Big rise in rail fares in the New Year

[whole diary]

[Robin Summerhill]

I doubt that many of us would seek to argue with what Red Squirrel has to say, but I?m not sure what the relevance of it is to the thread which is entitled: Big rise in rail fares the New Year

No matter what the general trend might be over the next 5 years or 10 years or 20 years, the average motorist will see at the moment marginally less traffic on the roads, and a lot more inner city parking space available as all-day parking requirements for commuters are minimal.

So right now, this minute, how do you think an above inflation increase in rail fares will go down with the motoring public, and what will they do to attract those people back to the railways?

[Red Squirrel]

I was responding to the suggestion that COVID-19 might lead to a re-emergence of the philosophy of Marples and Beeching. I don't think it will.

Of course above-inflation rises in rail fares are not going to help. The idea that passengers need to somehow repay the cost of keeping trains running during the pandemic is absurd; it's like doubling the price of a pint of beer next year to pay for furloughing bar staff.

How do we get people back on trains? Firstly we stop telling them not to catch trains. Once this crisis is over - and we could allow ourselves to hope that things might start to get better as soon as next spring - the railway will need to have a long hard think about how it can adjust to better reflect new travel patterns as these emerge. My biggest worry is that for decades the railway seems to have almost gone out of its way to make itself inflexible, with specific fixed-formation trains race-tuned for specific routes and flows. That may be the hardest nut to crack.