Rail fares may go up

Mainline rail commuter fares could be increased in a bid to keep people off the trains and ease chronic overcrowding, it was revealed today.

Rail bosses are considering “demand management” to deal with rising numbers of passengers on peak-time services.

But the move is set to be resisted by passenger groups and environmental campaigners, who fear it will force commuters back into their cars.

Passengers using the busy lines from the west via Reading into Paddington could be among the first to suffer.

The fares warning is in the small print of the Strategic Rail Authority’s route utilisation strategy (RUS) document for the Great Western main line.

Now being studied for services across the country including other London routes, the RUS is designed to achieve optimal use of existing facilities and stop overcrowding getting worse.

But Brian Cooke, chairman of the London Transport Users Committee, the capital’s passenger watchdog, found its references to “demand management” very worrying. “If they mean fare rises in an effort to reduce demand we would strongly resist this,” he said.

The RUS, Mr Cooke said, does “little more than tinker at the edges” of the many problems affecting services serving busy west London stations.

Passengers on the local route from Slough, for instance, are already “beleaguered” by the lack of trains, he pointed out.

He went on: “This strategy fails to take account of economic and demographic development and understates the need for improved services.” The LTUC is concerned it “may well result in severe under-provision of services, meaning congested and poorlyperforming trains”.

Another of the committee’s concerns is the SRA’s “failure to address the peak-hour frequency of trains on the Reading-Paddington line, especially at stations such as Hayes and Harlington, Southall and West Ealing and the proposal to reduce services at Greenford”.

Mr Cooke added: “Frequency is one of the key factors for successful public services in London.” He called for the RUS for the lines into Paddington to be “dramatically re-assessed before it is implemented.”

Using fare increases to control the number of people using busy routes was a failure when it was tried by the old British Rail in the Eighties.

But over the coming decade, ministers have warned, passenger numbers across the UK may rise by hundreds of thousands.

In January peak-time fares increased by one per cent above inflation — bringing the average to between 3.5 and four per cent, with a warning of similar annual rises to come.

An SRA spokesman declined to comment specifically on the fares issue. “We have to ensure best use of existing facilities,” he said. “The Great Western RUS is a real-world document that addresses real- world issues. That is what the debate needs to be about.”