A British expat has praised Australia’s railway system after he calculated his fare was 25 times cheaper than the cost of a similar ticket in the UK.
Josh McCallion moved from the UK to Sydney in November 2024 and since then has been travelling around the area to take in the sights.
Until last week, however, he had no idea just how cheap train tickets were in NSW.
In a video shared to social media, Mr McCallion filmed himself inside Central Station after he had bought a ticket from Sydney to Newcastle.
The trip takes roughly two-and-a-half hours and costs $10.66 during peak hours or $7.46 off-peak.
The price astonished Mr McCallion, who made a quick comparison of how much the ticket would cost a person in the UK who wanted to travel a similar distance by train.
Mr McCallion explained a similar trip in the UK from Newcastle to Derby – where he is originally from – costs a staggering $190 for the cheapest ticket.
For the quickest morning trip between these destinations, the price sits at an ‘obscene’ $269.70 – or 25-times the cost of a similar trip in Sydney.
Josh McCallion caught his first train in Sydney and could not believe how much cheaper it was than those in the UK
A trip from Sydney to Newcastle only cost Mr McCallion a little over $7
Many social media users who watched the video blamed the UK’s privatised train network, while others warned Mr McCallion that not all trips are so cheap in Australia.
Mr McCallion said he was still new to Australia and just ‘needed an excuse’ to travel when he was left gobsmacked by the ticket prices.
‘We needed an excuse to get up there because we’ve heard it was nice, but when I looked at the train prices, I was just blown away, to be quite honest,’ he told Yahoo.
‘In the UK, we just use the train because it’s just obscene.
‘We don’t have a car yet, but the public transport is making us think whether we actually need one, which is quite a nice place to be, because in the UK, that would never have been an option.’
Train networks in the UK have been owned and operated by rail companies since the the privatisation in 1993.
Because of this, train tickets can fluctuate similar to how airline bookings do based on supply and demand.
The cheapest return ticket which can be purchased between Newcastle and Derby is currently $262.55 at the time of writing.
An equivalent ticket in the UK, from Newcastle to Derby, costs $190 at least
Train tickets are so much more expensive in the UK because the railway network was privatised in 1993, unlike the publicly owned railroads in Australia
Brits pay roughly 30 per cent more on railway tickets than their counterparts across Europe, according to the 2011 McNulty report.
Social media users squared the blame solely towards National Rail for the excessive cost UK residents have to pay for long-haul public travel.
‘Because privatised public transport is about profit extraction not service,’ one said.
‘What’s worse is the UK has eight times the population of NSW in a smaller land area to attract customers to cover costs and make a good profit,’ another added.
‘I spent £139 (AU$284.46) going to Bristol and back last week,’ a third wrote.
‘For the same price I could fly to Europe.’
But train prices are not universal around Australia as others pointed out.
‘But how did I spend $21 for a 10 minute train ride to Sydney airport,’ one man complained.
‘Sorry, what? It costs me $8.40 to get to work every morning by train in Sydney, a 35 minute ride, and you’re telling me the train to Newcastle is less,’ another wrote.
‘In Queensland we went from the Gold Coast to Ipswich for 50 cents and in Victoria we went from Melbourne to Ballarat on a Sunday for about $7.50,’ a third said.
