Rail passengers will pay record fare increases of 20 per cent under restrictions on off-peak tickets being imposed by Britain’s biggest train company.

The national rail passenger watchdog has accused South West Trains (SWT) of abusing its monopoly and voiced concern that other companies would now introduce similar increases.

SWT is to force passengers with flexible working hours to buy more expensive tickets, even though they are travelling after the rush hour. It is abolishing the existing split between peak and off-peak fares and introducing a new, intermediate price band on May 20 that will cover trains arriving in London after 10am and as late as 12.49pm.

It will be the second increase well above inflation in only five months for the company’s passengers, who already endure the worst overcrowding on the network. The announcement came less than a week after it was revealed that Brian Souter, chief executive of Stagecoach, which owns SWT, will receive a windfall from the company of about £100 million.

The Department for Transport admitted that it had secretly approved SWT’s plans for big fare increases last year when it awarded the company a new ten-year franchise in return for a £1.2 billion payment.It also secretly agreed to allow First Great Western to remove 20 carriages to save money, a decision which resulted in a fares boycott in January by passengers forced to endure much greater overcrowding.

Anthony Smith, chief executive of the watchdog, Passenger Focus, said: “This unjustified, unexplained and unfair price hike is exploiting a monopoly market because passengers have little choice but to use South West Trains’ services. The lack of consultation and explanation as to why it is necessary to raise prices by as much as 20 per cent will leave passengers frustrated and angry.”

Mr Smith said the increases would effectively extend the peak throughout the whole of the morning and hit thousands of passengers who had arranged flexible working hours in order to take advantage of off-peak prices. These large increases have as much to do with making money as they do in seeking to ease crowding pressures on true peak-hour trains. The danger is that this could set a precedent for other companies to follow.”

Under the changes, passengers travelling from Weymouth to London, who can currently buy a cheap day return to arrive at Waterloo just after 10am, will have to wait almost three hours or buy a much more expensive ticket. Even then they will still pay more because SWT said it was raising the price of the cheapest tickets by 3 per cent from May 20, on top of the 5.3 per cent average increase in January. First-class passengers will pay between 15 per cent and 20 per cent more on trains throughout the day.

An SWT spokeswoman said the increases were partly being introduced because too many passengers were catching the first off-peak train. “People working more flexible hours or coming up to London for a meeting were waiting for the first cheap train, creating another mini-peak. This will flatten demand but we don’t want to price people completely off the train.”

SWT has already angered passengers by removing seats and lavatories on several of its busiest routes in order to create more standing room. On the Portsmouth line, passengers now have to sit five abreast, instead of four abreast, for journeys of an hour and 20 minutes.

Gerry Doherty, general secretary of the transport union TSSA, said: “This amounts to daylight robbery in view of Stagecoach’s profit levels. Modern-day passengers are now being held up by the owners, who consistently increase fares beyond the rate of inflation.”

It is the second time in less than a year that the Department for Transport has struck a secret deal with a train company to raise fares. Last June it emerged that it had approved plans by First Capital Connect to force passengers to buy more expensive tickets to travel out of London between 4.30pm and 7pm.

A department spokesman said: “Stagecoach brought forward proposals for phased increases in some cheap day return fares in their bid. As these are unregulated fares, it is entirely within the commercial freedom of the company.”

Fares please

Examples of fare increases
Return tickets for journeys arriving in London between 10am and noon: new fares from May 20
– Portsmouth: was £25.20, rises to £30.20
– Southampton: was £27.20, rises to £32.60
– Winchester: was £23.20, rises to £27.80

Who is affected
– 16 million passengers a year will pay 20 per cent more
– SWT is removing a fifth of the seats from almost 500 carriages to create more standing room
– The company predicts passenger numbers will grow by up to 50% over the next decade
– 444,000 people a day use SWT’s services
– Brian Souter and his sister and co-Stagecoach founder, Ann Gloag, are worth £395 million (Sunday Times Rich List 2006)

Source: South West Trains & Times database

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