Protests\nwill be held in Birmingham against rail fare rises as studies shows UK\npassengers spend up to five times more on season tickets as other European\ntravellers. The TUC said the 3.1% rise in season tickets\nwas higher than the expected growth in wages this year of 2.5%<\/p>\n\n\n\n
TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady\nsaid: “The most reliable thing about our railways is the cash that goes to\nprivate shareholders each year, but with the most expensive fares in Europe,\nthat can’t be right. It’s rewarding failure and taking money away that should\nbe invested in better services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It’s\ntime to take the railways back into public hands. Every penny from every fare\nshould go back into the railways. The number one priority should be running a\nworld-class railway service, not private profit.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mick\nCash, leader of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union said: “The British\nfare-payer has been battered by the toxic combination of gross mismanagement\nand profiteering by the private companies exploiting Britain’s rip-off\nrailways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Our\npassengers have been left paying the highest fares in Europe to travel on\nrammed-out and unreliable services and that is a national disgrace. The only\nsolution is to sweep this whole racket away and return our railways to public\nownership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan\nsaid: “The train companies are telling passengers to pay more for a poorer\nservice and that’s not a great offer, is it? Not for passengers, or for voters\nat the next election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n“Commuters complain about persistent delays and cancellations, and the\nconsumer group Which? says the privatised train operators are one of this\ncountry’s least trusted groups – beaten to bottom place only by second-hand car\ndealers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Wages\naren’t keeping pace with inflation and yet the train companies, and their chum\nthe Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, are pushing up prices yet again. What a\nway to run the railway.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Transport Salaried Staffs Association general secretary Manuel\nCortes said: “Millions of commuters will be staggered and furious that\nfares are rising yet again while privateers stuff shareholders’ pockets with\ncash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“This situation is untenable, and the fact is only\nbringing the railways back into public hands will end the misery for so many\neach day.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unite national officer Harish Patel\nsaid: “Given last year’s rail timetable chaos, presided over by the\nhapless Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, there should be no rail fare\nincreases for hard-pressed travellers in 2019 – fares should have been frozen.\nThe 3.1% rise is an insult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“As\nusual, the real ‘winners’ are the greedy shareholders of the privatised rail\ncompanies that have gobbled up more than \u00a31 billion in ill-gotten dividends in\nthe last six years – money that could have gone towards freezing fares and\nboosting rail investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Every\nday the case for the public ownership of the rail industry grows stronger,\nespecially after the woeful performance of 2018.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rail union leaders, politicians and\ncampaigners will protest outside stations across the country including in\nBirmingham, as well as London King’s Cross, Cardiff, Liverpool, Manchester,\nBristol and Leeds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Protests will be held in Birmingham against rail fare rises as studies shows UK passengers spend up to five times more on season tickets as other European travellers. The TUC said the 3.1% rise in season tickets was higher than the expected growth in wages this year of 2.5% TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,37,3,112],"tags":[264,1789,1788],"class_list":["post-27934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-local-news","category-news","category-top-stories","tag-birmingham","tag-protests","tag-rail-fares"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}