Let me book!
With summer right around the corner many people have got plans locked in for the warmer months. Festivals, graduations, family holidays, pride events; hotels are booked, even restaurant reservations are made, but can you book your train tickets yet? It’s complicated...
This summer I’ll be one of 1.2 million people attending the UK leg of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. It’s no exaggeration that getting these tickets last year was the most logistically complicated process I’ve ever faced. I’m talking a spreadsheet of hard-won pre-sale codes, emails upon emails confirming entry to different sales, days sat in timetabled Ticketmaster queues, and finally an elated Facetime call once my friends and I had secured the goods. Having tried our luck for every city on the tour, we were off to Edinburgh.
In the weeks following the Ticketmaster carnage, hotels in every city on the tour were snapped up, sold out, gone. If this was the situation with accommodation, what were the trains going to be like? We’d have to wait over a year to find out.
In the UK, the booking window for train tickets varies widely between train company, ticket type or time of travel. Some open tickets are available further in advance but only through certain retailers, and not always at the best possible price. Out of 20 train operators that offer advance tickets, only eight let you book your train tickets more than 12 weeks ahead of travel; the current length of time that Network Rail takes to confirm its engineering works timetable.
This is, as ever, another example of how unnecessarily complicated and confusing train tickets are in this country. While rail passengers are restricted to this narrow booking window, Eurostar and European trains are bookable much further in advance. My colleague Jess can book European trains for her interrailing holiday in August, but not the trains needed for the UK leg of her trip. For families wanting to plan a holiday in the UK, boosting our tourism sector, the 12-week booking window can be a real barrier. The faff of waiting to book trains to Cornwall, uncertain of the price, can make booking a flight to Spain seem much more appealing.
Which brings me back to Taylor. All the cities on the tour (London, Cardiff, Liverpool, Edinburgh) have an airport. In the mad rush to book tickets and hotels, how many will have wanted to make sure their travel was covered by booking a flight? I’m betting a lot. And they’ll have been able to do so, with flights ready to book one year in advance. Meanwhile for the ease and many (many!) benefits of taking the train, my friend Lois was put in charge of marking the date when our train tickets should be available and still spent time weekly monitoring as prices changed and timetables were confirmed before booking.
We urgently need to make rail competitive with flying. Only last week we learned that UK aviation emissions are returning to pre-pandemic levels and that some UK airlines are polluting more than ever before. And let’s not forget that the Government’s scrapping of domestic Air Passenger Duty has created new UK flight routes, which are much more polluting than their rail alternatives. Simplicity, affordability and ease are all key to encouraging people to choose trains not planes.
Many of our supporters have contacted us with their own struggles to plan their summer train journeys.
Julia from Scotland said:
“I have already booked the Eurostar and my onward trains to Germany, but I cannot book the trains to and from London, so I have to hope that I get a good and cheap ticket. It’s fairly ridiculous – in Germany you can book trains up to 15 months in advance.”
While Jeremy from Norwich said:
“Every year I book a holiday cottage early in the year but can’t book a train until much nearer the time. I book the Caledonian Sleeper in advance, but can’t book tickets to London to connect with the sleeper train yet. It’s ridiculous. It puts people off travelling by train.”
This is why we’re calling on train companies to end this inconsistency and make things simpler for passengers. Network Rail should better manage repairs and upgrades and set its engineering works timetable at least 16 weeks in advance to give passengers greater ability to plan their journeys. If we want people to choose train over plane, it needs to be easier and more convenient to do so. This is a simple change that could go one step further to achieving just that.
