Ruth Alexander
speaker
4,250 appearances
120 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2011
last heard Aug 2018
Ruth Alexander’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
To the Conservatives, it would be a freeze in real terms, but to you, it would feel like you just paid more for your train tickets.
And there are some further nitty-gritty details.
Firstly, the government can only control the price of about 45% of all tickets sold worldwide.
They're called, as I mentioned, regulated fares and that encompasses season tickets and some off-peak returns as well as any time tickets in major cities.
So this price freeze, which is a price rise, would only affect a few less than half of tickets sold.
Advanced tickets in general, for example, wouldn't be frozen.
Another point is that a cap on rail fare sounds like a policy directed at all or
you know, the ordinary voter, but actually the Institute of Economic Affairs reckons that 60% of spending on rail fares is undertaken by the richest 20% of households.
So you could argue it's a policy aimed at the rich.
Yeah, train punctuality went up a little in the first couple of years of the coalition government, but it has fallen over the last year or so.
About 85% of trains were on time in the first quarter of this year, and that compares to more like 90% in 2010.
So it's really in the last couple of years that performance has slipped.
Overcrowding hasn't been getting worse overall, but it has in some places, and commuters in London and Sheffield will feel it the most.
A fifth of commuters in London can't get a seat at peak times.
Well, broadly speaking, season tickets cost about the same as they did in the early 90s when the railways were privatised.
When you strip out the effect of inflation, they've gone up in line with the RPI inflation on average.
And experts reckon the advanced fares we have now, they work a bit like low-cost airline tickets.
So the first people that buy them, if you buy them early, you get them cheapest.
Experts reckon they've brought average prices down.
But other fares that you don't buy in advance, you know, you just turn up at the station, they've gone up an awful lot.
Showing 381–400 of 4,250 · page 20 of 213
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