£10,000 rail ticket coming up the tracks
THE DAWN of the £10,000 season ticket is nearing as commuters will see the highest price rise in five years.
Rail fares will rise by 3.6 per cent from January in line with inflation, which for many will add hundreds of pounds to their ticket in what has been described by passenger groups as a “kick in the teeth”.
The fare rises will mean commuter season tickets on the most expensive routes will reach £10,000, with fares on the hour-long Swindon to London service rising by £328 to £9,448 – more than a third of the town’s average salary.
David Sidebottom, director of Transport Focus, the independent transport user watchdog, said: “This is an eye- watering amount for a commute. Pas- sengers tell us they want a service they can consistently rely on. In our latest survey only a third of commuters thought their ticket was value for money.
“So while performance remains patchy, and with pay and wages not keeping pace with inflation, passengers will feel rightly aggrieved if they are paying much higher rises next January. Passengers deserve a fairer deal.”
Although the average commuter will see their bill increase to £2,888, season tickets on Virgin trains between Birmingham and London are the most expensive and will rise to £10,637. Even
passengers on the Southern route from London to Brighton will see their yearly ticket rise by around £163 to £4,699. The 3.6 per cent rise – almost double that of last year – is the highest since 2013 and means the price of a season ticket has increased almost 40 per cent in the last decade.
Regulated fare rises are capped at the rate of the Retail Price Index measure of inflation, which was announced by the Office for National Statistics yesterday. Critics argue that it should be capped at the Consumer Prices Index which is used for changes to most government controlled funding.
Research by the Rail, the Maritime and Transport (RMT) and the TUC shows fares increased at twice the rate of pay rises in recent years.
Natasha Coello, 36, who was injured when her train hit buffers at King’s Cross, questioned how companies can justify it. She said: “We all commute because we want to have more opportunities and better wages in order to pay for the roof over our head, but the fares do not allow you that opportunity.”
She pays £436.80 a month to travel from Stevenage to London and is often forced to stand and has to contend with delays and lack of rail staff.
She added: “How can they justify these prices when on some routes you have to stand like sardines with so many issues happening regularly?”
Rail unions stepped up their calls for the industry to be bought back into public ownership, with Mick Cash, RMT leader, calling for an end to “government sponsored racketeering”.
Around 40 per cent of rail fares are regulated including season tickets, anytime fares and some off-peak returns but the rise is generally seen as a benchmark across the network. The Government says that on average 97p in every £1 of a fare is reinvested.
♦a points failure caused a passenger train to hit a Network Rail wagon and derail yesterday morning at Waterloo. There were no injuries.