Yesterday was a good day to bury bad news. So Boris slipped out the annual announcement on tube/bus fare rises while nobody was paying attention. Here are some of the highlights (or lowlights, depending).
Cost of a single central London tube journey
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
£1.50
£1.60
£1.60
Oyster
£1.60
£1.70
£1.50
£1.50
£1.50
£1.60
£1.80
£1.90
Visitor
£2.00
£2.00
£3.00
£4.00
£4.00
£4.00
£4.00
£4.00
The Zone 1 Oyster tube fare rises 5½% in January, to a new high of £1.90. Pessimists will note that this is 27% higher than when Boris came to power. Optimists, however, should note that it's still only 27% higher than a decade ago.
Cost of a single central London bus journey
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
£1
£1
£1
Oyster
70p
80p
80p
£1
90p
£1
£1.20
£1.30
Visitor
£1
£1.20
£1.50
£2
£2
£2
£2
£2.20
The pay-as-you-go bus fare rises 8% in January. That's a whopping 44% rise since Boris came to power, which is awful... but only a 30% rise over the last decade, which maybe isn't so bad.
On average, across tubes and buses, we're told that prices will be rising next year by 7% (which is the rate of inflation + 2%). But this average hides a multitude of larger rises, for example...
Cost of a tube journey from Green Park to Heathrow
2010
2011
% increase
Peak (Oyster)
£4.20
£4.50
+7%
Off-peak (Oyster)
£2.40
£2.70
+12½%
Visitor (cash)
£4.50
£5.00
+11%
And then there's a subtly hidden yet very evil thing concerning One Day Travelcards. It's this.
Come January there'll be just three different One Day Travelcards within London, whereas currently there are six. This is bad news if you currently use one of the One Day Travelcards being scrapped, most notably the Zone 2-6. TfL haven't yet released prices for the newly restricted range.Update: yes they have, grudgingly. So let me demonstrate what will happen in January once the range is cut back.
Cost of One Day Travelcard - any time(updated)
Z1-2
Z1-3
Z1-4
Z1-5
Z1-6
Z2-6
cost now
£7.20
£8.60
£10.00
£12.60
£14.80
£9.00
to be retained?
✔
×
✔
×
✔
×
cost in 2011
£8.00
£10.00
£10.00
£15.00
£15.00
£15.00
Cost of One Day Travelcard - off peak(updated)
Z1-2
Z1-4
Z1-6
Z2-6
cost now
£5.60
£6.30
£7.50
£5.10
to be retained?
✔
✔
✔
×
cost in 2011
£6.60
£7.30
£8.00
£8.00
Consider, for example, the poor Outer London Travelcard user. At the moment they save cash by not travelling into Central London, but when the Zone 2-6 One Day Travelcard is withdrawn they'll be charged the same as if they had. That's a massive 57% fare increase off-peak, and an astonishing 67% increase for the all-day user. How on earth can this be justified?
You may be thinking so what, I never buy a One Day Travelcard anyway. But maybe you do, indirectly at least, through daily price-capping. Pay-as-you-go price caps are always set to match the relevant Travelcard, so if a paper Travelcard disappears then so will the matching electronic price cap. » For example, if you use your Oyster to swan around in Zones 1-5 all day, you currently never pay more than £12.60. Once the Z1-5 Travelcard vanishes you'll have to pay up to £15.00 instead, which is the Z1-6 cap. Over a week, a month, a year, that'll really add up. » Or consider an Oyster user who makes four off-peak Zone 2-3 tube journeys in a day, each costing £1.80. At the moment the price cap kicks in at £5.10, which means the fourth journey is free. Once the Z2-6 Travelcard vanishes the price cap leaps to £8.00, which means the the fourth journey costs full price. Ouch.
Fare rises are clearly essential if London's going to continue to have a vaguely world-class transport network. Somebody has to pay to keep our trains and buses moving. But there's a nasty undercurrent to these latest price hikes, disguised beneath a veil of simplification and rationalisation, and it seems that some travellers are being asked to pay far more than their fare share.
