If public transport hadn't been privatised would it have cost me 8 quid to get home today (UK ONLY)?

People are expected to use public transport despite the fact that it is significantly cheaper and more convenient (at an individual level) to drive their own car.

You mention that one company has a virtual monopoly over the whole Bristol/Bath area. Whilst that is obviously bad in itself, it's not thee whole story.

The chief benefit of private enterprise over state sponsored services is that competition drives efficiency & service (well, that's the theory at least). When it comes to public transport, even if there were several similarly sized companies - you don't even get that. If you need to get to work on the bus, chances are that only one bus will get you from A to B at the time you need to get there. You can't choose to reject Bus Company A on the grounds that Bus Company B is cheaper, simply because your employer expects you to be at your desk by a certain time.

Privatisation of buses & trains was a terrible idea, and decades after Thatcher did it, we're still paying for it.

Yorrik has given you a great answer already, but I'd like to expand on it. Don't just look at the likes of Germany & France, with their (relatively) strong economies. Look also at eastern european countries, where there is not so much money as we have here. Their state run public transport systems are significantly better than ours as well.

Make buses & trains cheaper & more reliable for individuals would cut UK emissions & help towards meeting (or exceeding) climate targets. It would reduce congestion on the roads, so that vehicles that had to use road networks could be more efficient. There's knock-on benefits to the country for providing a more efficient service. Privatisation of transport has failed. If it can't be made to work for people by private companies, then it should be re-nationalised.

Why should the taxpayer have to pick up the tab for everything that goes wrong with the so-called privatized railways? They are in receipt of a massive public subsidy as well as having the highest fares anywhere in the EU and probably the world for that matter.

Go to France and see their railway network of high speed trains all owned by the State. Same thing in Germany - where efficiency is the order of the day.

Here in UK we pay high fares to go even a short distance.

Thankfully, being a London Pensioner I have the London Freedom Pass which allows me to travel free anywhere in London on the Buses, the Tube, the London Overhead, the DLR and the Trams. The railways only allow me to travel on their grubby trains after 9.am Monday to Friday and all day any time at the Weekend.

It costs the tax payers of UK £5 Billion a year to subsidize the so-called 'private railway companies'.

http://daryan.blog.co.uk/2011/05/21/trains-delays-...

It's a bleeding joke - there you are paying a massive eight quid just to get home on a railway which you have already part paid for out of your high taxation.

I just don't get it at all.

Were I in command of UK I would at a stroke nationalise the UK railways.

No. Public transport, like all the other privatised public utilities, used to run on a not for profit basis and was paid for by local or national taxation, with users only paying a fair contribution.

Once privatised, these services became run to allow the companies and shareholders to squeeze the maximum profit from them. The high costs of public transport, road and rail, are compounded by the fact that the private operators, as well as charging exorbitant fares also receive heft subsidies from the government and/or local councils, so we pay twice.

That is a lot of money for a Bus journey and although you don't say how far you had to travel, that would in my area take you about 30 miles.

I am not sure whether you would have been any better off in the cost prior to privatisation, remembering the cost of fuel.

I do agree with you however and we are all in the same boat, nothing is like it was, that's is a fact. Judging the way costs are rising, nobody in charge cares.

Nice to know you got home okay.

No, definately not. But there is always a payback even so.

Going back a few years, maybe 25, public transport was virtually always subsidised by the taxpayer which was great. Lets face it, if you want people to get off the clogged up roads then you have to give them a little incentive - even though buses and train carriages used to be filthy and hardly ever stuck to time-tables. Now though, that they privatise everything, then someone has to make a profit. If that someone decides he has a monopoly, then he can charge what he likes.

governments keep telling people to travel by public or privatised transport

like buses or trains etc saying it will save the economy billions not

importing oil.

so we try to comply and in our area we could travel by bus using passes or

paying our fares to a big city like manchester.

then suddenly the bus company decides they are not making enough money

going to the city on a regular basis so they cancel part of the service and journey

to manchester and say they will only go from halfway there.

then they find that far less people are getting on the bus at half way.

what do they do cancel the service completely.

so now I have to travel by car adding to the pollution and costing more in oil imports.

it really beggars belief that some cabinet idiot put another idiot civil servant in control

of transport.

third world countries hi we brits have arrived to join you.

i've got confidence so sorry for the greater youthful era of immediately, i could hate to be of their concern no longer in basic terms in possessing and working a vehicle yet additionally in looking jobs and getting on the valuables ladder as each little thing is so high priced those days .the government continuously bypass on approximately some super reward of public transport yet rather it extremely is extremely high priced , unreliable and not extremely extremely worth the money , i artwork shifts and there is not any public transport obtainable to me to tournament my shift situations so I haven't any decision yet to apply my vehicle and to pollute the ecosystem ( because of the fact the government desire to assert ) yet what different decision have i or hundreds of thousands greater human beings have been given ?so i proceed as huge-unfold paying for overtaxed petrol to put in my already high priced vehicle that's legally insured at an extortionate top type ( even although i'm no longer a newly qualified teen ), then my vehicle is taxed yet yet back so as that it may use the roads that are packed with potholes which the council cant have sufficient funds to repair by way of government cutbacks of their budgets so those potholes then reason injury to my vehicle which of direction can in basic terms be repaired at my fee .Oh the thrill of motoring .driving is now a very high priced interest interior the united kingdom yet until the common public transport gadget is extremely better to cater for the desires of surely everyone then there'll continuously be automobiles obtainable yet will there nonetheless be all and multiple around who could have sufficient funds tocontinual them.

If public transport was subsidized by the taxpayer you would still have to pay cos the council tax would go up like it did in the 1970s when Ken Livingston ran the GLC.

It is one of the great Tory myths that privatisation will increase competition and lower prices, it may well do to begin with but look around and see the reality, profits rule.

It would help to answer if you say the distance you to had to travel for £8 it

might be cheap or not who can tell from you question. It costs me £4.70

for a 30 mile journey which l consider reasonable