Our rail fares in the UK are noticeably quite expensive for a variety of journeys. Basic examples include a Off-peak London Travelcard, which costs an adult £25.40. That is with an origin of Reading. Whereas an Anytime Travelcard will cost an adult £55.90 (correct at the time of writing according to National Rail), which I consider to be expensive.
Why is this? To give a bit of background, our rail franchises today are awarded by the Department for Transport (DfT) and as a result the government regulates around 45% of the fares. Any increase to the fares are impacted by government policy. An obvious reason is so that train operators can cover their operating costs, but a more likely reason is that the government wants passengers to pay more money so that the government can make a profit. Over past years the government has increased fares by up to 3.2%, resulting in some passengers have to pay an extra thousand pounds for their annual season ticket. What's the problem? Well, the government are in control and can raise or lower the price if they want to. The problem is that they keep on increasing the prices and not lowering or freezing them, but people's wages are not in creased to keep up, resulting in fares becoming more and more unaffordable. This really doesn't help what the government wants to achieve. In actual fact, what's happening is contradictory: by raising fares they are encouraging more people to take to the car, which in turn will result in higher carbon emissions, as opposed to encouraging people out of their cars. It has been discovered that the number of people using the rail system is gradually decreasing. If the government wants to reduce the carbon emissions emitted by cars and help the environment, they need to reduce fares fast! What can be done? The Rail Delivery Group (RDG) have recently come up with a big plan, which would involve some big changes and this plan (if it came to fruition) would give passengers more options in the way of fares, along with some cheaper fares. One operator, Virgin Trains, has suggested that all train operators do away with walk-on tickets (i.e. tickets paid for on the day of travel) and get passengers to bid for seats on their services. Its suggestion hasn't gone down very well. Really, the best option to take would be to reduce fares drastically. Based on the examples above, the Off-peak London Travelcard fare could be reduced to £20. This would encourage more people to travel, especially those who haven't been able to afford rail travel before, and as a result the operator (in this case Great Western Railway) would benefit from increased revenue. It would also bring more cars off roads and in turn reduce carbon emissions. In the case of a London to Edinburgh Waverley Super Off-peak Return ticket, it costs an adult £147.40. In this case it would be cheaper to purchase two singles, which would result in only having to pay £129.50. OK, London to Edinburgh is 396 to 400 miles according to Google Maps, but £147.40 is still quite expensive. That problem will be alleviated in a few years time when open-access operator, First Group, start operating services between London and Edinburgh with fares up to £25. In the meantime, Keith Williams is conducting a Rail Review into the UK's railways, which is due to be published as a White Paper in September 2019. We will see what he has got to say about our rail system. Williams has already highlighted that in the future, the government will have to take step back from our rail system as it's currently got too much involved. All prices mentioned above were correct at the time of writing according to National Rail.
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