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Will rail fares continue to increase every year until a point UK cant afford to travel

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01jtiong

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Every year around this time the government/rail delivery group announce that rail fares will increase in the new year so will this happen every year until as such time that rail travel will be so expensive no one can afford it anymore
 
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Bertie the bus

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The price of things goes up year after year. It is called inflation. The bread I buy has gone up from 50p to 53p to 55p in the last year.

It always amazes me how every year people get so shocked and outraged that rail fares increase. Just like everything else does.
 

Ianno87

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The BBC ran a good graph that showed that Rail fares inflation for the last few years has run roughly in line with average wage growth. So the level of relative affordability has remained about the same.
 

Railwaysceptic

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It'll probably continue until we have a major cultural change and go back to concentrating on keeping costs down. That was the culture until John Major's fragmentation of the railways and was a total obsession with Civil Servants. Since the pseudo-privatisation of the railways, there has been a 100% change in attitude and a total abandonment of the principle that capacity costs money. Civil Servants now spray tax-payers' money around like confetti and no attempt is made to contain costs with the result that we have an expensive railway that requires very high fares plus a huge subsidy from the tax-payer.
 

gordonthemoron

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surely, eventually ticket income will cover all railway expenditure so the requirements for eye watering far increases will diminish?
 

Ianno87

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Railway expenditure will continue to increase (inflation and all that), so fares would still have to increase to cover that too.
 
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Agreed that you need increases every year -- the costs the railways face every year certainly go up.

But I do wonder if continuing fare rises will make people less willing to commute long distances, softening demand.
 

Bletchleyite

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is there an alternative to commute to work as there is no cheap way or ways to bypass the system

If it got *too* expensive, commuter coach services would start becoming viable again. Or people would live nearer work, which would be no bad thing (and work would have to move out of expensive places like London, again no bad thing). Or more remote working.
 
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I will say one thing, once my daily off-peak commute fare reached the psychological barrier of £5 a day, I did start cycling far more often.
 

mrcheek

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future increases will largely depend upon basic economics.

Fares keep going up, but so do passenger numbers (apart from 2017-18. but apparently that was a blip and they are now rising again).

If passenger numbers started to fall continuously, then I assume the government would re-think the policy. But despite all the media criticism every single year (actually, 3 times a year. Once when the inflation rate is released for the appropriate month, then again when the fare increases are announced, then again when the increase actually happens!), passenger numbers are still strong.

The policy is of course that passengers are expected to pay an increased share every year. But even in a theoretical situation, if fares got so high that they funded the entire cost of the railways (how many years would this take?!?!), fares could still keep rising, with the extra money being paid back to the government in premiums. Give it a thousand years, and maybe the railways will eventually pay back their entire cost for past, present and future!
 

jon0844

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The mayor of London promised the fares freeze, meaning a cut in fares year on year in real terms. It is clearly starting to impact on services, although the worst of the cuts will probably bite just as someone new takes over and gets all the blame...
 
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The mayor of London promised the fares freeze, meaning a cut in fares year on year in real terms. It is clearly starting to impact on services, although the worst of the cuts will probably bite just as someone new takes over and gets all the blame...

Same phenomenon is happening to universities. Tuition fees were frozen at £9k for several years, now £9250.
 

tbtc

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The price of things goes up year after year. It is called inflation. The bread I buy has gone up from 50p to 53p to 55p in the last year.

It always amazes me how every year people get so shocked and outraged that rail fares increase. Just like everything else does.

^^ What Bertie said ^^

I'm amazed that people still get surprised/ outraged by the fact that the price of something goes up each year in line with the Retail Prices Index - it's so simple/basic yet it gets to many people frothing with anger (the same people, incidentally, who'd presumably expect the purchasing power of their own salary/pension to increase in line with inflation each year?).

The BBC ran a good graph that showed that Rail fares inflation for the last few years has run roughly in line with average wage growth. So the level of relative affordability has remained about the same.

I didn't see the graph, but that ties in with my experiences.

Sadly it's easy to show the price of something compared to a generation ago to make it sound expensive ("this now costs almost double what it used to" etc), ignoring the fact the prices of most things will roughly double in that time as will wages.

It'll probably continue until we have a major cultural change and go back to concentrating on keeping costs down. That was the culture until John Major's fragmentation of the railways and was a total obsession with Civil Servants. Since the pseudo-privatisation of the railways, there has been a 100% change in attitude and a total abandonment of the principle that capacity costs money. Civil Servants now spray tax-payers' money around like confetti and no attempt is made to contain costs with the result that we have an expensive railway that requires very high fares plus a huge subsidy from the tax-payer.

This is a bigger problem - we seem to have no control over costs in the railway - hence projects routinely going over budget and Network Rail running up huge debts (around fifty billion quid after around fifteen years of operation... they got an easy ride in the early years because BLAME RAILTRACK was a good excuse for turning the taps on and spending money on things but NR has been around for twice as long as Railtrack lasted).

That's where I'd target my anger (the neverending debts and the lack of control).

surely, eventually ticket income will cover all railway expenditure so the requirements for eye watering far increases will diminish?

Eye watering?

It's about three percent - inflation is about three percent - what kind of rise would be acceptable (given that staff will be wanting rises in line with RPI, fuel and infrastructure costs seem to keep going up, Network Rail has already got debts of fifty billion...)?
 

yorkie

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is there an alternative to commute to work as there is no cheap way or ways to bypass the system
Most of my travels to work consist of cycling. When I go further afield, I will use a variety of methods to get cheaper fares.

This doesn't work for Season tickets, but there are accredited ticket "splitting" sites that reduce the cost of many journeys.
The price of things goes up year after year. It is called inflation. The bread I buy has gone up from 50p to 53p to 55p in the last year.
But fare rises go beyond inflation. Our walk-up fares are higher than they should be, for many journeys, because our policy in this area is not as good as that of many other European countries.
 

BigCj34

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The mayor of London promised the fares freeze, meaning a cut in fares year on year in real terms. It is clearly starting to impact on services, although the worst of the cuts will probably bite just as someone new takes over and gets all the blame...

Fares did go up significantly under Boris Johnson, so the intention is to amend his predecessors exploits for a few years.
 

jon0844

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Fares did go up significantly under Boris Johnson, so the intention is to amend his predecessors exploits for a few years.

By cutting just about everything? I bet people didn't think they were voting for that.
 

BigCj34

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Most of my travels to work consist of cycling. When I go further afield, I will use a variety of methods to get cheaper fares.

This doesn't work for Season tickets, but there are accredited ticket "splitting" sites that reduce the cost of many journeys.

But fare rises go beyond inflation. Our walk-up fares are higher than they should be, for many journeys, because our policy in this area is not as good as that of many other European countries.

Splitting is great for now and easier than ever, but it is not a user-friendly way to use the railway; foreign visitors are almost certainly not going to know about it. However I do not have confidence any fare reform will introduce through tickets that provide fares as cheap as the split ticketing equivalent.

While there is an element of logic to inflationary fare increases, it is an insult to commuters who have been plagued by strikes and the mass timetabling problems of the past year. Indeed compensation can be claimed, but still won't be considered enough by many. It is only really justified if the services worked mostly on time.
 

cuccir

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I'm amazed that people still get surprised/ outraged by the fact that the price of something goes up each year in line with the Retail Prices Index - it's so simple/basic yet it gets to many people frothing with anger (the same people, incidentally, who'd presumably expect the purchasing power of their own salary/pension to increase in line with inflation each year?).

It's reasonable to complain at the continued use of RPI. The government ditched RPI in favour of CPI in 2013. To quote from the ONS:

In 2013, the RPI lost its status as a National Statistic. Our position on the RPI is clear: we do not think it is a good measure of inflation and discourage its use. There are other, better measures available and any use of RPI over these far superior alternatives should be closely scrutinised.

There are various issues with RPI but the main one seems to be that it is too closely tied to house prices, and the rise in house prices doesn't have much direct impact on the amount of cash most people have.

According to Swanlowpark, £1000 in 2012 at RPI is now worth £1187; at CPI is now worth £1121. In other words, it's now about 5.5% lower. So an annual Brighton to London season ticket, for example, would be £222 a year cheaper at this measure.
 

yorkie

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Splitting is great for now and easier than ever, but it is not a user-friendly way to use the railway; foreign visitors are almost certainly not going to know about it.
I don't think its user unfriendly, but you are right people need to be told about it!
However I do not have confidence any fare reform will introduce through tickets that provide fares as cheap as the split ticketing equivalent.
This really is something for a new thread, but they'd have to introduce a lot of new fares for splitting to not be consistently cheaper on longer distance CrossCountry journeys.
 

swt_passenger

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The Tfl fare freeze has not affected price caps though
Or day or season travelcard prices, which are under joint control of TfL/DfT. As people discovered last year, when they renewed zonal seasons, there’s a lot of spin involved in this.
 

BigCj34

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I don't quite understand how a fare freeze and the hopper fares would create such a budgetary black hole, and surely the hopper fare should even encourage more bus patronage? Have there been cuts from central government which have largely contributed to the deficit?
 

greyman42

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If it got *too* expensive, commuter coach services would start becoming viable again. Or people would live nearer work, which would be no bad thing (and work would have to move out of expensive places like London, again no bad thing). Or more remote working.
I see commuter coaches in The City lined up along Queen Victoria St. and the Victoria Embankment waiting to take commuters home. They also pick up at Canary Wharf. I don't know what the fares are but they are luxury coaches and you would be guaranteed a seat, however I do appreciate that in the amount of commuters London has, these are a drop in the ocean.
 

Railwaysceptic

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Fares did go up significantly under Boris Johnson, so the intention is to amend his predecessors exploits for a few years.
Oh, come on! The intention was that an ambitious career politician would win an election by damaging the finances of public transport in London.
 

urpert

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I see commuter coaches in The City lined up along Queen Victoria St. and the Victoria Embankment waiting to take commuters home. They also pick up at Canary Wharf. I don't know what the fares are but they are luxury coaches and you would be guaranteed a seat, however I do appreciate that in the amount of commuters London has, these are a drop in the ocean.
Though many of them exist to take commuters home to North Kent, which is currently easier to access by road from Canary Wharf than by rail. Crossrail may have quite an effect on their business model, though it still won’t be a particularly quick rail route to the Medway Towns (where most of those coaches seem to be going).
 

MikeWh

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The Tfl fare freeze has not affected price caps though

Or day or season travelcard prices, which are under joint control of TfL/DfT. As people discovered last year, when they renewed zonal seasons, there’s a lot of spin involved in this.
Well quite. The DfT even have some control over the London Overground fares on the lines out of Liverpool Street. It's a mess.
I don't quite understand how a fare freeze and the hopper fares would create such a budgetary black hole, and surely the hopper fare should even encourage more bus patronage? Have there been cuts from central government which have largely contributed to the deficit?
Yes, TfL has had a funding cut from central government as well.
Fares did go up significantly under Boris Johnson, so the intention is to amend his predecessors exploits for a few years.

Oh, come on! The intention was that an ambitious career politician would win an election by damaging the finances of public transport in London.

I wouldn't call Johnson a career politician, he was a journalist too.
Boris wasn't the one contesting an election promising a fares freeze. More seriously there was already a significant difference between commuting fares on TfL set routes compared to NR set routes. The fares freeze has made that worse and there is more to come. Mr Khan may well find his support in South London drops unless he can do something to mitigate the two-tier structure.
 
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