Helen Pidd endorses direct action against 'unfair' rail fare price increases

[Starmill]

I notice today's piece by Helen Pidd endorses an unusual direct approach:

Why I refuse to pay January’s unfair new train fares

There is only one thing for it. On 2 January, when the fares go up, we all need to refuse to pay the difference. A mass act of disobedience is all that will make these rail companies listen. Many stations outside major cities don’t have barriers. People can just board their trains as usual and offer the conductor the old fare. (Have exact change to make things nice and easy.) John Parker Lee, a photographer in Manchester, told me he got so fed up with delays a few years ago that he started offering 80% of the fare. The conductor never argued back. “If everyone started paying what the service is worth, and not what it demands, the network would be reformed in months,” he said.

There were 1.7bn journeys made on the railways in 2016-17 – which averages out at 4.6m a day. Even if only 1% of us took part, that would be 46,000 people causing a major headache for the mickey-takers who run our trains. We can crowdfund the legal fees for anyone they decide to make an example of. Who’s with me?

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/dec/01/why-we-must-boycott-higher-train-fares

I think that she is absolutely right; some direct action is likely to be the only way to achieve reduced rate increases under current circumstances. Of course, the fares I most often buy will increase by around 5%, so 3.1% would be a dream to me.

Unfortunately her proposal seems difficult to work. How can a guard or ticket office issue a ticket with the wrong price and get away with it? They could issue the tickets and pay in short but that brings its own set of problems.

The fact that this mindset by customers of direct attack towards the industry is a sign of the times. I remember it never used to be like this. I've seen people more motivated towards fare evasion or ticket fraud as a result of unjustifiable price increases and deterioration of service. Even whith us most all enraged, though, and with agreement from the majority that tickets aren't value for money, it seems very unlikely she will get enough people to participate in her campaign of disobedience.

 

[plcd1]

I think her "proposal" is ludicrous. It doesn't target those responsible which is the Government and those who are happy to vote for the long standing policy of passengers paying an ever larger share of the industry's finances. The fact that those who moan about fare increases most likely voted for the party that has pursued the policy seems to escape those self same people (referring here more to the South and East where there are more Conservative MPs).

It could create a whole load of issues for the poor staff who would end up in needless confrontation with passengers. The staff don't deserve the hassle. Neither do the BT Police who'd probably be dragged into any serious dispute or "mob" action. If people have a choice and don't want to pay fares then don't pay them. Use a different mode of transport. Not viable for everyone obviously but most do have some level of choice. That's one way of not paying higher fares and depriving rail of the money they were hoping for.

The only way you "fix" high fares is to increase subsidy which means the taxpayer at large pays a larger share of the total industry costs. There are no magic cures here via changes to industry structures or ownership. Any change costs money to effect and has the potential to cause disruption and distraction in the short term. Change to the rail industry should only be embarked upon after some long and serious consideration of the objectives and the least disruptive way to implement said change. "Pat answers" like this so called "campaign" get us precisely nowhere.

 

[Silverdale]

I agree that the rather simplistic idea of withholding part of the fare is a ludicrous suggestion, for the reasons @plcd1 gives.

However, I don't agree that the only wax to "fix" high fares is by increasing the subsidy. In the part of the rail industry that I actually know something about - track renewals and track maintenance - there are obvious inefficiencies and instances of waste which could be addressed in order to reduce the cost of the infrastructure.

Network Rail are really not incentivised to reduce their costs. My experience has been that if you turn up at Network Rail and suggest ways in which they could reduce costs or eliminate some waste, you will be patted on the head and politely shown the door.

 

[RJ]

This isn't a novel idea - lots of people who don't like the price offered already find ways to evade the fare due.

 

[Mag_seven]

Sounds to me she is advocating a "fares strike" similar to this one in 2008:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jan/28/transport.uk

Rail commuters today staged a fares "strike" in a protest against overcrowded, unreliable trains and rising fares.
Hundreds of passengers boarded First Great Western trains services, in south-west England, wearing cattle masks, with some substituting their normal tickets for specially printed vouchers carrying slogans such as "Worst Late Western".

 

[yorkie]

Her plans are not feasible.

I would like to see something done, but this isn't it.

This isn't a novel idea - lots of people who don't like the price offered already find ways to evade the fare due.

Not really; she is talking about people offering the old fares at around 3% less than the new fares.

People who evade fares are not paying a few percentage points less than the fare due!

People using legitimate methods can save far, far more than that anyway!

 

[mrcheek]

I bet she got this idea from her brother, Stew.....

 

[deltic]

Typical Guardian article. Yes let’s keep subsidising the middle classes on their commutes to well paid jobs while the low paid who use the bus network are stuffed

 

[JonathanH]

This really misses the point that the railway has loads of costs which are linked to inflation, not least inflationary pay increases for staff.

The disconnect comes from the way in which pay increases work in businesses where everyone does the same job and those where it is possible to differentiate for performance. You might have a budget of RPI (or CPI) to spend on the workforce - in the former situation you spread it equally over everyone and no one gets a pay increase reflecting merit (progress / performance etc) - in the second you target the increase at those who most merit it and some people get no increase.

The only freedom to get a larger budget for pay increases comes from true 'growth' in income. Similarly the only way to afford pay increases if you don't put prices up is to have growth. However, a lot of franchises are let on the basis of passenger growth enabling higher year on year premiums to be paid to government so there isn't a lot of scope for fares not to increase.

The apparent problem comes where some of the users either don't feel that railway staff should get pay increases because they haven't or because they want to keep more of the pay increase they had for themselves.

Unfortunately an annual increase is a fact of life.

 

[Meerkat]

Is there a chart of fare increases (or the +/- to inflation) over the decades?
I often read about BR pricing demand away but not any stats.

Have the railways ever raised prices for upgrades? Obviously it is tricky because passengers will argue that the upgrade is how it should always have been......

My concern is about what is being subsidised. SWR passengers effectively pay an extra train tax, but Southeastern passengers are significantly subsidised - does that make sense?
As someone living in a town with a great service to London but not working there myself the train service actually costs me a lot of money in raised house prices......I would be interested in a review of what Rail subsidies are actually buying!

 

[Polarbear]

Whilst increased fares are unwelcome, I don’t agree with Helen Pidds’ viewpoint on this one. I was going to comment on the Guardian article, but the comments quickly decended into mainly uninformed wibble.

The point that really needs to be got across to joe public is that the regular fare increases at rates at or above inflation are currently government policy. Because of the policy, the fare box/subsidy ratio has moved from 50:50 to somewhere near 75:25.

Unfortunately, we live in a country where the population want everything, but often aren’t willing to pay for it. Successive governments (both left & right, but mainly right), have continually promised voters that taxation is bad, public sector is bad, private sector is good & is always more efficient. Well the current situation on UK rail rather belays that mantra in my opinion.

 

[BigCj34]

A fare strike would surely be more effective and logistically plausible than withholding a small portion of the fare.

The government should apply their CPI formula universally rather than what suits them. Plus considering the farcical May timetable rollout, a fare freeze next year on affected parts of the network would be the least the government could do.

While I am not advocating we should have the level of subsidy France has on their railway, having some subsidy on infrastructure is a fact of life.

 

[Haywain]

Network Rail are really not incentivised to reduce their costs. My experience has been that if you turn up at Network Rail and suggest ways in which they could reduce costs or eliminate some waste, you will be patted on the head and politely shown the door.

Isn't that the one bit of the industry that is truly nationalised? After all, nationalisation is the answer to all of the railway's problems.

 

[Silverdale]

Isn't that the one bit of the industry that is truly nationalised? After all, nationalisation is the answer to all of the railway's problems.

Indeed, although it is still administered at arm's length, Network Rail's extensive debts are on the public books.

Some of the inefficiencies and waste within NR date back to when Railtrack was a private entity, though, and have simply been inherited. One of my particular bugbears with them is due to a simple misuse/misunderstanding of their own data and has been going on for 20+ years. My fag packet estimate of the cash that has consequently gone down the plughole racks up to nearly half a billion over that period. That would buy quite a lot of day returns to Accrington for Ms Pidd and her mates. When you point these things out to the PE heads at NR, they don't disagree. They're just completely indifferent, or incapable of doing anything about it.

 

[bakerstreet]

Is there a chart of fare increases (or the +/- to inflation) over the decades?
I often read about BR pricing demand away but not any stats.

Source: @DirectorSERG (Twitter)

https://twitter.com/directorserg/status/947980275383980035

 

[LAX54]

This really misses the point that the railway has loads of costs which are linked to inflation, not least inflationary pay increases for staff.

The disconnect comes from the way in which pay increases work in businesses where everyone does the same job and those where it is possible to differentiate for performance. You might have a budget of RPI (or CPI) to spend on the workforce - in the former situation you spread it equally over everyone and no one gets a pay increase reflecting merit (progress / performance etc) - in the second you target the increase at those who most merit it and some people get no increase.

The only freedom to get a larger budget for pay increases comes from true 'growth' in income. Similarly the only way to afford pay increases if you don't put prices up is to have growth. However, a lot of franchises are let on the basis of passenger growth enabling higher year on year premiums to be paid to government so there isn't a lot of scope for fares not to increase.

The apparent problem comes where some of the users either don't feel that railway staff should get pay increases because they haven't or because they want to keep more of the pay increase they had for themselves.

Unfortunately an annual increase is a fact of life.

You will find many staff within Network Rail, who are on Role Clarity, do not get the same rise as those like Signallers and Techs etc, they are assessed every year, if they improve they get a rise, which is also dependent on how good they are, if not, their pay will not increase.

 

[js1000]

Typical Guardian article. Yes let’s keep subsidising the middle classes on their commutes to well paid jobs while the low paid who use the bus network are stuffed

The woman's a clown.

Rail fares have to increase due to inflation. However it's just plain wrong that rail fares are decided by the usually higher RPI index rather than the CPI index.

It should be written into law that any increase in pensions, interest on student loans and rail fares should be standardised to a single inflation rate so the government cannot "cook the books" and people aren't ripped off.

 

[deltic]

The woman's a clown.

Rail fares have to increase due to inflation. However it's just plain wrong that rail fares are decided by the usually higher RPI index rather than the CPI index.

It should be written into law that any increase in pensions, interest on student loans and rail fares should be standardised to a single inflation rate so the government cannot "cook the books" and people aren't ripped off.

Taxpayers are certainly ripped off by the pension triple lock which means they go up by the minimum of CPI, 2.5% or average wages. Median income for pensioners in 2016 was 13% higher in real terms than in 2008 while for working households, median incomes declined by 1.2%.

 

[philthetube]

Who would volunteer to be a sacrificial lamb and take the prosecution in order for this to work?

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

Who would volunteer to be a sacrificial lamb and take the prosecution in order for this to work?

Why would anyone? Intentionally refusing to pay the fare due would be prime time RoRA material. It would only be a strategy worth considering in Scotland, where there would be no prosecution possible.

 

[cuccir]

Why would anyone? Intentionally refusing to pay the fare due would be prime time RoRA material. It would only be a strategy worth considering in Scotland, where there would be no prosecution possible.

For the same reasons that people risk prosecutions in various protest movements:
1. There's always a chance that if sufficient people participate then there won't be prosecutions, either for practical reasons or because, in the case of what would be private prosecutions, the TOC decides that there's clear public support against them
2. They think the personal hit is worth the cause; for many people the disadvantage of a prosecution would be the cost of the fine but not much else. In a well organised protest movement, that fine cost may even be covered by a collective fund.

Ignoring the rights and wrongs for a moment, the challenge of any commuter based protests would be the lack of an organizing force. Petrol price protests have always started around truckers who provide a central organisation. But commuters are a disperate group so i doubt any mass protest movement could really develop around them

 

[35B]

The woman's a clown.

Rail fares have to increase due to inflation. However it's just plain wrong that rail fares are decided by the usually higher RPI index rather than the CPI index.

It should be written into law that any increase in pensions, interest on student loans and rail fares should be standardised to a single inflation rate so the government cannot "cook the books" and people aren't ripped off.

No price "has to increase due to inflation"; I would love my employer to be able automatically to raise prices based on inflation. The government has chosen to implement a fares policy that is based on an inflation index, and companies are implementing it.

In a normal customer facing environment, the railway operators would be considering possible fares increases in the light of changes in their costs, and the impact on demand of those fare rises. In Britain's railway system, the government puts pressure on the operators to increase their fares each year, demand is relatively inelastic so companies can raise prices without choking off too much demand, and an inflation index starts to be seen as protecting customers rather than encouraging them to be gouged.

 

[crosscity]

Have the railways ever raised prices for upgrades? Obviously it is tricky because passengers will argue that the upgrade is how it should always have been......

Both politicians and railway managers have been using this argument for at least ten years. It doesn't make much sense. If you invest in infrastructure the trains should run faster, capacity should increase, your maintenance costs reduce and your operations should cost less. Buying new trains: ditto.
Shouldn't fares reduce as the service costs less to run, and you entice more passengers on to your faster, more reliable and more frequent services?

The point that really needs to be got across to joe public is that the regular fare increases at rates at or above inflation are currently government policy. Because of the policy, the fare box/subsidy ratio has moved from 50:50 to somewhere near 75:25.

I think this is the nub of the problem. Our lords and masters want this to happen but are unwilling to explain the consequences so spout the increased investment argument for the increase in fares.

 

[jon0844]

The problem with the huge growth has been the need to carry out extremely expensive works, often on a live railway, to cope with demand for just a fraction of the overall day. It means that you've now built new platforms, stations and trains that sit idle for a lot of the time. That all costs a LOT of money.

If you were able to balance the load and simply spread demand out to have fewer trains needed to run a service all day, you'd then have more ticket sales and lower costs. You could begin to consider lowering prices due to economy of scale.

This isn't how things work in reality. Everyone wants to travel between 7-9am and 5-7pm or whatever, and you have massive capacity issues to content with.

One solution would be to massively hike peak rate fares to offer cheaper off-peak fares, but of course that would be a disaster for those who have to work and don't travel for leisure, or have an employer that allows flexible working. So that's a non-starter right there.

 

[Meerkat]

If you invest in infrastructure the trains should run faster, capacity should increase, your maintenance costs reduce and your operations should cost less. Buying new trains: ditto.
Shouldn't fares reduce as the service costs less to run, and you entice more passengers on to your faster, more reliable and more frequent services?

If you have a 140% full train and add capacity then the 40% get a seat, but don’t add revenue.
Will you add enough revenue to cover the extra costs? Where the service is paying a premium I am not convinced there is much repressed demand, and elsewhere you will need to add a lot of passengers for additional revenue to cover the extra subsidies needed.

 

[Starmill]

This isn't how things work in reality. Everyone wants to travel between 7-9am and 5-7pm or whatever, and you have massive capacity issues to content with.

To be fair this is not really something TOCs are usually trying to tackle is it.

For example, trains on Thameslink arriving in London at 1100 weekdays are going to have significant spare capacity on them. Trains arriving at 1100 Saturday mornings will probably be packed with shoppers, and demand considerably higher for coming into London around midday on a Saturday than it would be on a typical Tuesday, for example. And yet GTR charge significantly more for the much quieter inter-peak time on a weekday than they do at the weekend.

 

[Baxenden Bank]

Who is Helen Pidd?

Why would I be remotely interested in her spoutings when the consequence may well be a criminal conviction?

What is the point of crowd-funding legal costs for a sure-fire conviction? It's not like smashing a fighter jet with hammers to prevent a greater crime taking place.

 

[Starmill]

Who is Helen Pidd?

She is an author from Lancashire, and the North of England editor for the Guardian. As per the link in the opening post.

 

[Baxenden Bank]

Is there a chart of fare increases (or the +/- to inflation) over the decades?
I often read about BR pricing demand away but not any stats.

Have the railways ever raised prices for upgrades? Obviously it is tricky because passengers will argue that the upgrade is how it should always have been......

My concern is about what is being subsidised. SWR passengers effectively pay an extra train tax, but Southeastern passengers are significantly subsidised - does that make sense?
As someone living in a town with a great service to London but not working there myself the train service actually costs me a lot of money in raised house prices......I would be interested in a review of what Rail subsidies are actually buying!

Attached
Data table in word or excel formats. Goes back as far as 1996 comparing inflation measured by RPI, fare increase rule in place, revised fare rule in place following public outrage, and the public 'announced' increase.

If any one can actually import the tables retaining the formatting, rather than a long single column of incomprehensible numbers, please feel free to do so!

 

[Baxenden Bank]

She is an author from Lancashire, and the North of England editor for the Guardian. As per the link in the opening post.

I didn't follow the link because I get fed up with their sorry pleading cries for a financial contribution. Worse than Wikipedia whose annual begging pop-up is on the go at the moment.

If she, or the Guardian, has a problem with price/fare increases over the rate of inflation it needs look no closer than its own cover price. 45p in 1998, £2.00 in 2016. A 344% increase over 18 years when inflation was around 50%.

A random local fare, Blythe Bridge to Uttoxeter rose from around £3.80 to £6.80 over the same period.

Time to boycott The Guardian. Let's all go into the newsagents and only offer £1.00 for the newspaper.