{"id":353990,"date":"2025-08-18T10:52:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T10:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/353990\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T10:52:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T10:52:11","slug":"rail-passengers-in-england-face-outrageous-change-from-wednesday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/353990\/","title":{"rendered":"Rail passengers in England face &#8216;outrageous&#8217; change from Wednesday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Train passengers and rail users say a potential 5.5% rise in England\u2019s train fares next year is \u201coutrageous\u201d.<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/0_rail-passengers.jpg\" alt=\" Train passengers and rail users say a potential 5.5% rise in England\u2019s train fares next year is \u201coutrageous\u201d.\" loading=\"eager\"  \/> Train passengers and rail users say a potential 5.5% rise in England\u2019s train fares next year is \u201coutrageous\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">Rail campaigners say potential 5.5 per cent fares rise would be &#8220;ripping off&#8221; passengers. Train passengers and rail users say a potential 5.5% rise in England\u2019s train fares next year is \u201coutrageous\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">July\u2019s Retail Prices Index (RPI) measure of inflation will be announced on Wednesday. The <a class=\"TextLink_text-link__dBSS0 TextLink_enabled__dJF3l\" href=\"https:\/\/www.birminghammail.co.uk\/all-about\/labour-party\" target=\"\" aria-label=\"\" tabindex=\"0\" rel=\"noopener\">Labour Party<\/a> government has not confirmed how it will determine the cap in regulated fare rises for 2026, but this year\u2019s 4.6% hike was one percentage point above RPI in July 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">Bruce Williamson, spokesman for pressure group Railfuture, said \u201cit would be outrageous\u201d if fares rose by that much. He said: \u201cWhat would be the justification for jacking up fares above inflation? There isn\u2019t any.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \"><a class=\"TextLink_text-link__dBSS0 TextLink_enabled__dJF3l\" href=\"https:\/\/www.birminghammail.co.uk\/news\/cost-of-living\/hmrc-update-over-spying-uk-32293601\" target=\"_self\" aria-label=\"\" tabindex=\"0\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong class=\"Strong_strong__e2x35\">READ MORE HMRC update over &#8216;spying&#8217; on UK households with more than 350 disciplined<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">\u201cIt\u2019s ripping off the customer, driving people off the trains and onto our congested road network, which is in no-one\u2019s interest.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">Mr Williamson said: \u201cOne would hope that there would be some efficiency savings and economies of scale that you get from having a more integrated railway.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">\u201cBut of course, I strongly suspect that if there are any savings to be had, they\u2019d be swallowed up by the Treasury and not passed back to the passengers, which I think is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">Ben Plowden, chief executive of lobby group Campaign for Better Transport, said: \u201cRising fares are not just burdening passengers, they are putting people off rail travel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">\u201cOur survey found that 71% of people would be more likely to take the train if fares were cheaper.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">\u201cPublic support for nationalisation plummets if fares continue to rise, so as the Government progresses plans for Great British Railways (GBR), it must take the opportunity to reform fares and make rail travel more affordable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">A DfT spokesperson said: \u201cThe Transport Secretary has made clear her number one priority is getting the railways back to a place where people can rely on them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">\u201cThe Government is putting passengers at the heart of its plans for public ownership and Great British Railways, delivering the services they deserve and driving growth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">\u201cNo decisions have been made on next year\u2019s rail fares but our aim is that prices balance affordability for both passengers and taxpayers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Train passengers and rail users say a potential 5.5% rise in England\u2019s train fares next year is \u201coutrageous\u201d.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[73043,748,393,4884,528,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-353990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-birmingham-trains","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-labour-party","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115049394599296862","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}