Some fares have risen by nearly 30% over the last 5 years!
This post is about National Rail fares in zones 1-6 for operators using the NR1 farescale. That’s most fares for Southeastern, Southern, SouthWestern Railway and Thameslink south of the river Thames plus Thameslink and Great Northern north of West Hampstead and Finsbury Park. These Oyster fares are set by the Rail Delivery Group with input from the TOCs so that the same fares can be set for all the companies.
The fares are adjusted each January using the same formula for regulated fares throughout the UK. This means that on average fares rose by around 2-3% each year. There is a problem where the fare in question is quite small, because the increase must be a multiple of 10p. A 2% rise on a £2 fare is only 4p, so when rounded up to 10p the increase becomes 5%. The logical and fair thing to do would be to increase one year and then freeze the next so that cheaper fares did not become disproportionately more expensive. Sadly that hasn’t happened.