Rail prices increasing: What can the Government do to better transport in the UK?

National World - LocalTV

The Government has announced that regulated train fares in England are to increase by 4.6% next year. It was also revealed that the price of most railcards will rise by £5. The rail increase is set to come into affect from 2nd March 2025.

Transcript

00:00Now, the issue that we have here is the pricing signals are wrong to encourage people to take

00:05sustainable modes of transport.

00:06Campaign for Better Transport, we support public transport, that's rail and bus and

00:11all modes of sustainable transport, but I think everyone agrees there's a climate emergency,

00:14so we really need to be encouraging people to take the train.

00:17Also, cost of living, quite apart from climate emergency, costs a lot of money to take the

00:20train and people are actually choosing to drive when they were previously regularly

00:24taking the train.

00:25It's a serious, serious issue.

00:26The public aren't going to be happy with the rail fare rise.

00:29The problem is, at the moment, rail fares have bad press.

00:32The railways have a lot of bad press, it's been fragmented, there have been challenges

00:35and cancellations and services.

00:38Rail fare rises are really bad news, people don't like it, they don't think I'll take

00:41the train because it's affordable.

00:42And a lot of people who might think about taking the train, never have, see these headlines

00:46and that puts them off.

00:48And if you want to be a popular government, an easy way to make the public happy, subsidise

00:53them rail fares and bus fares, make it affordable for people, so that's our take.

00:57In documents published alongside the budget, the Treasury reportedly said that, quote,

01:01these policies will support the Secretary of State for Transport's plans for record,

01:07which will increase efficiency and reduce costs, while boosting ridership and revenue

01:11and improving performance.

01:12The government's priorities, to an extent, do align with ours.

01:16So there's good progress on rail reform, so we really need to see track and train come

01:20back together.

01:21So there's one organisation running track and train.

01:23The fact that the government has a rail reform bill is good news.

01:26The fact that the government has a better buses bill is very good news.

01:29So there is positive action in terms of public transport, and we are very supportive of the

01:32government, we work with them.

01:34But unfortunately, on these key indicators, the pricing signals, it doesn't look great.

01:38And we've seen bus fares go up as well, it really doesn't look great.

01:40And the reality isn't good for a lot of people.

01:42We need much bolder action, we need to be vision led with transport, we need to actually

01:46think about the world we want to see rather than thinking where we can save money.

01:50We don't really have the time to be thinking about saving money and having that kind of

01:53rhetoric.

01:54Everybody needs access to the train network.

01:56Let's build those networks and invest properly.

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