Calls for rail fares in North to be frozen

THE GOVERNMENT was today facing calls for rail fares to be frozen for passengers in the North after a summer of disruption and delays across the network.

Dewsbury MP Paula Sherriff joined the metro mayors of Greater Manchester and the Liverpool City Region in writing to Transport Secretary Chris Grayling ahead of the announcement of the annual fare increase tomorrow.

The exact rise will be confirmed when the July Retail Prices Index (RPI) measure of inflation is released by the Office for National Statistics, but economists predict the figure will be announced as 3.5 per cent. The Department for Transport (DfT) uses July’s RPI to determine the annual increase in regulated train fares, which comes into force every January.

Regulated fares include season tickets on most commuter routes, some off-peak return tickets on long distance journeys and Anytime tickets around major cities. These fares went up by 3.6 per cent this year.

Large parts of the North saw rail services plunged into chaos following the botched introduction of a new timetable by operator Northern in May.

Disruption has continued in recent weeks and this weekend Northern cancelled 80 services, including trains on the Liverpool to Manchester Airport line in the third successive week of Sunday cancellations. In an open letter to Mr Grayling, Labour MP Ms Sherriff said: “To again increase fares faster than wages for passengers in the North would only add insult to injury.

“People in my constituency should not have to pay more for the shocking level of service they have experienced this summer.

“After months of misery on our region’s railways, a freeze in fares going into the new year should be the bare minimum that passengers in my constituency should be able to expect.”

In their letter, mayors Burnham and Rotheram say: “Over the past few months travelling by train in the North has become a lottery, where passengers turn up at stations with no idea if there will be a train or whether they will arrive at their destination on time.”

A DfT spokesman said: “Any fare increase is unwelcome, but it is not fair to ask people who do not use trains to pay more for those who do.

“Taxpayers already subsidise the network by more than £4bn a year – meaning that 38 per cent of our transport budget is spent on the two per cent of journeys that the railway accounts for.”

Rail Delivery Group Chief Executive Paul Plummer said: “We can’t speculate ahead of Wednesday’s publication of the RPI inflation figure, which government has decided determines the increase in season tickets, in line with other day to day prices.

“Of every pound spent on train fares, 98p is invested back into the railway, helping to underpin a once-in-a-generation investment to change and improve.”