The Government has announced that regulated train fares in England are to increase by 4.6% next year. It was also revealed that the price of most railcards will rise by £5. The rail increase is set to come into affect from 2nd March 2025.
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00:00Now, the issue that we have here is the pricing signals are wrong to encourage people to take
00:05sustainable modes of transport.
00:06Campaign for Better Transport, we support public transport, that's rail and bus and
00:11all modes of sustainable transport, but I think everyone agrees there's a climate emergency,
00:14so we really need to be encouraging people to take the train.
00:17Also, cost of living, quite apart from climate emergency, costs a lot of money to take the
00:20train and people are actually choosing to drive when they were previously regularly
00:24taking the train.
00:25It's a serious, serious issue.
00:26The public aren't going to be happy with the rail fare rise.
00:29The problem is, at the moment, rail fares have bad press.
00:32The railways have a lot of bad press, it's been fragmented, there have been challenges
00:35and cancellations and services.
00:38Rail fare rises are really bad news, people don't like it, they don't think I'll take
00:41the train because it's affordable.
00:42And a lot of people who might think about taking the train, never have, see these headlines
00:46and that puts them off.
00:48And if you want to be a popular government, an easy way to make the public happy, subsidise
00:53them rail fares and bus fares, make it affordable for people, so that's our take.
00:57In documents published alongside the budget, the Treasury reportedly said that, quote,
01:01these policies will support the Secretary of State for Transport's plans for record,
01:07which will increase efficiency and reduce costs, while boosting ridership and revenue
01:11and improving performance.
01:12The government's priorities, to an extent, do align with ours.
01:16So there's good progress on rail reform, so we really need to see track and train come
01:20back together.
01:21So there's one organisation running track and train.
01:23The fact that the government has a rail reform bill is good news.
01:26The fact that the government has a better buses bill is very good news.
01:29So there is positive action in terms of public transport, and we are very supportive of the
01:32government, we work with them.
01:34But unfortunately, on these key indicators, the pricing signals, it doesn't look great.
01:38And we've seen bus fares go up as well, it really doesn't look great.
01:40And the reality isn't good for a lot of people.
01:42We need much bolder action, we need to be vision led with transport, we need to actually
01:46think about the world we want to see rather than thinking where we can save money.
01:50We don't really have the time to be thinking about saving money and having that kind of
01:53rhetoric.
01:54Everybody needs access to the train network.
01:56Let's build those networks and invest properly.