Responding to the Spring Budget, Andy Bagnall, chief executive for Rail Partners, said:
“While measures helping with the cost of living are clearly welcome, freezing fuel duty for the 13th consecutive year, set against a 5.9% increase in rail fares earlier this month, has the unintended consequence of making of a low carbon form of transport relatively less attractive.
“Government needs to look holistically at how it supports different transport modes to encourage people to make greener choices to get from A to B.”
Notes to editors
- Rail Partners welcomes the significant continued capital investment and revenue support from the government for the industry, in the face of continuing challenges to rail’s financial sustainability.
- The scale of the problems facing the sector emerging from the pandemic, and our proposed solutions to attract passengers back, are outlined in Rail Partners Fork in the Tracks report.
- Government has a legally binding commitment to hit net zero by 2050. Transport is one of the largest sources of Greenhouse Gas emissions in the UK economy, and rail remains a low carbon way to move people and goods across the country, accounting for just 1.4% of domestic transport emissions.
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