News analysis
franchise frequently vilified for running some of the most expensive services in the country. It works out at less than 6p a mile. Yes, the journey takes forever. But to a cash-strapped teenager,
price is everything. The sum of £3.50 doesn’t even cover the car parking for a trip to the cinema. So for people like her, taking the train is a great deal. And this is an enormous market for the railway to tap into, with people who are willing to travel in cheaper periods when the trains are least full. The price of fuel has risen by a fifth in two years. The cost of
insurance for a man under the age of 24 went up by 34 per cent last year alone. My son is a student, clinging on to car ownership by his fingernails. His car, called Dobby, only moves if some mates club together to share the petrol. For them, the alternative to the train is the coach. Five minutes’ walk from their student house in Southampton – and much nearer than the station – is the university bus stop for the Greyhound to London. Book it early, and the cost is £5. That’s cheaper than two pints of beer in the student bar. For that, they recline in luxurious leather seats, with loads of legroom, unlimited storage space and free wi-fi. In less than two hours they are at Victoria coach station with genuinely first-class service. Door to door it’s the same journey time as walking to the station
and getting the train. For the same trip at 11:00 on a Saturday morning, booking three weeks ahead, the rival National Express coach is £6.50. Stagecoach’s cheap offer via the megatrain website is £6. South West Trains’ walk on fare on the same train is £34.10. This is perhaps the most hotly contested battleground for
passengers. With two large universities, Southampton has almost 40,000 students. So National Express is almost hourly, the Greyhound
is every two hours and megatrain’s website offered three suitable Saturday services. ‘Getting a car on your 17th birthday is no longer a familiar rite of
passage for a growing number of young people,’ says Edward Welsh, director of corporate affairs for Atoc. ‘We know a lot of under 25-year- olds are struggling to afford the costs of buying, running and insuring a car. A generation of 16 to 25-year-olds has been quick to see train travel as an affordable, reliable alternative to a car that has the added bonus of never having to worry about asking mates to chip in with petrol money.’ I think that’s partly right. More young people are clearly travelling
by train. The number of 17-year-olds taking the driving test dropped slightly last year, but the number of 19 to 21-year-olds taking the test increased, which implies that people are still learning to drive in similar numbers, but they are delaying the age at which they start. The AA says there is little sign of young adults’ enthusiasm for cars tailing off; a first jalopy is still the passport to freedom and independence. Teenagers are still buying cars but there is evidence that they are using them less. The current economic climate has made travel more difficult, but the trend is still upwards. The growth curve on rail is steeper than by road, where the total number of miles travelled each year is levelling off. But even in this young adult sector, at the very cheapest end of the market, rail is still a niche market in which the overwhelming majority of journeys are still made by road. The battle against both the private car and the coach is intensely competitive.
PAUL CLIFTON is the transport correspondent for BBC South:
paul.clifton@
railpro.co.uk
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