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Another year, another fare rise

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jon0844

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Cut and paste politics! Rather like Bob Crow and the call for renationalisation.
 
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dannypye9999

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another price rise once again with the "promise" of a better service. Been traveling the same train for 10 years now, not once seen a better service that's improved for me personally - still smelly, manky toilets on all northern services and crackling information tannoys on stoke to Manchester services.

Time to bring back british rail.
 

tbtc

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You'll probably recall that prior to the MML electrification announcement in quite a few posts you bemoaned the fact that all the North of England improvements were elsewhere and that there weren't any real plans for Sheffield.

Many places still aren't set to get any real improvements except for possibly a little extra capacity from cascaded 1980s DMUs released by electrification projects

It'd be impossible to improve the service on every single line in the country in the short term, but we are seeing huge improvements over the rest of the decade - thousands of new coaches, the biggest electrification commitment I can remember - yet we see more moaning about the lack of "much-needed service improvements".

I could have understood that reaction ten years ago (when there was little being built), but a lot of people are trotting out the same old "outrage" angle without looking at the fact that things are changing.
 

cjp

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Note I couldn't find a similar thread in existence for this year's fare rises. Apologies if I've duplicated the topic!

Being given out at 8am this morning at Paddington by Unions was . . . .
a little card - made some sense to me, more now I hear the news
 

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tbtc

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another price rise once again with the "promise" of a better service. Been traveling the same train for 10 years now, not once seen a better service that's improved for me personally - still smelly, manky toilets on all northern services and crackling information tannoys on stoke to Manchester services.

Time to bring back british rail.

You've not benefitted from the extension of most Northern services beyond Macclesfield to Stoke?

Or from having some of the most modern trains in the UK doing other Manchester to Stoke services (220s, 221s and 390s)?
 

Goatboy

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Or from having some of the most modern trains in the UK doing other Manchester to Stoke services (220s, 221s and 390s)?

Good point - we get to travel on swish 12 year old Voyagers, so to be honest a 10% rise would be fair.
 

SWT_USER

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I probably shouldn't moan too much about fare rises as my local line is getting Crossrail, but the service at the moment is far from good enough, and I'm actually having to pay more than I should to get home in the evenings as I have no service to either of my local stations after 9. Also I think it's very poor that there are still stations in London with no Sunday service.
 

NSEFAN

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cjp said:
Being given out at 8am this morning at Paddington by Unions was . . . .
a little card - made some sense to me, more now I hear the news

Thankyou for sharing that, although I am concerned that unions are handing over such sweeping generalisations to the public, as if a publicly owned system is the cure-all for the ills of the railways. :|
 

LNW-GW Joint

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Um, there's a breakdown in the article you just posted......:

Looking at these figures they seem to exclude the additonal cost of funding NR directly from DfT (the "Network Grant") and other taxpayer support.
"Where the ticket money goes" is not the whole story by any means, it's just ATOC's view of life.

Patrick Macloughlin talked today about a 2/3 1/3 split between the farepayer and taxpayer being the current funding position.
I think when Labour started this line of thought the figures were 1/4 3/4, and the target was to reverse this to 3/4 1/4.
So still a bit further to go down this road.
 

Goatboy

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25 / 75 taxpayer/fare payer split only works in an economy where you are happy to encourage road use.

It would have worked nicely in the 80's. Now though, with the focus on sustainability, it seems like its completely the wrong way around.

As I've said before - the more this continues the more likely I am to simply stop using rail and go back to my car. Even now for about 50% of my journeys I only use rail because I enjoy trains rather than becuase it makes economic sense for me to leave my car at home. Infact I only break even versus the car because I use split tickets, it's just daft.

This is a ridiculous state of affairs really. If I didn't like rail then its likely I'd never travel by train as so many of the journeys, bar some of the local ones in Devon, are roughly the same price as using the car anyway and thats for a single traveller with a not particularly economical car let alone when you are travelling as a couple or family or with an economical car.

Other countries in the world recognise the value to an economy of an affordable transport system - hello Germany for example.

We will never reduce our dependancy on imported fossil fuels if we continue to gouge rail travellers with far above wage-rise level fare increases.

Here is an example - an offpeak journey from Exeter to Birmingham for two adults.

Rail: £84.70 x 2 = £170
Road using the UK's best selling car - the Focus @ 45mpg = £46 + lets say £20 for 2 days parking = £66. Lets add another tenner for misc wear and tear (Though a 300ish mile journey wont cause that) and its £76.

Even if you go alone it's still cheaper to burn petrol, emit CO2 and sit in your private bubble to your own timetable.

That'll really help encourage people to leave the car at home, won't it? And no, I won't include the road tax etc in that cost because most people already have a car and will incur these costs anyway even if they leave it at home.

Never mind, it's all worth it because in 5 years time the train might be powered by electricity instead, wow! That'll make it worth spending more than twice the amount to travel on.
 
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Bungle73

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Looking at these figures they seem to exclude the additonal cost of funding NR directly from DfT (the "Network Grant") and other taxpayer support.
"Where the ticket money goes" is not the whole story by any means, it's just ATOC's view of life.
Um, it's a break down showing the public where their fare money goes. Nothing more, nothing less. I'm not sure why you're trying to add stuff that has nothing to with anything to it?

Patrick Macloughlin talked today about a 2/3 1/3 split between the farepayer and taxpayer being the current funding position.
I think when Labour started this line of thought the figures were 1/4 3/4, and the target was to reverse this to 3/4 1/4.
So still a bit further to go down this road.
We don't need to go "further down this road" we need to back track the other way.

It's funny how the government's argument is that only people who use the railway should pay for it (despite them being an important part of the country's infrastructure), yet everyone has to pay for the roads, but a lot of us don't drive.
 

Goatboy

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It's correct that all taxpayers should pay for public services, not just those who use them.

I do not use schools, I have not visited a doctor for a decade, I don't visit the library, I don't use public parks but I am more than happy that my tax is used to fund these services for those who do use them. It's why we pay tax - its how the system works. I also don't use the bus but am happy that my tax is used to make the bus affordable for those who do need it or want to use it.

The more people who use rail:

a) The less congested the roads are
b) The easier it is to park
c) The lower the UK's CO2 emissions are
d) The lower our trade deficit becomes
e) The lower our dependance on imported oil from unstable areas of the world is

etc etc.

Even if you never set foot on a train in your life, a integrated public transport system that encourages people to use it through a carrot not a stick approach benefits the entire economy as a whole.

Perhaps if we were not having to fund rampant inefficiency, priviate sector profit and ridiculous vanity projects there might be more money left in the pot to actually acheive this.

I wonder how many East Coast passengers think on a daily basis as they pay a small fortune for a ticket and board a modern Mk4 coach 'I really wish I could pay even more money to travel so I can have a brand new IEP'.
 
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Dave1987

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another price rise once again with the "promise" of a better service. Been traveling the same train for 10 years now, not once seen a better service that's improved for me personally - still smelly, manky toilets on all northern services and crackling information tannoys on stoke to Manchester services.

Time to bring back british rail.

In what way would bringing back BR improve your service? To make a statement like that you clearly know exactly what BR would do, how they would make your service better??
 

chuckles1066

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I've posted this before; the whole "above inflation increases are needed to fund infrastructure improvements" does seem to be a lot of hot air.

Services, from my limited experience, were regularly shortformed in 2010 and I have no doubt that if I wandered along to Patchway or Filton Abbeywood next week I'd still find the same culprits (particularly the 7.36a.m or whatever it is these days service to Bristol) shortformed.

There's only so many times you can lie before you get caught out.
 

Bungle73

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In what way would bringing back BR improve your service?
It's just something that people like to bandy around, like it's some kind of magic bullet that would "fix" everything, completely forgetting that when we had BR it suffered from no end of complaints.
 

Dave1987

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It's just something that people like to bandy around, like it's some kind of magic bullet that would "fix" everything, completely forgetting that when we had BR it suffered from no end of complaints.

Indeed its almost like BR could solve all the problems with the network overnight at the moment.
 

Andrewlong

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Does anyone have details of annual fare rises from say 1975 through to 2013? It would interesting to compare rises pre and post privatisation.
 

jon0844

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London commuters can't really moan about their higher fares not paying for any improvements, given LO, Thameslink, Crossrail, station upgrades (KGX, STP, Blackfriars, and Victoria/London Bridge etc), new rolling stock, many train refreshes and the other stations being given longer platforms. Then there's the new platforms and track reinstatement from FPK... The list goes on.

Sure, fares are high but the money is being spent on infrastructure not just TOC profits. But I bet most people will just moan about high fares because of privatisation.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4
 

yorksrob

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Indeed its almost like BR could solve all the problems with the network overnight at the moment.

Some of us are old enough to remember us all being told that privatisation would cure all the railway's (and indeed everything else in the world's) ills.
 
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Goatboy

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Whatever the answer is, the current situation isn't it. We get the worst of both worlds - private sector profit and DFT meddling and micromanaging everything and forcing private companies (You know, the place where the enterprise was supposed to come from) to use certain types of train etc.
 

pemma

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It'd be impossible to improve the service on every single line in the country in the short term

The easiest way to get close to that would be to replace new stock with new stock and then cascade down with the oldest stock dropping off at the bottom. That is similar to the what happened when the 185s were introduced and Northern got extra 158s as a result, putting them on to what were previously class 155 and 156 diagrams, with the 156s making their way on to what was previously class 150 diagrams and the 150s replacing 142s, with some 142s finishing up in storage. However, obviously when that happens people question why they are getting the cascaded stock and not new stock,
 

Simon11

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I don't see 3% profit for TOC's as huge consider the investment and risks in their franchise for trying to reduce costs and increase revenue.

Let's also remind ourselves that TOC's don't set the level which regulated fares on average are set at. With nationalisation, I don't see why fare setting policy would have been any different.

Let's also remind ourselves that journeys have been increasing over the last decade, of which some should be attributed to franchising.
 
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ivanhoe

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Fare rises of this magnitude give no incentive to have a radical overhaul of the cost base. Most people have had little or no increase in their salaries over the past four years. Something will give in the near future.
 

pemma

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You've not benefitted from the extension of most Northern services beyond Macclesfield to Stoke?

Or from having some of the most modern trains in the UK doing other Manchester to Stoke services (220s, 221s and 390s)?

Note that there were morning peak Stoke-Manchester stoppers and evening peak Manchester-Stoke stoppers before the hourly service in both directions was introduced, so peak time commuters from say Congleton to Manchester won't really have benefited from the change.

Congleton also lost most of it's XC service as a result of the hourly Manchester-Stoke service being introduced so there are some negative effects of the hourly stopper, even if more passengers benefited than lost out.

Good point - we get to travel on swish 12 year old Voyagers, so to be honest a 10% rise would be fair.

What's wrong about Stoke-Manchester is instead of there being a cheaper fare valid only on the stopping services (the 323s), there is a cheaper fare valid only on the express Pendolino services. Imagine if it was cheaper to do Crewe-London on an express Pendolino than a stopping Desiro?
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Let's also remind ourselves that TOC's don't set the level which regulated fares on average are set at.

Let's get one thing straight. The government sets the maximum average level which regulated fares can increase by, it's up to the operator to set the fares. A couple of years back First Great Western froze their local regulated fares despite the fact the government did not set the maximum average level which regulated fares can increase by 0%.
 

island

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This morning's Today programme on Radio 4 featured a commuter who is paying £5,600 for an annual season ticket from Bedford to London. For that she gets the right to travel at any time between those two stations on FCC's shabby, overcrowded trains.

In Germany, for almost exactly the same amount, you could buy a first class Bahncard 100, giving unlimited first class travel across the entire country for a year.

Why are the UK's trains so expensive?
This one gets wheeled out every year, and the answer isn't different. Higher costs due to fragmentation, ancient infrastructure, better-paid staff, and demand management for a start.
I think the point about the Bahn Card is a valid one, particularly in the light of ATOC‘s continued failure to come up with a national railcard !
Well there was the Two Together Railcard last year, perhaps that might make a reappearance?
Thankyou for sharing that, although I am concerned that unions are handing over such sweeping generalisations to the public, as if a publicly owned system is the cure-all for the ills of the railways. :|
Well for a start it would cut out the 5%+ or whatever profit is being creamed off overseas and there would be more of a motivation to run the railway in the interest of the passengers.
Here is an example - an offpeak journey from Exeter to Birmingham for two adults.

Rail: £84.70 x 2 = £170
Road using the UK's best selling car - the Focus @ 45mpg = £46 + lets say £20 for 2 days parking = £66. Lets add another tenner for misc wear and tear (Though a 300ish mile journey wont cause that) and its £76.

Even if you go alone it's still cheaper to burn petrol, emit CO2 and sit in your private bubble to your own timetable.

That'll really help encourage people to leave the car at home, won't it? And no, I won't include the road tax etc in that cost because most people already have a car and will incur these costs anyway even if they leave it at home.

This sort of cherry-picked fallacy gets wheeled out regularly too. If you're organised and flexible you get advances for £16 per person per journey or £64. Throw in £30 on the car journey for the two days' insurance and VED (and yes they are part of the cost of the journey, although not perhaps the marginal cost), another fiver on petrol burnt in traffic jams or driving in towns (as you never really get the published mpg), and suddenly it's £111 vs £64 on the train, to say nothing of not having to get stressed and tired out by driving long distances.
 

pemma

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Fare rises of this magnitude give no incentive to have a radical overhaul of the cost base. Most people have had little or no increase in their salaries over the past four years. Something will give in the near future.

If you ask me what'll give I'd suggest peak time.

Employers aren't going to give 5 years worth of pay rises in one year even if the financial situation improves.

The government is going to continue to want to cut rail subsidies.

Potential problem - people can't afford to get to work by rail but there are ways around that if the employer is flexible with working hours.

Potential solution 1: 9 to 5 working day becomes 10.30 to 6.30 working day
Potential solution 2: 7.5 hours a day for 5 days a week becomes a 4 day week with working hours of 9 hours 20 minutes.
Potential solution 3: Employee works 3 weekdays and the weekend instead of 5 weekdays.

Any of the above could see the number of peak time travellers decline (effectively stopping it being a peak time to travel) and a reduction in the amount of revenue taken.
 

dannypye9999

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In what way would bringing back BR improve your service? To make a statement like that you clearly know exactly what BR would do, how they would make your service better??


We'd have a far better service than we do now put it this way
 
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