Rail fare increase: BBC breakfast News reporting from London Waterloo

railfan100 · 3 Dec 2016

al78 said:
Because drivers do not pay the full cost of motoring, that is, the cost to society of all the negative side effects. It is called externalized costs, and operates across many industrial sectors; it is why we can pay for imported goods at cheaper prices that we can manufacture ourselves, because other people overseas are subsidizing the cost with their quality of life (e.g. pollution, poor working conditions, poor human rights).

Why is not the full cost of motoring? Is it because there are no fat cats bleeding and milking the system dry like it is in in the privatised rail system? The rail network offers the tax payer and user very poor value for money and is totally inflated for a mediocre substandard service.

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NSEFAN · 3 Dec 2016

cs233 said:
Why is not the full cost of motoring? Is it because there are no fat cats bleeding and milking the system dry like it is in in the privatised rail system? The rail network offers the tax payer and user very poor value for money and is totally inflated for a mediocre substandard service.

You missed the point. The cost is an environmental one. At the moment, NOX is particularly a problem.

railfan100 · 3 Dec 2016

NSEFAN said:
You missed the point. The cost is an environmental one. At the moment, NOX is particularly a problem.

Environmental impact is debatable with many considerations and factors to consider, the efficiency of some modern cars is outstanding and electric car numbers are growing, even some of the petrol cars are ultra low environmental impact. Can the same be said for a 30 year old Class 150 with its clapped out 285hp Cummins NT855 lump that is spewing out not just emissions but burning oil like there is no tomorrow!

NSEFAN · 3 Dec 2016

cs233 said:
Environmental impact is debatable with many considerations and factors to consider, the efficiency of some modern cars is outstanding and electric car numbers are growing, even some of the petrol cars are ultra low environmental impact. Can the same be said for a 30 year old Class 150 with its clapped out 285hp Cummins NT855 lump that is spewing out not just emissions but burning oil like there is no tomorrow!

Diesel has become a greater problem with the advent of diesel cars. They may be more efficient with fuel but through their sheer numbers they do serious harm to our health, which translates to higher NHS costs.

And has been said, a lot of the fuel is sourced from countries with lower safety and human rights standards than us, so in that sense we are just fobbing the cost off to someone else.

railfan100 · 3 Dec 2016

NSEFAN said:
Diesel has become a greater problem with the advent of diesel cars. They may be more efficient with fuel but through their sheer numbers they do serious harm to our health, which translates to higher NHS costs.

And has been said, a lot of the fuel is sourced from countries with lower safety and human rights standards than us, so in that sense we are just fobbing the cost off to someone else.

Governments fault again? Who was pushing diesel cars in the early 2000's? Not convinced that the railway has less of an environmental impact than the private car, there are so many semantics to consider. Also modern diesels have DPF's fitted which do have a big impact on emissions go and look at some figures for modern diesels they are actually low impact from an environmental perspective. If the government is of the opinion rail has a lesser impact on the environment (which I do not agree with) then how about ensuring the network has enough seats and is reasonable value?! How about retiring the exhaust spewing legacy and life expired Sprinter units that have significant emissions

Goatboy · 3 Dec 2016

al78 said:
Because drivers do not pay the full cost of motoring, that is, the cost to society of all the negative side effects.

This is true but it remains reality - my choice when I travel to, say, Birmingham and back is that I can either drive my car for £42 in fuel and a £10 contribution to marginal depreciation, servicing and tyre wear or I can stand in the vestibule on a 4 car Voyager for £120 (Plus further costs unless my destination is New Street itself!).

With those numbers I'm going to drive - it's more convenient, it takes no longer, its more comfortable and it's less than half the price. I already own the car, I'm never going to go without a car, therefore when appraising road v rail only the marginal cost of that additional journey is relevant.

I absolutely accept that this is partially as a result of government policy that this is the situation.

But it works fine on some lines - look at the West Coast Main Line. Booked sensibly in advance it's very easy to find long distance fares at very reasonable prices which clearly undercut the car. Not only do these fares undercut the car but the train also offers a demonstrability superior service to the car. Try getting from Manchester to London by car in 2 hours! Not going to happen in a million years. Yet you can by train and you can do it for a fraction of the cost of driving.

Yet anything that Cross Country has its hands on is terrible. Sub standard trains, chronic under-capacity and outrageously high fares with very poor value for money Advance Tickets that are often barely cheaper than the equivalent flexible ticket and sometimes more expensive in the case of return journeys.

Clearly XC have capacity constraints but nobody told them to buy 4 coach voyagers with less seating capacity than a 158. I'm sure if you took half the coaches away from the WCML you too could suffer severe overcrowding and use it as an excuse to triple the fares..

The question is what do we want to do in this country? Do we want a sustainable transport network that is good for the environment and good for peoples health? If so, we need to encourage people to use trains and buses and we don't get them out of warm and cosy private cars by asking them to stand by a toilet for twice the cost of driving.

Midmat · 3 Dec 2016

jonmorris0844 said:
The increase isn't likely to go down well for many commuters, although SWT users have probably had a better year than those on a GTR service. Victoria would have been an interesting location, or maybe Brighton..

SWT have had it better than GTR but hasn't been a great year. Am keeping a close eye on the next update on their performance stats. Been hovering at threshold for season ticket discount on suburban for a while and the last period seemed very bad...

https://www.southwesttrains.co.uk/about-us/our-commitments/performance/

thedbdiboy · 3 Dec 2016

F Great Eastern said:
All of those big bad private companies ordering the minimum amount of rolling stock they can get away with or neglecting to order rolling stock at all since they prefer to cram all of their trains to breaking point at peak times so they can sit back in the office smoking cigars watching their pots of gold mount up whilst the public rides on in ram-shackled, overcrowded, insufficient old stock that they deliberately crowd with the minimum future proofing leading to unsafe journeys because there is too much overcrowding.

Then the prices! Look at them! I can fly to Rome for 4 weeks with my kids for the same price that I can travel from London to Edinburgh. Not only that but I also have a table on the plane and a complimentary snack unlike that overpriced on train catering. Also why do those trains not run on boxing day, can't they do the engineering work during the night or do they not want to pay their staff more so they can cash in further on their greed?

The answer surely has to be to bring back British Rail. Then the DFT can order new trains that will arrive within a few months of being ordered which the process for will only take a few weeks because they don't drag their feet to save money. There will be huge capacity, every train would be 12-16 carriages long, everyone will have a table bay of 4 and every train will run at 200mph and nobody would ever have to stand at any time. All trains would be built in Derby and if they were 10 minutes late they would refund all your ticket price.

Every penny will be invested in the services and the unions won't use this to further their own agenda. There will be greater investment, the fares will be 80% cheaper and the cost to the taxpayer will be cut by 99%. Trains would run 24 hours a day and 7 days per week and there will be at least 3-4 guards for every train. There will be the same timetable 7 days a week and free Wifi would be on all trains and ironing board seats would be banned. There will be ticket offices at every station with minimum of 3-4 staff including tube stations.

Off-Peak tickets would be disbanded and there will be one price for all. Kids would travel free with a paying adult and students would pay 50% fare. Railcards would be abolished and paid with a yearly payment card to give 25% off all journeys open to all. Pacers will be sent to areas that are anti-brexit areas who will then be dubbed as being re moaners for putting up with them. The newly nationalised railways would be proof that brexit was the right idea when they turn out to be the best in the western world.

You do realise of course that some people might actually believe this!
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

yorkie said:
The increase in fares is relentless and unwarranted; most fares are poor value for money for most people.

Almost anything the Rail Delivery Group (ATOC) says can be discarded as inaccurate propaganda that isn't worth reading. I know roughly what rubbish they are going to spout before they even say it.

The only way forward is to use cheaper fares that represent better value. I very rarely buy a ticket from origin to destination as it's usually a rip-off. It's nearly always either cheaper to "split", or to buy a ticket for a different journey, and then starting and/or finishing "short".

The average Trainsplit customer saves around £10 (or was £10 last time I checked) and the savings can be even greater when combined with using better value fares such as Brighton to Bournemouth "Not via London" being used to start short at Clapham Jn (no harm divulging that one as it's common knowledge and the DfT won't let the TOCs get rid of it)

The best value fares which can be used for otherwise costly journeys can't be divulged where pricing managers may put a stop to their use, so attending a Fares Workshop is a good way to find out how to save money.

Paying full price fares from origin to destination is totally unfeasible for anyone who isn't rather wealthy. As I get paid several grand less than an LU CSA, with no travel perks whatsoever, I can't afford to pay the ludicrous fares that the likes of CrossCountry ask for, so legitimate alternatives have to be deployed if I am to continue travelling by train. I know many are in the same position.

Although RDG has absorbed ATOC it isn't the same organisation. And RDGs messaging is now saying that fares need to be restructured quite drastically if the problems are to be sorted out - this of course doesn't make it into the snippets on the news.

The price of fares is ultimately a government decision because fares alone do not bring in enough money to pay for the investment in the network. The structure is something that successive governments have not had the nerve to tackle. XC has significant overcrowding issues that can only be addressed by pushing as many people into reservable fares and making walk-up fares prohibitive. GWR maintains a massive rebooking anomaly at Didcot because the DfT knows that brings in more revenue and effectively books that revenue in the bid price for the franchise. Add in the 1995 lash up that privatised the fares setting process but chained everyone to the same routeing and interavailability rules and you have a recipe for chaos- but it is really reaching the point where things will have to change, and change in a way that benefits the general public.

railfan100 · 3 Dec 2016

thedbdiboy said:
XC has significant overcrowding issues that can only be addressed by pushing as many people into reservable fares and making walk-up fares prohibitive.

Surely a public transport system in its most basic concepts is about serving the needs of the public, having walk on fares at eye watering prices means it is not fit for purpose. In other countries the railways are priced for people that cannot afford the running costs of a private motor vehicle, Britain has it the wrong way around!

D6975 · 3 Dec 2016

cs233 said:
Environmental impact is debatable with many considerations and factors to consider, the efficiency of some modern cars is outstanding and electric car numbers are growing, even some of the petrol cars are ultra low environmental impact. Can the same be said for a 30 year old Class 150 with its clapped out 285hp Cummins NT855 lump that is spewing out not just emissions but burning oil like there is no tomorrow!

There are a few governments that would disagree with you about the cleanliness of modern diesel cars - take a look at the news re banning diesels from cities.. (Paris, Mexico City, Madrid and Athens)
How long before the congestion charge becomes a congestion + diesel charge, or diesels are banned from London. Imagine the upheaval on the taxi front.

Clip · 3 Dec 2016

Polarbear said:
The usual drivel from BBC as regards fare increases. I was watching just before the 07:00 announcement and the reporter referred to Waterloo station as one used by many "Southern" commuters. Thankfully, this was altered by the time he did his next piece to camera around 20 minutes later!

!

Quite correct too have you seen Clapham in the morning with people changing trains?

Helvellyn · 3 Dec 2016

I wonder how the good SWT commuters would react if told that over half the price of their ticket goes to one Mr P Hammond, c/o HM Treasury? When he was still MD one of my colleagues had Tim Shoveller on his train, and not being backwards asked him about the money, etc. Apparently Tim was quite honest, and quoted that over half the fare revenue goes to government and pointed out that if SWT could keep that £500million a year just how much investment could be made, with the added fact that he believed SWT could easily fill all the extra capacity that could be added thereby genuinely meaning the franchise could generate even more income.

I think Stagecoach make about 3% profit from the revenues, which seems to be standard (GoVia said that all the issues on GTR meant they expected profit to drop from a planned 3% to 1.5%). A lot of businesses would not be interested in taking on a business with those sort of margins. As just one example, a few years ago British Airways said they expected their routes to generate a margin of 10% unless an individual route could be shown to add additional value to the network.

railfan100 · 3 Dec 2016

D6975 said:
There are a few governments that would disagree with you about the cleanliness of modern diesel cars - take a look at the news re banning diesels from cities.. (Paris, Mexico City, Madrid and Athens)
How long before the congestion charge becomes a congestion + diesel charge, or diesels are banned from London. Imagine the upheaval on the taxi front.

Whilst there is a worldwide government witch-hunt for modern diesel cars, the same government's were typically implementing policies that encouraged diesel motoring since the early 2000's. A modern diesel car with DPF meeting the latest Euro standards is very economical compared to a legacy Class 150 'Sprinter' unit with an out of date diesel lump that is badly maintained and life expired.

Whilst a modern railway network using the latest technology is economical and by the large in some situations is more environmentally friendly than a car; the UK rail system falls short of modern standards making it overall flawed from and environmental perspective.

Starmill · 4 Dec 2016

I'll say the same thing I say every year: we should aim (that's aim, not 'achieve at any cost', and means work towards over a number of years) for all journeys to be no more expensive than just one person (even though lots of car journeys are for more than one person) in the average car (rather than a new, efficient car like many people have).

Now that sets the bar relatively low. Especially if we only try to enforce that off-peak. But we are nowhere near that. And unless we get to a stage where we are (or there is huge use of buses in place of cars, which I feel is very very very unlikely, even as buses done well in London and Edinburgh attract new passengers). This approach would have huge carbon emissions and urban pollution benefits, improve road safety significantly and all but eliminate road congestion. Of would, it could require a huge increase in rolling stock, but that's currently cheap and we are starting to see this expansion already. This is practical and over time within the reach of the Government. All of these extra passengers would also probably pay for themselves given how busy most intercity routes are. But it doesn't look likely...

Mintona · 4 Dec 2016

cs233 said:
Whilst there is a worldwide government witch-hunt for modern diesel cars, the same government's were typically implementing policies that encouraged diesel motoring since the early 2000's. A modern diesel car with DPF meeting the latest Euro standards is very economical compared to a legacy Class 150 'Sprinter' unit with an out of date diesel lump that is badly maintained and life expired.

That's not exactly comparing like for like. Surely the comparison should be 1 x Class 150 v the number of passengers on it (maybe 100 people?) in diesel cars, and then I'm fairly sure that the train would have lower emission.

railfan100 · 4 Dec 2016

Mintona said:
That's not exactly comparing like for like. Surely the comparison should be 1 x Class 150 v the number of passengers on it (maybe 100 people?) in diesel cars, and then I'm fairly sure that the train would have lower emission.

It is a valid point and calculating the real environmental impact has so many variables although in general the UK rail network is not as modern and environmentally friendly as it could be and there is a great deal more to be done.

Network rail uses a cloud based sustainability software solution to look at the environmental impact of various trips with varying loads and in some situations the car wins.

Groningen · 4 Dec 2016

Some people just want to move from A to B. Investment in tracks OK, but a totally overhauled railwaystation costing 100 of millions is for some too much. That fare increase of 2,3 %. I consider it normal.

If inflation goes up, than maybe the rate may be higher.

2 years ago is was in the Netherlands 3,4 %.

thedbdiboy · 4 Dec 2016

cs233 said:
Surely a public transport system in its most basic concepts is about serving the needs of the public, having walk on fares at eye watering prices means it is not fit for purpose. In other countries the railways are priced for people that cannot afford the running costs of a private motor vehicle, Britain has it the wrong way around!

I wouldn't disagree with you; the point I was making is that the decision is a political one enacted by the government. I would point out that our rail infrastructure compares well with many countries; it is common for people to assume based on hearsay that everywhere else somehow has frequent cheap clean trains - the answer is in many cases provision is patchy, and where the trains are cheap they are not necessarily frequent or modern....

Richard_B · 5 Dec 2016

yorkie said:
The increase in fares is relentless and unwarranted; most fares are poor value for money for most people.

Fares are almost always going to be going up in nominal terms while there is any inflation in the economy. If they are going down (because of the rate of inflation) that probably means we have bigger problems. It would only be less relentless if they lengthened the time between each change. It is only a problem because of the lack of increase in real wages.

I would like to see a higher subsidy to lower fares - but once that is in place fares will still have to rise with inflation from their lower level.

Robertj21a · 5 Dec 2016

Richard_B said:
Fares are almost always going to be going up in nominal terms while there is any inflation in the economy. If they are going down (because of the rate of inflation) that probably means we have bigger problems. It would only be less relentless if they lengthened the time between each change. It is only a problem because of the lack of increase in real wages.

I would like to see a higher subsidy to lower fares - but once that is in place fares will still have to rise with inflation from their lower level.

Surely, a higher subsidy would have to come from central government funding ? - no reason for the population at large to further subsidise train fares.

NSEFAN · 5 Dec 2016

Robertj21A said:
Surely, a higher subsidy would have to come from central government funding ?

Quite, and that's not been very popular for some time. The fares have been allowed to go up above inflation so the government doesn't need to increase subsidy by quite so much.

Of course, whether the money is well spent or not is another matter. Perhaps if the railway was better organised overall, it wouldn't cost so much to run?

yorksrob · 21 Dec 2016

I've just noticed that an off-peak return from London to Ashford (Kent) is now £29.40 ! And that's not even on that overpriced high speed nonsense. Disgusting really.

Penmorfa · 21 Dec 2016

yorksrob said:
I've just noticed that an off-peak return from London to Ashford (Kent) is now £29.40 ! And that's not even on that overpriced high speed nonsense. Disgusting really.

I think you mean £24.90:
http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/service/timesandfares/CHX/AFK/tomorrow/1030/dep/tomorrow/1530/dep
that's £24.90 for 55 Miles, compare Rhyl to Chester £16.10 for 30 miles. So not a bad deal on South Eastern.

yorksrob · 21 Dec 2016

Penmorfa said:
I think you mean £24.90:
http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/service/timesandfares/CHX/AFK/tomorrow/1030/dep/tomorrow/1530/dep
that's £24.90 for 55 Miles, compare Rhyl to Chester £16.10 for 30 miles. So not a bad deal on South Eastern.

Are you sure that's not the cheap day return ?

Penmorfa · 21 Dec 2016

yorksrob said:
Are you sure that's not the cheap day return ?

if you mean Rhyl to Chester that's the Anytime day return, no off peak fare available.

yorksrob · 21 Dec 2016

Penmorfa said:
if you mean Rhyl to Chester that's the Anytime day return, no off peak fare available.

I meant London - Ashford. Yours seems extortionate as well though.

Penmorfa · 21 Dec 2016

yorksrob said:
I meant London - Ashford. Yours seems extortionate as well though.

Super off peak day return, 10.10 from Charing Cross, return any time. Yes, our fares are extremely high.

Starmill · 22 Dec 2016

Err, no. An Off-Peak Return from London Terminals to Ashford International is definitely £29.40. It will be £29.90 next year. The cheaper fares are only valid on one day.

orange cat · 3 Jan 2017

How would I find out all the 'Std Return Fares' from Bristol Temple Meads to Filton Abbey Wood that have been charged since Filton first opened?

Rail fare increase: BBC breakfast News reporting from London Waterloo

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