Tim Worstall

SWT Train Fares

My word, we are learning things today. Not just Polly telling us that competition drives up the quality of services, we have more!

Passenger Focus, the rail watchdog, complained to the Rail Regulator after it found that the rises were only implemented at stations where SWT had a monopoly, such as Woking, Winchester, Guildford, Salisbury, Southampton and Bournemouth. The company is freezing fares at Reading and raising them by only 1 per cent at Basingstoke because it competes at these stations with First Great Western.

Competition also drives down prices! My, my. Guess here might be some truth to this markets stuff then, eh?

In

3 responses

  1. dsquared Avatar
    dsquared

    a true pedant would note that “freezing prices” means a zero increase and “raising them by 1%” means a one per cent increase, and that the phrase “driving down” in the context of prices is conventionally reserved for a decrease.
    Tim adds: Inflation is what, 2.5 %? 3%? So this is “driving down” in real terms, is it not?
    Yours, The Pendant.

    Reply
  2. Mark Wadsworth Avatar
    Mark Wadsworth

    RPI was 4.8% last time I looked.

    Reply
  3. Alex Avatar
    Alex

    Anyone with any sense would point out that this is actually evidence that there is no meaningful competition on the vast majority of rail routes. (BTW Reading-London Waterloo by SWT will take you a good half an hour longer than Reading-Paddington down the Great Western.)

    Reply

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