Great Western Coffee Shop

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jan/02/rail-fares-train-operators-accused-of-milking-the-system-as-rises-kick-in

Quite heavily covered on the BBC and elsewhere this morning...........is it the usual "why oh why" or are the year on year increases "truly staggering" as the Labour bod says?

Our country chooses the mid-summer lull of August to announce the overall rate rise on regulated fares as a percentage, and it chooses the dead period for real news over the new year for the new fares to sink in. I don't suppose you would see the same level of coverage if fare rises were based on the inflation figure announced in March, and implemented on the second Monday of September.

Whether such increases are "staggering" depends on your point of view. The 5% rise in real terms in the last 20 years which I quoted the other day at http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=17809.0 doesn't seem "staggering" to me and the implication (if the increase was indeed eye-watering in some years) is that there have been some / many years where rises have just matched inflation.   But we do need to be careful in accepting that view.

a) What does "in real terms" mean - is it against the retail price index, against average wages, against general travel costs, or what?

b) Were we starting from a really low point for the railways where extra income was desperately needed to ensure that lines could remain open and services running frequently enough for people to stay with rail?

c) Does the 5% apply only to regulated fares / what has happened in the meantime to unregulated fares and to terms and conditions that have changed the fare system map? Members with a long memory may recall a Westbury to London travel card product that was withdrawn a few years back and lead to a steep increase, to restrictions added to all line rovers that mean they're no longer suitable for some uses, to changes to Groupsave that put some group fares up by 75%, and indeed fare banding at weekends being introduced by one operator tomorrow which - if I have read it right - mean that a weekend day trip to London goes up by around 25% for a lot of people to the South West of London.   Against these rises, thought, you also need to consider (whether it's in the 5% or not) some fare reductions / system changes that now offer lower cost options.  And I would like to highlight
* Swindon to Salisbury on the 06:12 - DOWN by 50%
* Severn Beach line fares - my understanding is that they have become much more affordable
* New routing fares from Swindon and Chippenham to West Wiltshire, slashing fares on direct trains
* Advance purchase tickets which at time offer far lower fares than alternatives
And I'm sure there are more examples - they just don't make the news like the rises do

d) With passenger journeys having doubled in the past 20 years, but with only 15% more rolling stock on the lines, isn't there a huge efficiency saving?   Has that really all been re-invested in rail, or does it go to various other places like franchise payments (which some consider a tax on travel) and to the wicked companies who run the trains ;) and their shareholders?

e) Should we be reducing rail fares in real terms due to efficiencies made, or have we inflated the cost of provision so much over the years by insisting on better and better trains with extreme safety, access-for-all, comfort and a desire to keep fleet age down adding hugely to the costs? 

Conclusion?   "Staggering" isn't an absolute measure - it's the view in each case of the person using the word.  And it's a very useful word to use with emotion to help persuade people of your view if you think the system under which are railways operate needs major revision.

While we're "at it", mid December is a staggeringly awkward time to change the timetables at least as far as marketing and promotion of new opportunities offered is concerned ...

If these fell closer together, the press wouldn't feature them quite so heavily each time. Nearly 6 months apart, the press goes to town both times for the same rise - I'm sure some infrequent travellers think that there are two rises each year of this %.


Or me....but there are those that think rail travel should be free at point of use. Or at least subsidised stupidly heavily


The former.


No - the Government of the day - Labour - wanted the taxpayer subsidy to get smaller & the users to pay more fairly for their use of it...didn't it start off at RPI+2% generally? Before the invention of CPI% too?


Larger increases in general terms - eg Virgin EC this year have put some walk-up fares up by 7%...befause they can.


That would be a *long* way to the SW of London - only affects those SW of Salisbury.

While we're "at it", mid December is a staggeringly awkward time to change the timetables at least as far as marketing and promotion of new opportunities offered is concerned ...[/quote]

That'll be something that can be changed once/when/if Brexit takes place - it's an EU habit!

5% in real terms?

Yet elsewhere I have read of 'twice the rate of inflation and wages in the last decade', '25% more than inflation since privatisation'.

January regulated price rises only cover around 40% of fares. All others are at the whim of operators.

The cheapest tier Advance Purchase from Bristol TM to London Paddington in 2007 was £10.00. Today it is £15.00. A 50% increase over a period where inflation increased by only 31%.

I'm of the belief that railways are socially necessary so they should be more heavily subsidised by the state, not progressively less.

Paying more for an improved and better service is a a reasonable approach.

However, these increases have been ongoing for 12+ years as the cost has moved from government to passenger, and very few improvements have actually bee made.

Fantastically high costs of rebuilding stations do not seem to justify benefits seen, with the possible exception of Reading and Glasgow Queens.

The high costs of upgrading track and signals as yet do not seem to add significant capacity.

At the moment, it always tomorrow (6 months, or few years) that things will get better, but this never appears to materialise.

Surely, in the light of the Southern Scandal, the botched implementation of GW Electrification, this years increases should have been cancelled.

I thought it was the other way ... fares from Salisbury and east thereof into London, with exceptions being made for those service further west.   See http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=17782

From the SWT web site / information, remembering that super off peak tickets were valid on all trains on Saturdays and Sundays until the end of last year.

Forgive me having an insular view.   On 14th December last, I picked my wife up (metaphorically, not physically) from an overseas trip, and we took a train from a station that was newly opened in 1999. Several changes along the way, one at a station that was completely redeveloped in very recent years, and the final change onto a train that had ceased running at the time convenient for us (I understand) in 1966, and resumed in 2013.  It seems at times that we so quickly discount improvements whereas we remember the delays and heartache, and find it highly frustrating awaiting developments - especially when someone or other has lead us to believe one set of dates / improvements just to have hopes and promises dashed or delayed.

Many of the above posts show that people have very different experiences of the rail system, dependent on how they use it and what their journey is.

For those who have put up with, and continue to do so, a norm of traveling on dangerously overcrowded trains and waiting on cold platforms open to the elements while they wait for delayed or cancelled services, with unreliable or non-existent information systems, the idea of any fare increase on fares which are already the highest per mile in Europe is not going to be popular. So it is perhaps not surprising that they don't appreciate being told they are benefiting from expenditure on the infrastructure elsewhere, which may one day in the distant future bring benefits to them, when they have heard the same said for the last 20 years.

Yup - you're right - thanks - I misread it. Quite clear on SWT website too.

I think that sums it up quite well............if only the fare rises were as "Manana Manana" as the long promised improvements!!!

I would not mind if increased fares resulted in actual improvements, but most of the changes that I have seen have been backwards !

When I lived in London, fares rose substantially to pay for improvements that in south east London consisted of replacing 8 car slam door EMUs with a mixture of 4 car and 6 car networkers. I got a seat on the old 8 car trains, but had to stand on the new shorter ones.

At the time I was travelling regularly to visit my parents in Gillingham Dorset. A total route modernisation took place, resulting in full length loco hauled trains being replaced by 3 car DMUs. Again I got a seat on the old trains but had to stand on the new ones, some improvement !

I never used cross country that much, but recall standing on new shorter trains replacing sitting on old full length trains, progress I suppose.

At present we have an enormous programme of investment in the southwest. We already have the new and less reliable signalling, and delays due to electrification works. Soon to come are the overhead wires coming down, and the new shorter trains.
Of course lessons might have been learnt. It must be said that the electrification structures now being erected look more substantial than those used on the failed east coast scheme.
And the numbers of new shorter trains ordered SHOULD permit of two coupled together being used on many rush hour services.

Lots of other services and routes will be longer and/or have more seats due to increased frequencies within the next few years.  For example, all of the suburban services on the GWML at the Paddington end are changing from 2-6 car trains to 8 or 9 car trains within the next few years. 

Surely it predates our accession to the EEC, let alone the creation of the EU?

I thought it was relatively recent.

Timetable changes always used to be May & September. The EU imposed the December change to bring us in line with the rest of Europe

For UK seasonality, May and September make sense, and smaller changes will can still be introduced then.

And German timetables also used to switch in May and September. But for some changes those are the wrong times of year, here or elsewhere. And French timetables are full of trains running only on listed of dates, and other irregularities. And the 2000 UK timetable book (26 Sept to 27 May) had loads of timetables with other change dates in them.

So maybe it's a bit more complicated. What is it that comes in in December? Is it a timetable (the same each day) or a timetable (a set of daily timetables covering a year or half-year, which can have changes at any date)?

If you're referring to Crossrail, how does that justify GWR raising their fares on suburban routes?

By how much are Paddington-Reading suburban services being lengthened in the next year or two?

The impression I get is that at best, they will be running to stand still capacity wise......and there are still huge deficiencies in Customer Service, to say nothing of the much vaunted new signalling systems which seem less reliable, and the endlessly delayed electrification (and yes I know that much of this is down to NR, but it's still the customers who are paying the fares) - if fare increases were linked to combined NR/TOC all round performance KPIs and customer satisfaction, you may just notice that it creates a catalyst for more rapid improvement.

A prime example being GWR's appalling delays in responses to correspondence.....I have now been waiting almost 3 months for a response to a basic query - it has been escalated to Hopwood, one of his flunkies informed me recently that I "should" receive a response "within a few more weeks" - that may seem like a minor issue to some, but it's symptomatic of a wider, complacent apathy within a business.

class 387
45 * 4 = 180 carriages

Class 165
16 * 3 + 20 * 2 = 88 carriages
Class 166
21 * 3 = 63 carriages

So replacing 151 by 180, but need to retain:
12 carriages for branches off Paddington to Reading
20 carriages for Reading to Gatwick
8 carriages for Didcot to Oxford shuttle
= 40 carriages

Suggest 2 & 3 car trains up to 4 cars; 5 & 6 car trains up to 8 cars on London - Reading - Didcot, London - Reading - Newbury, and shorter runs within that area.

I understand we might see peak hour 387 trains from Swindon to Paddington, and with the loss of Oxford and Henley electrification at this stage there may be logic in using 387s on other services west from Didcot to the limits of elecrification; there might be operational logic in running the trains that stop more from Paddington and terminate at Cardiff with 387s, and the trains with fewer stops in England with 80x units.

387s to Chippenham seems operationally risky having to turn them on the main line, but there would be some logic in that with a re-instatement of the bay platform; reverting to the previous layout at Chippenham, with the island being (from north) London services and bay(s) and the platform by the station buildings being the main westbound line would make some sense, now that almost everything calls and so the high speed non-stop capability is virtually unused.

This is an educated guess, by the way ... others may have better figures to offer.

Some "back of fag packet" calculations ...

Call it currently 40% overcrowded and 60% increase in capacity - so new trains will be running initially at 87.5% capacity.  Growth of 4% per annum puts them back to running at capacity in 3 years. But that's in theory; remember Crossrail will be providing extra capacity from May 2018 on the inner suburbs (replacing the Hayes and Harlington shuttle) and from December 2019 to Reading. The dates there are quoted as a "planning assumption" on the Crossrail site.

The EU directive isn't imposed. There's nothing stopping any nation having their own timetable change dates, provided international traffic isn't affected. If international traffic is affected then the EU Commission merely has to be informed. The UK in fact only follows one part of the directive - the December change. The directive says that subsidiary changes should be made on the second Sunday in June. The UK makes theirs in May.

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32002D0844:EN:HTML

That is the key statistic for me.  And the key challenge that the ToCs, and governments (of all colours) have failed to crack. 

I was merely replying to Broadgage's previous post where he suggested that infrastructure improvements and new trains generally result in fewer carriages and less capacity.  The three examples he cited were from 15-25 years ago when the railway was operating under very different circumstances.

As regarding your comments on the suburban trains though, an all-day Hayes to Paddington service started today which means an additional 32 trains per day in each direction from Hayes and Southall which works out at 256 carriages worth per weekday in each direction on what was offered at this time last year.  The service from West Ealing, Ealing Broadway and Acton Main Line is no more frequent but the longer trains mean an additional 192 carriages per day.

Then, all being well, we have 8-car electric trains on Maidenhead peak trains next May, and an all day electric service between Didcot and Paddington due to commence from December or very early 2018.

Finally, although the Crossrail service proper doesn't start until late 2019, the Heathrow Connect service is due to change from 5-car trains to the new Class 345 Crossrail trains which are 9-car in length in May 2018.  Another big boost for capacity on the busiest section between Hayes/Southall and Ealing/Paddington.

So, whilst making no attempt to justify fares increases on what has been a pretty awful last three years, finally the improvements are actually coming on stream.  It's been an immensely frustrating wait for everyone.

2.3%? Pah!

My Weekly Somerset Network bus ticket on Buses of Somerset (FirstGroup) has gone up from £15 to £25. A 66% increase.

BoS argument is that the previous price was a special offer because there was competition from Webberbus. Having seen off that competition in late summer they say they've held the Season prices as long as they could.

When Webberbus went First took over some routes. My new hometown, Langport, kept its two buses an hour to Taunton, with, in the other direction, one going to Street and one to Yeovil. First have now cut the service so that there's just an hourly service between Taunton and Yeovil.

So I have a service cut in real terms and a massive fares hike. Thanks First!

Other bus companies putting up prices too ... but there's no central database of bus fares (and indeed many bus fares aren't even online) so it's hard to make a headline story. 

Via http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=17828.0 I have already noted "Wiltshire Council have authorised an increase in fares on their contracted services equating to approximately 10% to assist with the shortfall in funding we are currently experiencing and to ensure the longer term viability of these supported services." and if that's applied county-wide it's a 10% rise across about a half of the bus routes. 

Via the same link, "Fares will increase by up to 50p on single and return tickets with multi journey tickets changing accordingly. The changes have been made to address recent increases in operational costs, which includes the hidden costs associated with worsening congestion across the region." is again an increase of (my estimate) around 10%, but bus fares (unlike rail fares) aren't limited to a single annual rise; I recall prices rising for people using the bus to get from Chippenham and Corsham to their local main hospital (the RUH in Bath) last summer when the Chippenham to Bath route moved from being competitively run to a monopoly.

Late last year's news, but typical National Express prices from Melksham to London doubled a couple of months back - which now makes super off peak rail with Groupsave the cheapest way for groups to make the journey, as well as being [advert]quicker and more frequent[/advert]

Whilst I am looking forward to the mass introduction of the 387s, don't forget that a 3 car turbo has more seats than a four car 387, so it's not all about the number of carriages.

That's at present, more would be required when the enhanced services start, (unless only using 2 cars) + 6 cars required for Basingstoke shuttles.

Perhaps I discounted 20% of seats on the 16x units because they're the middle of 3 seats that no-one likes sitting in.  But then I'm shooting myself in the foot by saying that and looking forward to them providing more seating on Cardiff - Portsmouth ...

I thought about Basingstoke in my original post. My logic in not counting them was that there currently run with 150/0 units and whilst 6 carriages of 16x may be retained at Reading for them, that will release 6 carriages of 150/0 out westward so I think the maths stay the same and I've just simplified the arithmetic by not taking out and adding in the same numbers. 

I didn't include any retention beyond Oxford for Banbury (potentially an oversight on my part) or the north cotswolds (should become universally 5 coach IEP?). And I'm aware of a release of between 4 or 5 carriages between Swindon and Cheltenham Spa when IEP comes in there and the service that currently a local one becomes mainline; two of those carriages are the 'spot hire' unit that comes off the Salisbury depot each day and I suspect that arrangement would come to an end. 

 I sympathise with anyone, especially those who commute daily whilst on a 'minimum wage'.
 So the bold statement by Chris Grayling, 'wages rising faster than rail fares' left me questioning
 this defence of fare increases.
 I heard it a second time on our local news, that I have to ask. how many of us have actually had
 a 2% increase on our salary ?

Perhaps he's been selectively quoted "minimum wages rising faster than rail fares"?
http://www.minimum-wage.co.uk

Look hard enough for a statistic to prove a point and you'll find one!

Latest figure of ONS in average growth of take home earnings is for the year to October - 2.5%

Is the average wage rise giving the right picture? How much of that is due to few people getting a very large rise. The median might give a better picture.

ONS says:
The main weakness as I see it is that it doesn't include consideration of the self-employed. Also the sample needs to be representative.

It is the stat used in the uprating of basic/new state pensions.

It's all very well saying "I shouldn't pay more for the service I get as a passenger". The trouble is that, unless something changes the efficiency of the railways, that means "people who don't use railways the should pay for me". That needs justification.

The other half of the equation is efficiency. The ORR have been doing some sums on this, though the result (in Rail productivity 2010-2015 (http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/excel_doc/0005/19481/rail-productivity-2010-2015.xls) is a bit puzzling. They have produced figures for the cost (p) per passenger km, with general inflation (i.e. for GDP, not retail prices) taken out. Their figures cover 2011/12 to 2014/15, and I've copied them below. They include infrastructure costs, which is fair enough for maintenance and routine renewals. It seems wrong for enhancements which will be paid for, if at all, over the life of the new infrastructure. So I've put that as an additional add-on at the bottom.

Category	2010-11	2014-15	increase
Train Operating Costs	6.77	8.64	28%
ROSCO charges	2.50	1.87	-25%
Infrastructure opex and maintenance	3.52	3.01	-15%
Infrastructure renewals	3.98	4.25	7%
Total	16.77	17.77	6%
Infrastructure enhancements	2.38	4.20	76%
Total	19.16	21.97	15%

The in-between years, which I left out, suggest these changes are all trends rather than oddities of the two years shown. It does look strange, doesn't it, that train leasing has got so much cheaper, while operating costs have gone up so much. If you want to know why, you could look in the ORR's bigger collection of "GB rail industry financial information" (http://orr.gov.uk/statistics/published-stats/gb-rail-industry-financial-information). Loads of numbers there! But, having looked at a few of them, I can't see where this effect comes from.

In my view, the figure is misleading, not JUST for the reason given of distortion due to small numbers getting a large rise, but ALSO it is based not on basic salary, but on take home pay, which in many cases includes overtime or similar payment.
It would be very perilous to be reliant on overtime payment in order to be able to afford fares to work. Any cessation of overtime could result in the job becoming non viable. If someone resigned under such conditions they would struggle to obtain social security payment on the grounds that they had voluntarily left employment.

There is a series on basic pay only. The latest rise figure happens to be the same, ie 2.5%.