newsWe’re all being taken for a ride – UK’s train fares are the most expensive in Europe
Messages telling passengers to be beware of suspicious objects and people . . . but never any explanation from company officials explaining why trains are late or cancelled (Picture: Train at York Station by Trevor Grundy)
Myth has it that Benito Mussolini made the trains in Italy run on time. Believe it if you like. But one thing is for sure. It will take more than an Italian dictator waving his arms and shouting from a balcony to make the trains in Broken Britain run on time. TREVOR GRUNDY reports –
Rail fares in Britain are the most expensive in Europe – about two and a half times higher than average fares anywhere else.
The European Federation for Transport and Environment (T & E) which is Europe’s leading advocate for clean transport and energy, has this week issued a report after examining average costs for more than 8,000 second class fares across 27 European operators.
It found that rail travel in the UK is “particularly costly” pointing towards high infrastructure costs and private monopolies.
The report comes at a time when the Labour Government led by Keir Starmer is at the point of bringing the railways back into public ownership. The government says that this is a once-in-a-generation chance to reform and modernise the country’s out -of – date and appallingly inefficient railway network.
The situation is particularly bad in the north of England.
Northern, which runs 2,500 services a day connecting cities including Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle, have been of particular concern and scrutiny in recent months because of cancellations causing serious delays for thousands of people have spiralled.
And no one ever tells fuming passenger the cause of delays or cancellations.
This lack of communication between companies and passengers is driving more and more people wild with fury.
While trains shudder to a stop our ears were battered by loud announcements telling us to be on guard against anyone or anything that looked “suspicious.”
“See it. Say it. Sort it.”
A man sitting next to me outside Hull at that was not working because of ‘line failure’ put down his newspaper and in a voice as loud as the overhead speaker said –
“See what? Tell who? These silly buggers couldn‘t sort out a piss up in brewery.”
More than 51,000 trains were cancelled between 2023-24, an increase of six percent on the previous year and four times higher than in 2014.
Heidi Anderson is the latest Transport Secretary.
Last week she unveiled a rail nationalisation timetable which has sent shivers up and down the spines of Conservative MPs and Free Market wallahs who fear some sort of return to post-Second World War “socialism.”
She said that a complex system of private train operators has too often failed its passengers, adding “For too long the British public has put up with a rail service which simply doesn’t work.
Mick Whelan, boss of the rain drivers’ union ASLEF said (Daily Mail, December 4, 2024): “(British prime minister) John Major’s decision to privatise British Rail in 1994 was foolish and ideologically – driven and doomed to fail. It was described even by that arch-privateer Margaret Thatcher as a ‘privatisation too far.’ “
Anger is mounting to beyond boiling point among millions of train-dependent passengers who are sick to death of paying sky-high prices for bog-standard services.
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