Anthony Smith: Passengers rail against price of train travel

This is especially the case if you can book ahead, are travelling with a group, on a rail card or if you can be a little flexible with the time that you can travel.

But many passengers are flabbergasted by unreasonable fare rises. Price increases this coming January seem inevitable – we just don't know how bad the hike will be yet, although it is likely to be well above the rate of inflation.

Other industries have reacted to the current economic climate by showing restraint and reducing prices. Premium supermarket Waitrose is now offering to price match with its rivals in an effort to remain competitive.

The rail industry, on the other hand, continues to impose above-inflation price rises. Passenger Focus surveys more than 52,000 passengers every year in our National Passenger Survey (NPS) and passengers report consistently that they're unhappy with the value for money that they receive – only 48 per cent of passengers told us in our latest NPS that they were satisfied with this aspect.

To address these concerns, we explored passenger views in more depth and compared fares and service levels in Britain with those in Europe.

While punctuality, overcrowding and managing delays were contributory factors, ticket price remained a key component of value for money.

So if the industry is going to improve passenger views, it needs to continue to work on punctuality and address overcrowding, but it also has to tackle ticket prices which are just too high.

For those passengers travelling long distances, they are sometimes able to find a cheap ticket if they can book in advance and tie themselves to a train at a specific time.

Our study found that if you can buy a ticket at the cheapest possible "buy in advance, one-train-only" price, long-distance travel to London can be cheaper than travel to the major cities of Europe, but the price of flexibility is too high.

If a passenger has to travel at short notice or can't be sure which train they'll need to catch, then their journey to London is likely to be more expensive than if they were travelling between other European cities and much more expensive if they need fully flexible tickets.

Part of the problem surrounding perceptions of rail fares, is that many passengers just don't know if they have received a good deal.

We recently published some research that found that passengers who don't use the train very often or are making a journey that isn't familiar, had trouble navigating ticket machines. The technology wasn't intuitive and left passengers questioning if they had paid the right price for their ticket.

Similarly, our research also found that there were some passengers who would rather queue at the ticket office than use a ticket machine – even if they faced a longer wait to be served.

These passengers have a preference for face-to-face transactions for reassurance, and Passenger Focus continues to reiterate the need for staff to be available at the station for a variety of reasons, including assisting passengers with advice and sales, for security reasons and for revenue protection.

We believe the industry should take the initiative and promote ticket restrictions clearly and outline the good deals available. For example, why not advertise the cheapest "buy-on-the-day" return ticket price at the station, which would give passengers reassurance that they're getting the best deal available?

Passenger Focus is also lobbying for greater transparency on advance fares: we should know whether tickets for a particular train have yet to be released or have sold out, rather than having to constantly check websites in the hope that a good deal might become available.

There should be more flexibility when passengers miss their booked train – the money you've already paid for an advance ticket should count towards the cost of any new ticket.

In the longer term, we need a fundamental review of the long-distance fares structure to create a system that is both understood and trusted by passengers.

The NPS looks at every aspect of passengers' experiences of train journeys. The good news is that the latest report found that record numbers of passengers (83 per cent) told us that, overall, they are satisfied with their journey.

But the industry must be reasonable and address issues with value for money if passengers are going to continue to use the railway in the same numbers they have during better economic times.

Anthony Smith is chief executive of Passenger Focus.