Rail fares are surging as Trainline makes £86m profits – and passengers are furious ...Middle East

Rail passengers do not “need” Trainline and its soaring profits should be invested in cutting fares instead, campaigners have said.

The ticketing company has announced a profit of £86m for the year ending February, up 56 per cent compared to the year before.

Trainline said this was down to the growing popularity of digital tickets and fewer rail strikes, as well as an increase in fares which went up 5 per cent last March.

However, critics argued third-party operators such as Trainline take money out of the railway system which should be used to make improvements and cut fares.

Ticket prices continue to rise despite more than 384,000 train cancellations across Britain’s worst-performing rail companies in the last year.

Trainline’s success has been built on promising to find customers the cheapest tickets and charging a commission.

But Eddie Dempsey, RMT General Secretary, told The i Paper the company “profits from a fragmented ticketing system that fails passengers”, arguing discounts through splitting journeys “can mislead passengers into buying restricted tickets”.

“It often doesn’t offer the cheapest fares, and some tickets are invalid, forcing customers to pay again or face fines,” he said. The company also adds up to 4 per cent in booking fees on approximately one-third of transactions, Dempsey added.

Trainline said its booking fee is capped at £2.79 and that it believes it is helping to grow the rail industry by encouraging more passengers to use it.

The Government has begun the process of nationalising the railways by bringing private train companies under public ownership, directed by a new single operator known as Great British Railways (GBR).

Labour has promised GBR will simplify the rail industry’s complex fare system and start selling its own tickets through a new website and app, replacing the current 14 different operator websites that currently sell tickets.

While the Government has said it will continue to support a “thriving third-party retail market”, the move has caused some uncertainty about the future of Trainline. Its share price has fallen by a third since the start of the year.

But the company’s annual report, published on Wednesday, showed its net ticket sales increased 12 per cent to £5.9 billion last year, mainly driven by fast growth in the UK and expansion in European countries.

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Johnbosco Nwogbo, from campaign group We Own It, said: “We cannot allow £86m to leave the system when it could be used for cutting fares. This just illustrates how much our railway system is not working for passengers.

“There is an opinion in government that people care a great deal about competition in public services – they think when I go to use the train I’m going to look for the cheapest ticket out there and look at all the options.

“In reality, I don’t believe most people do any of that. People just want to get from Point A to Point B safely, on a clean and tidy train, quickly and cheaply.”

The Government has said GBR will remain in competition with third-party retailers such as Trainline in the hope this will drive up standards “in the interest of consumers”.

But Mr Nwogbo argued that ministers should be looking to put the likes of Trainline effectively out of business.

“The complexity of the ticketing system is what gives Trainline its power. The reason the system is complicated is that there are a million and one different interests in the private system.

“What Great British Railways should be doing is removing those interests, simplifying tickets for people, and then we don’t need this tool,” he said.

Trainline declined to comment when approached by The i Paper.

However, in its annual report the company responded to speculation about the impact of GBR on its model by saying it is “taking an increasingly assertive stance with the Government to deliver on its commitment to deliver a fair, open and competitive future retail market”.

The Department for Transport has also been contacted for comment.

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