheap, no frills tickets and services so attract the student/minimalist/poorer customer. Chiltern are trying to break into both markets by offering something in the middle, but from less overcrowded stations. Make rail a market and it plays to the market, gently caress the socio-economic benefits of a highly mobile population.
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May 9, 2012 22:52
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Having just been reminded of Alptransit what are the current prospects of shifting more freight traffic to rail? There is always a lot of talk about the environmental and other costs of hauling so much stuff by truck but any attempt to promote rail over road freight seems to get shot down.
Munin fucked around with this message at 22:17 on May 10, 2012 |
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May 10, 2012 16:40
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Just wondering about South West Trains, until I got my bike fixed, it was my regular route to work (Brentford to Clapham Junction, and Clapham to Hampton Court). What's the normal public opinion on them? I don't think the trains they use are that effecitve, I always fear the Putney stop as thousands of business people cram onto the train and it seems to be dominated by large seats rather than good standing space. Yet on the train to Hampton Court, they are much better for standing space and seating, on the service that needs it less. What's up with that? Also just out of curiousity and my final question, how much does it cost to run a regular service with a decent amount of passengers to turn a profit or break even? It always puzzles me that some people can get £12 tickets on national travel and others pay upwards of £100, even though the cost to run the service is the same. Hope that makes sense.
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May 10, 2012 16:53
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Bozza posted:I think it's a bit a bullshit to call the railway a "rich mans toy". Commuting certainly is, but travel in general is not. Far be it for me to defend ATOC, but there are cheap fares out there and it is by far and the way the best method of travel if you are willing to vary your travel time or date.
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May 10, 2012 17:14
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Zephro posted:Sure, but there aren't that many trips that you can plan a week or more in advance and that leave at funny times of the day. This is definitely a market but it's not a very big one, and you often see trains defended for their social benefits, as a way of helping people who can't afford cars, or who can't drive for whatever reason, move around the country. But they're actually not at all good at that, and the stupid expense of walk-on fares is one reason (though not the only one, of course - they only go to rail stations, obviously). It was actually cheaper for me to drive to london from portsmouth than get a train a couple of years back. Haven't looked since.
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May 10, 2012 20:17
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Munin posted:Having just been reminded of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alptransit] what are the current prospects of shifting more freight traffic to rail? There is always a lot of talk about the environmental and other costs of hauling so much stuff by truck but any attempt to promote rail over road freight seems to get shot down. I'd like to answer this one if I may? A lot of freight goes to unusual places without overhead power. This means it is more practical to haul freight by diesel the whole way than to change locomotive when you run out of overhead lines. This is why there are big plans to extend electrification in the UK network at the same time as clearing all the platforms, tunnels, bridges and viaducts for the heavier vehicle loads and bigger swept envelope of a freight train. This is quite a task, especially if you want to go through Standedge tunnel.
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May 10, 2012 21:31
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Jut posted:It was actually cheaper for me to drive to london from portsmouth than get a train a couple of years back. Haven't looked since.  about it you need to consider the cost of insurance, road tax, MOTs, servicing and the fact that you can't do anything while driving other than driving, but given that those are sunk costs for anyone who already owns a car, yeah, it's very often cheaper unless you book three weeks in advance and don't mind leaving at five in the morning.
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May 10, 2012 21:35
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