CAMPAIGN group Railfuture have warned of ‘another decade of misery’ for train passengers as the latest rail fare increases came into effect today.

Dave Richardson chairman of the Thames Valley branch also said local CrossCountry passengers, which operates the routes from Oxford and Banbury to Birmingham, Manchester, Yorkshire, Newcastle, Southampton and Bournemouth, were being particularly badly treated over the increase, explaining: “These services are often desperately overcrowded, and to ask passengers to pay more for a deteriorating service is adding insult to injury.”

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Railfuture's spokesman Bruce Williamson, talking about the national average fare rise of 2.7 per cent, said: “The Government shows no sign of ending its policy of squeezing passengers harder and harder, year after year.

“With CPI inflation at only 2.1 per cent, there’s no justification for yet another inflation-busting fare increase, particularly when the government has frozen fuel duty for motorists for nearly ten years now. The government seems to be running scared of the motoring lobby but is happy to punish rail travellers.”

The Government uses the Retail Price Index (RPI) when calculating fare increases, but Mr Williamson said this meant fares were outstripping people’s incomes.

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He explained: “A £100 ticket in 2004 should only have gone up to £145 today. Instead it’s more than £180. Part of the problem is the government’s inability to control costs in the rail industry, and the travelling public is literally paying the price for this.

"How on earth is the government going to meet its climate commitments by pricing people off environmentally-friendly trains and onto our polluted and congested roads?”