I’d be surprised if Government can afford a fares freeze.
It depends on what happens following the freeze/increase.
If it leads to an increases in ticket revenue then it could be argued that's what's needed.
However, if the increase is small then it's it worth the political fallout from the increase?
Likewise, can we even be sure that it would lead to an increase? For example it may well be that those who are unsure, but have seen high fuel prices may confirm that they are staying with driving, whilst a freeze may be enough to tip the balance to returning to using rail more. Whilst a rise may push yet more to stop using rail, especially if we see fuel prices fall in the next few weeks.
Such a decision now could have long term consequences, for instance a rise now increases the rise going forwards, which could mean less passengers in the future, which could mean that it requires more support to keep the services running.
Conversely, if we can get rail passengers back, then it could be that they once again cover a greater percentage of the operating costs.
95% of something is better than 100% of nothing, especially for something which is sell it now or never (i.e. the 12:08 service can only sell tickets for people to use on the 12:08 service, they can't sit on a shelf to be sold another time).
As I see it, the issue isn't the non commuting travel (as commuting was 70 or of every 100, if that's fallen by 50% it would mean that instead of being out of 100 it's out of 65, which would imply that there's been nearly zero fall on non commuting travel as current overall use is 65% to 70%), however with industry after industry struggling to recruit staff I suspect that there just aren't the same number of commuters (even if they were to be working in the office).
Some of that will be down to there being fewer people from overseas working in the UK, for many reasons. However a factor will be that it's now harder for many to work here due to it being harder to work under the latest immigration rules.
However I also suspect that many found that life on a lower wage wasn't so bad and so are now either working for themselves, reduced their hours or have left work. It's certainly something which has been observed in the US. Given that there's few out of work in the statistics, I suspect that those no longer working are likely to be those who have chosen to retire. That's most likely to harm the railways as they are the sort who do the long commute, rather than those starters who will be more able to live nearer where they work due to being in rented accommodation.
With regards to those who have reduced their hours, it only requires 1/2 your staff to go to a 4 day week (and someone dropping to 3 days then counts as two) and you've lost 10% of your staff's working hours. With not enough staff to go around are many bosses going to risk losing someone from them handing in their notice if they aren't allowed to reduce their hours? I suspect not.
Likewise, even a few fewer staff can have a significant impact on total staff working hours in a business.
There's also the potential that some have moved to a cheaper area with a job which pays a little less but that's offset, or more than offset in lower costs (such as lower house prices, not needing to travel so far for work, etc.).
As such is likely that there are fewer staff doing fewer days, probably also more likely to be closer to where they live and having been put off rail by the continued need to wear a mask when their perception was that almost everywhere else people had stopped wearing them.
A raise in peak tickets isn't going to make much of a difference if a greater percentage of people are using discounted advanced tickets and they don't change in price (as they are the near 50% now who are non business related travel).
