Date published: 2011/08/16
The BBC says:
Rail commuters are facing ticket rises of about 8% next year, following the release of July's inflation figures.
Regulated fares, such as season tickets, use formulas based on the RPI figure - unchanged at 5%.
This means the average season ticket in England Wales will rise by about 8%. Some fares might cost more.
Rail Minister Theresa Villiers said "difficult decisions" had been taken due to the budget deficit. Campaigners called the rises "a disaster".
...
For the past few years the formula for fare increases has generally been RPI inflation plus 1%, but for the next three years it is RPI plus 3%.The formula affects regulated fares, such as season tickets and long-distance off-peak tickets. Some fares will go up by far more than the 8% average, because train companies are allowed to increase fares by another 5% on top, as long as that is balanced with reductions elsewhere.
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A combination of more people travelling, above-inflation fare rises and cost-cutting has led to rail users' contributions to the railways rising from £5bn in 2006-07 to £6.6bn in 2010-11 - over the same period the amount contributed by taxpayers has fallen £6.3bn to £4bn.
...
"Affordable rail travel is vital for passengers, for the environment and for our workforce," said Alexandra Woodsworth from the Campaign for Better Transport."These massive fare rises will be a disaster for people already struggling with rising costs, and risk pricing those on lower incomes out of jobs in our major cities.
"The country simply can't afford fare rises on such a punitive scale. It's time to burst the bubble on inflation-busting fare hikes."
Even with these increases, rail passengers are having their journeys subsidised by over one third. Unfortunately rail passengers have been led to believe that the rest of society should subsidise their life style, and so are unhappy. But rail passengers, in particular London commuters, are far wealthier than the average UK citizen, and it is bizarre that they should be subsidised at all. The main effect of these subsidies is to encourage commuters to live further from their work place than they otherwise would.
Of course some rail passengers are in effect subsidising other rail passengers. In particular, a lot of money is now supposed to be sucked into a vanity project called HS2. If that money has to be spent, it would be better spent on ordinary rail services. There are also undue subsidies for rural areas, in particular for Scotland and Wales. So once again, the English are subsidising the English haters.
The so-called Campaign for Better Transport is really just the Campaign against Cars. Needless to say, their alleged concern that "these massive fare rises will be a disaster for people already struggling with rising costs" never seems to be a concern for them when it comes to drivers, and indeed they perpetually want drivers to subsidise train passengers ever more. The CBT is just a typical middle class special interest pressure group pleading for special subsidies for their pet life style choice. As such they should just be ignored, especially, as here, when their proposals involve massive transfers of money from the less wealthy (drivers) to the more wealthy (train passengers).
Unfortunately, the MP for Cambridge, Julian Huppert, has not surprisingly chimed in his support for London train commuters:
MP Julian Huppert has expressed his concerns about increasing rail fares which will leave Cambridge commuters facing an eight per cent rise on their season tickets.
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He said: "Commuters in our city will find these rail increases incredibly difficult to absorb. It will just make it even harder for them to afford to get to work. If we are really serious about getting our economy back on its feet, it makes little sense to put obstacles in people's way when they are trying to earn a living.
This is about as hypocritical a statement as could be made. So Huppert and basically all of the Lib Dems are happy to extort more and more money out of drivers by calling for ever increasing tax (in particular fuel duty) to be paid by drivers. So evidently Huppert does not really believe that "it makes little sense to put obstacles in people's way when they are trying to earn a living", except when it comes to rich train commuters.
London train commuters are a problem for Cambridge, as for any other city within reach of London. In particular they push house prices up, and any new housing development anywhere near the railway station is immediately swamped with yet more London commuters. This would be acceptable if they paid the cost of their journeys, but they do not.
Huppert is sucking up to London commuters because they have a large number of votes in Cambridge, and he is hoping that ordinary Cambridge residents do not notice that his policies are costing them more money, to the benefit of these rich London commuters.
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