Fare rises - shockingly Bad Value for Money

[Masbroughlad]

On TV this morning. Some fares are to go up by 13%. That is disgusting.

You can't always book in advance or choose when to travel.

 

[Aictos]

On TV this morning. Some fares are to go up by 13%. That is disgusting.

You can't always book in advance or choose when to travel.

That does seem bad but take the local bus operator in Peterborough - on the Citi 2 and Citi 3 routes as example, the fares go up every so often but investment is nil.

Makes you think why the fares have to keep on getting more and more expensive when public transport is supposed to be a reliable and good way of moving people and there's very little investment being shown.

 

[Masbroughlad]

I had to travel West Midlands to St Ives last week. Mid week, walk up fare an eye-watering £128. This could potentially go up to £144.

The train was overcrowded between Birmingham and Plymouth - the trolley could not get through the train.

FGW from Plymouth was shockingly overcrowded - people stood throughout the train (HST) as far as Par.

We should not be paying more for bad service today to benefit tomorrow.

 

[RyanB]

If we had the world's best train system a fare rise of 13% is unacceptable. You would think that for that kind of money most operators would be able to buy more rolling stock to reduce overcrowding, but sadly there is no such investment, it's frankly appaling that TOCs can do this to passengers.

 

[Masbroughlad]

If we had the world's best train system a fare rise of 13% is unacceptable. You would think that for that kind of money most operators would be able to buy more rolling stock to reduce overcrowding, but sadly there is no such investment, it's frankly appaling that TOCs can do this to passengers.

I agree 100% - far too much money for a shocking level of service. Daylight robbery.

You wouldn't go to a restaurant and pay more money for a rubbish meal today in order that someone gets a better meal tomorrow. Why should the Goverment be allowed to inflict this on us with our railways?!

 

[yorkie]

Regulated fares will go up by 8% (article here), that will push up the cost of a York to London Super Off Peak to over £95, and a Plymouth to London Off Peak will rise to over £101! Newquay to Kyle Off Peak Return (avoiding London) will rise to over £307!

This means that passengers have to consult sites like this more and more just to be able to afford to travel.

I for one will be making even more use of Routeing Guide anomalies, starting/finishing short, splitting tickets, Rangers that are cheaper than point to point tickets (e.g. Derbyshire Wayfarer is cheaper than Sheffield-Burton), booking engine anomalies, promotional tickets including where there are anomalies (e.g. buying further to get the discount) and any other legitimate method possible.

Without these methods, you would simply be ripped off for many journeys. Even I sometimes get caught out because I ask for a ticket that I've not researched properly. We will all have to do more research when making a purchase to ensure value for money.

 

[Masbroughlad]

Regulated fares will go up by 8% (article here), that will push up the cost of a York to London Super Off Peak to over £95, and a Plymouth to London Off Peak will rise to over £101! Newquay to Kyle Off Peak Return (avoiding London) will rise to over £307!

This means that passengers have to consult sites like this more and more just to be able to afford to travel.

I for one will be making even more use of Routeing Guide anomalies, starting/finishing short, splitting tickets, Rangers that are cheaper than point to point tickets (e.g. Derbyshire Wayfarer is cheaper than Sheffield-Burton), booking engine anomalies, promotional tickets including where there are anomalies (e.g. buying further to get the discount) and any other legitimate method possible.

Without these methods, you would simply be ripped off for many journeys. Even I sometimes get caught out because I ask for a ticket that I've not researched properly. We will all have to do more research when making a purchase to ensure value for money.

I agree - its great to get help on here. I just feel sorry for poor Joe Public who just has to put up and shut up.

 

[142094]

For many travellers the "investment in services" is total crap. Most of the journeys I make are in the same area (i.e. Northern territory), and the only improvements I see are cascades from other operators. Time for a big debate on renationlisation. Privatisation didn't work with the buses and it sure as hell hasn't worked with the railways.

 

[HYPODERMIC]

For many travellers the "investment in services" is total crap. Most of the journeys I make are in the same area (i.e. Northern territory), and the only improvements I see are cascades from other operators.

Exactly - and how shamelessly patronising it is, too, that the great cities of Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, et al. are repeatedly subjected to hand-me-downs. I mean, the blatancy of it - it's like they live by the old stereotype of the North being grim and outdated.

As I've said on another forum, I have very little time for Hammond's "closing the North-South divide" moral crusade, because he loves deploying it to prop up HS2 yet simultaneously seems to see the regions as fit for little more than the very oldest rolling stock in the country.

These kind of fare rises are just disgusting, because absolutely nothing is being done to reduce the costs of the railway and make these rises unnecessary. Some share of the blame must fall with McNulty, a weak, wish-washy report that utterly failed to consider any genuine radical cost-cutting options (vertical integration, renationalisation, total route modernisation) in favour of "let's have a second ATOC organisation, that'll help" - Wolmar says this was on insistence of the DfT, who were rather keen to ensure the current system was not too harshly criticised as it would be politically inconvenient for them.

It makes me angry. Not so much the fare rises, but the whole establishment that is quite content to slag-off BR's "chronic underinvestment" while repeating exactly the same mistake, shunting off exhausted trains to the North, and watching fares follow upwards too. Total incompetence - or total apathy. You decide.

 

[Masbroughlad]

For many travellers the "investment in services" is total crap. Most of the journeys I make are in the same area (i.e. Northern territory), and the only improvements I see are cascades from other operators. Time for a big debate on renationlisation. Privatisation didn't work with the buses and it sure as hell hasn't worked with the railways.

Anyone know if there is an e-petition on Nationalisation of the railways? I am sure it would get a big response - maybe top the 100,000 required for a debate in parliament?

 

[CosherB]

These rises are quite ridiculous and entirely indefensible. They are the result of the government wanting to reduce rail subsidy (where have we heard that before?), but also reflect the very high, and increasing, cost of running our railways. McNulty had quite a lot to say about that.

 

[mallard]

The only real way to reduce the cost of the railways is to renationalise them.

Running them for-profit just funnels taxpayers money to shareholders.

It's simple maths, if it costs £x to run the railway and the companies doing it make £y in profit, the total cost to the taxpayers, passengers and freight customers is £x+y. If it were nationalised and run not-for-profit, the cost would only be £x.

 

[hairyhandedfool]

For many travellers the "investment in services" is total crap. Most of the journeys I make are in the same area (i.e. Northern territory), and the only improvements I see are cascades from other operators. Time for a big debate on renationlisation. Privatisation didn't work with the buses and it sure as hell hasn't worked with the railways.

What do you think Nationalisation will achieve? Who do you think controls what stock the TOCs can order?

The Government wants to spend less on the railway, not more.

 

[Deerfold]

The only real way to reduce the cost of the railways is to renationalise them.

Running them for-profit just funnels taxpayers money to shareholders.

It's simple maths, if it costs £x to run the railway and the companies doing it make £y in profit, the total cost to the taxpayers, passengers and freight customers is £x+y. If it were nationalised and run not-for-profit, the cost would only be £x.

More importantly you wouldn't need all the layers of lawyers and bureaucracy which exist to apportion and move all the costs around inside the system.

Of course, entirely conincidentally a large proportion of politicians are lawyers.

If BR had only had the money that's gone into the railway companies since privatisation...
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

What do you think Nationalisation will achieve? Who do you think controls what stock the TOCs can order?

The Government wants to spend less on the railway, not more.

It would mean there was an organisation that could actually buy trains instead of leasing them. It's laughable what you can lease a Pacer or Sprinter for because there's no spare stock.

 

[Metroland]

Oh this old Chestnut. The profit margin on the railways is about 4-5%, which is pitifully small, in fact so small any less would not attract any private sector investment.

The way to reduce costs is longer innovative franchises (read Chiltern), innovation in general, and opening the rail sector up in terms of new entrants: Staff, companies, new suppliers.

BR did a good job, but for those that remember it, in the early 1990s, drivers basic wages were £200 a week, Signalmen in power boxes about the same. Station staff half of that. The wages were so low and conditions so bad, BR had trouble recruiting any sort of staff in some areas, let alone quality staff.

Stations were not painted from one year to the next, non-main lines were on 'maintenance holidays'. In the early 1990s the cross country network had countless TSRs because as the only loss making part of the intercity sector, the board did not want to put the money in.

BR also had some eye watering fare rises to price people off the railways during the peak, because the government of the day wanted to reduce subsidy.

That said, there was some good things about BR, some fantastic innovation such as SSI, RETB, the HST.

Nationalisation is fine if (and only if) the country is prepared to put money in. It is not if the country is not prepared to put it in and when times get hard the first thing government cuts is the budgets. There has been a more mature approach to transport in later years, but this country always put Health and Education first, and transport somewhere near the bottom.

We should be grateful the way the railways are financed is pretty much set in stone, so budgets can't be cut (easily) in this control period. Which is why were getting new trains, new lines, electrification, and on the buses (where 60% of the cost is paid for by the taxpayer) they are facing massive cuts.

I agree with lower fares, especially for walk on travel, but I think again this has to be done through innovation. For example, selling off the off peak travel to get bums on seats, by providing loyalty schemes and low cost unlimited tickets as they do on the buses, either locally or nationally.

I used a rail rover not long ago, very cheap at £70 for 3 days unlimited travel in the East Midlands and hardly any of the staff knew about it! (I'll start a new thread on this)

Finally, costs are going up across all modes of transport, especially on the roads (both buses and cars).

 

[mallard]

Lets also not forget that BR was very good at making the money they did have go a long way. Now, we have a railway where everything is paid for at premium prices.

I recently read a report where Network Rail's quoted extra costs for building a new bay platform one coach longer were on the order of ~£500,000. That's just for ~20m more track and platform structure!

Do you think BR would allow (or be allowed) to let overcrowded sprinters and pacers run busy commuter services while carriages and locomotives of a similar age are allowed to rot in "storage"? I few loco-hauled peak-time "relief" services would make a massive difference to many areas, but with the system as it is, hiring in the stock costs too much. It wouldn't cost anything (other than marginal maintenance costs) under BR. (And of course, the running costs could be shown to the government/PTEs as justification for ordering new stock, ala. Cl50's on West of England).

Sure, BR had to make some difficult decisions about how to spend its limited budget, resulting in the mentioned "maintenance holidays" and such, but I think we've passed the point of giving the railways "enough" money and are now just wasting money without even trying to control costs.

 

[supervalkoinen]

Exactly - and how shamelessly patronising it is, too, that the great cities of Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, et al. are repeatedly subjected to hand-me-downs. I mean, the blatancy of it - it's like they live by the old stereotype of the North being grim and outdated.

As I've said on another forum, I have very little time for Hammond's "closing the North-South divide" moral crusade, because he loves deploying it to prop up HS2 yet simultaneously seems to see the regions as fit for little more than the very oldest rolling stock in the country.

These kind of fare rises are just disgusting, because absolutely nothing is being done to reduce the costs of the railway and make these rises unnecessary. Some share of the blame must fall with McNulty, a weak, wish-washy report that utterly failed to consider any genuine radical cost-cutting options (vertical integration, renationalisation, total route modernisation) in favour of "let's have a second ATOC organisation, that'll help" - Wolmar says this was on insistence of the DfT, who were rather keen to ensure the current system was not too harshly criticised as it would be politically inconvenient for them.

It makes me angry. Not so much the fare rises, but the whole establishment that is quite content to slag-off BR's "chronic underinvestment" while repeating exactly the same mistake, shunting off exhausted trains to the North, and watching fares follow upwards too. Total incompetence - or total apathy. You decide.

Neither. Total antipathy.

 

[CosherB]

Nationalisation has been demonstrably proved not to work. BR was in a downward spiral with governments of both colours starving it of investment money. In a nationalised railway, who has the clout to make governements pay what the railway needs? No-one, so there's no money.

In a railway where private industry has 'some skin in the game', they will ensure the money is forthcoming. Just look at the money that has poured into the railways since privatisation with almost complete renewal of rolling stock, the investment (albeit poor value investment) in refurbishing the WCML, and the many infrastucture improvements such as re-doubling lines that BR singled.

It's all very well saying 'think what BR could have done if they'd had that money'. The fact is, BR would never in a million years have got that money - it took the involvement of private industry to ensure the gov paid up.

I agree it's a disgrace that commutuer trains in the north are old cast-offs (nodding donkeys etc) that should never have been built (another example of BR parsimony) and should certainly have been scrapped by now. However, the Manchester - London service is probably an example of the railways of UK at their best, with sub 2 hour journey times and reasonable reliability.

Where the railway has to loose cost it's in Network Rail pricing for infrastructure work which seems very high compared to similar work abroad, and a curb in the wage demands of rail staff (I know one Northern Rail driver who told me he has just had a £5K rise! In a climate where most folk have had NO pay rise in several years).

 

[hairyhandedfool]

....It would mean there was an organisation that could actually buy trains instead of leasing them. It's laughable what you can lease a Pacer or Sprinter for because there's no spare stock.

You would trust the very organisation that stops TOCs from ordering stock, to buy new stock for the railway, when it is already trying to reduce spending?

 

[dickdarlington]

The issue for me isn't nationalisation, or TOC's. It's that the whole set up is wrong.

Yes we need to offer longer contracts (but with much harsher penlalties for failure).

We need smarter TOC distinctions. Why do Northern have the local trains in the NE. Either give NEXUS a wider sphere, or hand them over to East Coast. Same with whoever gets the WCML and the North Western Northern element.

And my biggest bugbear is rolling stock. Instead of cascading (valid as it is in certain areas). Remove all ownership of trains from the TOCs, and set up one specific ROSCO (I think that's right) as a franchise in its own right. They order in bulk, and then send out suitable trains to the TOCs, who pay pro rata on usage and mileage. This would remove the ordering new stock to win franchises aspect, which leads to incompatable trains when supporting fluxes in travel, or transfers to other areas.

If the above doesn't float your boat. How about merging all of the third rail TOCs south of London into one company, so they can order a bulk load of stock at much cheaper prices. After all, its the passengers on these types of routes who the government are so keen to keep happy with shiny new trains.

 

[jon0844]

The only way the industry will worry is if loads of people don't renew their season tickets in January. However, anyone who has half a brain will be renewing their season before the increase and paying the 2011 rates - and won't get stung until 2013.

The problem here is that by renewing (at the old rate) it makes it hard for most people to protest when it might make a difference. If you didn't renew to prove a point, you'd likely end up forced to renew later at the higher rate you protested against.

 

[yorksrob]

Nationalisation has been demonstrably proved not to work. BR was in a downward spiral with governments of both colours starving it of investment money. In a nationalised railway, who has the clout to make governements pay what the railway needs? No-one, so there's no money.

In a railway where private industry has 'some skin in the game', they will ensure the money is forthcoming. Just look at the money that has poured into the railways since privatisation with almost complete renewal of rolling stock, the investment (albeit poor value investment) in refurbishing the WCML, and the many infrastucture improvements such as re-doubling lines that BR singled.

That is a bit of a myth though. Just think of all the things done since privatisation.

There were new trains brought for the Southern Region longer distance services after privatisation certainly, but by that same token all of the inner suburban trains on the Southern were replaced by BR in the 80's and early nineties, not to mention the majority of trains in the Northern section of Network SouthEast.

What about the West Coast route modernisation ? Well, BR modernised the East Coast mainline as well as electrifying the Great Eastern Mainlines to Norwich and Kings Lynn, all in the eighties.

True, BR hadn't got around to any re-doublings that I can think of, but if you perouse any of the recent threads on reopenings you'll see that far more were accomplished by BR in the 1980's and early 90's than have been achieved since.

There have certainly been lots of new trains in the regions since privatisation, that is true, but throughout the whole of the eighties BR was busily churning out 15*s. The only time this stopped was when the impending privatisation put the kybosh on everything. And as for inter City trains on the West Coast, the Mk 5’s were already on the drawing boards, long before pendolino’s were twinkles in their daddy’s eyes.

But what about all of those new passenger there have been since privatisation I hear you say. Well actually, passenger numbers were steadily increasing throughout the whole latter half of the 1980’s, and one thing the 80’s didn’t have was a 15 year long economic boom (the 80’s weren’t 15 years long for a start) so I’m sure there would have been a long rise in passenger numbers on BR throughout the late 90’s and most of the noughties. Maybe not quite so spectacular as on the privatised railway, and it may have slowed down a bit more in the recent recession, but you have to give private enterprise some credit.

The only substantial gain I can see from privatisation has been the introduction of open access which has made a substantial difference to some routes neglected by BR, but the idea that a nationalised railway has been “demonstrably” proven not to work is far from the truth given the amount of investment that did take place, much less the politically motivated nonsense that BR was in a “downward spiral”.

It's all very well saying 'think what BR could have done if they'd had that money'. The fact is, BR would never in a million years have got that money - it took the involvement of private industry to ensure the gov paid up.

I agree it's a disgrace that commutuer trains in the north are old cast-offs (nodding donkeys etc) that should never have been built (another example of BR parsimony) and should certainly have been scrapped by now. However, the Manchester - London service is probably an example of the railways of UK at their best, with sub 2 hour journey times and reasonable reliability.

With respect, the fact that nowadays Governments seem unable to provide investment without throwing inflated amounts of money at a third party just to keep things off its books is, I suspect a major reason why this country is in the economic state it’s in today. (this isn’t confined to the railway btw - think PFI).

I don’t however think it’s necessarily “a disgrace” that we have older trains in the North. It would be incredibly wasteful to provide everyone with new trains every twenty years and most of the North's were built for the North rather than being hand-me downs. Trains are built to last and scrapping them prematurely would certainly lead to unnecessary price rises.

Perhaps someone could explain why on the Nationalised railway it was somehow always BR’s fault when the Government didn’t stump up for new trains, yet on the privatised railway it’s always the Governments fault when new trains aren’t forthcoming.

Anyhow, with that off of my chest, I do sympathise with Metroland’s post to an extent, in as far as I’d be wary of making radical changes to the railway - at least while Government is still coughing up. And it’s certainly true that BR priced people off the railways at times. I think whoever owns the railway, Government needs to remember that not everyone who works in London is a top flight lawyer or businessman. If you price everyone else off of the railway you lose a lot of benefits in terms of economic activity and less congestion.

Plus there’s no guarantee that re-nationalisation would automatically mean that we’d get back sectorised BR, which is what really would be useful.

Perhaps longer franchises are worth a try - and Chiltern has done a good job. It must be remembered though that Chiltern serves a very wealthy commuter area and received a golden inheritance in terms of renewed infrastructure and new trains, so how easily this could be replicated across the rest of the network remains to be seen.

Just a thought - if we are to have franchises, since infrastructure tends to last 40 - 50 years and trains last 30 - 40 years, shouldn’t franchises be around 40 years long, then franchisees could own their own kit and get full use from it?

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

There was someone from ATOC being interviewed earlier today with regard to the proposed "average eight per cent" increase in which he constantly referred to the fact that his members were complying with the policy on this matter of the Government.

 

[table38]

The D███y M██l says

'Scandalous' 30% fare increase will hit millions

although reading further, that's over 4 years. Some fares could rise by 13% as they can charge RPI + 3% but an additional 5% on some fares as long as the average is only 8% shock horror probe.

Mind you, it also says

All aboard the Brangelina Express! Couple charter an entire train to take them and family from London to Glasgow.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie decided that their family's five hour journey to Scotland should be done away from prying eyes and autograph hunters.
And they clearly decided that taking over a first class carriage wasn't going to be enough for their brood - so they chartered the entire train instead.

 

[Helvellyn]

Unfortunately buried over halfway down the article, but this extract from BBC News is illuminating: -

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.​

The Coalition are simply continuing a policy started by the last Labour Government to make passengers pay 50% of the costs of rail travel (It was previously 25%). What the Coalition wants to try and do is bring down costs to mitigate this longer term, hence the McNulty report.

 

[Sadsmileyface]

The D███y M██l says



although reading further, that's over 4 years. Some fares could rise by 13% as they can charge RPI + 3% but an additional 5% on some fares as long as the average is only 8% shock horror probe.

Mind you, it also says

The train wasn't empty. It had movie crew and entourage too.

 

[jon0844]

I've managed to get our gas bill down by simply using less of it. Likewise, for electricity, we've replaced ALL our incandescent light bulbs with LED bulbs (7W) or energy saving bulbs (11W) leaving just the halogen cabinet lights to consume a lot of power - but they're on a timer and you can now get LEDs for them too (but they usually need a new transformer too). My computer probably sucks a lot of power, but this too goes into a deep sleep when not used.

The only things we can't save on are the kettle and electric oven, microwave, washing machine etc - they're as efficient as they can be, for what they are, but still need a lot of power even if for a relatively short time.

Nevertheless, we've reduced our energy bills despite increases. Clearly now we can't do much more and will see prices rise, but we planned ahead knowing bills would rise, putting us in a better position.

Sadly, when it comes to me commuting to work, I can't really do anything to save money. My only way to save money is to move house (imagine the cost of doing that!) or change job (nice idea, in theory).