Rail Fares to Increase 6.2% in January

During the Olympics some of the country’s leading politicians were accused of trying to muscle in on the many success stories of Team GB and use it to bolster their image and take credit for things that they had nothing to do with.

Well maybe it shows just how incompetent politicians are, because the games have been over for five minutes and they’re already unpopular again, as today it has been announced that from January 2013 some rail fares in England will rise by 6.2% about double the rate of inflation.

The extra money raised from the fare hike is helping to fund huge investments across the rail network, in what David Cameron and the coalition have described as the biggest investment in the rail industry since the Victorian age.

Well with these price rises, like the Victorian age you’ll have the more affluent sitting in the luxury carriages and the mere mortals packed in the back somewhere like battery hens.

That’s assuming this increase doesn’t price a large number of people out of rail travel all together, you can’t increase rail prices this much at a time when the economy is on life support and wages are languishing.   

Transport Secretary Theresa Villiers said that the fare increases were necessary in the short-term to achieve the government’s long term goal of bringing down the cost of running the railways, yes because they’ve been so successful at doing that with the economy.........

She also said that the rises will make life better for passengers, most probably because less people will be able to travel by train come January and those that can will have a bit more space.

I’m sure you’ve realised by now that I’m a train user and am shocked and disappointed not only at the rise but at how steep it is, I don’t understand why government encourage you to use public transport and then make it unaffordable, what would happen if all the countries major supermarkets issued a joint statement saying we are all raising our prices by 5% as of now, deal with it, there would be chaos.

Millions of people rely on train’s everyday and these price rises could for some make them a one-off luxury, its madness.