The cost of catching a train whether for business or pleasure is increasing year on year. I am often quite shocked by the cost of travelling by train when looking up journeys to different cities in the UK and find it appalling that this method of transport can reach such high prices. Public transport is a great way to bring down pollution to the environment as a means of shared transport. If we can all travel via train or bus, the number of individual journeys made in cars would go down which surely is brilliant news for the environment. Personally, when making longer journeys I would travel by rail in most instances if the cost is affordable. However, if there is more than one person travelling, nine times out of ten it is considerably cheaper to travel by car to split fuel costs. This is negative to the environment, but with such substantial differences in cost - the lower priced drive will win every time. Consequently, I believe the rail fares are unfairly priced, and should be brought down much lower to encourage the use of public transport, to help reduce pollution levels.

The cost of railways in Britain is shocking! There are some options to book in advance or through a third party to make the journey cheaper. There are also website which can calculate "split fares", where sometimes it is cheaper to get two or three separate tickets for a single journey which takes place on the same train - no need to get off the train, it's just a quirk of the ticketing system that three connecting journeys are cheaper than one long one. But this kind of thing should not be necessary. Many people find it cheaper to fly abroad from England than visit other places in the country, and I cannot see why running a train is cheaper than running an aeroplane. As well as this, you can pay a lot for a train ticket and not even have a reserved seat, so travel in the corridor, or standing up at busy times. Upgrading to first class, in order to have more space, is sometimes not much extra and is a tempting option sometimes in order to have a pleasant journey, but you pay so much for the ticket you'd hope to have a pleasant journey anyway!

The price of rail travel has risen far above inflation since privatisation of the railways in the 1980s. However, this price hike has done nothing to deter the even faster rise in the use of the railways, particularly by commuters. This is partly because of the weight of car traffic that has traditionally made driving into big cities, particularly London, very unpleasant and slow. Ken Livingstone, as mayor of London, also introduced the congestion charge in the early 2000s, making it more expensive to drive into London. At the same time he used the mayoralty to suppress the cost of travel on buses and undergrond trains within London.

However, commuting to London remains incredibly expensive. Last year it was found that the average cost of commuting with a season ticket (the cheapest option) was over 10% of most workers' wages. Added to this the journey lengths (which are often disrupted by cancelled trains or problems on the line) and the lost free time or late starts at work and it feels very much that commuters are being required not just to carry the cost of bringing their labour to nearby cities (something that London absolutely depends on to survive as a commercial city) but also to accept that the cost of their free time wasted in transit is calculated by the government and economists as being zero (not to mention added childcare costs when they are unable to get back when anticipated).

Recent disputes on the Southern Rail network have caused many who commute on that route to consider or go through with career changes because they have found the disruption too much of an unacceptable impact on their lives. On a smaler scale this can be found replicated all over the country.

I am always amazed at how "cheap" the cost of transport is when I travel. Not only that, the railway services generally run on time and are clean. A single journey by train from Schipol Airport to the centre of Amsterdam ranges from €3.80 to €5.30. The cost of a single journey from Gatwick Airport to central London (albeit a slightly longer journey time) is GBP19.90 - equivalent to €22.00. The cost of tickets goes up every year. Without fail. Many of those who commute are paying astronomically high fares (GBP4,300 per annum) to travel from the South Coast to London - a distance of around 65 miles. And these people aren't even guaranteed a seat! Recent changes to timetables across the country have been a debacle with trains arriving late and being cancelled arbitrarily. And then people have to "fight" to get their money back for missed journeys. The entire rail service is a disgrace and the fact that it is so grotesquely over-priced just fuels passengers' anger, particularly when they have had the opportunity to enjoy competitively priced services that are well run abroad.