Train companies have been under fire of late for their fare pricing policies.

Yesterday consumer champions Which? questioned whether companies were manipulating the hours when peak rate apply in order to charge higher prices.

The findings came barely a week after warnings that passengers could be set for the biggest rises since privatisation when fares go up in January.

However train companies representative, the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) has moved to defend the track record of the firms’ fares.

The Claim

In an interview screened on the BBC News Channel yesterday, ATOC spokesman Edward Welsh, insisted that far from getting ripped off, the vast majority of passengers benefited from discount fares.

He said that four out of five journeys were made on such discounted fares – a claim repeated in ATOC press releases.

Yet with surveys showing value for money being the top concern among rail passengers, Full Fact decided to take closer look at the figures.

Analysis

We spoke to ATOC, and while they were happy to explain the figures behind the claim, were unable to provide us with the data.

This is, as a representative of the Office of Rail Regulators (ORR) explained, because the ‘LENNON’ database of ticketing information is actually owned by ATOC and is not publicly available.

“LENNON is the central ticketing database and although we publish information on behalf of the industry as the independent regulator they are not actually our figures.

“We get them from LENNON, which is an ATOC database,” he said.

However a representative for ATOC explained that the figure is arrived at by looking at ticket sales in four main category types, namely Anytime, off peak, advance, and season tickets.

With Anytime tickets, the only non-discounted tickets of the four, accounting for 21 per cent of sales, this leave 79 per cent of tickets sold at a discount rate, roughly the four fifths claimed by Mr Welsh.

As the ATOC spokesman explained, this was likely to be, if anything, a conservative estimate.

“A lot of people on the Anytime tickets are also travelling on rail cards. Once you add rail cards into the journey a proportion of those any time tickets will actually be discounted as well,” he said.

So why do some passengers still feel they are getting a raw deal?

We spoke to Passenger Focus, the body representing public transport users, who suggested that comparatively high fares relative to continental Europe

Research published in 2009, shows that for most types of journey’s UK railways offer the most expensive or second most expensive fares on average.

However, given that the bulk of this research related to fares in 2008, only limited conclusions can be drawn from the figures, as fares in 2010 saw modest rises and in some cases decreases, according to ORR figures.

Yet what the ORR figures show is that even when inflation has been taken into account unregulated fares, which on some estimates account for 60 per cent of journeys, have gone up by a national average of 28.3 per cent since 1995.

Conclusion

The claim made by ATOC over discount fares, checks out as far as we are able to tell.

Without a more detailed look at the figures there is no apparent reason to cast doubt on the claim.

However, the lack of access to figures compiled by ATOC themselves, is a practice that runs contrary to the kind of transparent data in the public debate for which Full Fact campaigns.

But on the other hand, the fact that discounts through the use of rail cards are not included in the figures largely counters any suggestion the figures are exaggerated.