Live updates

Rail commuters face huge price hike

Commuters across our region are bracing themselves after hearing they'll have to pay hundreds of pounds more to travel by train next year.

The government's allowed operators to increase fares by the rate of inflation - 3.2 percent - plus another 3 percent on top of that.

And it doesn't end there because some of those fares could go up even more. It means some commuters will have to dig even deeper to find the money to pay for a price hike of up to 11 per cent. Lauren Carter reports

  1. Read more
  2. 4 updates
Rail fares set to rise

Advertisement

We can't 'pass on the cost' of rail improvement to commuters

Cambridge MP Julian Huppert, co-chairman of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party Committee on Transport, has hit out at plans to increase the cost of rail travel in order to finance rail improvements. He said:

The coalition is, quite rightly, investing more in our railways than any Government since the Victorian era in an effort to sort out the mess we inherited.

But we can't just pass on the cost to commuters. Liberal Democrats in the coalition, along with the Transport Secretary, managed to negotiate an RPI-plus-1% fare rise for 2012, much lower than planned by some Conservatives.

But people are struggling to make ends meet against a backdrop of wage freezes and rising utility bills.

– – JULIAN HUPPERT, LIBERAL DEMOCRATS
  1. Read more
  2. 4 updates
Rail fares set to rise