public transit is a service, not a business. it does not need to make a profit.
this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2025
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Ideally it should be supported without deficit or profit by its users. A lot of these old services also accumulate inefficiencies over time that should be pruned from time to time
There’s a reason flights are so cheap compared to to rail, and it’s not good news for anybody except the CEOs of airline companies. TLDR: they’re subsidised and the fuel is subsidised to artificially price them below public transport. We could have cheap or even free public transport if we wanted using the same method.
Oh man. I wish that'd work where I live (Canada). Europeans don't realize how lucky they have it! I can't fly to any worthwhile countries and back in a day (at least not long enough to enjoy the stay)
An old colleague of mine worked at a different office - he got fed up of the rat run and took a job within a stone's throw of Stansted Airport - close enough that a hotel or carpark shuttle bus covered his route.
He couldn't be arsed with London and Essex house prices so he bought his house near Shannon (yes, in the Republic of Ireland) and commuted by plane every day. The major problem with that was if he didn't book a flight when they were released (where it was about fifteen or twenty quid return!), or if there was a short notice job came in that changed his hours, he was royally fucked and it cost him a fortune.
I should imagine his carbon footprint was somewhere between "Chinese concrete factory" and "literally burning petrol in the back garden for a laugh".
A friend of a friend did something similar in east London - couldn't be holed with the London house prices so got a place in some Paris suburb and commuted by train most mornings, only staying over if there was a staff night out or a late working task planned.
...and I sometimes complain about my ten mile commute.
I work remotely, but when I have to go into the office, it takes half an hour. I walk.
My son's commute to his workplace is four minutes. He also walks.
£7.50 for a flight? That's insane! I'd be going on vacation once a month if I could score a single flight for even 10x that.
Oftentimes, it was even more wild than that. One flight may have been ten or twelve quid; and the other flight might have been three or four quid. Granted this was ten or fifteen years ago; but some of the low-cost carrier flights were insanely low.
There's still some crazy low prices to be had if you live near a hub for a low cost carrier, like Stansted or Glasgow Prestwick.
Can hardly even fly to another Canadian city without it costing an arm and a leg.
And an extra finger too, if you want to choose where you sit!
Be tempted to look south my man
I'd like to visit Mexico sometime, but it wouldn't really work for a day trip
I seriously think we need to ask serious questions if we're able to shift people point to point further, faster by first going 4 miles towards space for a fraction of the price of moving more people at once on an electrified railway stopping at multiple destinations, picking up and dropping off along the way.
Something cannot be right. How can they not compete and be profitable? What am I missing?
Outside of major cities in the UK trains tickets are ludicrously priced.
Planes don't have to maintain the sky, but trains need to maintain the rails.
Essentially any costs that can be externalized & paid by the public with air travel have been, like maintaining airports, etc.
Airlines pay landing fees though, they definitely aren't using the airport for free.
Yeah, but from A to B the plane does not use man made infrastructure and planes are for longer journeys than typical trains. Two airports cost a lot less than the constant maintenance of hundreds of miles of tracks, signaling, crossings, bridges and tunnels, forest overgrowth etc. plus the road infrastructure needed to maintain all parts of the train track corridor, even if it's a dirt road, it needs minimum maintenance.
You are correct, but I think the airports are privately owned though, it's just they need a lot less to maintain them in relative terms.
Privatised railroads
Well. In the UK the rails and infrastructure used to be privately owned. But it turned out a private company couldn't be trusted with that level of safety within their remit. So it returned to government control quite some tine ago.
The train companies are private though. Well except for a handful that failed to meet requirements.
the rails and infrastructure used to be privately owned. But it turned out a private company couldn’t be trusted with that level of safety within their remit
Google Ladbroke Grove and Hatfield rail crashes if you wanna know more.
Oh I remember why. I was considering including links to some of the causes of the end of railtrack. But I thought it shouldn't really come as a surprise to those already here that private companies and safety are seldom bedfellows.
I...don't blame them? If people prefer flying, which usually consist of at least an hour of waiting before taking off and the flight time, which sometime could be longer than, vs train, then there's something seriously bad happen to the train. The article mentioned £150 on train without a seat, if that's true then that's a serious issue, for both the price and seat.
Absolutely mental regarding the cost of public transport in most of Blighty...
It's pretty immoral in the current day and age, but it is something that should be made (near) impossible with better regulation until it can be done with a reasonable carbon cost
Fucking airline companies leeching on government opportunities, fucking train companies that treat train travel as a luxury (ex: fucking Thameslink which is expensive and yet only has seat treys in its first class) and governments not giving train lines the same benefits they give to airline companies are all complicit in environmental crimes.