There’s a cracking story in the Sunday Times today which reveals that rail firms ‘need billions to plug a Covid shortfall’. Essentially, the government instruction to stay at home and work from home has seen the numbers using trains plummet. So they have an answer to that: according to Rupert Murdoch’s drooping organ, “they want to tear up ticketing rules to charge a sliding scale through the day.” Or, to put it another way, whack up the cost of off-peak tickets. That should bring in the missing billions, right?
The paper goes on: “Seasoned rail travellers know the drill: wait till 9:30 for the first cheap train of the day and save a fortune. However, the days of hunting for “off peak” tickets may be numbered, under plans dusted off by the railway industry.” It’s certainly something I recognise from the dim and distant past. If I went to London for a gig or a sporting event, I’d wait until the cheaper fares became available because the peak time fares were unaffordable. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, you didn’t have to book weeks or even months ahead to get cheaper fares: you just turned up. In more recent decades, tickets to just about anywhere have become if not wholly unaffordable, then frankly unjustifiable.
Late last year, we visited the Lake District and considered taking the train until we discovered the tickets would cost in excess of £250, so we drove. Recently, my partner went to Manchester and finding the rail fare to be over £100 took the Megabus instead at a third of the price. Even with my elderly person railcard, fares are still far too expensive and guess what? The rail firms want to make them even more unaffordable.
Increasingly, rail travel has become the exclusive mode of transport for the better off. The early morning trains from Bristol to London are, I would suggest, used by wealthy business folk, many of whose companies foot the bill. For as along I can remember, whenever I have visited London, I have driven, left my car in the cheapest car park I can find. Now, those rail firms want to make so called off peak fares as expensive as the peak fares because obviously even more expensive fares are what we have all been waiting for to get back on the train.
There is clearly no plan by anyone, least of all the hopeless transport secretary Grant Shapps, for the future of the railways beyond allowing the business fat cats to take their share dividends while the rest of us get back in our cars.
Before long, there will be calls to rip up all the rail tracks to create extra roads because no one will be able to afford to take the train. I’m absolutely not kidding. What is the point of a national rail network if only a small percentage of people can afford to use it?
