ALTON Line Users Association (ALUA) has expressed deep disappointment that regulated rail fares will rise by 3.6 per cent in England and Wales from January 2018 - increases which, fears the passenger watchdog “will really hit the pockets of commuters and peak time rail passengers”.

The rise - which could see the price of an annual season ticket from Farnham to London Waterloo rise above £4,000 for the first time - is in line with July’s Retail Price Index (RPI) and not the lower Consumer Price Index (CPI).

In a statement this week ALUA said it “can only assume the Government is not using its preferred measure of inflation the CPI, which is the one used to determine wages and pension increases, because it is often lower than RPI and would lead to smaller fare increases.”

But, it says: “Passengers deserve to be treated fairly. Salaries and wages over recent years have diminished by seven per cent in real terms, while rail fares have been continually rising.”

While understanding of the claim by the Rail Delivery Group that “money from fares is supporting one of the biggest programmes of investment in the railway since Victorian times” ALUA is demanding to know why “passengers travelling today should pay for improvements in the future?” - especially when many of the electrification schemes have recently been cancelled by the Government.

Speaking on behalf of ALUA, secretary John Eddleston said the organisation “totally agrees” with Transport Focus director, David Sidebottom who stated: “Yet again, passengers [who are] now majority funders of the railway, face fare rises next January. Commuters do not give value for money on their railways a high satisfaction score – just one-third according to our latest survey.

“So while performance remains patchy and with pay and wages not keeping pace with inflation, they will feel rightly aggrieved if they are paying much higher rises next January.”

The Rail Delivery Group has stated that the increase is needed because it is income from fares that helps to upgrade the railway. It added: “Many major rail industry costs rise directly in line with RPI. Rail companies are working together to improve performance now, adding thousands more seats over the next 18 months and, longer term, simplifying fares and ticket buying.”

But ALUA finds this “disingenuous” saying: “The railway companies operating in our area have complicated the fares greatly by introducing a super off-peak fare onto an already complex scale of off-peak and standard fares for the many different types of tickets used at various times of the day.”

Responding to this criticism, the Department for Transport (DfT) has said in a statement: “We are investing in the biggest rail modernisation programme for over a century to improve services for passengers – providing faster and better trains with more seats, We have always fairly balanced the cost of this investment between the taxpayer and the passenger.”

ALUA believes, that many passenger, and in particular commuters, would not agree that it is any longer fairly balanced. Rail fares on the South Western Railway network are the highest in Britain and much higher than most of Europe. Our area yields a surplus of income, paid to the Treasury (Rail No.813).”

It is asking the British Government to follow the lead taken by the Scottish Parliament which “limits off-peak regulated increases to RPI minus one per cent, meaning that regulated fares in Scotland are now expected to rise by 2.6 per cent in January. The British Government should do the same, but also link fares to CPI not RPI,” it said.