Off rails! UK commuters pay 10 times more than French
BELEAGUERED rail passengers are paying up to 10 times more than French commuters for similar journeys, shock figures showed yesterday.
They were released ahead of today’s announcement that fares are expected to rise in January by another 3.5 per cent.
The RMT rail union said a commuter in Cheshunt, Herts, going to London pays £3,200 for an annual season ticket – 10 per cent of the UK average salary.
In contrast, a French commuter pays £268, one per cent of the average salary, for a season ticket from Ballancourt-sur-Essonne to Paris.
A trip from Bristol to London will cost £99 compared with £34 from Bologna to Milan, Italy.
And in Germany a commuter on a high-speed ICE service from Dusseldorf to Cologne pays £2,976 for a season ticket, while their counterpart in Gravesend, Kent, travelling to London on the high-speed Javelin service, will pay £5,828.
Last year UK fares rose by 3.4 per cent – the biggest rise in five years – but pressure is growing for a freeze after months of chaos for passengers.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling yesterday bowed to pressure and said he favoured the fare increase being linked to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) official rate of inflation, which is usually lower than the Retail Price Index (RPI), on which the January fare rises are based.
Mr Grayling told rail union leaders he backed lower price rises, but warned that in return they should use CPI as part of pay deals.
He said: “I have already taken steps to ask the Office of Rail and Road to move away from the use of RPI in the contractual and regulatory structures that the industry uses. This will be part of the next regulatory period, which starts next year.”
Meanwhile the RMT will demonstrate against the fare rises in cities including London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Leeds and Edinburgh today.
In recent months passengers have faced delays and mass cancellations after the botched introduction of new timetables.
RMT general secretary Mick Cash said: “Despite all the timetable chaos and service and staff cuts our rail fares are up to five times more than fares in Europe and are rising twice as fast as wages. That is nothing short of a scandal. Even if fares were pegged at the more modest CPI these latest increases would still massively outstrip wages.
“This latest kick in the teeth for passengers is another nail in the coffin for privatisation and it’s now a question of when, not if, railways are nationalised.”
Steve Chambers, of Campaign for Better Transport, said: “Passengers have endured enough from the failures of the rail network and being asked to pay more again next year will be a bitter pill to swallow.”
But the TaxPayers’ Alliance opposed a fares freeze. Campaign manager James Price said: “Taxpayers would be subsidising wealthier rail users to the tune of more than £1billion over a parliament. Instead, the trade union-caused bloated wage bill should be addressed and hated, pointless and wildly expensive projects like HS2 should be scrapped.”
Paul Plummer, chief executive of the Rail Delivery Group, representing train companies and Network Rail, said foreign fares were not a true comparison and added: “Of every pound spent on train fares, 98p is invested back into the railway.”