Dear All,
A new year’s ‘gift’ for commuters in the UK has proved rather unwelcome: a rise in fares of, on average, 2.3 per cent.
This has angered commuters and sparked off a wave of protests at various stations across the country. It has also given the Labour Party an opportunity to publicise their criticisms of the existing system and highlight their own policy on the railways.
The fare rise has come after commuters on some routes have experienced huge disruptions to their journeys -- Southern Rail routes for example have been beset by industrial action and commuters on those routes have had what some described ‘nightmare journeys’ in to work. A very great number of commuters are very angry and it’s not solely because the fares have gone up, it’s because fares have gone up and service has declined sharply. Commuters who hold season tickets recount how they are mostly forced to shove their way on to overcrowded trains and stand all the way because no seats are available.
Desperate commuters and shorter trains or delays and cancellations result in a horrible sort of desperation and mob ruthlessness. It is not a nice thing to experience (as the commuters piled onto the roofs and sides of Karachi buses might also tell you).
UK commuters expect fares to rise by some small percentage every year but this year’s rise in fares is the "highest since January 2014 when they increased by 2.8%" and so they are now quite angry. As BBC’s Richard Westcott pointed out, "Even if you allow for inflation, rail fares have gone up by around 25% since the mid-1990s [and] some tickets have spiked by 40% in just a decade".
On the question of why this is, he explains, "because successive governments have been changing the proportion of the rail bill paid for by passengers. It used to be around 50%. Today it’s around 70%".
Britain’s railways were nationalised after the Second World War during Clement Atlee’s Labour government, and British Rail operated all rail routes till the Conservative government decided in 1992 that privatisation was needed. So "between 1994 and 1997, British Rail was privatised. Ownership of the track and infrastructure passed to Railtrack on 1 April 1994. Passenger operations were later franchised to 25 private-sector operators and the freight services were sold to six companies, five of whom were owned by the same buyer."
Although Labour opposed privatisation, they did not reverse it after coming into government in 1997, but what they did do is see off plans to privatise the London Underground network. But now that the routes given to private companies are not running efficiently, the present Labour Party (headed by old fashioned socialist Jeremy Corbyn) suggested that the railways should be re-nationalised and be run by the state. This idea, which would have seemed absurd and foolish a few years ago, has actually gained some public support.
Passenger protest groups Action for Rail, Fair Fares and Campaign for Better Transport have managed to attract murmurs of support from many. People have started to take clear positions on the issue as for example London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who has called for the government to freeze rail fares and who has taken the position that TfL (Transport for London) should take over more rail services.
The mayor has managed to freeze all TfL fares till 2020 and he seems to understand how important this issue is for people who see up to a third of their income now being spent on just getting to work.
The railways and how they are run might well become an election issue in Britain.
It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out.
Best wishes