UK rail fares ‘four times’ more expensive than France

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The RMT are claiming that passengers on privatised UK trains ‘ are having to fork out £4.6bn a year more than equivalent travellers in France’.

Research undertaken by Just Economics calculated that, mile-for-mile travelled, UK rail passengers would save £4.6 billion a year if fares were set at the same level as France, where they are four times cheaper.

The research, which forms part of A Fare Return, a larger comprehensive study to compare UK rail with the networks of France, Italy, Germany and Spain, also found:

  • Fares hikes ‘increase social exclusion for lower and middle income families because they are being completely priced out’ of the rail market.
  • Overcrowding on UK rail is ‘far worse than in the comparator countries’. The value of achieving the same passenger-to-seat ratio in France was assigned a proxy ‘comfort value’, which was worth almost £3 billion a year.

Report author Eilis Lawlor, said: “This report puts figures on what everyone already knows – that trains in other countries work much better but are also cheaper.

“The logic behind the privatisation of the UK’s railways was to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

“This clearly has not happened, yet we are still being told that rail networks can only be run effectively by the private sector.”

RMT general secretary Bob Crow, said:

“Like the McNulty review, this study compares privatised UK rail with European services, but, unlike McNulty, it has not turned a blind eye to the huge social and economic cost of privatisation.

“We already knew that Britain’s railways are the most expensive in Europe, but this study exposes the shocking degree to which UK rail users are being fleeced by the greed and stunning inefficiency of the rail privateers and made to suffer unnecessary overcrowding.

“This study shows that we have a choice – the bleak McNulty-ConDem future of massive fares hikes and a frighteningly de-staffed, overcrowded, and under-maintained network being sweated for profit, or the successful, efficient and eco-friendly model of public investment in a public railway.

“The wrong choice will have a disastrous impact that would take generations to repair, and that is why the McNulty report needs to be nailed and ditched before that damage is done.”

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