Rail workers to stage protests as passengers hear fare rise news
Commuters will find out on Tuesday how much extra they will be charged from the new year.
Rail workers are to protest warning passengers that they are paying “more for less” ahead of an announcement on how much rail fares will go up next year.
Commuters and other passengers will find out on Tuesday how much extra they will be charged from the new year.
The Government links the annual January rise in Britain's regulated fares with the previous July's Retail Price Index (RPI) measure of inflation, which will be announced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Regulated fares make up almost half of all tickets and include season tickets and standard returns.
They increased by 1.9% in January, but the RPI figure for July this year is expected to be around 3.9%, which would lead to the highest increase in fares since 2012.
Rail unions said that, even as fares rise, rail engineering work is being delayed or cancelled, skilled jobs are being lost and staff are being cut on trains, stations and ticket offices.
They will call for reduced fares, public ownership and protection of jobs, during protests on Tuesday outside railway stations across the country, including Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool.
Transport Salaried Staffs Association leader Manuel Cortes said:
“When the Tories passed legislation which allowed rail fare hikes year in, year out, they made legal one of the greatest train robberies in railway history.
“Now, the state-owned railway companies of France, Germany, Holland and Italy, who have gobbled up large swathes of our network, are allowed by Transport Secretary Chris Grayling to laugh all the way to the bank at our expense.
“Dick Turpin had the decency to wear a mask when he robbed his passengers. Today train companies, with the Government's blessing, hide behind the Retail Price Index as a method of legitimately fleecing more money from hard-pressed passengers at the start of each new year.”
Mick Whelan, general secretary of train drivers' union Aslef, said: “After years of austerity, when workers have not achieved pay increases for years at or around inflation, it is unfair that the industry they subsidise creates transport poverty and hurts the communities and industries that they should be supporting.”
Fewer than half of passengers are satisfied with the value for money of train tickets, according to the latest survey by passenger watchdog Transport Focus