Britain’s biggest train company is facing an investigation into claims that it
is abusing its monopoly on key routes by imposing the highest fare increases
since privatisation.
South West Trains (SWT) is raising morning off-peak fares by 20 per cent from
May 20 on services into Waterloo. The increase will affect thousands of
people who work flexible hours and wait until after the peak to take
advantage of cheaper tickets.
The company claims that the increases are necessary to reduce overcrowding on
trains arriving in London before noon. But passenger groups believe the real
reason for the rises is that the company wants to raise its profits from
passengers who would find it difficult to travel later.
Passenger Focus, the rail watchdog, complained to the Rail Regulator after it
found that the rises were only implemented at stations where SWT had a
monopoly, such as Woking, Winchester, Guildford, Salisbury, Southampton and
Bournemouth. The company is freezing fares at Reading and raising them by
only 1 per cent at Basingstoke because it competes at these stations with
First Great Western.
This month’s increases affect off-peak trains arriving in London as late as
12.49pm. A so-called “cheap day return” from Southampton to London will rise
from £27.20 to £32.60 and from Bournemouth to London from £36.40 to £43.70.
Anthony Smith, chief executive of Passenger Focus, said: “The scale of these
price increases is breathtaking and completely unacceptable. We have written
to the regulator asking him to investigate. The affordable, ‘turn-up and go’
railway has been further eroded and SWT is exploiting a monopoly market.
Families making day trips to London will be hard hit by these changes.”
Mr Smith said that if SWT was concerned about overcrowding, it would cut fares
on the last two trains of the morning peak, which were often half empty. “We
are very suspicious about their claims that these increases are needed to
deal with overcrowding because they haven’t tried any other measure, such as
dropping the price at the end of the peak.”
An SWT spokeswoman admitted that one of the reasons for not increasing fares
at Reading and Basingstoke was that the company was concerned it could lose
passengers to a rival train operator. She added: “We are trying to spread
the demand a bit across the day. We also have to raise money to invest in
the railway, though there would be no point in pricing people off the
railway and losing our off-peak market.”
SWT signed a new franchise last year under which it agreed to pay the
Department for Transport £1.2 billion over ten years. It cannot increase its
revenue from season ticket holders because their fares are set by the
Government. But its contract allows it to increase off-peak fares as often
as it likes.
This month’s increases will be the second in five months for SWT’s off-peak
passengers.
The company is also the subject of another complaint to the Rail Regulator
from Ed Davey, the Lib Dem MP for Surbiton. He said that SWT was breaching
the new Gender Equality Duty, in force since last month, because previous
rises fell heaviest on part-time workers, who are disproportionately female.
People who work two or three days a week have to buy day-return tickets,
which are set by SWT. It raised day-return tickets between Surbiton and
Waterloo by up to 36 per cent in January.
Mr Davey said: “These unfair fares have to stop and we have written to the
Office of Rail Regulation requesting an investigation. This will be a long
campaign to bust open these anticompetitive practices that hit local
commuters.”
In its letter to the rail regulator, Passenger Focus said: “We are very
concerned at the scale of the increase on the cheap day fare. We feel that
this move is against the wider passenger interest.”
SWT has already angered passengers by removing seats and lavatories on several
of its busiest routes to create more standing room.
Going north
20% the fare rise for services to London from stations with an SWT
monopoly
£43.70 the new price of a “cheap day return” from Bournemouth
16m passengers a year will pay 20 per cent more
440,000 people a day use SWT’s services
£770m the worth of Brian Souter, chief of Stagecoach, which owns
SWT, and his sister Ann Gloag
Source: Passenger Focus, The Sunday Times Rich List
Fares going up has been a nightmare for many of us coming into London from the north too.
I am paying £110 a week to get into Kings Cross, which is effectively 40 miles!
To top it off, the car park fare seems to go up every 3 months!!!
Currently I am paying £119 a week to get into work. The trains are still late now and again, the heaters are sometimes never turned on, the trains are filthy and getting worse.
Somebody somewhere is making a lot of money, and us the passengers are NOT getting a better service.
So what do we do? can we strike? but then how do we get into work?
This is where these Watchdog type groups are very helpful, I hope the government does more than just bat a few eye-lids and then move onto figuring out a new stealth tax to make more money off the top of these fare increases.
I remember back in the days when one could get a Burger and Fries for a couple of quid, nowadays we're looking at 6 quids.
Sorry for going off topic, but everything is relative!
Ash, Sandy, Bedfordshire
The train companies appear to be in league with the governments' apparent intent to tax the poor into ghettos.
The government want to tax the poor out of their cars with road tolls. The train companies would rather increase prices than improve their service. Any normal business sets the product or service price to attain a fair profit. If the demand is high it makes more sense to increase the supply.
At this rate only the rich will be able to afford to travel by train, and they won't want to. What will the train companies do then?
Bernard Mahan, Edinburgh, Scotland