Passengers must be protected from the biggest fare increases since the railways were privatised, according to opposition parties, unions, green campaigners and the rail watchdog.

With record rises in prices due to come into force tomorrow, the Government is under pressure to intervene. Regulated fares, which include season tickets and off-peak services, will increase by an average of 6 per cent, twice the level of inflation. Unregulated fares, which include advance purchase tickets, will rise by 7 per cent.

Some commuters will pay even more. Those buying a season ticket between London and Gillingham, a service run by Southeastern Railway, will have to shell out an extra £280 a year, a rise of 10.2 per cent.

The price of a Canterbury to London season ticket will go up by 8.6 per cent, while the Tonbridge to London service will cost 9.5 per cent more. Passengers on Virgin's Coventry to London service will pay more than £400 more a year from tomorrow.

Recent changes to fare restrictions mean that some passengers buying their ticket on the day of travel at a peak time will face paying as much as 15 per cent more compared with the cost of the same ticket last January.

Government rules dictate that annual fare rises must not exceed one per cent above inflation. But a quirk in how the increases were calculated meant that they were set last July, when the economy was still booming and the Retail Price Index (RPI) was at 5 per cent.

Since then, the economic crisis has seen the RPI sink to 3 per cent in November. It is expected to plummet further in the new year, making tomorrow's fare increases the steepest since rail privatisation 16 years ago. Passengers on Britain's 20 busiest services would be paying an average of £76 less if the fare increases had been calculated using the current rate of interest.

Critics say the large rise will punish the poorest who spend more of their income on travel and force people back into their cars, setting back the fight against climate change.

Passenger Focus, the independent rail consumer watchdog, called on the Government to put an immediate freeze on all further price increases, while introducing a limit on the range of fare rises that could be introduced. So far, the Government has refused to take any action over the fare increases. "Fare rises that hark back to a time of high inflation and spiralling energy costs look very out of kilter," said Anthony Smith, chief executive of Passenger Focus. "Perpetual tinkering with ticket restrictions ensure back door fare rises continue."

Norman Baker, transport spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said: "The Government must step in to avoid these increases. It stepped in to stop the rise in fuel duty. I don't see why rail should be any different. Ask people whether they want widened motorways or cheaper rail fares and I think the answer would be pretty clear. The Government's whole policy in this area has been to force fares up, rather than help social exclusion or make a real difference to climate change."

The Conservatives' transport spokeswoman, Theresa Villiers, said: "In these difficult financial times, the Government should be doing all they can to ensure that the rail industry keeps costs under control and that both the taxpayer and the farepayer get much better value for money."

The Association of Train Operating Companies (Atoc), which announced the fare increases in November, say they will help fund "major investment" in the rail network. Michael Roberts, its chief executive, said travelling by rail would still be "considerably less expensive than commuting by car, even allowing for falling petrol prices – and journey times are usually quicker too".

It blames the extent of the fare increase on the Government's determination to cut the subsidy handed to the rail industry by 40 per cent by 2014.

The Department for Transport urged rail operators to "strike a balance" when setting ticket prices, but it has no plans to step in to protect passengers from the higher prices. "We cap regulated fares," said a spokesman. "The revenue they generate helps cover the cost of providing services and has also enabled the single biggest programme of investment in railways for a generation."

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Rail fares soar, despite inflation drop

Daily Telegraph: 02 Jan 2009
By David Millward, Transport Editor

Railway passengers are being hit with record-breaking fare rises higher than any imposed since the industry was privatised in the 1990s.


The Government is trying to price people off the railways in order to provide more space, according to a Tories' transport spokesman Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Commuters will face increases twice the rate of inflation as they return to work today.

The plight of passengers has been worsened by train operators imposing a raft of additional backdoor increases by cutting back on the availability of cheap walk-on fares.

Train operators are also squeezing their customers by forcing up the cost of using station car parks by more than 10 per cent in some cases.

"These fare rises hark back to a time of high inflation and spiralling energy costs. The economy is different now, but the seemingly unstoppable rail price express ploughs on," said Anthony Smith, chief executive of the consumer watchdog, Passenger Focus

"We cannot simply go on dumping costs onto the passenger in this way. Many passengers will shudder and shiver when they find out the scale of some New Year fare rises."

Commuters' anger has been fuelled by the fact that the fare rises have been linked to the inflation rate in the summer before the full impact of the economy downturn put the brakes on price rises. As a result tickets will go up by six per cent – one per cent above July's Retail Price Index.

Had the same calculation been made last month, the fare increase would have been four per cent.

On Southeastern, which serves passengers coming into London from Kent and East Sussex. commuter fares will rise by an average of eight per cent to help pay for the 140mph high speed bullet train which will start operation at the end of the year.

Many of the backdoor fare rises were introduced to coincide with the introduction of a new timetable last month.

They saw companies such as Virgin Trains reclassifying services as "peak", paving the way for eye-watering rises on some journeys.

Anyone taking an early morning train from Euston to Lancaster now has to pay £238 from Monday morning, compared to £69.30 this week.

A day trip to Carlisle has gone up from £87.10 to £247 and to Glasgow from £102.90 to £252.

Other companies have also imposed fresh restrictions, including East Midlands Trains and National Express East Coast.

The raft of rises were condemned by Theresa Villiers, the Tories' transport spokesman.

"At a time when personal budgets are tight and passengers are crying out for value for money, the Government have sanctioned a fare increase 3 per cent over inflation," she said.

"It is now clear that the Government is trying to price people off the railways as a feeble attempt to deal with overcrowding which has resulted from their complete failure to deliver the new capacity on the railways that they have been promising for almost a decade."

Earlier this year the Daily Telegraph disclosed that overcrowding was so bad that commuters were being allocated less space than the EU minimum for transporting farm animals.

The fare rises were also attacked by Bob Crow, general secretary of the transport union, RMT.

"Passengers being told to fork out huge increases in fares and season tickets for overcrowded services have every reason to ask how the operators can rake off such huge amounts of their money as 'profits',"

"The government has used huge sums of public money to prop up and nationalise failing banks, but when it comes to the railways there is more than enough evidence to show that bringing them back into the public sector would leave taxpayers and passengers better off.

"It seems that the rail privateers want everyone else to tighten their belts so that their shareholders can keep their snouts in the trough – yet the government insists that the set-up delivers value for money.

But the fare rises were defended by the Association of Train Operating Companies. "The formula is agreed with Government and fares have to be set in advance," a spokesman said.

"In other years passengers have gained when the inflation has risen during the second half of the year."

The Department for Transport also defended the rises. "Train operators need to strike a balance in setting ticket prices – which is why we cap regulated fares so most price rises are no more than 1 per cent above inflation, on average, until 2014," a spokesman said.

"The revenue they generate helps cover the cost of providing services and has also enabled the single biggest programme of investment in railways for a generation."