Friday 26 July 2013

Blatant Racketeering

Luke James writes:

Transatlantic flights are now cheaper than sky-high return fares charged by rail privateers for journeys between London and Glasgow, official figures revealed today. Passengers face a stunning £338 fare for a return journey between the cities with Virgin Trains if they buy their ticket on the day of travel.

Yet round trip flights across 3,450 miles of ocean to New York were available today for £298 through a popular travel price comparison site. The discovery delivers another embarrassing blow to rail privateers who claim to deliver good value and politicians who back the rip-off.

Rail union RMT said this is just one example of "blatant rail racketeering" contained in the latest data released by the Office for Rail Regulation.v Figures showed journey prices for "walk-on" passengers have soared by 23 per cent over the past nine years - outstripping inflation by a quarter.

RMT general secretary Bob Crow said passengers were being punished by "a poisonous combination of political ideology and boardroom greed."

"The British are being squeezed dry, paying the highest fares in Europe to travel on unreliable, overcrowded trains while the profits and bonuses in the rail company boardrooms bleed hard cash out of the network," he said. "Public ownership of our railways is the only way to end this scandal."

Green MP Caroline Lucas has recently put down a Private Members Bill in Parliament calling for the renationalisation of Britain's railways. She pointed out today that rail companies are also taking huge public subsidies while handing 90 per cent of their profits to shareholders.

She told the Star: "If we eliminated the costs created by private ownership, passengers would see fairer fares and improved services. That's why I hope MPs, especially on the Labour benches, will vote for my Bill to bring the railways back into the hands of the public."

A spokeswoman for Virgin Trains insisted today that it offers a wide range of fares. "They are more expensive for passengers who buy their tickets on the day but this does not give the whole picture," she said.

But Bruce Williamson of the Rail Future campaign group warned that the fare rises are driving people off the trains and into cars. He said: "If the government was really interested in promoting greener travel it would be helping people to get on the trains rather than attempting to price them off."

"People want the convenience and flexibility of walk-on fares but they are the expensive ones. Whilst cheaper advanced fares are very nice in some circumstances, in many others they are not very practical or useful to people."

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