“What is really galling is that year after year, fares have gone up by above inflation,” he explained. It’s important to contrast that with what the previous government did with fuel duty for motorists, which was frozen for 12 years, and then they put a 5p cut on top of that.
“That policy was making motoring more and more attractive and rail travel less and less attractive, which is the exact opposite of what we should be doing when we have a climate crisis on our hands.”
Johnbosco Nwogbo, lead campaigner for public ownership campaign group We Own It, added that the changes, while small, are only likely to “frustrate” passengers.
“What this says to passengers is that the priority for the private train operators is profit rather than running a good rail service,” Nwogbo explained. “Why are we talking about even higher fares before we’ve seen improvement in our railways?
“Rail fares occasionally going up is not inherently a problem. What passengers are worried about is that our baseline rail fares are already unaffordable and the rail fare hikes appear to be making private companies profits rather than improving the service for passengers.”
An example of the slight railcard discount reduction is on an off-peak return from London to Manchester, which costs £109 at full price.
The same journey costs £71.90 for Railcard users on Saturday 14 September, and rises to £72.55 on Sunday 15 September for railcard users after the changes have been implemented, a 65p rise.
The Campaign for Better Transport explained that the railcard discount has always been one-third, but due to system limitations, this was applied mathematically at 34%, however those system limitations have now “eased” and the discount is being applied more accurately to one-third.
“The cost of a railcard hasn’t increased in 10 years. These hugely successful discounts will continue to offer passengers a third-off rail fares for £30 a year, making train travel more affordable and encouraging more people to use the train,” head of campaigns at the Campaign for Better Transport, Michael Solomon Williams, said.
Williams added that the advocacy group would like to see a northern network railcard introduced to “give passengers in the North of England the same discount offered to many of their southern counterparts by regional railcards”.
“We’re also calling on the chancellor to end the 5p cut to fuel duty and use the £2bn of recuperated revenue to freeze rail fares instead, which would help make rail more affordable for those passengers not eligible for a Railcard discount,” he added.
Big Issue has contacted National Rail for comment.
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