RAIL passengers travelling on the first working day of 2018 are being hit with the largest fare rise in five years.
Average ticket prices across Britain went up by 3.4 per cent on Tuesday.
It has been reported that regular UK passengers will now spend up to 13 per cent of their salary travelling to work by train from today, rising to 17 per cent in Scotland.
The Times has suggested that a peak-time ScotRail ticket between Edinburgh and Glasgow will increase from £23.80 to £24.70 while a 12-month season ticket between the two cities will rise by £136 to £3,956.
Protests have been held outside around 40 stations to mark the biggest increase since 2013.
Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union handed out chocolates to "sweeten the bitter pill" of the price increase.
Paul Plummer, chief executive of the Rail Delivery Group which represents train operators, said "nobody wants to see fares going up" but insisted the increase is necessary to improve the network.
He said: "All we can do is make sure we invest to improve as fast as we possibly can.
"We've had decades of under-investment which we are now addressing and have been consistently over the last few years, but it takes time.
"We need that money from fares to be able to afford that investment."
Many season tickets have gone up by more than £100, including in Prime Minister Theresa May's constituency of Maidenhead, where an annual pass to London rose by £104 to £3,092.
Other commuter routes that are now more expensive include Liverpool to Manchester (up £108 to £3,152), Neath to Cardiff (up £56 to £1,708) and Elgin to Inverness (up £100 to £2,904).
Stephen Joseph, chief executive of the Campaign for Better Transport (CBT), accused the Government of choosing to "snub rail passengers" by continuing to increase fares while fuel duty is frozen for a seventh consecutive year.
CBT figures show that average season tickets into London terminals have gone up by £146 this year, compared with £74 last January.
Mr Joseph said: "The extra money that season ticket-holders will have to fork out this year is almost as much as drivers will save.
"That doesn't seem fair to us or the millions of people who commute by train, especially as wages continue to stagnate. What's good enough for motorists should be good enough for rail passengers."
The Government uses the previous July's Retail Prices Index (RPI) measure of inflation to determine increases in regulated fares - 3.6 per cent in 2017.
These are around half of all tickets and include season tickets on most commuter routes.
Train operating companies set the prices of other tickets but are bound by competition rules.
Bruce Williamson, of campaign group Railfuture, warned that "people are being priced out of getting to work".
He called for the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation measure to be used for regulated fare increases.
It is normally lower than RPI and is used by the Government to set increases in benefits and pensions.
Mr Williamson said: "If CPI had been used instead of RPI since 2004, then rail fares would be 17% lower, a significant amount of money for season ticket holders who are spending thousands of pounds to get to work.
"It's no wonder that poor value for money is the number one concern of rail travellers, with British rail fares amongst the most expensive in Europe."
A Department for Transport spokesman said: "We are investing in the biggest modernisation of our railways since the Victorian times to improve services for passengers - providing faster and better, more comfortable trains with extra seats.
"This includes the first trains running though London on the Crossrail project, an entirely new Thameslink rail service and continuing work on the transformative Great North Rail Project.
"We keep fare prices under constant review and the price rises for this year are capped in line with inflation, with 97p out of every £1 paid going back into the railway."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel