The commuter season ticket that’s risen by £2,500 in eight years
RAIL commuters are paying up to £2,500 more for a season ticket to work than they were at the beginning of the decade.
As passengers are hit today with the biggest fare increases in five years, a report reveals the cost of some season tickets has soared by as much as 50 per cent since 2010.
The analysis by the Labour party of more than 180 routes found the average commuter will be paying £2,888 for their season ticket – £694 more than in 2010. The highest increase in cash terms was on a Virgin Trains season ticket between Birmingham and London Euston, which has risen by £2,536 since 2010 and now costs £10,564.
The biggest percentage increase was between Tame Bridge Parkway near Walsall and Nuneaton, where the cost of a season ticket has risen 50 per cent or £968 to £2,916.
Labour’s transport spokesman Andy McDonald described the rises as ‘truly staggering’.
Regulated rail fares such as season tickets rise each January in line with RPI inflation for the previous July – in this case, 3.6 per cent. They have risen by 32 per cent since 2010, three times as fast as wages, according to Labour. But train companies also exploited a rule letting them impose steeper increases on some regulated fares as long as the average overall rise was capped in line with inflation. The policy was scrapped by George Osborne in 2015.
A separate report found rail passengers in Britain are spending up to five times as much of their salary on fares as other Europeans. Someone on an average salary travelling from Chelmsford to London will have to pay 13 per cent of their wage – or £381 a month – for a season ticket. And someone making the commute from Manchester to Liverpool will have to pay £302.60 a month – or 10.6 per cent of their average salary.
This compares to someone commuting from Etampes near Paris to the French capital who will have to pay just £66 a month – or 2.5 per cent of their salary.
Commuters in Italy would have to pay 3 per cent – or £65 – to travel from Civita Castellana to Rome, according to the report by the Trades Union Congress. All four journeys cover roughly 30 miles.
As millions of Britons return to work today, fares rise by an average of 3.4 per cent. While regulated fares will increase by up to 3.6 per cent, unregulated fares, which include off-peak tickets and are set by the rail companies, have risen by almost 10 per cent in some cases.
It comes as the Daily Mail revealed yesterday that rail bosses are in line to receive multimillion-pound pay packages this year. Some could earn as much as £5.4million.
Paul Plummer, chief executive of the Rail Delivery Group which represents train operators, said: ‘For every pound paid in fares, 97p goes directly back to operating and improving services.’ The Department for Transport said: ‘This is the fifth year in a row where this government has capped regulated fares in line with inflation.’