Train fares set to rise 4% in biggest price hike for 5 years

COMMUTERS face the highest hike in rail fares in five years – adding hundreds to the cost of season tickets.

Millions of rail users will find out this morning how much more they will have to pay from next year when officials reveal the latest inflation figures.

The RPI (Retail Price Index) rate of inflation for July is always used to determine how much train companies can raise the price of regulated rail fares.

There are fears that today’s figures will allow an increase of 3.9 per cent from January – more than double last year’s 1.9 per cent rise, and the highest hike since 2012.

Regulated fares make up almost half of all tickets and include season tickets and standard returns.

An increase of 3.9 per cent would raise the cost of an annual season ticket from Portsmouth to London from £5,050 to £5,247.

Critics have accused the Government of allowing the taxpayer- subsidised rail industry to fleece the public by linking fares with the RPI rate of inflation rather than the much lower Consumer Price Index (CPI) rate.

For example, while the RPI rate in June was 3.5 per cent, the CPI was just 2.6 per cent.

And while train fares and interest payments on student loans are linked to RPI, the CPI rate is the one on which most pay rises are based.

Figures revealed yesterday show fares have increased twice as much as pay since 2010.

one union boss said foreignowned companies were acting like the masked highwayman Dick Turpin and ‘ hiding behind’ the RPI rate so they could rob passengers with the Government’s blessing.

even the office for National Statistics has warned that RPI is ‘flawed’ and has ‘serious shortcomings’. Last night Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said: ‘It is ludicrous that train fares are being hiked in line with RPI instead of official inflation.’

And Labour’s transport spokesman Andy McDonald said: ‘The Tories ought to be standing up for the interests of the travelling public rather than the private and foreign state-owned companies who run our railways.’

He added: ‘The RPI should be scrapped as the measure for increases and replaced with the lower CPI.’

Yesterday the RMT union unveiled research showing that rail fares have risen by around 32 per cent in eight years, while average weekly earnings have only grown by 16 per cent.

Rail workers will today protest warning that passengers are paying ‘more for less’.

They say that despite fare rises, engineering work is being delayed or cancelled, skilled jobs are being lost and staff are being cut.

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 ... 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: ‘It is unfair that the industry they [taxpayers] subsidise creates transport poverty and hurts the communities and industries that it 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.

It has been the policy of successive governments to reduce the funding of railways by the taxpayer while increasing the amount that passengers contribute.

Last night a DfT spokesman said: ‘The Government carefully monitors how rail fares and average earnings change, and keeps under review the way fare levels are calculated.’

‘Laughing all the way to the bank’