Tom Haines-Doran, "Derailed: How to Fix Britain's Broken Railways" (Manchester UP, 2022)
New Books in Economics
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Why Are Ticket Prices So High?
Since privatisation fares have increased by about 40% overall. The government regulates half the fares and private companies set the other half. Government regulation affairs sets a benchmark and they deliberately increase those fares above and beyond inflation over many years. We've also been subsidising cutting costs for motorists. Every successive government has reduced in real terms fuel duty. To the extent that there's been something like a £20 billion short for per year in today's money in terms of the government and what they receive from fuel duty. So effectively we could have free public transport if a government hadn't made these decisions to cut fuel duty.
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