What price convenience?

[borden]

Working in Stratford and living in Sittingbourne the convenience of the High Speed service is perfect and beats my old pre HS route of Cannon St - walk to Bank - Central line to Stratford -by a whopping 40 mins of extra 'in bed time'. BUT I'm only prepared to pay so much for this convenience. I've seen the cost of my monthly season ticket rise from £350 in 2010 when HS was introduced, through £397 in 2011 to close to £450 this year. In this Olympic year there is the added blow of curtailment of services during the Olympics to provide the Javelin trains. So this 63 year old commuter is back on the buses. Yes they are slower and more crowded, yes I get less time 'in bed' and yes I have to get a Jubilee line transfer from Canary Wharf and YES I save £200 per month.
I for one will only pay so much for convenience and SE you have now passed that barrier as far as I'm concerned.

[borden]

Since my last post on this forum 'What price convenience?' I've been in correspondence with the DfT asking if they were aware of the negative impact that increasing ticket prices has on the number of passengers using the service. Their reply below:

Fares on Southeastern High Speed Services

I note the point you make with regard to the effect of rising fares on future demand. I can only reiterate the Government’s commitment to ending above-inflation fare increases once the economic situation allows and once the costs of running the railway have been brought under control.

So in summary, they understand that increasing fares every year reduces the number of passengers using the service (onto less eco friendly modes of commuting) but they stick to the line that fares will increase until 'the costs of running the railway have been brought under control'. Awareness that increasing fares means that their objective just keeps getting further away or is potentially never achieved seems to escape them.

Now if SE were brave enough to cut HS1 fares, passenger numbers and revenue would increase and the objective would be potentially achievable.

[busman]

Bog standard reply from them, they must have that set up as a template.

An old u-tube clip but it sums it up:

www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dmGjeDsj8yg