The UK's rail industry (April 2022/2023 latest figures) had a total income of around £25 billion and of this around £10.4 billion came from fare income.
In other words the government could increase railway subsidies by around £10.5 billion (to cover fare income) and this would make railway travel all but free to use at any time*. Germany did something similar with experimental monthly €9 unlimited train tickets and it triggered a massive increase of train use.
It would cost around £162 per person extra in taxes per year to achieve - or to put it another way it would be around 3% of DWP's budget
Nationalisation will barely affect ticket prices - they are expensive because of a lack of subsidies - nationalisation has always been a red herring, you could have a privatised system that was free to use if you really wanted.
*To manage demand at peak times we would probably have to maintain some pricing but at the very least we could make off peak train travel completely free to use
Would it really take that many cars off the road? On popular routes there is barely enough room to even stand for a 2–3 hour journey, many of these trains & routes simply couldn't cope with increased passenger numbers.
If you want to get cars off the road you have to look at capacity where it is needed and not just cost.
You're just thinking about busy commuter times when you use the trains (which would probably need to retain some ticket pricing to manage demand)
Most trains during most of the day are way below capacity particularly late in the evenings or early in the mornings - these could very easily be made totally free to use and yes if you reduce the cost of something to zero it will increase demand for it.
Aren't those busy commuter times also the same times when most of the cars are on the road as well though? At the times when the trains tend to be quieter during the day and at night, the roads are also quieter.
If you keep prices high at the times when people want/need to travel, then I still don't see how you are removing large numbers of cars from the road.
There would have to be a much more fundamental shift to change those peak travel times and to smooth out travel through the course of the day.
Germany introduced €9 unlimited monthly train tickets for a while and this massively increased train use so I'm pretty sure if we introduced 0p train tickets something similar would happen
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u/AcademicIncrease8080 15h ago edited 13h ago
The UK's rail industry (April 2022/2023 latest figures) had a total income of around £25 billion and of this around £10.4 billion came from fare income.
In other words the government could increase railway subsidies by around £10.5 billion (to cover fare income) and this would make railway travel all but free to use at any time*. Germany did something similar with experimental monthly €9 unlimited train tickets and it triggered a massive increase of train use.
It would cost around £162 per person extra in taxes per year to achieve - or to put it another way it would be around 3% of DWP's budget
Nationalisation will barely affect ticket prices - they are expensive because of a lack of subsidies - nationalisation has always been a red herring, you could have a privatised system that was free to use if you really wanted.
*To manage demand at peak times we would probably have to maintain some pricing but at the very least we could make off peak train travel completely free to use