Commuters face significant rail fare hikes despite ongoing strike disruption
Commuters are facing a significant rail fare hike, which could add hundreds to the price of their season tickets despite ongoing strike disruption and faltering performance.
On Wednesday, the Retail Price Index (RPI) figures used to set next year’s rail fare increase will be announced.
Rises in the cost of tickets are typically linked to to the RPI. However, ministers ditched the metric last year to avoid a massive 12 per cent increase amid soaring inflation and chose instead to match the fare with July’s average earnings growth.
That figure came out at a 5.9 per cent rise and marked the first time in 25 years that the government had upped fares by less than inflation.
The hike was still the biggest jump in the cost of rail travel over the last decade and drew strong criticism from transport bodies and Labour, who described it as a “sick joke”.
But the government now faces a further quandary, having insisted at the time of last year’s hike that its intervention was for “this year only”.
Meanwhile, the most recent figures show the RPI reached 10.7 per cent in June and is forecast to dip to 9.8 in July.
Paul Tuohy, from the Campaign for Better Transport, said: “If rail fares go up again in January it will be the second hike in a year and will do nothing to get people back on-board trains.”
He argued that government should “instead freeze rail fares, as they have done with fuel duty, until the long-promised ticketing reform takes place”.
The announcement on Wednesday follows a backdrop of poor service and continued disruption on Britain’s railways.
The ongoing industrial dispute looks no closer to a resolution, with fresh RMT strikes announced last week and set to disrupt the latter half of August.
Earlier in the year, the Transpennine Express was nationalised after continued substandard performances, while Avanti West Coast awaits an October verdict on its own contract.
A Department for Transport spokesperson said that last year’s government intervention to cap rail fare increases was the “biggest ever.”
The spokesperson said that “any increase” would be “delayed until March 2024, temporarily freezing fares for passengers to travel at a lower price for the entirety of January and February as the government continues with its plan to halve inflation.”