| Increase in non-regulated rail fares |
| The issue: |
Dear Sir George,
Good evening. I am writing to complain at the outrageous rises in non-regulated fares on First Great Western, and Cross Country in particular which was reported at 11%. My complaint is that this is yet another example of incompetent government for the following reasons (1) The rail companies operate non-competitive franchises are therefore fares need to be regulated, so why do we have the concept of non-regulated fares? This just leads to even more ridiculous increases than would occur in a monopoly (2) As I suspect part of the driver for these changes is reductions in government subsidy. So why is the government hiding behind the train operating companies instead of taking responsibility. We already have a small subsidy than other countries in the EU (which could be argued is an unfair advantage for our European competitors).
Overall I don't really blame the train operating companies their job is to maximise profit within the market and regulatory framework that government has created. It is the governments responsibility to sort this mess out.
My preferred solution would be for Government to fix the fares and then to conduct regular competitive tenders with train operating companies to keep their supply costs at the lowest possible level.
I do use the trains quite a lot myself for travelling to London and Manchester. Prices for the trip to Manchester have now reached about £102 for an advance return. With petrol prices falling I will soon be driving.
It would also be useful if the Conservative government had a credible transport policy that made this a key item on the political agenda. In a modern economy transport should be prioritised first as without it exchange cannot occur ( we can't get to business meetings, school or hospital), education should come next and finally health which is mainly a benefit to relatively unproductive older people, like me.
Needless to say transport is intimately connected to the environmental agenda which David Cameron seems to be very fond of.
Hoping that you may be able to do something about this at some point, best wishes Steve |
| Date Issue Raised: |
23 Nov 2008 |
| My response: |
Many thanks for your email via my website about rail fares. As a former Secretary of State for Transport and a regular rail user, I was particularly interested to read your views.
Before privatisation, all rail fares were regulated by the Government. After privatisation, the rise in fares was lower than pre-privatisation – partly because some of them were frozen to RP!-1% for five years. (These were the ones that were regulated). Decades of decline in passenger and freight traffic were reversed , and there was an explosion of investment in track renewal, new signalling and new rolling stock
Regulation was introduced alongside privatisation to protect travellers who had no option but to travel by train, and, as you rightly say, there is the risk of abuse of monopoly power. The current Government has changed the formula for these fares from RPI -1% to RPI +1%. As you also say in your email, this is because they want to cut the subsidy. Other rail fares were not regulated as there was competition from road and rail which encouraged the companies to keep fares low to win traffic.
I have seen reports of increases of 11% - I hope the average is less than this, and of course not everyone pays the standard fare. Railcard holders and those who book in advance can pay less.
I agree with what you say about the potential of rail travel, and my party is committed to opposing the third runway at Heathrow and to investing in highspeed rail links instead.
Best wishes, George Young.
|
|
Sir George Young Bt MP: Constituency and Parliamentary Website 