Cambridge to London season tickets could hit £5,593 in 2022 after ‘brutal’ rail fare rise of 3.8%
Rail users were left aghast after the Department for Transport announced that rail fares will rise by up to 3.8 per cent from March 1.
It means a season ticket from Cambridge to London terminals could rise by £204.74 to nearly £5,593.
Cambridge’s Labour MP Daniel Zeichner condemned the hike as a “brutal betrayal”, while campaigner group Railfuture East Anglia suggested the government had forgotten the warnings from the COP26 climate change conference already.
The price cap of 3.8 per cent is in line with July’s Retail Prices Index (RPI) measure of inflation. Previously, it has been based on RPI plus one percentage point.
But it will be the steepest increase since January 2013.
Mr Zeichner said analysis by Labour showed commuters in Cambridge will be paying an extra £1,829 for a season ticket between the city and London compared to when the Conservatives came to power in 2010 - a 49 per cent rise.
He said average fares had risen twice as fast as wages under the Tories.
Mr Zeichner said: “Many families in Cambridge are already struggling to make ends meet this Christmas, and rather than give them a helping hand the Tories have piled on more misery.
The worst part is that the communities who will feel the brunt of years of broken promises, empty words and no action are at the same time being squeezed by the Conservatives’ tax hikes and rising bills, as those with the broadest shoulders remain largely untouched.“
Peter Wakefield, vice chair of Railfuture East Anglia, a leading voluntary railway campaign group, said: “We are deeply disappointed at the increase in railway fares announced by the Department for Transport / Treasury. Note that all the fare revenue now goes directly back to them.
“They surely realise that the increase will make it all the more difficult to attract passengers back to the railway post-lockdown at a time we urgently need to to decarbonise our transport network by decreasing the use of motor vehicles.
“It is doubly difficult to understand this fare increase when those who drive those vehicles have had the duty on the fuel they burn frozen for no less than 12 years. Train users will note this and feel they are being unfairly penalised.
“The DfT/Treasury are clearly not heeding the warnings from the Glasgow climate change conference. Train users will note that their journey on the train emits little CO2 but because road transport fuel duty has been frozen, over those 12 years there’s been a three per cent rise in transport emitted CO2.
“If the road fuel escalator had been used as originally planned over those years, there would have been a cut in CO2 emissions of no less than 13 per cent.
“This fare increase just does not make sense at this time.”
Rail minister Chris Heaton-Harris described the 3.8 per cent rise as a “fair balance” that means the government can “continue to invest record amounts into a more modern, reliable railway, ease the burden on taxpayers and protect passengers from the highest RPI in years”.
He added that delaying the changes until March enables people to save money by giving them longer to renew their tickets at current prices.
But rail union the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association accused the government of being “hell-bent on discouraging rail travel”, claiming the fares increase will “put yet more people off and price many out of rail travel completely”.
Demand for rail travel is more than 40 per cent below pre-pandemic levels.
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