The relentless rise of transport fares

Why the periodical calls of "spend and save the economy" are grating and snobbish in the extreme.

Over the Christmas period, you may have overheard various pontificators telling the populace to spend, spend, spend in order to "save the economy".

With what money though, they never say. Look at the figures.

According to the Office for National Statistics, salaries in Britain went up in 2010 by 2.3%, less than the current rate of inflation which now stands at 3.2%.

That looks positively tame when you consider the inflation-busting rises ordinary people are having to deal with whichever direction they look.

Transport fares, for instance. As of yesterday, they went up across the whole country. In Birmingham, adult bus fares increased by 5.55%, daysavers rose by 8.3% (they now stand at £3.60) and the precious evening savers were done away with altogether (see here for full details).

Of course, like each and every single time fares go up, transport companies justify the policy by playing the usual old record of "rising business costs", "massive reinvestment" and "new vehicles".

Yet, an external observer may be excused if he or she expects those buses to be powered by Ferrari, paved with gold, and sporting a crew of smiling hostesses dispensing free drinks to cheer you up on your ride to work. Because since 2005 tickets on the former Travel West Midlands and current National Express West Midlands have gone up by a mental 80%. That is eighty-per-cent, from £1 five years ago to the current £1.80.

Top executives aside, hands up anybody if your wages have gone up by anything remotely like that. The most recent minimum wage increase, for instance, was a meagre 2.19%.

So, when Chancellor George Osborne returns from his "luxury break" at Prince Charles’s favourite ski resort, can any journalist with a pair please ask him what advice he's got for the millions of low wage workers facing galloping costs eating further into their wages?

Is this normal?

Before the election, the LibDems promised cheaper train fares. That must be why you're ticket's going up.

Look at the picture above. A single off-peak ticket connecting two towns in the same area of England. If you thought £32-20 was already taking the piss, then you've got another thing coming.

And that's because train fares are set to rise by an average 6.2 per cent, well above the rate of inflation. And that's the "regulated" ones, because otherwise train companies can charge as much as they like.

If you're priced out of big cities and you've got to commute each day to go to work, season tickets are going to be even more unaffordable.

From January on, for instance, a season ticket from Brighton to London will cost you an extra £276 with the price further escalating in the coming four years.

Of course train operators will tell you that those rises are necessary.

Investment, innovations, resources, efficiency, improvements. They're always improving. You heard the mantra throughout the New Labour years (when fares kept going up almost as fast as Tony Blair's ego) and you're hearing it now. Except that the trains are still overcrowded, inefficient and extortionate.

What you may not know, however, is that "48p in every £1 goes to Network Rail", and that Network Rail has also just announced that its profits more than doubled over the past year - even though a regulatory review said that that the same Network Rail is "30 to 50% less efficient" than its European rivals.

In any case, if this is all feeling too much on top of your current pay freeze, VAT rise, cuts in child benefits and other 'measures', just be positive and look at it as "investment in policies that promote social mobility". Not my words, but those of guru of progressive politics Nick Clegg.

By the way one of his party's pre-election promises was to "cut commuter fares". Seriously!

[Picture courtesy of Christina Marsh]

Also on the subject:
- Campaign for Better Transport, "Join the fight";
- Welsh Ramblings, "Renationalise the rail".

Birmingham 4 London 0

Unlike the capital, bus fares in the West Midlands will be frozen in 2010.

Last year we criticised the OTT bus fare increases that hit the West Midlands right in the middle of the most vicious recession in decades.

We calculated that the price of public transport in Birmingham and surrounding areas had gone up by 70 per cent in four years- a rise unknown to any wage or benefit. Particularly badly hit had been single tickets and "Daysavers".

However, credit when due, National Express, the (fairly) new owners of Travel West Midlands recently announced that all bus fares will now be frozen for the first time in years.

In a statement displaying humanity, the company said: "The region’s largest bus operator is freezing the price of all bus fares into 2010 to help the region recover from the effects of the recession. Bus fares have traditionally been adjusted at the start of each year.

The West Midlands has the highest unemployment levels in the country, with over 200,000 people out of work. National Express took the decision to freeze their bus fares to ensure customers can continue to access education and employment at a low cost."

Look and learn, Boris Johnson.

Boris Johnson: let the poor pay, not the rich

Kick the poor in the teeth. Make it more expensive for them to go to work. But ask millionaires to contribute a bit more and it's like "Stalin's assault on the kulaks".

Shock. Boris Johnson thinks the 50p top rate of income tax will be a "disaster" for Britain.

Proof of that, he says, are the threats to leave the country made by a handul of millionaires such as artist Tracey Emin, former Formula One boss Eddie Jordan, and actor Michael Caine. Wow.

Suspiciously similar to the good old days when "the top talent" at RBS, Northern Rock et al routinely claimed they'd leave the country if bonuses were to be cut (if only they had).

So just picture what a national disaster it would be if Tracy Everyone-I-Have-Ever-Shagged Emin upped sticks and took Her Tent to France. Devastating, right? You can just imagine people up and down the country crying their eyes out.

Of course, instead, the Mayor of London thinks it's perfectly fair to impose fair rises of up to 20% upon ordinary citizens. They can be milked and kicked in the teeth at will.

They can have bus passes, tube fares and Oyster cards increased savagely year-on-year, because, even if they fancied the idea, they wouldn't be able to "do an Emin" and bugger off to France, would they? How could they, without the cash to shoot off and buy a villa outright on the Côte d'Azur.

Unfortunately for Boris Johnson and the Daily Express though, the majority of Britons are of the opinion that a 50p tax rate for high earners is a good idea.

And anyway, Boris, what are you moaning about? For all your wailing that the 50p tax is like "Stalin’s assault on the kulaks", that cosy payrise you gave yourself last year, from £137,579 to £143,911 (h/t Tory Troll), should cushion you nicely.

SpEak you're BrANES!

Pay cuts to save jobs? For some people that's been happening routinely anyway. Mark Reed on the unfair stick public sector employees get.

Recently, employees of my local council have been offered a 1% payrise.

Public consensus, that is, on the local BBC SpEak you're BrANES! is that they should count themselves lucky they EVEN have a job. Hell, they should even pay the council for the privilege of working there.

Which in a way they do. The current rate of inflation is 3%.
The current increase in train fares is 9%.

So what this 1% means is that, in effect, staff are having a pay cut.

I know some businesses are asking workers to take pay cuts or imposing pay freezes, but that's a recent development of the recession. A Public Sector Worker getting a pay rise of 1% is not unusual. The biggest annual pay rise I ever got in the Public Sector year-on-year and staying in the same role was 2.5% a year.

An entry level librarian earns less - much less than the average UK salary of £20,000. An entry level nurse at Grade 1 earns around £11,800 a year. A 1% pay rise to a entry level nurse would benefit them by £118 a year, or less than £10 a month. Before tax. After tax, about £7.50 a month. With train fares rising 9%, if you pay more than £70 a month to get to work, that's your pay rise wiped out in the blink of an eye. So your pay rise goes on nothing but getting to and from work.

Nobody seemed to mind highly paid city bankers ... until the recession. Nobody seemed to mind the fact that obscene bonuses and salaries for the few priced out millions of people from home ownership. Nobody seemed to mind capitalism when it worked, and nobody seemed to mind getting rich - but everyone despises the hangover when capitalism goes wrong. So many people are Fair Weather Friends to capitalism. You can't just have the goods and not pay the bill when it arrives.

Given that the Public Sector does not pay the competitive salaries of many businesses, by working in the public sector people are making a trade off : relatively (but not entirely) secure employment which does not pay especially well - unless you're at the absolute higher echelons, which is often challenging, underfunded, understaffed, swamped in bureaucracy, publically accountable, and - by the way -accountable to the Kangaroo Court of the tabloids whenever any scumbag parents beat their children to death, yet at the same time, being meddling, brainless bureaucrats that want nothing but to snoop through your garbage.

And of course, everything every Public Sector Worker does can be on the front page of a newspaper, because WE WORK FOR YOU, and of course, the editors of Tabloid Newspapers. Nobody really seems to care too much if a Private Sector corporation wastes an enormous amount of money, or if they do something that kills someone - but if someone in the Public Sector does it, the Editor of a red top is screaming for a public hanging from the front page. At my current job, I get a lot of Freedom Of Information Act requests from newspapers asking questions because they're looking for stories to publish about Political Correctness Gone Mad in their small world. Don't be surprised if there is something about Esperanto in the next twelve months in a newspaper.

And Public Sector workers are all pigs with snouts in the trough of final salary pensions : despite the fact that it's not final salary pensions that are the root of financial evil, but the fact that businesses are moving away from final salary pensions and forcing future generations into old age poverty that is a great financial inequity in this world.

Working in the Public Sector is not a job designed to make you popular or rich. It's thing many people do because they'd rather do something with their lives that makes a difference, that gives someone a better home, or an extra few years seeing their grandchildren grow up, makes the world a better place in a small way. I was once offered a job working on the air-to-ground targeting computers for missiles. The end recipient of such a missle would not appreciate it, or benefit from it, in say, the way that a ill patient could have their lives saved by a diagnosis or a treatment.

The Public Sector is hard, but it's the most satisfying and rewarding job I have done.

Public Sector staff have traditionally worked in tough environments. Few people got rich working in the public sector. Yes, public sector workers can get some minimal help with key housing - but realistically, the number of key housing properties available is a fraction of the number of key workers in the public sector. Working in the public sector means that you either have to rent a property, inherit one, or have bought one years ago. Public Sector Workers generally don't earn enough to get mortgages these days.

I've been working in it the past fifteen years, and I have earnt probably around a half to two thirds of what I could have made if I worked in the Private Sector. At the time I was working as a project manager for multi-million pound projects in October 2001, I was having to buy food on credit cards due to the meagre salary I was then earning.

Still, if all we ever wanted was to be rich, anyone can achieve that - but there is a price to pay.

Now, I know that times are tough, but they're tough for everyone - including the people who work in the Public Sector. The common perception from people who work in the Private Sector is that the Public Sector is made up of people who can't get jobs in the Private Sector. People in the Public Sector can't cut it out there in the so called 'real world', and some people seem to think that most civil servants are sitting around in ivory towers, doing no work whatsoever, twiddling their thumbs as they are 'unsackable', and are parasites leeching off the hard work of the rest of society.

If it were true, nobody would ever collect your bins. All the libraries would be closed. All the hospitals and doctors would charge your credit card before they diagnose your ills. There would be no fire engines. No police. No ambulances. No hospitals. No one would get unemployment benefit. There would be no social workers. No one to help the weak in society.

It's time the Public Sector workers - the people who maintain the fabric of our society, clean our toilets, empty our garbage, save lives, get attacked in ambulances, arrest and chase criminals, put out fires, try to house the desperate, teach the next generation, and try to make the world a better place were a little bit more appreciated financially. All we ask is an equal wage. Not a pay cut by stealth.

Forking out on the buses

Take the price hike on West Midlands buses and put it next to Gordon Brown's and the CBI's call for a wage freeze. It's happy days all round.

Let's not beat around the bush. Britain in 2009 is the place where the 'little people' are being slapped in the face for the years of binge enjoyed by what Tony Blair famously referred to as "the wealth creators". But while the wealth creators may have to cut down on a Ferrari or two (if that), let's have a look at how the 'little people' are being left to fend for themselves.

Imagine you're in the bottom 27% per cent of UK families who don't own a car. As Margaret Thatcher once charmingly said "travelling by bus is a sure failure in anyone over the age of twenty-six". You're one of them (and so am I) and public transport is our only way to access work and do our daily business.

This is how prices in the West Midlands have shot up in the past four years:

- 2005: £1.00

- 2006: £1.20

- 2007: £1.40

- 2008: £1.50

- 2009: £1.70

Correct. A single bus ticket in the Birmingham area now stands at a mindblowing £1.70. Last year, Travel West Midlands justified the price hike with the need "to offset rising fuel costs". But with oil prices back down again, what have they got to say now?

Now, if your wages were to follow the same trend (that's a 70% increase in four years), your minimum wage would have gone up from £5.05 in 2005 to £8.58 in 2009. In the real world, though, there was only a 9% rise to the current £5.52, and that's still getting our CBI bosses' knickers in a twist.

Of course National Express, the new owners of Travel West Midlands, will point towards the swanky new buses that ooze CCTVs from all pores and indeed they do look very good. They will then advise you to purchase a "Daysaver", but that too went from £3.00 to £3.30 in one go.

That's about buses. Then, with the official inflation rate above 4 per cent, the ever mighty council tax and unstoppable utility bills, Gordon Brown had the cheek (or maybe something else) to call for "wage restraint" (2 per cent, in his view), and also to urge HM's subjects to enjoy shopping sprees down the High Street. All the while the Confederation of British Industries (CBI) has seized the opportunity to call for a minimum wage freeze.

Remember that, according to the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, the current rise of inflation has nothing to do with wages. "Pay growth has remained moderate", he said (except for boardroom pay, of course, up by 37%).

In conclusion, when will a journalist, any journalist, ever confront our Labour and Conservative politicians with the above mentioned figures and the simple question: how on earth are ordinary people supposed to make it?

Train rip-off hikes and the watchdog with no gnashers

Where's the big debate about yet more ridiculous train fare hikes? Where are the tabloids? Where's the goading? Why is John Sargent more important?

Simply, shameless. The day train fares go up again, Britain's papers marinate the news in a sea of I'm A Celebrity Out of Here bulletins and debates about Strictly Come Dancing. If an alien landed on UK soil today, aside from granting Richard Littlejohn and Peter Hitchens apoplexy (you can't get more of an immigrant than an alien), he'd think that the dancing moves of one John Sargent matter more than public services in the land of hope and bovvered. And yet the rail increases are supposed to hit people directly. It means less pints. It means more debt.

Still the fact that almost all train operators are introducing inflation-busting fares in 2009 (like they did in 2008, 2007, 2006, and keep counting all the way down to the final days of British Rail) looks like a side issue. Every year, the same story.

I ran a search online. I googled 'rain fares increase above inflation'. There were thousands of entries, local and national, from whichever year since the internet became part of the furniture. Exactly the same stories. Headlines, captions and articles.

Last year, for instance. From the Guardian, "Fare increases of up to 15% anger rail passengers". The watchdog describes the "new prices unjustified and unfair", the passengers calls them "outrageous", and the companies justify the 'change' as necessary for "investments and improvements".

Then this from 2007: "Train passengers face fare rise", with the customary "the money was needed to pay for ongoing service improvements", placed next to "passenger groups have criticised the price increases and said rail users are already paying high fares".

The year before, the Mirror complained that "TRAIN TICKET RISE IS SO UNFARE". Guess what, "train chiefs said the price rises were essential to pay for improvements" and "the Rail Passengers Council says many walk-on fares are now at "eye-watering" levels".

BBC News, December 2004. The rail industry says the rises are necessary to help pay for "investment to improve services". The Rail Passenger Council retorts "it's hitting passengers in the pocket".

And so here we are, ready for January 2009. The watchdog's arguing that "we cannot simply go on dumping costs onto the passenger in this way”; the rail operators repeating that "the increased revenue would help pay for investment to improve the railways and deliver better value for taxpayers"; and the Prime Minister giving the word "spineless" new depths. "Gordon Brown believed it was important customers got good value for their money", said his spokesman. Whatever the meaning, it makes Pontius Pilate sound like one of the Baader Meinhof gang.

Nobody, no paper, no journalists asking the obvious questions. I guess they must be all thinking about John Sargent. And still...

a) What the fuck is something called a "watchdog" doing if every single year the rail companies run rings round them just like that? Watching it may do, but the dog has no gnashers;

b) How long are those "improvements" going to last for?

c) Could it be that the only people enjoying said "improvements" are the shareholders?

d) Shouldn't the papers be full of horror stories about overcrowded, super-overpriced trains across the country? Where are the goading tabloids when you need them?

e) Shouldn't the Labour government be as gobby about it as they are with the incapacity benefits they keep fiddling with at each turn of the weather?

But no, that was no way to treat John Sargent...

Trains in Britain...

...and their duties to their shareholders

For a very long time, the railway system has been one of the biggest scandals of today's Britain. Ok, let's just say it, since British Rail was privatised. For years, we've been negotiating our way around a maze of train fares, "journey planners", advance bookings and arcane notions of "peak-time". But the scandal was something you wouldn't hear about. At best (or worst), the media would report news of train crashing or derailing. But Virgin and the rest making obscene amounts of money and receiving obscene state subsidies....? Nah...It's the market, ennit? The best providers, aren't they?

Nobody could have put it any better than Mark Steel. Take a look at this brilliant article from The Independent online. There, at last, a true, thorough and honest look at the state of trains in 21st century Britain. In no specific order:

- the packed few 2nd class carriages and the never-ending succession of empty first class ones;

- the extortionate prices unless you book 7 months in advance when the moon is at a certain angle and you're between 5'5 and 5'7 tall and your surname contains between 3 and 4 vowels;

- the appalling delays;

- the perennial "engineering works" that have been disrupting lines (especially Sundays) for 10 years at least.

The answer? "No private company is going to run a railway because they want to run a railway. They have a duty to their shareholders," Mark Steel was told by a PR man.

Those stinky Travel West Midlands buses

In the space of two years a standard bus fare in the West Midlands has gone up to £1.20, a steep 20% rise. The so-called 'daysaver'? Another 20% rise, from £2-50 to £3-00. At this rate it'll be a fiver by the end of the decade. Even worse the 'short hop' ticket, from 55p to 85p an increase of around 50%. Perhaps they charge extra for the eau-de-piss essence you inhale on those Travel West Midlands' double-deckers.

Now look at your wage slip. What a surprise it doesn't swell up anywhere near as fast as those rates. Somehow in the same stretch my wage went up by 2% in total, and I should even concede I've been luckier than some. And let's not get into the mad rise of London Underground fares or railway prices. Train fares could knock you for six unless you know whether you're going to travel 25 months in advance, the exact departing time and your surname begins with M or something. And what a service they offer, but that's another story.

Clearly the taxpayers' zillions poured into Virgin Trains and every cash-strapped private company contracted out to supply public services aren't enough. Do your bit of charity. Get on that bus.