Rail travellers warned to expect 3.5% increase in fares
RAIL commuters are being warned to expect a 3.5 per cent fare increase next year.
The exact rise will be confirmed when the July Retail Prices Index (RPI) measure of inflation is released by the Office for National Statistics on Wednesday, but economists from Investec and EY Item Club predict the figure will be announced as 3.5%.
The Department for Transport 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 went up by 3.6% this year. A Scottish Government spokesman said Scotrail’s fares increases are generally lower, on average, than those elsewhere in the UK.
He added: “This is a result of our policy to place a cap that is lower than RPI on regulated off-peak fares increases, whereas the UK Government applies an increase at the level of RPI to all regulated fares.”
A Campaign for Better Transport spokesman urged the UK Government to “commit to a fares freeze”. He said: “The Government cannot go on telling passengers that fare increases are justified.”
A Department for Transport spokesman admitted any fare increase is “unwelcome”, but added it is not fair to ask people who do not use trains to pay more for those who do.
He said: “Taxpayers already subsidise the network by more than £4billion a year – meaning 38% of our transport budget is spent on the 2% of journeys the railway accounts for.”
The spokesman added that fare increases are helping to pay for extra carriages and services, as well as upgrades on some routes.
Paul Plummer, chief executive of the Rail Delivery Group, representing train companies, said: “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 for the benefit of our customers, local communities and UK economy.”
Mick Cash, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, has called for public ownership of the railways. He said: “Britain’s passengers are being robbed blind by greedy train operators for travelling in rammed out and unreliable services while the shareholders are laughing all the way to the bank.”