[Newspaper Column] Train Prices

Each week the Romford Recorder and Ilford Recorder have the Steve N Allen column. If you're around East London and West Essex you can buy the newspaper every Thursday/Friday, or follow @mrstevenallen to see the columns on Twitter. You can also read the archive of past ones, which can be found here.

You can click the image to zoom in on the paper, or read the column below.

New year, new me. This year I am going to be less of the grumpy man I had become. I plane to find the positive in things, see the glass as half full. Or totally empty as it's dry January.

It can be hard to find the positive spin on things but I think it is worth the effort.

The New Year also means new prices for train tickets, with an average increase of 3.4 percent. It isn't easy to feel positive about paying more for something that is exactly the same as last year.

An increase of 3.4 percent in the ticket price would be easier to stomach if the trains were 3.4 percent less late or 3.4 percent longer. If the armpit of the person you find yourself wedges into was 3.4 percent fresher it would be OK.

I think we're in the best place to feel positive about this though. While other areas see little improvement we got to use the new Elizabeth Line trains. They seem clean, they look great, they have displays that give us extra information and also mean at least 3.4 percent fewer people will ask you, "Is this train for Stratford?" while struggling to lift their suitcase.

There are no connecting carriage doors so your extra 3.4 percent cost means you can enjoy the smell of the food being eaten on the entire train.

Or course the following years we won't have new trains to keep ourselves distracted and I am sure the fares will continue to go up above inflation in 2019 and 2020.

So the grumpiness I normally have hasn't gone it is simply delayed, and these days you'd pay 3.4 percent more for something like that.