Unions say Tuesday’s ticket price increases – the biggest in five years – outstrip last year’s average pay rises by 50%

A wave of protests has been planned on Tuesday to mark the biggest increase in rail fares in five years.

Fares will rise by an average of 3.4%, with season tickets going up by 3.6% – increases that outstrip average pay rises last year by 50%, unions say. Protests by unions are planned at more than 40 railway stations in response to the increases.

The industry and government have defended the fare rises as essential for investing in the modernisation of the railways.



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The RMT union said commuters on average earnings would spend between 10% and 20% of their take-home pay on train travel. Fares have increased by 24.5% since the public sector pay freeze started in 2011, a period in which the pay of 5 million workers including NHS staff and teachers has gone up by just over 5%.

The RMT general secretary, Mick Cash, said: “While workers are struggling, the private train companies are raking it in. As we enter the 25th anniversary of railway privatisation legislation, the need for public ownership of rail has never been more popular or necessary.”

Mick Whelan, general secretary of Aslef, the train drivers’ union, said: “After years of austerity, when workers have not achieved pay increases at or around inflation, it is absolutely unfair that the industry they subsidise creates transport poverty and hurts the communities and industries that they should be supporting.”

Campaigners contrasted the treatment of rail passengers with efforts to cut costs for car drivers. Stephen Joseph, chief executive of the Campaign for Better Transport, said: “The government has protected motorists from increases in costs by freezing fuel duty, but at the same time they have allowed rail fares to go up, now with their highest rise for five years.

“Although there are more motorists, rail commuters are often concentrated in marginal constituencies so the government could end paying for this through the ballot box.”

A Department for Transport (DfT) spokesman said: “We keep fare prices under constant review and the price rises for this year are capped in line with inflation, with 97p out of every £1 paid going back into the railway.”

The fare hikes come after a week of disruption to rail services owing to engineering work and strikes. Members of the RMT on South Western Railway and CrossCountry staged 24-hour strikes on New Year’s Eve in separate disputes.

The RMT claimed there were 141 unstaffed South Western stations that could become “crime hotspots and no-go areas for vulnerable and disabled passengers” if guards were removed from trains.

South Western, which runs services into Britain’s busiest station, Waterloo, said the union was “scaremongering” and that guards would be retained. It planned to run around 75% of services on New Year’s Eve but warned passengers to expect queues and delays if travelling back from the capital’s fireworks.

Staff on CrossCountry walked out in a row over rosters and Sunday working.

The dispute over the future of guards on trains is expected to persist into 2018, with the RMT union planning more strikes in January on South Western, Southern, Merseyrail, Greater Anglia and Northern trains.

Driver-only trains have been encouraged to cut costs in rail franchises. Successive governments have attempted to lower the public subsidy for rail, which stood at £4.2bn in 2016-17 – a 13% reduction in real terms on the previous year, but more than double the subsidy to British Rail before privatisation.

The DfT spokesman said: “We are investing in the biggest modernisation of our railways since the Victorian times to improve services for passengers – providing faster and better, more comfortable trains with extra seats.

“This includes the first trains running though London on the Crossrail project, an entirely new Thameslink rail service and continuing work on the transformative Great North rail project.”

The fruits of some of that investment should soon be evident to commuters in the south-east who have suffered years of disruption, with the full reopening of the upgraded London Bridge station planned on Tuesday.

However, figures from the Office of Rail and Road show that Britain’s current trains are the oldest since records began, according to Press Association analysis, with passengers typically travelling in carriages built in the mid-1990s.

The Campaign for Better Transport said it showed “just how far the railways have to go to modernise”. Trains in London and south-east England are typically 18 years old, while those on regional services are 24 years old.

The Rail Delivery Group, which speaks for train operators, said more than 5,500 new carriages would be introduced across Britain by the end of 2020.