Fare rises are too much

The arcane debate about whether fares should go up by the Retail Price Index or by the lower Consumer Price index was a clever distraction by Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling.

The key point is that the continued heavy increases in rail fares, especially at a time when the railways have not exactly been operating well, are a step too far. Last year there were 500,000 fewer journeys made every week on the network, and anecdotal information suggests this decline is continuing.

The rail companies, with their very conservative managements, are too shortterm in their perspective to care that ultimately pushing up rail fares is a longterm negative for their businesses. After all, they do not have to put up the unregulated fares by the same amount - although invariably they do. Moreover, where are their voices saying ‘this is bad for the industry, please change the system’?

Meanwhile, Grayling is their prisoner because their contracts guarantee that they can increase the fares by RPI. They are simply not going to agree to a change, as they think it will reduce their income - although given the loss in passenger numbers as a result of high fares, this may not be the case any longer.

Indeed, demands from the public that the fares should be frozen cannot be met by Grayling - he would have to pay out money to compensate the train operators, and he is never going to do that.

The whole complex structure of the industry, therefore, guarantees that neither the operators nor government will make any serious effort to change the fares structure or to limit increases.