To compare the continent and their toll roads to here is barmy. The UK is a compact densly populated country when compared to the likes of France, Spain and Germany. The toll roads work in Europe and are well used especially given the distances you might want to cover. How long would it take to get from Paris to Lyon on a non toll road!!

Most continentals travelling between big cities, especially the French & Germans would opt for TGV or similar, rather than bugger around on the roads

And the train services are cheaper too. And a proper network, so if you are on a train that's delayed, any connection will be held for you.

I can't ever remember having to stand on a continental train either.

It amazes me that airlines allocate seating, as do inter-city coaches and yet the railways can hide behind victorian legislation, in order to continue treating their passengers worse than livestock

I have had to stand a couple of times in France – but only on very small, local trains.

Train travel in the UK can be a nightmare. There really are times I've flashed the press card.

Mind, talking of travel companies – I had fun with BA at the weekend, getting trapped in Glasgow because of fog in London. Now I don't have an issue with them not taking risks, but the lack of proper information – partly to keep you in the loop with them and to stop them incurring any more costs – is frustrating, to say the least.

Even when train companies allocate seating (Cross Country for instance) they then go and totally waste the time and effort of doing so by just continuing to sell tickets long after all the seats have been used up rather than adding extra seating or extra services, I understand its not easy to just add another train into the system but it wouldn't take too much thought and analysis to work out which are your busy times and which are not.

As an example the morning Edinburgh/Plymouth service is usually half empty when it arrives in Leeds at 8.10am but fills at that point and continues to be full down to Birmingham, you could say that Leeds to Birmingham is a busy sector for that particular train - until April/May it was always a five coach train but then changed to three coaches for "the summer schedule" with no downturn in demand - somebody somewhere made that decision and it was based on some piece of data that they decided not to share with their own staff who were as p1ssed off as the paying passengers, it can't be easy to work a corridor packed with angry standing people who all want to know where coaches C and D have gone.

On the other hand I've used that service in the middle of the afternoon on the return trip and used first class (only an extra £5) and found myself sitting alone in a coach with another first class one in front of that, again someone made that decision but it obviously wasn't based on advanced sales

Yeah right.

Perhaps but there are still plenty of bodies using the motorways including freight - all those left hand drive lorries we see on our motorways didn't pick the stuff up at Dover.

I agree re the TGV - brilliant train I got it from Beaune to Paris - <2 hours fantastic.

The big difference is that, with airlines, you have to check-in to get a seat.
Rail companies allocate seating too but, because there's no check-in, you have to reserve at least the day before.
However, only this morning, the seat next to me remained empty all the way, despite being reserved from Wakefield Westgate to KX.
I think that might be another large part of the problem, i.e. there are so many "no-shows" on trains that they just let people get on the train and sort themselves out.

I haven't thought this through but maybe we need check-in at rail stations and electronic comms to the train so that the seat can be un-reserved when there's a no-show.
Then you only allow the same number of unreserved passengers to match the number of unreserved seats.

You do for Eurostar.