Ryanair (not a UK company btw) have been a pioneer in this area with aggressive discounting of basic level airfares but with lots of 'upgrade' options.
In transport, you can choose between comfort, speed, time, flexibility, reliability, and a few other factors, and make your choice. London to Manchester options on the train have
* Time -- travel by train "offpeak" and save a fortune over peak
* Comfort -- travel by train "peak" and have more space. Travel in First Class and have more space.
* Speed -- travel by London Midland and Northern rather than Virgin and save a fortune
* Flexibility -- book a fixed train and save
In addition to the plethora of options on the train there's also * Fly -- can be faster (depends where you're going, but from west London to West Manchester it's faster), can be cheaper, can be more comfortable (you're guarenteed a seat), tends to be pricey if you want an element of flexibility, not as flexible as the train or car
* Coach - slower, less comfortable, cheaper
* Drive -- very flexible, slower than the train, requires effort, twice the off peak train cost
* Taxi -- not that expensive, especially for a few people
However people complain that "it's too expensive", despite being able to travel from Manchester right now for £20, or in a couple of hours for £12.
There's also the fact that long-distance travel in the UK is priced significantly better than short-distance travel. There's been times where I've been able to get to London from a small town for cheaper than it'd cost to get to the nearest city. First class on East Coast used to be priced at a rate where it was cheaper to upgrade (and get food and drinks included) than to get food on the go - on local services, there's often no competition aside from a car, so prices even for standard class can be raised almost arbitrarily, especially if there's any tourist traffic on the line.
Even for long-distance journeys, pick the wrong date or need to be there for the morning, and my options become far, far more limited, and far, far pricier, since we don't have sufficient capacity for peak dates - we barely have capacity for everyday services on some modes of transport - and we have very few overnight services.
Edinburgh to Paris next month - we were stuck with the choices of taking the bus, or flying for 2-3x the price. Train was more expensive than the flight - a remarkably common occurrence, even for travel entirely within the UK. We eventually chose the bus, despite it being a 24 hour journey.
The downsides of hiring the car
- time isn't very useful while you're driving (compared to on a train/plane where you can work, or read, or watch netflix)
- usually slower - especially with city centre to city centre
- parking stress
- Driving is tiring, and more dangerous. A 3 hour drive, then an 8 hour day, then another 3 hour drive.
Choice is wonderful.
Ideally I'd have something that costs 5p per mile, runs every 5 minutes, is is door to door, and I travel on my own sofa with 300mbit wifi, power, and waiter service.
However as that's not possible I, as a consumer, can choose what's important for me for a given journey. Sometimes that's the train, sometimes it's the plane, sometimes it's a coach, sometimes I'll drive
Choice is a right pain, but it allows you to choose what's important
Edinburgh to Paris is a long trip - 1360 mile return. That's £600 for a car (HMRC give you 45p per mile, they wouldn't give you that if that was a grossly high amount), plus the cost of the ferry.
I can get a train leaving tomorrow and coming back on Saturday for £400 return, or 30p per mile. I can fly on the same days for £276 return, or 20p per mile. What is a fair price?
Transport is a low margin industry. The fact that some people can travel really cheaply is possible because others are willing to pay more for flexibility. This means those who want flexibility win (London to Edinburgh trains every half hour), and those that want cheap tickets win (12p/mile), and those willing to shop around win (even less than 12p/mile).
What would you change?
Given the large amount of people you can place in a large vehicle, one would hope that a private car is significantly more expensive than public transport without having to convince anyone to pay for bizarre things like being able to pick a seat. The fact that it isn't is, in fact, utterly bizarre.
In the case of the dates we have to travel for a conference, the bus is £150 pp, and flights are £300+ pp - with no flexibility whatsoever in either case. Trains come out to £400 pp or more, which is bizarre given the passenger density of long-distance rail.
Anyway, the point was, the cheap option only exists if you know how to look for it - it's really, really not obvious, and the only reason I know how to do it is that public transport is my full-time hobby. And then once you pick the cheap option and suffer a delay - which is almost guaranteed to happen on a regular enough basis to make the cheap option actually more expensive in many cases, given the state of the country's transport infrastructure - you're stuck on your own, because we have no concept of a joined-up multimodal journey in this country, unlike the rest of Europe. Hell, if you go for the cheap option, staff may even treat you with suspicion and assume you're lying about what your ticket allows you to do, and what you're entitled to.
If you go to the National Rail Enquiries site today and ask for a ticket from London to Manchester tomorrow, you'll be sold a completely non-flexible ticket totalling about £100 if it matches up with your schedule, or up to £169 otherwise. Compare this to e.g. Switzerland, well-known for having an exceptionally high cost of living - where I can book a train from Zurich to Geneva for £54 tomorrow with nothing but a quick google search for "trains zurich to geneva", or £24 if I want to travel in a couple of days. (And on much more comfortable trains, I might add.) There's no need to worry about booking weeks in advance or poring over whether the bus or the plane will be cheaper or whether there's a split ticket that works - the infrastructure exists to allow fast, cheap, somewhat flexible travel on comfortable services.
A walk up simple London to Manchester ticket is £86 return, unless you're travelling before 9:30am. Those willing to buy from https://trainsplit.com/ can get a return for £47, or buy the tickets manually and it drops to £39. That's just like those who know going to Aldi will be cheaper than shopping at harrods.
That "slow train" which costs £20 each way, in the peak, and is still quicker than a car.
The money made from open tickets is pumped back into the rail industry to subsidise rural branches in Cornwall. It also subsdises the frequency, where trains are running with say 20 people per carriage (with 80 seats), but are running every 20 minutes. Some people are willing to pay a lot for that frequency - hence the reason they sell £500 returns.
I would like to see thetrainline shut down, but they advertise their inferior product heavily and people use it.
Does letting you choose your seat increase their costs? If not, then I can see why people see it as a scam.