Peak rail users facing a "super" increase in fares (From The Argus)

The most expensive travel in Europe and they are still wanting more. Rip off Britain! Grr

No-one who doesn't need to be in London before 10am travels at peak time.

Those who do have no choice. You're not going to suddenly see a change in the working hours of office staff, bankers and workers.

If you have a job to go to, you need to arrive between 9 and 9.30 and leave between 5.30 and 6. Which means trains at 10am and 6pm are always going to carry fewer people.

I go from Brighton to London Zone 3 every day.
The monthly cost is £445.90 for a season ticket.
I know an annual ticket is cheaper but who wants to take out a loan to be able to afford it? Seriously?
And if they put the prices up any more it will be the straw that breaks the camels back.

In an ideal world, employers would encourage telecommuting.
However most employers still want to see offices filled with people beavering away on computers, never mind that their work could be just as easily done from home...

And if I was offered the opportunity to work from home 4-5 days a week I'd jump at it!

I travelled by train from Hove to London pretty much every working day for 10 years and the last fare increase, I turned from the train to my car to commute. I save about £20 per week even with the present petrol hikes. Brighton needs tourists to come down from London and the only thing these fare rises will do is dissuade people from visiting Brighton by train, meaning less money so less jobs in Brighton. Families wishing to settle on the south coast from London will think again about moving. All a fare rise does is cut Brighton off from the rest of the country. Southern railway says the rises are to improve the service but they've been saying that since I sarted commuting 10years ago. The answer. Tarmac over the railway lines and run buses. No more points failures, broken down trains and a lot cheaper and more reliable service. The age of the train is dead.

If this doesn't show the need for more capacity between Brighton and London, I don't know what does. What other business tries to price people out of using it?

What better arguement for reopening the route via Uckfield to London, BML2, which would solve capacity issues ONCE AND FOR ALL.

This proposal reflects the worst possible practices of the old hidebound monolith behoven to the whim of government that was British Rail. It is the economics of the madhouse. If there's not the capacity on the present line, which is CLEARLY the case now, we need an alternative, and one already exists. And we need it as soon as possible.

The issue of a greatly overloaded railway cannot be allowed to prevent the proper economic development of the City, and of East Sussex.

The continuing opposition to BML2 by ESCC cannot continue to be allowed to hold the futures of Sussex and West Kent to ransom.

There is an alternative to continuing with the present misery of ridiculous fares and relying on one route alone. The railway operators know it, the government know it and the councils know it. And if you've read this... you now know it too.

Go on, put BML2 into your search engine, and see what YOU think.

Da Prof wrote:
I go from Brighton to London Zone 3 every day. The monthly cost is £445.90 for a season ticket. I know an annual ticket is cheaper but who wants to take out a loan to be able to afford it? Seriously? And if they put the prices up any more it will be the straw that breaks the camels back. In an ideal world, employers would encourage telecommuting. However most employers still want to see offices filled with people beavering away on computers, never mind that their work could be just as easily done from home...

Looking at the fares calculator you are paying an extra £900 per annum for the pleasure of paying monthly. Even if your loan was at 10% you would still save £500.

The train serice offers extremely poor value for money. Nothing will change as this and the last Labour government are ideologically driven to preserve a falsely split railway industry in the name of competition. What is required is a return to a unified railway. This cuts out a lot of the messy interfaces and allows better planning and investment.

When I first started commuting to London, it was £15.60 a month: but that was obviously a very long time ago, and on a publicly-owned utitlity whose raison d'etre was to provide a service.

Now the fragmented railway industry's main purpose - like it or not - is to maximise shareholder value: and, en route, to hoover up £6 billion plus from the taxpayer, four times the subsidy that the old British Rail used to get. Hundred of millions of this disappears into the pockets as dividends to the people who own the train operating companies.

As others have noted, a decent railway system has to be a unified entity. Strage that it seems all right for large parts of our service infrastructure to be owned by the nationalised industries of France and Germany, but we can't own them ourselves through our own public utilities..... But it all makes sense to the Tories, I'm sure.

I wholeheartedly agree with the comments above that the railway does need to be a unified entity.

A reconstituted publicly owned British Rail could not be allowed to languish under the direct control of the DfT, at the whim of short term ill considered decisions by government departments as before.

For the sake of all, a new British Rail should operate under a charter, owned by the taxpayers and independant of political control. Then there would be no reason why it couldn't be at least as successful as DB, or as valued as SNCF.

Strange how those countries who've followed the disasterous policies of competition theorists have suffed, whilst those who told the competition commisioners to get stuffed are the ones now running OUR railways.

The micro-management of the past failed the railways, and therefore all of us, leading to successive Chairmen of BR merely presiding over the gradual decline of the industry and attempting to mitigate its worst effects, with varying degrees of success.

Pricing the poorest off the rush hour railway as the best solution the government has, shows more clearly than anything that they are unaware of, or insensitive to charges that they have no real long term strategy for growth, in the rail market, or generally, no concept of the wider effects of this nonsensical action in stifling the very growth they purport to wish to achieve, and furthermore don't give a hoot about the less well off trying desperately to make ends meet.

How does it benefit anyone working 9 to 5 as required by employers, not out of choice, to have to take twice as long to get to work by bus, or suffer an effective cut in disposable income?

This proposal is regrettable in the extreme, as it represents yet another tax in time or money on the average wage commuter.

It would be easier to live with if the government showed any sign of investment to permit improvement, and lay the ground for sustained economic growth. Currently, they don't, which just adds insult to injury.

They seem more concerned with the opinion of 'credit rating agencies' who so obviously excel in their field that NONE of them foresaw the current economic foul up presided over by government and banks alike.

And who's not suffering as a result of their own foul ups? All in this together. Like hell.

Anyway, there's a solution on offer... you know what I'm going to say... all together now.... BML2

BML2? Probably not enough profit in it. It might reduce overcrowding and undercut the rationale for raising fares....

robpotter wrote:
BML2? Probably not enough profit in it. It might reduce overcrowding and undercut the rationale for raising fares....

Remind me to lose some sleep over that sometime Rob :)

Seriously, though, a quick glance at the northern end of the proposed BML2 scheme will show that if a new route across the river gets included, it won't just benefit commuters from Sussex, it'll relieve congestion on lines from Kent as well as allowing a useful expansion of London Overground services.

With the likely requirement for train paths from Sussex, Kent and within London, the new link would be an exteremly attractive investment, and greatly improve capacity permanently.

If anyone knows any of other proposed scheme that could so drastically reduce the overcrowded conditions on the Brighton line, the Underground, and free up train paths into Victoria, London Bridge, Charing Cross, Cannon Street and Blackfriars, please let me know.