Rail commuters face £100 hike in season ticket prices

RAIL commuters face increases of more than £100 in the cost of their season tickets under price hikes to be announced today.

The annual rise in regulated rail fares, which include commuter season tickets, is determined by the Retail Prices Index (RPI) measure of inflation in July.

This is due to be announced today by the Office for National Statistics and is likely to be about 2.8 per cent.

This means the cost of season tickets will rise by more than £100 for many commuters when the increase takes effect in January.

For example, the cost of a Glasgow to Edinburgh ticket could rise by £114 to £4,198 – and the price for Brighton to London could soar by £125 to £4,581.

The latest rises are likely to spark anger from commuters, particularly as the RPI measure of inflation is often discredited.

The more widely used Consumer Price Index rate of inflation, which excludes the housing market, is expected to be only 2.1 per cent for the third quarter of 2019.

Although UK rail journeys reached a record 1.76 billion in 2018/19, those made using season tickets have fallen in the past three years, from 712 million in 2015/16 to 625million in 2018/19. Analysis by the Trades Union Congress found that rail fares have increased at twice the speed of wages since 2009.

Campaign group Railfuture believes passengers will ‘refuse to pay’ the increases and instead either change jobs or use a different mode of transport. Spokesman Bruce Williamson said: ‘It might be that we’ve now reached the point where we cannot simply put fares up and expect passengers to take the hit.

‘They will just give up and refuse to pay. They will either find another job or another form of transport.’

The UK, Scottish and Welsh Governments use RPI to set their cap on annual fare rises, despite Bank of England Governor Mark Carney saying it had ‘no merit’ in January last year.

He said ‘virtually everyone’ recognised the lower CPI measure of inflation and called for a ‘deliberate and carefully timed’ withdrawal of the RPI from government contracts.

The Rail Delivery Group, representing train operating firms, said the actual fare increase was usually slightly lower than the RPI rate because that figure was the cap and they tried to keep fare rises lower than the maximum permitted.

Tory MP Huw Merriman, a member of the transport select committee, said: ‘Rail operators’ costs go up by inflation each year. If the unions moderated their pay demands, then we could perhaps limit the rises.’