What are the government's plans to improve Britain’s rail services and are return train tickets being scrapped? FactCheck takes a look.
The Transport Secretary has announced plans for a new public sector body named Great British Railways – also known as GBR – which will oversee Britain’s railway, as well as the extension of a trial scrapping return tickets on some rail journeys.
Mr Harper said GBR will be responsible for ‘track and train’, as well as revenue and cost, which means treating the railway as a whole coordinated system rather than a series of separate interests. He said ministers will provide strategic direction and be accountable to Parliament, but won’t make operational decisions – this will be left to industry experts in regional GBR divisions instead.
Mr Harper said that after LNER’s “successful” single fare pricing trial, this will now be extended to other parts of the LNER network from the spring. The results of this extended trial will then be “carefully considered” before deciding whether to extend it more widely to other train operators. The LNER trial was designed to address issues whereby people were purchasing single tickets for long distance journeys, sometimes at nearly the cost of the return fare.The trial replaced return fares with single tickets around half the price of a return ticket, with the aim of allowing customers to select the best ticket options for their journeys more easily and give passengers the opportunity to ‘mix and match’ the best ticket for each leg of their journey.
She added: “Thirteen years of failure has seen fares soar, more services than ever cancelled, while failing operators continue to be handed millions in taxpayers’ cash.
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