Flat Train Fares Introduced

A train company is introducing flat rate fares allowing passengers to pay the same price regardless of when they book or the time they travel.

Wrexham and Shropshire said it was introducing a single standard fare after listening to passengers’ views.

The company is the first in Britain to introduce such a system.

Wrexham and Shropshire runs trains between Wrexham and London Marylebone via stations in Shropshire and the West Midlands.

Tickets may be bought on the train, from thetrainline.com or at a ticket office for the same price.

Andy Hamilton, managing director of Wrexham and Shropshire, said: “[Passengers] clearly tell us they’re finding the fare structures confusing and they think the fares ought to be better value so we’ve responded by introducing the new structure.

“Up until today [Monday], you have been able to travel from, say, Wrexham to London from around £53 on an off-peak train but it could be a lot more on a peak train.

“As of today, on all our trains it’s the single £53.”

From Monday to Saturday, the company operates four trains a day to and from London, with three on Sundays.

Mr Hamilton said he was confident the service, which started in April last year, would attract new customers.

“If you look at the prices and the price they’re pitched at, you would struggle to drive to London for the same price so why would you bother?” he said.

“We all know what the traffic is like, we all know what the parking is like in London so why bother when you could sit on a train?”

Fare structures

Mark Smith, from travel advice website seat61.com, said efforts had been made nationally to tackle the issue of complex fare structures with the introduction of three fares – any time, off peak and advanced.

“I think the key thing with Wrexham and Shropshire is that finally they’re going to be charging affordable off-peak prices for the whole of the day,” he said.

He said many people believed Britain had the highest train fares in Europe but that was not necessarily the case.

“We’ve some of the cheapest fares in Europe if you book in advance, and we’ve comparable fares if you travel off-peak but, until now, we’ve often had to pay hundreds of pounds to get into London by nine o’clock on a Monday to Friday,” he said.

“At last we’ve got a train company that’s charging fares that ordinary people can afford if they’re not travelling in business when they’re paying for their own ticket – even on a train that gets into London at 0857 on a week day.”

Research suggests that one-third of train passengers feel confused and even stressed by the variety of train tickets available.

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