The cost of living agenda - how should the railway contribute ?

[Bald Rick]

Its also worth noting that the taxpayer subsidy to the railways is running at almost 50% of revenue, at £12b

Taxpayer contribution to the railway is around 50% of the cost, rather than revenue. It’s about 100% of revenue (ie the same again).

 

[yorksrob]

Of course. But unless they start eating the elephant then it's just going to sit there whilst we munch on the side salad and hope for the best.

Oh indeed. Both need to be tackled from the beginning.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jul 2026 ==

The government will want to freeze rail's contribution to CPI/RPI which are the basis for many costs such as public sector pay rises and inflation linked gilt payouts. They really need to get interest rates down as well and lowering inflation is the number one lever for that.

Rail's contribution to inflation stats is calculated by the ONS.

Instead of manually checking ticket prices, the ONS now measures actual consumer spending using transaction-level data.

• The LENNON System: Data is extracted directly from the rail industry's Latest Earnings Networked Nationally Overnight (LENNON) ticket revenue system.
• Scale: The Rail Delivery Group (RDG) provides the ONS with approximately 40 million individual rail fare transactions every single month.
• Ticket Granularity: This massive dataset allows the ONS to track dynamic price changes across all specific ticket types—including Advance, Off-Peak, Anytime, and Season tickets—giving an exact picture of what consumers are actually paying.

Maybe lowering season ticket prices would have the biggest impact here. It would help the 'hard working' commuter, get Britain 'back to work' and nudge down interest rates.

Indeed. Increasing fares leads to higher inflation figures, which in turn lead to increased mortgages and rents, which is a good reason to keep them down.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jul 2026 ==

The government will want to freeze rail's contribution to CPI/RPI which are the basis for many costs such as public sector pay rises and inflation linked gilt payouts. They really need to get interest rates down as well and lowering inflation is the number one lever for that.

Rail's contribution to inflation stats is calculated by the ONS.

Instead of manually checking ticket prices, the ONS now measures actual consumer spending using transaction-level data.

• The LENNON System: Data is extracted directly from the rail industry's Latest Earnings Networked Nationally Overnight (LENNON) ticket revenue system.
• Scale: The Rail Delivery Group (RDG) provides the ONS with approximately 40 million individual rail fare transactions every single month.
• Ticket Granularity: This massive dataset allows the ONS to track dynamic price changes across all specific ticket types—including Advance, Off-Peak, Anytime, and Season tickets—giving an exact picture of what consumers are actually paying.

Maybe lowering season ticket prices would have the biggest impact here. It would help the 'hard working' commuter, get Britain 'back to work' and nudge down interest rates.

Indeed. Increasing fares leads to higher inflation figures, which in turn lead to increased mortgages and rents, which is a good reason to keep them down.

 

[Snow1964]

Its also worth noting that the taxpayer subsidy to the railways is running at almost 50% of revenue, at £12b so I think a debate about how this subsidy is applied would be reasonable. On lightly used rural routes do you reach a point where because subsidies are the bulk of income you reduce fares to get more passengers.

Where does that £12bn come from ?

A quote from Rail minister talks about £2.4bn passenger subsidy

The Government does, however, expect DFTO Group to make efficiencies and savings through public ownership of rail services and from rail reform with the creation of Great British Railways. These efficiencies contribute to the more than 50 per cent reduction in the rail passenger services subsidy from £2.4 billion in 2024-25.

https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2026-03-16/120878

 

[JamesT]

Where does that £12bn come from ?

A quote from Rail minister talks about £2.4bn passenger subsidy

https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2026-03-16/120878

Increasing fares revenue contributes to reduction in government subsidy for the railways | Office of Rail and Road

Train fare revenue for Great Britain’s rail network rose 8% to £11.5 billion between April 2024 and March 2025 when compared to the previous year, the latest statistics from the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) show. However, despite the number of passenger journeys approaching pre-pandemic levels...

www.orr.gov.uk

The rise in fare revenue contributed to a reduction in funding from the UK and devolved governments towards the operation of the railway. This fell to £11.9 billion in the year, down £0.9 billion from the previous year.

 

[yorksrob]

I do enjoy the tradition of threads that are essentially "<<thing in today's headlines>> justifies that thing I've been obsessing about for decades", I'm sure it won't be long until we see the same "solutions" (massive fare cuts, nationwide rail cards for everyone, copying whichever European nation is flavour of the week, abolishing peak fares etc) being suggested for whatever is headline news on another week

(At least people seem to now accept after various failed trials that cutting fares means an increase in subsidy needed, so the "this will actual see a rise in income because something something elasticity something" argument has been retired)

However, I wonder whether those suggesting specific changes to tackle the "cost of living agenda" have an idea of just how temporary their proposals would be/ what definition of future consumer wealth would trigger a resumption of peak fares or whatever? I'm sure this isn't just people disingenuously typing out their long term wishlists under the pretence that it was just a short term subsidy required to get through the current inflationary pressure, with no intention of returning to the status quo on fares if the economic pressures ever settle down

Surely when fares are topical, this forum is the place to discuss them ? It would be a bit of an odd forum if we weren't able to discuss them.

In terms of your question, something like a Nationwide network railcard would be permanent (along with most of the options proposed). Even if the cost of living crisis were to recede, it would leave us more in line with peer group countries in Europe (rather than basket case market dystopias in the Western hemisphere) which must surely be a good thing.

There's also no guarantee that the old, pre cost of living crisis world will return. We already have the hollowing out of the middle class, the increase in the gig economy and potential disruption from AI. It could end up being that cheap and abundant public services such as public transport are one of the few ways to maintain living standards.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jul 2026 ==

I have voted 'other' because I can see a number of related issues that need addressing, but also some more questions.

The first question is what can be done for people who are working but on low incomes, as IMO this group are the ones who are suffering most, frozen tax thresholds, a sluggish economy, housing costs rising quicker than incomes and because they are in service or manufacturing less opportunity to work from home.

A possible solution would be for employers to be able to provide season tickets to staff as a tax free incentive to use public transport. Restrict it to people who do not reach the 40% tax band, but you need to avoid a cliff edge effect.

A massive fares overhaul is needed, and I believe the concept of 'ToC's' should be abolished with the exception of OA operators. GBR sell tickets, deal with fare evasion, handle delay repay and deal with issues resulting from disruption, The current mess of ticket types is swept away. This will encourage more rail use. This is not directly related to cost of living, but as part of the the overhaul excessive fares for walk up journeys would be reduced, and this would help.

The next one is a bit more difficult, do you count discretionary journeys as part of 'cost of living'. If you are really struggling then you wont even be considering making leisure journeys, but on the other hand if you are working say a 40 hour week then its reasonable to expect that in your time off you are able to enjoy some relaxation. Personally I would flatten the difference between the cheapest and most expensive fares on a lot of routes, whilst staying roughly revenue neutral.

Its also worth noting that the taxpayer subsidy to the railways is running at almost 50% of revenue, at £12b so I think a debate about how this subsidy is applied would be reasonable. On lightly used rural routes do you reach a point where because subsidies are the bulk of income you reduce fares to get more passengers.

For people working but on low incomes, abolishing peak fares might be the most effective option for reducing day to day expense.

That said, I wouldn't dismiss the importance of leisure travel for morale.

 

[mike57]

For people working but on low incomes, abolishing peak fares might be the most effective option for reducing day to day expense.

That said, I wouldn't dismiss the importance of leisure travel for morale.

Abolishing peak fares would help, the problem, it also helps those who dont need help. Hence my idea to get a tax break on commuting costs if your income is below a threshold.

I think the incoming prime minister has a very short window of opportunity to sort problems out. If he fails then I think the next government will be very different in make up, and probably quite anti railway.

I agree about 'morale'. Working people on low incomes feel very left out, so anything that creates a better feeling has to be good, but the issues are much deeper, things which were within the grasp of the previous generation, home ownership, a steady reliable job, have been taken away. Whilst an affordable day out or holiday may help in the short term the big issues need to be addressed.

The problem you have is that only 2% (according to Google AI) of journeys are made by rail, so whatever you do is not going to make a huge difference to the overall cost of living. When you look at it this way the £12b subsidy starts to look expensive, so you are going to have to convince people that the subsidy, funded by taxpayers, is value for money.

I dont have an issue with taxpayer subsidies, its part of the give and take of living in a country where there are safety nets and things done 'for the greater good'. But the railways do need to be seen as useful.

 

[al78]

Just because 2% of journeys are rail doesn't mean that only 2% of the population use rail.

I'm sure I saw a statistic somewhere that around half the population use the railway at least a few times a year, meaning that they may well value it for specific purposes.

Also, a lot of the 98% of journeys will be "nipping out for a pint of milk" type journeys, so not really comparable with rail suited distances.

There is also the concept of externalised consequences. If the implication that only 2% of journeys are by rail implies the rail network is relatively insignificant, does that mean we could shut it all down and it would have minimal effect on anyone other than the minority who use it? No it wouldn't, because many journeys by rail represent journeys that are not being made by road, and the roads are becoming more and more congested every year (to the point where what used to be Easter bank holiday levels of traffic are becoming the new normal), so people using trains indirectly benefits motorists, which represents a big chunk of the population, through roads that aren't quite as bad as they would be without a rail network.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jul 2026 ==

Simply subsidising things (as the new PM has done with electricity and bus fares) doesn't tackle the underlying issues in the economy: the best way of helping people with the cost of living is to help them get richer.

One way to help people get richer is to reduce the cost of living. The problem we have in the UK is everything is expensive, wage inflation has stagnated, the country's economy has performed relatively poorly since the financial crisis and 52% of the population voted to simulate economic sanctions on the country a decade ago. These are largely systemic issues that will take decades to sort out and unfortunately recycling the government every 4-5 years really doesn't help with that.

 

[mike57]

unfortunately recycling the government every 4-5 years really doesn't help with that.

We are on our 6th prime minister since 2016, even when they are the same political party each change is a huge upheaval.

The previous 2 years have been some of the worst. Keir Starmer was elected with a huge majority, and should have been able to use that to make changes that were needed. The time and money spent on digital ID and removing the right to jury trials, which were not in the manifesto and are opposed by a large section of the electorate and politicians including a lot in his own party across the political hues were just two of his 'own goals', there are plenty of others. The only way I can describe it is 'out of touch' its not even a party political thing. Cost of living is another example of 'Out of touch', he doesn't have to make ends meet with rising costs and stagnant wages and an uncertain jobs market. Hopefully the new incumbent is more grounded.

I suspect the reality is the railways are not going to be high on the agenda at the moment. We still have the financial black hole that is HS2 which is going to haunt us well past the end of this government, and probably the next one as well. As for further major infrastructure projects, even if the appetite was there the money has pretty much run out. Tax increases to build more high speed rail or other major rail improvements are just not going to get buy in, either from the electorate or politicians.

The current highest for close to 50 years tax burden are the reason the cost of living is becoming an issue, high taxes kill investment and growth, making existing business uncompetetive, making start ups less likely and failures more likely. As for the 'tax the rich' which gets trotted out every time the cupboard is bare, it actally lowers tax take as those who have substantial assetts and wealth can afford to move them out of the UK, so instead of getting a small slice of their cake we get nothing. Its happened before, look at the number of high profile individuals who abandonded ship in the 70s.

 

[Bald Rick]

The problem we have in the UK is everything is expensive

It really isn’t. Compared to many other coutnries in the G20, we are cheap. Every single US visitor to the UK I have met recently (many, for various reasons) mentions how cheap the UK is. Similalry Canadians and Australians. Also Dutch. I’ve been to France and Switzerland recently, and most things were more expensive (not least petrol). Some countries are cheaper, sure.

But, broadly speaking we are in the middle of the pack.

wage inflation has stagnated

It hasn’t, this is a myth. Average weekly earnings are now £747 (total pay), which is 40% higher than 6 years ago. CPI-H has been 30% in that time. More recently, total pay growth is 1.2% in real terms for the past year. (Source, ONS weekly earnings)

the country's economy has performed relatively poorly since the financial crisis

relative compared to historic growth, yes. Not necessarily relative to our peers, until:

and 52% of the population voted to simulate economic sanctions on the country a decade ago.

This is the issue.

 

[martin butler]

The biggest holdbacks are energy costs, homes, cost of living,

So energy, more reliance on renewable energy, and stop linking it to the wholesale price of gas, hopefully that will reduce the price,

Homes, In stead of renting, how about the government under write cheap mortgages, at low interest rates, and people pay it as you would rent, but instead it taken at source, in your tax code, and abandoned houses, could be brought up by local councils, for low-income families, to get them out of expensive private rents,

Jobs, do away with the minimum wage, for many it's now became the maximum some employers want to pay, and replace it with a living wage that along with other measures, tax cuts for the very lowest, paid for by an increase in the upper bands, and a robust tax avoiding crack down, that makes it not worth the pain to avoid tax,

These measures should hopefully put more money in the pockets of people, who are likely to spend it, than save it, and therefore help the economy If people have spare cash, at the end of each month, they are more likely to spend it on leisure activities.

 

[yorksrob]

Abolishing peak fares would help, the problem, it also helps those who dont need help. Hence my idea to get a tax break on commuting costs if your income is below a threshold.

I think the incoming prime minister has a very short window of opportunity to sort problems out. If he fails then I think the next government will be very different in make up, and probably quite anti railway.

I agree about 'morale'. Working people on low incomes feel very left out, so anything that creates a better feeling has to be good, but the issues are much deeper, things which were within the grasp of the previous generation, home ownership, a steady reliable job, have been taken away. Whilst an affordable day out or holiday may help in the short term the big issues need to be addressed.

The problem you have is that only 2% (according to Google AI) of journeys are made by rail, so whatever you do is not going to make a huge difference to the overall cost of living. When you look at it this way the £12b subsidy starts to look expensive, so you are going to have to convince people that the subsidy, funded by taxpayers, is value for money.

I dont have an issue with taxpayer subsidies, its part of the give and take of living in a country where there are safety nets and things done 'for the greater good'. But the railways do need to be seen as useful.

However, I would counter that those 10 mile plus journeys that people make, tend to be more significant - e.g. going to university, visiting relatives, more significant leisure journeys etc and these are the journeys where rail tends to be more prominent.

Ultimately rail is the primary mode of public transport for medium to long term travel, therefore the 1% of public spend it takes is justifiable.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jul 2026 ==

There is also the concept of externalised consequences. If the implication that only 2% of journeys are by rail implies the rail network is relatively insignificant, does that mean we could shut it all down and it would have minimal effect on anyone other than the minority who use it? No it wouldn't, because many journeys by rail represent journeys that are not being made by road, and the roads are becoming more and more congested every year (to the point where what used to be Easter bank holiday levels of traffic are becoming the new normal), so people using trains indirectly benefits motorists, which represents a big chunk of the population, through roads that aren't quite as bad as they would be without a rail network.

Indeed. In a densely populated country like this one, one can only imagine the extra congestion and lost opportunities that would be created by not having the railway passenger network, therefore the expenditure is justified.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jul 2026 ==

The current highest for close to 50 years tax burden are the reason the cost of living is becoming an issue, high taxes kill investment and growth, making existing business uncompetetive, making start ups less likely and failures more likely. As for the 'tax the rich' which gets trotted out every time the cupboard is bare, it actally lowers tax take as those who have substantial assetts and wealth can afford to move them out of the UK, so instead of getting a small slice of their cake we get nothing. Its happened before, look at the number of high profile individuals who abandonded ship in the 70s.

The answer is to tax the asset and its income stream instead. The wealthy owner might be able to move to Dubai, however he won't be able to take his football stadium with him.

This is all getting into general discussion territory. The thread is about how the passenger railway can contribute to the cost of living agenda.

 

[Haywain]

The wealthy owner might be able to move to Dubai, however he won't be able to take his football stadium with him.

Property is taxed, through business rates, and those that generate high income streams will also be contributing significant amounts of VAT. And the owners won't be moving anywhere, least of all to the UK.

 

[mike57]

Homes, In stead of renting, how about the government under write cheap mortgages,

I actually think this would make a big difference, 'owner' (OK part owned by the mortgage company) occupiers feel as if they have a stake in the community, and to a point their destiny is in their own hands. How you would do it I have no idea, where I grew up in London 2 bed + box room houses are changing hands for close to £1m. We seem to have gone backwards from when I was growing up, where home ownership was with in the reach of most working people to the current situation where people on average salaries are completely priced out of the housing market over large parts of the country.

However, I would counter that those 10 mile plus journeys that people make, tend to be more significant - e.g. going to university, visiting relatives, more significant leisure journeys etc and these are the journeys where rail tends to be more prominent.

Certainly in our case thats our travel pattern, a couple of visits to relatives in Peterborough and a holiday via the channel tunnel once a year (ignoring my work trips as I am re-imbursed) as well as a few other journey where we choose rail. The issue is that our situation is not poverty line, so we can juggle the fun money. Looking around at a various people in our circle of friends and acquaintances who are not as well paid, they dont have 'fun money'. I personally dont have an issue with the level of rail subsudy, but I dont think anything that the rail industry did would make a huge impact on the cost of living. Energy, housing and food are where any changes would have an impact.

 

[yorksrob]

Certainly in our case thats our travel pattern, a couple of visits to relatives in Peterborough and a holiday via the channel tunnel once a year (ignoring my work trips as I am re-imbursed) as well as a few other journey where we choose rail. The issue is that our situation is not poverty line, so we can juggle the fun money. Looking around at a various people in our circle of friends and acquaintances who are not as well paid, they dont have 'fun money'. I personally dont have an issue with the level of rail subsudy, but I dont think anything that the rail industry did would make a huge impact on the cost of living. Energy, housing and food are where any changes would have an impact.

You say that, but bus fares aren't energy, housing or food, yet the cap is making a difference to the cost of living. Transport is an important part of cost of living, hence why the fuel duty freeze lasted for years.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

You say that, but bus fares aren't energy, housing or food, yet the cap is making a difference to the cost of living. Transport is an important part of cost of living, hence why the fuel duty freeze lasted for years.

Or is that transport is a highly visible part of the cost of living? People notice when it costs an extra £5 to fill up with petrol - or when their train ticket goes up from £20 to £20.50.

 

[Bald Rick]

Homes, In stead of renting, how about the government under write cheap mortgages, at low interest rates, and people pay it as you would rent, but instead it taken at source, in your tax code, and abandoned houses, could be brought up by local councils, for low-income families, to get them out of expensive private rents,

That would just raise house prices.

 

[yorksrob]

Or is that transport is a highly visible part of the cost of living? People notice when it costs an extra £5 to fill up with petrol - or when their train ticket goes up from £20 to £20.50.

Perception is very important, yes.

 

[JamesT]

Homes, In stead of renting, how about the government under write cheap mortgages, at low interest rates, and people pay it as you would rent, but instead it taken at source, in your tax code, and abandoned houses, could be brought up by local councils, for low-income families, to get them out of expensive private rents,

The problem with these schemes that make it easier to access credit is it tends to feed into the inflation of house prices. You've got more money chasing the same number of houses. The only real fix is to build more houses.

 

[mike57]

bus fares

I actually think bus fares are different to rail fares, as buses will be used more by people without cars, who in turn are more likely to be on a limited income. Fuel duty affects deliveries as well as private individuals, hence why an increase pushes food costs up. We have a car but choose rail for some journeys as it is more convenient, and I suspect amongst people making discretionary longer journeys that is often the case.

In other words in terms of targeted help I suspect the money spent on reducing bus fares will be more effective at helping those who are struggling, than an equivilent amount of money aimed at reducing rail fares.

 

[Magdalia]

The government will want to freeze rail's contribution to CPI/RPI which are the basis for many costs such as public sector pay rises and inflation linked gilt payouts. They really need to get interest rates down as well and lowering inflation is the number one lever for that.

Rail's contribution to inflation stats is calculated by the ONS.

The weight for passenger transport by rail in the CPI is 7.6215 parts per 1000, or about 0.75%.

Instead of manually checking ticket prices, the ONS now measures actual consumer spending using transaction-level data.

• The LENNON System: Data is extracted directly from the rail industry's Latest Earnings Networked Nationally Overnight (LENNON) ticket revenue system.
• Scale: The Rail Delivery Group (RDG) provides the ONS with approximately 40 million individual rail fare transactions every single month.
• Ticket Granularity: This massive dataset allows the ONS to track dynamic price changes across all specific ticket types—including Advance, Off-Peak, Anytime, and Season tickets—giving an exact picture of what consumers are actually paying.

This is a relatively recent methodological change, and it means that regulated rail fares have a smaller impact on CPI than the old methodology, which used the change in regulated rail fares as a proxy for all rail fares.

Or is that transport is a highly visible part of the cost of living? People notice when it costs an extra £5 to fill up with petrol - or when their train ticket goes up from £20 to £20.50.

The weight for petrol is 15.8480 and for diesel 10.1207 parts per 1000, taken together that's about 2.6%.

Fuel duty affects deliveries as well as private individuals, hence why an increase pushes food costs up.

And that's before adding in the second order effects.

the money spent on reducing bus fares will be more effective at helping those who are struggling, than an equivilent amount of money aimed at reducing rail fares.

I agree. A particular advantage with reducing bus fares is it helps low paid workers to commute and students to study. At the margin it might help to get NEETS into education, employment or training.

 

[WAO]

My take on this is that there is plenty of demand in the economy; what we are short of is the home produced supply side. This means that too much money goes abroad rather than improving employment and reducing (foreign) debt.

The Treasury recently had to warn Departments that they were buying too much abroad. I don't think other governments buy as much foreign capital goods as we do. They have a different view of "free trade", one reason why our EU membership failed.

The railway can't "quick fix" its own house; rather it needs to improve home skill sets, buy more (especially rolling stock) from UK (including design, software and traction packages), and simplify its systems to achieve economies of scale. Management should ask why the gauge is "standard" when most else isn't! Leasing is clearly poor value, hoovering up 1/3 of income while scrapping good mid-life stock and being unable to make a reliable 769.

We still have the most competent railway (staff) in Europe and UK rail is still admired worldwide viz the copying/adapting of UK liveries in many countries, the sincerest form of flattery.

WAO

 

[geoffk]

Abolishing peak fares is currently leading the poll, so there must be a few of us commuters on the forum !

Not necessarily. The afternoon peak fares introduced by Northern in major cities, which IIRC applied 16.00 to 18.30, could have a big impact on discretionary travel. Edinburgh also had this, or did when I was last there.

 

[Magdalia]

My take on this is that there is plenty of demand in the economy; what we are short of is the home produced supply side. This means that too much money goes abroad rather than improving employment and reducing (foreign) debt.

The Treasury recently had to warn Departments that they were buying too much abroad. I don't think other governments buy as much foreign capital goods as we do. They have a different view of "free trade", one reason why our EU membership failed.

This gets nearer than most to the fundamental flaw in the way that the UK economy has been run for the last 40 years. The Balance of Payments deficit and the Public Sector deficit are two sides of the same coin.

The railway can't "quick fix" its own house; rather it needs to improve home skill sets, buy more (especially rolling stock) from UK (including design, software and traction packages), and simplify its systems to achieve economies of scale.

These are good ways that the railway can contribute, but they are not "quick wins".

Leasing is clearly poor value, hoovering up 1/3 of income while scrapping good mid-life stock

In the period of low long term interest rates new stock was better value than refurbishing mid-life stock.

 

[yorksrob]

I actually think bus fares are different to rail fares, as buses will be used more by people without cars, who in turn are more likely to be on a limited income. Fuel duty affects deliveries as well as private individuals, hence why an increase pushes food costs up. We have a car but choose rail for some journeys as it is more convenient, and I suspect amongst people making discretionary longer journeys that is often the case.

In other words in terms of targeted help I suspect the money spent on reducing bus fares will be more effective at helping those who are struggling, than an equivilent amount of money aimed at reducing rail fares.

I think that this is an oversimplistic view of transport patterns. I don't drive and use the rail frequently for the sort of journeys that lend themselves to rail.

I'm also not convinced that targeting help towards those most in need should directly overlap with the cost of living.

Targeted benefits and income support are best used to directly assist those most in need. Measures to reduce the cost of living should be more broadly aimed at those with average and below average incomes.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jul 2026 ==

I agree. A particular advantage with reducing bus fares is it helps low paid workers to commute and students to study. At the margin it might help to get NEETS into education, employment or training.

Rail does all of those things, particularly in the regions.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jul 2026 ==

My take on this is that there is plenty of demand in the economy; what we are short of is the home produced supply side. This means that too much money goes abroad rather than improving employment and reducing (foreign) debt.

The Treasury recently had to warn Departments that they were buying too much abroad. I don't think other governments buy as much foreign capital goods as we do. They have a different view of "free trade", one reason why our EU membership failed.

Very true. It's shocking to me that the balance of payments is never covered anymore

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jul 2026 ==

Not necessarily. The afternoon peak fares introduced by Northern in major cities, which IIRC applied 16.00 to 18.30, could have a big impact on discretionary travel. Edinburgh also had this, or did when I was last there.

Yes, they were a terrible idea from the start and just an excuse for Eric Pickles to be seen to be furthering the Austerity agenda.

 

[Dr Day]

For the vast majority of journeys, transport (regardless of mode) is a means to an end - you need to go from A to B to do something, whether going to work, going out drinking with friends or going shopping etc.

For going to work, it would be interesting to see the figures, but I wouldn't expect numbers of low-income people who rely on rail rather than bus if they don't drive to be particularly high, and within that sub-set season tickets still offer typically very good value and have been frozen already.

In relation to leisure activities, the cost of travel is typically only part of the cost of the overall activity. If I don't have much money, I can't afford to go shopping or go drinking anyway, regardless of the cost of getting into the city in the first place.

 

[WAO]

In the period of low long term interest rates new stock was better value than refurbishing mid-life stock.

Low interest rates were a banking deception after the crisis. They distorted the balance between investment and maintenance temporarily but they were fools' gold as government is now discovering. New stock will only be cheaper than repaired mid-life stock if there is significant technical and cost advance, which I don't believe there was. Re-engineering has shown to be very cost effective around the world.

WAO

 

[Egg Centric]

If we accept for the sake of argument that we should be giving more money to the railways (I do agree but only by doing certain mental gymnastics) I would have thought the best thing to do is spend on infrastructure. Precisely what infrastructure I'll leave to those who are better informed.

 

[WAO]

Seed-corn is always better planted than eaten.

WAO

 

[yorksrob]

In relation to leisure activities, the cost of travel is typically only part of the cost of the overall activity. If I don't have much money, I can't afford to go shopping or go drinking anyway, regardless of the cost of getting into the city in the first place.

Although many might choose to go to the beach, or a walk in the country, where activities can be done on a budget with planning

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jul 2026 ==

If we accept for the sake of argument that we should be giving more money to the railways (I do agree but only by doing certain mental gymnastics) I would have thought the best thing to do is spend on infrastructure. Precisely what infrastructure I'll leave to those who are better informed.

Seed-corn is always better planted than eaten.

WAO

"Jam tomorrow" as they say.

The cost of living crisis is immediate.

 

[squingo44]

Subsidising rail fares is not as good a use of the rail transport budget as investing in more infrastructure. The best thing to do would be to fund projects that relieve railway lines that are already at capacity.

Sure, they won’t make a big difference at the moment, but they will make a big difference when they’re finished - unlike fare subsidies, which have a marginal impact at best in the short term and no impact in the long term.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jul 2026 ==

The cost of living crisis is immediate.

Immediate fixes are expensive and don’t achieve all that much