Ticket Price

Over the last nine months or so, I’ve commuted to work by train. The price isn’t too bad, the service is fairly regular (about every 20 minutes or so) and in general it’s quicker and easier than using a car to get to and from work.

Today, the rail ticket prices rose – supposedly by an average of 4.4 percent. Having just looked, my daily ticket has risen from £2.50 to £2.70 . Still not extortionate, (although that’s for a journey of roughly six minutes. Works out as around £12.25 per hour – be interesting if they did charge tickets by a “journey-time” rate, wouldn’t it?) but it’s closer to an 8% rise. Bastards.

Transport Secretary Alastair Darling says

“It has all got to be paid for and we’ve got to strike a balance between the amount of money that the taxpayer puts in and the amount that the fare-payer puts in as well.”

That sounds all well and good, except for one eeny-weeny problem with it. Yes, sure, strike a balance between taxpayers and fare-payers for the service. But the problem is that all the fare-payers are still also paying their bloody taxes to go to things like this. So the people who use the sodding trains get to pay twice for it. Which is, frankly, fucked.