The public believes rail fares constantly rise. That is hardly surprising: in the average year we are told not once but three times that tickets are about to cost more. Every year for decades I have diligently reported on each stage in this trifecta of misery.
In mid-August, the retail price index (RPI) for July is revealed. For reasons lost in the mists of history, successive governments use this arbitrary figure for a summer basket of goods to calibrate how much more you and I should pay for rail travel for the following year.
Over the decades since privatisation, the increase has been in line with RPI, sometimes plus or minus one per cent. Armed with the figure, calculating the increased cost of commuting from Leeds to Manchester, Swansea to Cardiff or Woking to Waterloo is a breeze. The usual suspects – the shadow transport secretary, trades unions and passenger groups – are readily on hand to deplore the potential rise.
Come late November, actual ticket prices are revealed for the benefit of travellers planning trips in the new year. I always check the anytime one-way fares from London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly (currently £193) and from Didcot Parkway to Swindon – a boggling £2.20 per minute, making it the most expensive main line train trip in Britain.
Round three was traditionally a fixture on the first day back at work in the new year. For several years, Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters gathered outside his local station, London King’s Cross, to lament yet another assault on the working classes.
During the Covid pandemic, the then transport secretary Grant Shapps moved the date to March. But the chorus remains the same: trains are shockingly expensive and you often don’t get a seat.
For 2026, it’s different. Rather than putting up ticket prices by a painful 4.8 per cent (last July’s RPI), the government is keeping them as they are. “We’re choosing to freeze rail fares for the first time in 30 years,” says chancellor Rachel Reeves.
That doesn’t guarantee that no tickets will cost more. The government controls only “regulated” fares. These comprise season tickets in the London area, anytime tickets around major cities and many off-peak return tickets on long-distance journeys.
More than half of fares are unregulated, including that London-Manchester ticket. But I imagine the transport secretary Heidi Alexander would have a stern word if Avanti West Coast were to propose putting up the cost beyond £200.
For the first time in living memory, everyone appears in favour of a government decision on rail fares. Alex Robertson, chief executive of the passenger watchdog, Transport Focus, called it “extremely welcome news for rail passengers who consistently tell us value for money is their highest priority”.
Mick Whelan, general secretary of train drivers’ union Aslef, said: ‘We are pleased that after 14 years of the Tories pricing people off our railways, this Labour government is helping people to commute to work and travel for pleasure.”
And Mark Smith, the British Rail manager turned international rail guru, told me: “I’m tempted to say, about time! We’ve seen the real cost of motoring fall repeatedly for years. Fuel duty has been frozen since 2011 and was actually cut in 2022.”
I spend a fortune on rail travel (in the past week alone, around £200) and will benefit from what is, in effect, a decision to make long-suffering taxpayers pay even more to keep the trains running – even though many of them never go near a train. If the fare freeze is combined with higher tax on motoring in the impending Budget, then it could lure more people out of their cars and onto the trains.
Yet the announcement conceals a failure to reform Britain’s outdated, labyrinthine rail fares system. Train tickets are ridiculously complicated and anomalous. One day, a government will be brave enough to overhaul them and lure more people on board. But not this one.
Instead, ministers are largely giving existing passengers like me a break: welcome, but neither essential nor transformational.
More radical action is needed. How about a half-price national railcard that anyone can buy? Germany and Switzerland sell them for £200 and £100 respectively. It would provide a meaningful incentive to choose rail over road. Crucially, it would also build loyalty: a quality that the railways, like political parties, desperately need.
Simon Calder, also known as The Man Who Pays His Way, has been writing about travel for The Independent since 1994. In his weekly opinion column, he explores a key travel issue – and what it means for you.
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