Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Coulter, is Friday the 28th of February.

I happen to be in the departure lounge at Stansted Airport, but I'm thinking two days ahead to the 2nd of March,

which is when we get the next annual increase in rail fares. It's going to be 4.6%. Now, that's for regulated fares,

which covers things like off-peak returns on longer journeys, journeys on commuter trains near big

cities and season tickets. But it also is pretty much the increase you will get for a lot of

other fares as well.

Brutiously also rail cars will increase by five pounds.

The typical one costs the moment.

30 pounds, that's going to go up to 35 pounds.

So really important to get to work on this,

and I'm delighted to be talking to Alex Robertson,

who is the chief executive of the Consumer

Watchdog Transport Focus. Alex, thank you for joining me. First of all, how do you feel about

the fares increase? Well, our research shows, and we talk to passengers all the time about this,

there's very definitely a mismatch between the price people pay for their tickets

and the service they expect to get in return for them. That clearly needs to change. I think it's also

fair to say that people understand that someone's got to pay for the railway. And as you know,

Simon, it's important to note that the funding from the railway can only really come from fares or taxes.

Not everyone, of course, uses the railway.

It's a really difficult balance to strike between those two sources of income.

So the Secretary of State ultimately has got to decide whether to draw the line.

And I can recognise that.

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