Rail fare rises must be worth the pain Over the past six years, wages have fallen more in real terms than in any previous economic downturn. During that time, however, one particular household cost has been guaranteed to rise by more than inflation: rail fares. Since 2007, they have outpaced wages by nearly 14 per cent - and from January, regulated commuter season tickets and off-peak inter-city return fares will go up by another 4.1 per cent, because they are linked to the RPI measure of inflation taken in July, plus one per cent. On some popular routes, unregulated fares could rise by much more. It will be the 11th year in a row that passengers have endured above-inflation increases. For many people, this is an unavoidable cost if they want to get to work; the millions of travellers feeling the squeeze are not so much angry as resigned to the annual pain. It is grudgingly acknowledged that if we are to see continued investment in the railways, then the passenger needs to make a greater contribution. An argument can be advanced to take more money from general taxation, on the grounds that the railways are a public service. But the taxpayer already pumps in around £4 billion a year - more than when the network was privatised in the Nineties, though below a peak of £6 billion in 2006 - and the Government is rightly anxious to see this fall over time. The train operators insist that the inflation-busting fares are not their responsibility. True, they have a duty to ensure their shareholders are rewarded with reasonable dividends. But whether this entitles executives to big bonuses, given the captive nature of their customers, is another matter. To earn them, they must keep costs down, reduce bureaucracy and improve the system's efficiency without damaging the quality of the service. That said, what looked like a dying industry 20 or 30 years ago now has more travellers than at any time since the 1920s, after the longest ever period of sustained growth. This is generating record levels of revenue to pay for more and better services, thereby encouraging greater rail use. For all that we moan about the fares - and, in particular, a ticketing structure that remains infuriatingly opaque, despite promises to end the complexity - most of the increase in revenues has been generated by passenger growth rather than by increased charges. On top of that, surveys suggest that public satisfaction is growing, so the train companies must be doing something right. They need, in that case, to carry on doing so. If the burden of subsidising the railways is to be gradually switched from the taxpayer to the passenger, then the latter is entitled to see continued improvements - in particular, less congestion and better punctuality.