Rail fares are set to increase by 4.9% from Sunday 3 March. Given the fact that Urmston train station is one of the country’s worst performing, Andrew Western, the MP for Stretford and Urmston, decided to take the Government to task on this in Parliament.

Speaking in Parliament about rail fare increases, on Thursday 8 February, 2024, Andrew Western said: “For a period last year, Urmston train station in my constituency was one of the country’s 10 worst performing train stations for service reliability. Given the level of service experienced by my constituents who use Urmston and other stations on the line, why are they set to face an inflation-busting fare increase in March?”

In response to the question, Huw Merriman, Conservative MP and Minister of State for Transport, said: “If we take the current year’s fares as an example, we delivered the biggest Government intervention on rail fares since privatisation by capping fare increases at 5.9%, which was 6.4 percentage points below the July RPI. It is all about striking a balance, and I believe that balance is a fair one.”

The increases will come into effect on 3 March, 2024. Annual increases to ‘regulated’ rail fares – such as season tickets and off-peak tickets – are usually linked to the previous July’s Retail Prices Index (RPI) measure of inflation, which for 2023 stood at 9%.