ATOC fares spin unspun - again?

Last year ATOC decided that it would only announce a headline figure for the January 2010 fares increases.

Regular readers may recollect that this transparent approach went down well with hacks... in the manner of the Titanic.

Clearly unabashed ATOC has adopted exactly the same policy this year,

So how did it go?

Daily Telegraph: Corporate spinners at the Association of Train Operating Companies have adopted a strategy which is, to put it mildly, economical with the truth.

Financial Times: The Association of Train Operating Companies has declined to give a detailed breakdown of figures for different operators since 2008, and so the figure is likely to mask considerable local variations in fare increases.

Daily Mail: Labour MP Louise Ellman, who chairs the parliamentary transport select committee, criticised the companies’ ‘failure to disclose’ the true increases.

Evening Standard: Rail bosses were today accused of deliberately trying to hide fare increases of more than 10 per cent.

The Scotsman: News of the increases yesterday was accompanied by anger from rail watchdogs that passengers will be unable to find out how much individual tickets will rise until at least Sunday.

Channel 4 News: [ATOC]... gave no details of what the rise would be for each individual train company, nor did it break down the figures into regulated fares - which include season tickets and account for around 40 per cent of all fares - and unregulated fares.

Yorkshire Post: The Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) attempted to put a gloss on the figures by confining itself to an announcement that average fares would rise 6.2 per cent

Metro: The Association of Train Operating Companies (Atoc) failed to break down the figures into regulated fares - which include season tickets and account for around 40% of all fares - and unregulated fares, and gave no details of what the rise would be for each individual train company.

ITN: Atoc's lack of information was criticised by the RMT and by rail customer watchdog Passenger Focus which said passengers "deserved to know how much they will have to bear in January".

So that went well then!

Of course Eye feels for individual TOC press officers who felt the full fury of annoyed hacks.

No matter.

Presumably ATOC hopes it will have the media hordes fully trained by next year.

Any bets on third time lucky?

UPDATE: This from a Hacked-off Hack...

Once again I'm astonished at ATOC's cowardice.

They say the present government is sticking to the previous administration's policy to cut the public sector's contribution to running the railways. But that's straightforwardly untrue.

In the CSR, the government announced average fare increases would be RPI + 3 per cent for three years from next year. That's a much more aggressive effort to claw back money from farepayers than was scheduled under Labour.

The policy isn't necessarily wrong - but why do ATOC have to mislead on the government's behalf?

UPDATE: This from Our International Correspondent

None of the transport hacks have understood.

The fares increase is essential to pay for improvements to train services...

Mostly those of Irish Rail.

UPDATE: This from Lobby Fodder...

Philip Hammond, at the Transport Select Committee, has just said that he would like ATOC to be more 'transparent' with fares announcements.

Bernard Street. This is Bernard Street. All change!

Chiltern rejects "streamlined fares"

This just in from Hymnody...

As Eye has already noticed, NFM05 content has been uploaded to "The Manual" earlier in the week.

One you may have missed, however, is a fare with a massive 46% increase!

The 1st Anytime Day Single from London Terminals to Banbury (and vv), priced by Chiltern, is increasing from £44.50 to £65.00.

Similarly, the 1st Anytime Day Return is increasing from £89.00 to a whopping £130.00!

At present, the only way to make use of 1st Class is to travel from Paddington via Reading.

But from the December timetable change it will also, of course, be valid on Wrexham and Shropshire services from London Marylebone, which will be making "full calls" at Banbury and Leamington Spa.

Probably best not to tell Lord Adonis, who used Tuesday's Grauniad to praise Open Access "steamlined fares".

UPDATE: This from Central User...

I wonder whether the justification for this is that 1st includes a sit-down cooked meal?

ATOC January fares announcement

Hmmm... that didn't work then.

Channel 4 News: Rail companies 'mask' fares hike

Sky News: Train company chiefs have been accused of masking the full extent of the annual rail fares' increase in the New Year.

ITN News: Train company chiefs have been accused of "masking" the full extent of the annual rail fares' increase which will see passengers paying an average of 1.1 per cent more for their tickets in January.

Daily Telegraph: Rail passengers face fare rises of up to 15 per cent from January as train companies try to disguise the biggest inflation-busting increases.

The Grauniad: Atoc normally gives separate figures for the regulated and unregulated increases. But today the association would not say what the average unregulated fare increase would be, merely lumping the two figures together to make the 1.1% rise.

Daily Mail:The Association of Train Operating Companies (Atoc) was also criticised for not publishing - as it usually does - a company-by-company breakdown of the increases.

ThisisWiltshire.co.uk: Train company chiefs were accused of masking the full extent of today's announced annual rail fares' increase which will see passengers paying an average of 1.1 per cent more for their tickets in January.

Eastbourne Herald: Rail firms accused of hiding increases

Etc...

Mind you the Murdoch rags have been spectacularly quiet.

'Nuff said!

UPDATE: Has anyone heard from ATOC, the organisation that supposedly represents those that set the fares?

Après le Déluge...

Surely First Great Western won't be allowed to profit from this?

According to thisiscornwall.co.uk...

TRURO railway station has been closed after torrential rain caused the roof to cave in above the ticket office on Thursday morning.

Passengers can only buy daily tickets in cash from a machine on platform two; all advance tickets and payments by card are unavailable.

Eye trusts that Passenger Focus is on the case, even though it's the weekend?

Hoon caught out

This from the BBC...

Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon has become the second cabinet minister in 24 hours to repay money he claimed on his designated second home.

Mr Hoon claimed bills in advance for a full year on his Derbyshire property - but in the same year he claimed a different house was his second home. It was an "inadvertent administrative error", he said, and apologised.

That's all right then.

Railway Eye readers are invited to diddle their employer for a similar amount (£668) and then use the same lame excuse (plus apology).

I'm sure they'll understand and invite you to remain in post.

Don't panic

Telegrammed by our man at 222 Marylebone Road
The 'IEP Evaluation Process Guidance Document' for the Frankenstein Train was published on Friday.

It promises to beat, with a very large stick, any bidder foolish enough to disclose confidential information:

5.2 Confidentiality
A fundamental requirement of the IEP procurement is that tender information is kept confidential at all times throughout the evaluation process and that the highest standards are applied and maintained in order to ensure that any evaluator’s access to Bidder information is restricted to that agreed with the evaluation team leads and set out herein as defined by the access to information defined in ASITE.

Specifically commercially sensitive tender information must be controlled to:

• Prevent the prospect of insider trading in share prices
• Avoid the leakage of undesirable information to Bidders and the undermining of the DfT’s negotiating leverage.
• Provide confidence in the procurement process
• Reduce the risk of Judicial Review

Does the stricture against 'the leakage of undersirable information' apply to the MD of one of the bidding groups who has already pointed out that the diesel version is "unfundable"?

Probably not, as DafT is terrified that if just one of the two bidders walks away the whole sorry process will attract even greater censure from the inevitable NAO inquiry.

Electification

From our International Correspondent

The Atkins sponsored "Case for Electrification" supplement in the July issue of Modern Railways has a forward by Secretary of State for Transport Ruth Kelly.

A good thing, as it is so incoherent and financially illiterate that your Treasury will almost certainly use it to justify never again having to electrifying a single chain of your network.

In one article RSSB is quoted as costing electrification at between £550k - £650k per single track-km.

On that basis Tier 1 alone (London-Bristol, Bedford-Sheffield and Edinburgh-Glasgow) would cost somewhere in the region of £400 million. And remember that's just for the wires. The cost of trains isn't included.

The £400 million "investment" would need to be serviced at a minimum rate of 4% per annum.

Servicing the debt would be achieved through a number of ways:

Savings by not running diesel trains (approx £40,000 maintenance saving per train per annum), additional "sparks effect" tickets sales and a reduction in carbon emissions which, according to supplement sponsor Atkins, delivers just 20% efficiencies over diesel - i.e pretty much what you get if you cruise your elderly HST at 100mph vice 125mph (or run it smoothly without signal checks, TSRs. or delays whilst the wires are down).

Deduct the loss of income during the endless weekend possessions whilst engineers do the knitting unmolested by trains and you have a pretty big income hole to be plastered over using Cost Benefit Analysis (i.e think of a number, get an academic to double it and then a Transport Planner to add the number originally thought of plus an optimism bias).

Now in Europe we just build the damn things and count the Euros rolling in afterwards.

Worth the wait?

***On Monday DafT revealed that the InterCity Express Programme has spent £9.4m on consultancy fees since 2005***

In case you're reading this whilst delayed by "rolling stock shortages" that figure would have bought two new three-car DMU or EMU trains.

HMG sets NR an example

***HMG has decreed that Government ministers will give up their pay rise for the forthcoming year. A welcome development that would have been unthinkable in the days of the Tony & Cherie gravy train.***

Perhaps those Masters of the Trough - Messrs MacAllister, Coucher and the Henderson twins, can still be prevailed upon to withdraw their snouts from NR's bonus pot - bearing in mind the company's piss-poor performance over Christmas.

Dead greedy

National Express East Coast have a demanding subsidy profile and every penny counts.

So Eleanor Summers discovered when her husband Thomas dropped dead and NEEC refused to refund the £96 they has spent on pre-booked travel tickets.

The Summers, from Byker, Newcastle, had planned to visit their son in London on 6th June, but unfortunately Thomas suffered a severe stroke on the 21st May and died a week later.

When grieving widow Eleanor contacted NEEC they offered her a £52 travel voucher – worth £44 less than the original set of tickets - claiming the difference covered "administration charges".

“We are very private people, but they are making millions of pounds out of people like my lovely husband.” said Eleanor.

After local paper The Journal became involved NEEC admitted they were wrong not to refund the entire price of the ticket, and promised to do so if Mrs Summers returned the vouchers.

The Fact Compiler thinks NEEC has an absolute cheek to charge an administration fee of almost 50% on ticket refunds, especially after the Banks had their bottom's spanked for similar sharp practices!

Perhaps this explains how parent company National Express can continue to fund the salaries of displaced MDs from all the franchises they have lost?