A season ticket for a 22-mile commuter journey in England costs £3,268 but just £336 in Italy, says Campaign for Better Transport

This article is more than 8 years old

This article is more than 8 years old

Some UK rail commuters, facing 6% average fare rises next week, are already paying almost 10 times more for their season tickets than their European counterparts, according to new figures.

The price of a 2011 season ticket from Woking in Surrey to London, including tube travel in the capital, is £3,268.

Yet a similar 22-mile journey from Velletri to Rome costs Italian season ticket holders £336.17, statistics from the Campaign for Better Transport (CBT) show.

Analysis of similar journeys of around 21-24 miles in other European countries reveal that rail travellers on the continent are paying far less for their trains.

According to the CBT figures, which include the equivalent of multi-modal travel tickets on each city's underground systems, an annual season ticket for the 24-mile journey from Ballancourt-sur-Essonne to Paris costs £924.66.

The cost of a season ticket on the 21-mile Strausberg to Berlin route is £705.85, while the 22-mile Collado-Villalba to Madrid journey costs Spanish season ticket holders £653.74.

From 2 January, UK regulated fares – which include season tickets – are rising by an average of 6%, while the overall average rise for all tickets is 5.9%.

The government had planned to increase the annual price rise formula by 2% in January 2012, which would have meant regulated fares rising 8%.

The chancellor, George Osborne, announced last month that the rise would be limited to 6%, but the government still plans annual rises of RPI inflation plus 3% for January 2013 and January 2014.

Sophie Allain, CBT's public transport campaigner, said: "We knew we had some of the most expensive rail fares in Europe, if not the world, but even we were shocked by how much more the UK ticket was in comparison with our European counterparts.

"When the cost of season tickets is so much higher than in other European capitals, the government's fare rises are starting to affect the UK's competitiveness.

"That's why if the government is serious about promoting economic growth it must also look at reducing planned fare rises in 2013 and 2014 as part of a policy to cut fares and make public transport truly affordable."

With UK train companies allowed to put up regulated fares by more than 6% as long as the average figure is not exceeded, some season tickets are going up by about 7% next week.

Also, a different annual price formula applies for the Northern train company's West Yorkshire Metro services, so some season tickets in this area are rising by more than 8%.

Bus and tube fares in London will also be rising on 2 January.

The average rise has been kept down to 5.6% thanks to an additional £136m of government funding.

But the increase is still above the inflation rate and comes at a time when Londoners have to contend with constant weekend disruption to services because of planned improvement work.

The government, the Association of Train Operating Companies (Atoc) and the London mayor, Boris Johnson, have insisted that the fare rises are necessary to continue much-needed investment in mainline rail and tube services.

In London, work continues on the massive cross-capital Crossrail project as well as the Thameslink scheme.

Both involve considerable changes to busy stations and, inevitably, disruption to passengers. Blackfriars tube station has been shut since March 2009 and will finally reopen at the end of February.

The government is determined that farepayers, rather than taxpayers, bear more of the cost of the railways, which suggests that high fares are set to continue in the short term.

On 3 January – the first working day on which the new fares will be in operation – the CBT will join the transport union TSSA in a "fair fares" protest at St Pancras station in London.

Responding to the CBT figures, a spokesman for Atoc said: "This is a flimsy piece of research that does not stand up to scrutiny, focusing on just one season ticket out of tens of thousands available.

"Next year, the average commuter will pay just over £2,000 a year, or less than £6 a day, to travel to work and back home again by train.

"In many other countries, the state chooses to subsidise the railways more heavily than in Britain.

"In this country, the longstanding government approach to sustain investment in the railways is to cut the contribution from taxpayers and increase the share paid by passengers."

A Department for Transport spokesman said: "We recognise the pressure on family budgets and that's why we announced that 2012 regulated rail fares will rise by an average of inflation plus 1%, not plus 3% as set out in the spending review.

"Revenue from fares is helping to deliver one of the biggest programmes of rail capacity improvements for 100 years, which will benefit passengers and stimulate economic growth – this includes 2,700 new carriages, a £900m electrification programme and the delivery of major projects like Crossrail.

"Better value for farepayers and taxpayers can only be achieved if the rail industry works together to reduce inefficiency, and we will be publishing our rail reform plans early next year."