While it’s great being in your twenties and all, there are some significant downsides. Accepting the reality of adulthood and the increased severity of your wine hangovers are probably two of the big ones, but right up there as a major inconvenience of reaching the otherwise delightful age of 26, is having to say goodbye to your 16-25 railcard.
Trains were already ridiculously expensive with the 30% discount, so getting your head around the now unavoidable cost of jumping on a train is enough to bring anyone close to tears. But, word on the railways is that there’s some good news for anyone now in their late twenties. Praise be to the discounted travel gods, because a 'millennial' railcard is apparently in the works.
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The Money Saving Expert website reported that a new 26-30 railcard is set to be offered from December 2017. It’s thought that the new discount card (at an assumed third off most fares) will initially be rolled out on a trial basis just to the area served by the Great Anglia train operating company (they do trains to London, Norwich, Cambridge and Colchester etc).
The news comes from a document that was circulated on a UK rail forum apparently, which said that the railcard ‘goes national in early 2018’. The Money Saving Expert also said that this document said the card will only be able to purchase a year at a time unlike the existing 16-25 one, but most interestingly it’s also likely to only be available in digital form via an app which makes so much more sense than the current system that involves spending an awkward two or three minutes fumbling through bags and pockets to find that a rectangular piece of plastic with an unrecognisable picture of your face on.
It goes without saying that the materialisation of this so-called ‘millennial’ railcard couldn’t be more welcome. We're part of a generation plagued by debts and having to borrow money to cover basic living costs. We're the first generation to be financially worse off than the one that came before us. We're generation rent, generation overdraft, generation literally-can't-afford-anything. And while an extra railcard for those on the older end of the millennial timeline won't fix everything and, you know, perhaps some functional government regulation of rogue price increases might help, the 26-30 railcard is most definitely a good thing. Baby steps, and all.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.