Posted 27th February 2012 | 1 Comment
Soaring car costs prompt youngsters to use trains
RAIL TRAVEL by people under 25 is soaring, with sharply higher car insurance premiums for young drivers said to be one of the reasons. New figures from the Association of Train Operating Companies show that the number of people holding a 16-25 Railcard is up by almost a third compared with five years ago.
ATOC said a move to rail has also been encouraged by increases in youth unemployment, as well as rising road fuel prices and tuition fees for higher education in England.
A spokesman described owning a car as an increasingly 'unaffordable luxury' for younger people, and said that 'boy racers' were frequently facing insurance premiums of £3,000 a year or more. Younger women are seen as safer drivers than young men by insurance companies, but even they were now being asked to pay an average of more than £1,800.
There were over 1.2million 16-25 Railcard holders last year, ATOC said, almost a third higher than the 950,000 who had a Railcard in 2005.
On average, young people with a Railcard were seeing an annual saving of £159, and making 40 rail journeys a year.
Almost 250,000 fewer 17 to 25-year olds took a driving test last year than in 2005, a drop of 18 per cent.
An ATOC spokesman added: "Getting a car on your seventeenth birthday is no longer a familiar rite of passage for a growing number of young people. We know a lot of under 25-year olds are struggling to afford the costs of buying, running and insuring a car – and that’s on top of paying for driving lessons.
"A generation of 16-25 year olds has been quick to see train travel as an affordable, reliable alternative to a car that has the added bonus of never having to worry about asking mates to chip in with petrol money."
The figures have been released as fuel prices are poised to rise again. Petrol duty is set to increase by 3p a litre in August, but oil prices are also hitting new highs on world markets. One motorway service station in the West Midlands has put up diesel to a record 150.9p, and petrol at the same site is 145.9p. The average price for petrol is now just over 135p, according to the website This is Money.
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Philip Russell, Carlisle
This report is probably accurate considering the increase in passanger numbers over recent years on the railways,and the reality of motoring costs, unlike the so called the anti car people who constantly claim that cars and lorrries do not pay their fair share and the cost of motoring has gone down 20% in the last 10 years,total Trotskyite rubbish.