Fare basket to increase by 3%

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Here we go again ... from The Guardian

An increase of more than 3% is expected to be applied to some fares in the new year, including season tickets. Fare prices are linked to the rate of inflation recorded for July, which will be unveiled on Wednesday.

Quiet news time - announce it for and get maximum press coverage in August where there is media to fill.

Implement it at the start of January - a quiet news time when you again get maximum press coverage ...

[paul7575]

Don’t they usually run the story again in September as well, when DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) confirm what was already assumed in August?

Paul

[TaplowGreen]

Prices rise as customer satisfaction with punctuality/reliability falls to as low as 62%, as has been reported this morning on the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page).

[old original]

...and of course the unions start bleeting on,  in an attempt to pretend they're on the side of the passenger whilst slamming in pay claims to, at least, match inflation if not exceed it. Where do they think the money comes from??

[JayMac]

There's no general election on the horizon* so it's doubtful HMG will freeze fares rises or lower the percentage.



*Unless the government falls over Brexit. Which isn't in the realms of fantasy.

[SandTEngineer]

Well.  From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Rail fares: Grayling urges inflation change to slow rises

The rail industry should change how it calculates fare rises and staff wages to cut costs for passengers, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling has said.

He has asked train operators and unions to use a different inflation measure, the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), to determine rail fare and wage increases.

This is lower than the current tool used, which includes mortgage costs.

But the RMT^▸ (National Union of Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers) union said it opposed Mr Grayling's call - made hours before January's rail fare rise is announced.

Fares are expected to go up by 3.5% at the start of the next year.

The exact increase will be announced on Wednesday when official inflation figures - used to set the price increases - for July are published.

Economists are predicting that the Retail Prices Index (RPI^▸ (Revenue Protection Inspector (or Retail Price Index, depending on the context))) measure of inflation - the number used by the Department for Transport to set rail fare increases - will increase by 3.5%.

This year rail fares rose by 3.6% - the biggest jump for five years.

Mr Grayling said he wanted to see "lower levels of increases for passengers in future".

"This will require a move away from the use of the Retail Prices Index in the way the industry operates to the more commonly used Consumer Prices Index," he wrote in his letter.

He said pay deals should also be based on the same, lower measure.

"I support paying rail staff decent wages for the hard work they do, but I also now believe it is important that pay agreements also use CPI and not RPI in future," he said.

Mr Grayling urged the rail companies' membership body the Rail Delivery Group to help the government move towards using CPI for future pay deals.

He said the move would help the industry to "keep costs down".

The letter was sent to all the rail unions, with a separate letter sent to Paul Plummer, the chief executive of the Rail Delivery Group, asking for his support.

Shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald said Mr Grayling was in charge of how much firms could raise regulated fares by.

"He has the power to enforce this, he's just choosing not to.

"The truth is that our fragmented, privatised railway drives up costs and leaves passengers paying more for less," he said.

Mick Cash, leader of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, said it would fight any attempt to impose a "pay cap" on its members in a drive to protect private train company profits.

"This is a basket-case government and a lame duck transport secretary continuing its all-out war on staff and passengers alike," he added.

The TUC union earlier calculated that rail fares had risen over twice as fast as wages over the past decade.

Wednesday's fare hike comes after a summer of chaos for many train customers, after a rail timetable overhaul saw scores of cancellations and delays.

[plymothian]

Will someone buy Mick Cash a Thesaurus; that man gets right on my Bristols!  (Or perhaps they have and he has now added "lame duck" to his vocabulary.

The UK^▸ (United Kingdom) has a real problem with public transport in that it does not see it as beneficial to the population and therefore must be self-sufficient, hence high bus and rail fares because the user must pay.

The railways have never been self-sufficient since they were built. 

[a-driver]

Rail fares: Grayling urges inflation change to slow rises

The rail industry should change how it calculates fare rises and staff wages to cut costs for passengers, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling has said.

If you want to cut costs for passengers let’s start by looking at large projects like the electrification of the GWML^▸ (Great Western Main Line). On time and on budget is it?!

[JayMac]

Shameless but quite canny of Chris Grayling.

It is within his purview to change the fares rise percentage for regulated fares. Its his department that regulates them.

To mention rail staff pay deals in the same breath puts into the mind of passengers that it is those (very generous compared to other industries) annual pay increases that are driving up fares.

Of course, one can be cut without the other. But is Chris Grayling spoiling for a fight with the rail unions?

I can see him saying that he tried to cut the fares increase but was prevented from doing so by the unions.

[TaplowGreen]

Rail fares: Grayling urges inflation change to slow rises

The rail industry should change how it calculates fare rises and staff wages to cut costs for passengers, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling has said.

If you want to cut costs for passengers let’s start by looking at large projects like the electrification of the GWML^▸ (Great Western Main Line). On time and on budget is it?!

Do you understand the difference between CAPEX  and OPEX?

[a-driver]

Do you understand the difference between CAPEX  and OPEX?

Yes.  Capital and Operational expenditure.

[TaplowGreen]

Do you understand the difference between CAPEX  and OPEX?

Yes.  Capital and Operational expenditure.

OK assuming you actually understand what they mean as well as the abbreviations, you'll appreciate that citing the cost of capital projects in the context of staff costs/pay rises doesn't really work?

[grahame]

From The BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page)

UK^▸ (United Kingdom) inflation rose to 2.5% in July, after holding steady at 2.4% in the previous three months as the cost of transport and computer games increased.

It was the first jump in the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) measure since November and was in line with forecasts.

Meanwhile the Retail Prices Index (RPI^▸ (Revenue Protection Inspector (or Retail Price Index, depending on the context))) measure of inflation fell to 3.2%.

The Department for Transport uses the RPI figure to set the maximum annual increase for regulated rail fares.

Does the RPI include the cost of transportation?   If so, isn't there an element of the fares going up this year ... because they went up last year?  A system that - to a very limited degree it must be admitted - stokes its own inflation?

[stuving]

Does the RPI^▸ (Revenue Protection Inspector (or Retail Price Index, depending on the context)) include the cost of transportation?   If so, isn't there an element of the fares going up this year ... because they went up last year?  A system that - to a very limited degree it must be admitted - stokes its own inflation?

Yes, but it's only a very small effect and not worth eliminating. In 2013, the latest year for which I have RPI weights sitting around doing nothing, rail fares were weighted by 0.6% in the total. Weights are adjusted each year to reflect the amount of that spending in the total of consumer expenditure that RPI measures.

That may be rising, if fares overall are going up faster than other prices, and/or if more of them are being paid. In 1996-8 that weight was 0.4%, but going back to 1989 it was 0.7%. If you go back further still, I'm sure rail fares were even more important as a share of spending.

[martyjon]

Does the RPI^▸ (Revenue Protection Inspector (or Retail Price Index, depending on the context)) include the cost of transportation ?

Don't know without googling RPI and CPI but a major difference in the two is RPI includes mortgage costs whereas CPI does not. This is a legacy of Mrs. Thatcher. When wages were steaming ahead during her tenure of No. 10 state pensions were uplifted by the average of wage inflation and so her administration changed the state pension uplift rate to be based on the RPI which was lower until some bright spark looking for promotion to her cabinet pointed out that the RPI included mortgage costs for which most state pensioners did not of course have and so was born the CPI which subsequently became the trigger point for state pension uplifts and was thus the ridicule of the infamous 50p state pension rise in Gordon Browns first budget. This was subsequently revised to the triple lock of the 2010 coalition government which was the higher of, 2 1/2 %, wage inflation or CPI and ever since wage inflation and CPI have remained below 2 1/2 % much to the chagrin of the present administration who have an ongoing exercise to define a fairer method of uprating the state pension, fairer to whom.