Regulated fares in the UK, which includes season tickets, can currently increase in price by 1% above the rate of inflation year on year, and unregulated fares, which includes most other tickets, can increase by as much as each train operator can justify.

The Campaign for Better Transport has been pushing to change this, not only so that commuters get a better deal but also so that more people use the train, which is of course better for the environment.

With all of the main political parties keen to trumpet their environmental credentials in the run-up to the general election it is therefore surprising that only the Lib Dems have signed up to the cause. Their policy document on transport – a refreshing one-page of clear commitments – states:

We will make sure that regulated fares go up by less than inflation which means prices will come down and we will make Network Rail refund a third of your ticket price if you have to take a rail replacement bus service.

You can’t get much clearer than that.

The rest of the party’s policy briefing notes on transport can be found in this PDF document.

Really?

Talking on Radio 5 Live today he said:

If I was in standard class I would not do work because people would be looking over your shoulder the entire time, there would be noise, there would be distraction… There’s lots of children, there’s noise, there’s activity. I like to have peace and quiet when I’m travelling. (source: BBC News)

Well don’t we all, Nicholas. Lots of us – myself included – work when we’re travelling. Lots of us would like peace and quiet and no distractions, but we have to make do with plugging into an iPod to block out everyone else.

MPs are the only people in any position to really do anything about the state of the railways in this country, and they should be forced to travel like the vast majority of us – in so-called ‘standard’ class. Perhaps then they’ll see how most of their constituents (a ‘totally different type of people’) live their lives.

I want to be represented by someone who is the same ‘type’ of person as me. How else could they ever fight for those things that interest and concern me?

Like seats on trains, quiet coaches and a service that runs on time.

Image courtesy of M. Holland

‘In common with other rail operators we have carried out a review of our cost base to ensure we are operating as efficiently as we can in view of reduced passenger growth and an increasingly challenging economic climate,’ the company announced on its web site.

Interesting term, that ‘reduced passenger growth’ bit. What it means isn’t that passenger numbers are falling, but that they’re still growing – just slightly slower than they were before.

So if it needs these 480 people to cope with present demand, how can it insist that it won’t affect passengers. It will if the rest of the staff go on strike. It will if it means platforms will be deserted and unsafe. It will if it has anything to do with the company’s plans to close ticket offices and force us all to rely on ticket machines, even though they might not sell us the best ticket.

Some of the jobs will be lost through natural wastage as people leave and aren’t replaced, but around 200 other staff who work there now look set to lose their jobs through a mixture of compulsory and voluntary redundancies.

That doesn’t mean you will be searched – just that you could. If you don’t agree to be searched, you don’t agree to travel. Simple as that.

Passengers who buy a London train or tube ticket would automatically be giving their consent to be searched, under proposals now under consideration. [says The Guardian]

The trouble is that at the moment the police have to have a reasonable suspicion about you before they can search you or ask you to walk through a knife-detecting arch. After the proposed changes they could just ask everyone to submit to searching, regardless of how many people are in a queue in front of you or how many trains you’ll miss as they do so.

The Prevention of Terrorism Act 2000 has been used to stop 62,584 people at railway stations and another 87,000 were questioned under “stop and search” and “stop and account” legislation.

That comes from The Telegraph, which reports comments from Lib Dem transport spokesman Norman Baker.

Clearly this is another example of overzealous application of laws in areas for which they were never designed – just like the way the government used anti-terror legislation to seize the money in Icelandic bank accounts in the UK when those banks went belly-up.