Why are UK train tickets more expensive than in Europe? BBC News — Transcript

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1. 0:02[Music]
2. 0:04it's 7:30 on a wild wet morning in
3. 0:07Lancashire this the commute from chy to
4. 0:10Manchester we're traveling about 25 mil
5. 0:13should take 40 45 minutes we're trying
6. 0:16to answer this question why are rail
7. 0:18tickets in Britain the highest in Europe
8. 0:21and we're going to get some help from my
9. 0:22colleague in Germany
10. 0:24Damian thanks gra I'm in straussburg on
11. 0:28my way to Central Berlin in it's just
12. 0:30coming up to 8:00 here so people are
13. 0:32rushing on their way to work and we're
14. 0:34also traveling 25
15. 0:37mil the train to Manchester fills up
16. 0:40quickly it's standing room only you can
17. 0:42understand why some passengers are less
18. 0:44than happy it's like sardines in a tin
19. 0:48uh they charge us full prices and uh and
20. 0:51then we have we're supposed to stand I
21. 0:53mean every day it surely can't be right
22. 0:56for us to be crammed in like
23. 0:58cattle the average cost of a season
24. 1:01ticket is now just under £25,000 but
25. 1:03some can be much more 11 12
26. 1:0613,000 and for this journey an annual
27. 1:09season ticket has just gone up to
28. 1:141,884 train tickets here in Germany are
29. 1:16much cheaper than the UK typically
30. 1:18around about a third of the price a
31. 1:20season ticket for example cost
32. 1:23936 that's about
33. 1:25£700 but does that mean that Travelers
34. 1:27here on German rail are happy with the
35. 1:29service
36. 1:30it's cheap and normally it's fast often
37. 1:35too late it's uh
38. 1:39dirty not so
39. 1:41good so it seems that German Railways
40. 1:44not quite as punctual as you might think
41. 1:46now the main reason that the German rail
42. 1:47network is so much cheaper than in
43. 1:49Britain is because of the amount of
44. 1:51money the German State puts into
45. 1:53[Music]
46. 1:56it last year in Britain the government
47. 1:59put in about five billion to the railway
48. 2:01Network it's about half what the German
49. 2:04government puts in but this is not all
50. 2:06about the amount of taxpayers money
51. 2:08experts say The British Rail industry is
52. 2:10fragmented inefficient overregulation
53. 2:15[Music]
54. 2:16we're on time now the German system is
55. 2:19far from perfect but most experts agree
56. 2:22that because the way ownership is set up
57. 2:24and because that's much clearer the end
58. 2:26result is a service for passengers which
59. 2:28is simpler more efficient and generally
60. 2:31just a bit better than the British
61. 2:35service this is Manchester Picadilly our
62. 2:37Journeys own and we're on time too but
63. 2:39these commuters have paid more than
64. 2:41double for their annual season tickets
65. 2:43than commuters in Germany who've
66. 2:45traveled exactly the same distance