Taxpayers are forced to join passengers in subsidising railway workers and franchise holders

SIR – Rail users should be thoroughly displeased with this latest fares rise, as they already pay the highest fares in Europe, but British taxpayers should be displeased as well.

Government rail spending in 2018 will reach nearly £15billion and benefit 3 per cent of the population. Road spending, which benefits more than 90 per cent of the population, is stuck at £10billion.

Government rail spending has increased year by year and now stands at 36p per passenger mile, with a £4billion direct subsidy. Roads gets 3p per mile and raise £50billion in direct or indirect taxes.

Rail spending by the United Kingdom is out of control and the only people that seem to be benefiting are the rail workers and franchisees. Mike Haville

Southam, Warwickshire

SIR – The BBC and other media report that some commuters will pay as much as £100 extra a year on a season ticket.

What we are talking about there is approximately one cup of coffee or a newspaper or a couple of bottles of water per week – not per day. Colin Myram

Hunston, Suffolk

SIR – On my 45mm gauge model garden steam and electric railway, most accidents and derailments occur because of my bad track maintenance. Only when I’ve sorted out these faults on Rodney’s Network Rail do I turn to sorting out the rolling-stock problems (Rodney’s Franchise Railway).

Everything then runs smoothly. During repairs and maintenance, being the owner of both companies and financing both out of the same budget, I can rejig the timetable to suit companies and the passengers. Communications are short. Everyone knows where they stand.

Under present arrangements, the Government, passengers and the train-operating companies are held to ransom by Network Rail. The trainoperating companies and Network Rail then waste years and millions of pounds fighting blame-game warfare as to whether the track or the rolling stock were at fault. There is no real competition on the track engineering side because it is a monopoly (Network Rail). Inevitably costs spiral upwards.

The Government should devolve track infrastructure to the trainoperating companies and we might at last get a proper railway system, as existed before nationalisation. Rodney Whitworth

Walsham-le-willows, Suffolk

SIR – Increasing rail fares by the Retail Prices Index of inflation, for nondiscretionary travel to work, is a farce.

Network Rail has managed to bungle recent electrification projects to the point where some are cancelled, others delayed.

HS2 has seen profitable revolvingdoor office relocations, redundancies and rehirings. HS2 route-planning has resulted in waste and expense due to initially unrealistic plans.

The London Bridge and Waterloo Expansion projects, trumpeted as triumphs, have a legacy of recurring track, points and signal failures. Thameslink is now less optimistic about the number of trains it can feed through the tunnels from Blackfriars to Farringdon. Crossrail is awaited with some trepidation.

Operating companies, such as Stagecoach, are not penalised for failure to deliver an over-optimistic promised share of revenue payable to the Government or promised improvements in passenger service. They bamboozle passengers with eccentric fare structures. Some comfortable, serviceable passenger rolling stock is arbitrarily scrapped and replaced with less comfortable to win new franchises, while passengers in other regions must suffer elderly equipment prone to breakdown.

All of the management failures noted above have contributed to inflation. The rail industry operators, constructors and regulators should be penalised, rather than rewarded. Brian Newton

Epsom, Surrey