TAKEN FOR A RIDE
Rail passengers to pay more for slow Christmas service
SOME rail fares are doubling at Christmas despite trips taking up to THREE TIMES longer.
Operators are ditching cheap advance tickets while bringing more misery because of engineering work.
Passengers on South Western Railway, already hit by 27 days of strike over guards’ roles on trains, and Great Western are losing the cheaper fares over the festive period.
So a London to Cardiff on December 27 trip will cost £81.30 for a super off-peak return, compared to £19.50 for an advance single fare. But the journey will take nearly four hours, twice as long.
Due to Great Western service suspension, a Christmas Eve trip from London Waterloo to Reading will take one hour and 21 minutes, three times longer than the usual
25 minutes from
Paddington. Those going from London to Portsmouth on South Western will effectively pay £19.35 for a single, not £9, for a 45 minutes longer trip.
Rail firms said they are withdrawing cheap advance tickets for journeys hit by engineering work as they could not reserve passengers seats on trains run by different operators on other routes.
But Ian Baldry, of travel consultants IBPTS, said: “Passengers will be spitting mad that the usual cheap advance fares were not made available this Christmas.
“More passengers have to pay full price fares, although rail trips will be longer because of works.”
Bruce Williamson, of the Railfuture pressure group, said: “If the service is slower, passengers would want to pay lower fares.”
Avanti West Coast began running the West Coast Main Line last night, taking over from Virgin Trains.