Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

It's Tuesday the 23rd of January, which means that the Great British Rail Sail has begun.

This is basically a repeat of what we saw in 2022. You'll recall that during the pandemic, we were told,

don't go anywhere near a train. COVID takes the train too. So we were very much deterred from

catching trains and guess what people stopped catching trains. and now as a result of the changes to the

working patterns that we saw after the pandemic has been a collapse in rail revenue it's about 20%

down on pre-COVID levels and taxpayers subsidising train travel by an additional two billion pounds

annually so what are we going to do? Well, if you want

to have a railway that works, you need to either cut costs, which is a very, very little sign,

or increase revenue. And how do you do that by enticing new customers on board and that's why

if you book and the stipulations are very very strict for when it is available you've got to book

by next Monday the 29th of January it's for travel from the 30th of January to the 15th of March,

you get a large number of good value tickets. And to tell you about them, well, I've been talking

to the rail minister, Hugh Merriman. Yeah, so let me take one example. I'll pick two of our

great cities, both have been in with B.

So from Birmingham to Bristol, a ticket that would normally cost £30,000, will be available for £15.30.

So exactly half-priced. And there are many other opportunities, England, Wales, and going across the border into Scotland as well. The timing isn't actually ideal.

Well, if you look at the six weeks that the

travel will be available at these discounted prices, for one day passengers will find their train

operator is subject to the strike from ASLAF. But that's just one day out of the six weeks.

And if it's the case that there are further strikes announced, which we hope will not be the

case, then we'll make sure that those passengers are refunded. So they shouldn't be put off by that.

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