MSE News: Rail fares could rise by 11.2% as inflation figures revealed

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Inflation_Monkey wrote: »

Over the last 25 years, UK train fares have generally increased inline with UK average salary growth. This is very different to the trend with RPI were train fares increases much faster. From all the news headlines recently, you would have thought that train fares were racing ahead from wages for the last 10 years.

Really? Train fares have increased by above the rate of RPI while most people's salaries have been frozen, dropped or increased by less than RPI.

The above RPI fare rises have been happening since British Rail were privatised under John Mayor's government as they aimed to stop the railways being loss making. First Great Western are the exception (who have frozen most fares this year) as First Group tried to win over the public ahead of a number of new franchise bids.

Some job roles didn't exist 25 years ago, while some roles like teaching have seen salaries increase at a higher rate than others like supermarket employees. Also it's generally the lower paid workers who are more reliant on using the train to get to work, so an overall comparison of all salaries compared to all train fares doesn't mean anything.

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National Office of Statistics have released figures showing how much train fares have increased.

An Off Peak is now, on average 148.7% of the cost of what it was in 2004, while a Peak ticket is now 158.6% of the cost. If they had increased at the rate of inflation each year the cost would be 129.9% of what it was in 2004.

http://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/displayreport/html/html/7cff3127-a5cc-4173-ac78-016db2339811