You lucky people!

Back to work after the Christmas and New Year break and what do we find in the news to welcome in 2013? Yep, rail passengers are facing their tenth consecutive year of above-inflation fare rises. This is a familiar theme for this blog and what we now find is that from today, the average season ticket goes up by 4.2% and many will rise by more than double that (a season ticket from Banbury to London rises by 9.2% or £436 - incredibly, that ticket is now just shy of £5,200 a year!!).

The unions have been quick to say that the Government is pricing ordinary people off the railway and according to a Network Rail study, more a third of trains are still late! This is going to keep happening, yet bizarrely, more people are using the railways than ever. Demand is growing at 5-6% every year, despite the fact that average train fares have risen nearly three times faster than average incomes since 2008. Rail use and the high prices, overcrowding and questionable punctuality that go with it seems to buck every trend and no one that I know can explain it.

Many commuters are spending a good 10%+ of their salary simply on travelling into work - and that's not even considering the time it takes out of the day with delays, connections etc etc. I suspect many of those will also say that they have no choice but to keep paying what is demanded of them. It's a captive market innit? But aside from how good any of this is for the world of work, people's pockets and their family/home life (or the country's economic recovery), will people really keep taking the hit? How much more can the Government and the rail companies get away with extorting from their "customers"? And does the "no choice but to pay it" argument really stack up?

I don't have all the answers but what I do know is that this state of affairs must represent a real opportunity for the motorcycle industry. The "Get On" and "Ride to Work Day" campaigns are doing some really good work but they are voices in isolation, so what I'd like to see in 2013 is a concerted campaign, backed (and funded) by all sides of the industry and the biking media, to really drive home the message of the advantages of switching to two wheels. The arguments are well-rehearsed but they're not being heard. What I don't see is any sense of us as a community working together.  

They say the two certainties in life are death and taxes. These fare rises are now becoming a tax on work - it's time to try a different direction....