IT’S JUST NOT FARE!
TRAIN PASSENGERS BRACED FOR BUMPER PRICE HIKES... AS ANGER RISES OVER DISPUTE THREATENING WALES’ RAIL REVOLUTION
RAIL workers are to stage a series of protests today outside stations including Cardiff warning passengers that they are paying “more for less” ahead of news on how much rail fares will go up next year.
Commuters and other passengers will find out today how much extra they will be charged from the new year.
The Government links the annual January rise in Britain’s regulated fares with the previous July’s Retail Price Index (RPI) measure of inflation, which will be announced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Regulated fares make up almost half of all tickets and include season tickets and standard returns.
They increased by 1.9% in January, but the RPI figure for July this year is expected to be around 3.9%, which would lead to the highest increase in fares since 2012.
Rail unions said that, even as fares rise, rail engineering work is being delayed or cancelled, skilled jobs are being lost and staff are being cut on trains, stations and ticket offices.
They will call for reduced fares, public ownership and protection of jobs, during protests on Tuesday outside railway stations across the country, including London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Bristol, Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool.
Transport Salaried Staffs Association leader Manuel Cortes said: “When the Tories passed legislation which allowed rail fare hikes year in, year out, they made legal one of the greatest train robberies in railway history.
“Now, the state-owned railway companies of France, Germany, Holland and Italy, who have gobbled up large swathes of our network, are allowed by Transport Secretary Chris Grayling to
laugh all the way to the bank at our expense.
“Dick Turpin had the decency to wear a mask when he robbed his passengers.
“Today train companies, with the Government’s blessing, hide behind the Retail Price Index as a method of legitimately fleecing more money from hard-pressed passengers at the start of each new year.”
Mick Whelan, general secretary of train drivers’ union Aslef, said: “After years of austerity, when workers have not achieved pay increases for years at or around inflation, it is unfair that the industry they subsidise creates transport poverty and hurts the communities and industries that they should be supporting.”
Fewer than half of passengers are satisfied with the value for money of train tickets, according to the latest survey by passenger watchdog Transport Focus.
Examples of annual season tickets at current prices include: Brighton to London £4,184; Liverpool to Manchester £3,044; Worcester to Birmingham £1,348; Bath to Bristol £1,580 It has been the policy of successive governments to reduce the funding of the railways by taxpayers and increase the relative contribution of passengers. London Mayor Sadiq Khan has urged the Government to take a similar step to his freeze of single fares on London Underground journeys until 2020.
Public transport campaigners have called for the Government to use the Consumer Price Index (CPI) measure of inflation to set rail fares. CPI is generally lower than RPI and is used to calculate changes in benefits.
The ONS warned last month that RPI is “flawed” and has “serious shortcomings”.
Mr Grayling sparked outrage with an announcement just before Parliament went into summer recess that plans to electrify rail routes between Cardiff and Swansea; Kettering, Nottingham and Sheffield; and Windermere and Oxenholme would be cancelled or downgraded.