Rail travellers are facing a massive hike in ticket prices with the cost of a season ticket between London and Birmingham rising by £2,874 since 2010.

Labour condemned the increase - and demanded the Government FREEZE rail fares.

Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said: "The Government’s shambolic mismanagement of our railways has been a national embarrassment."

It follows the Government's announcement that it is to allow rail companies to increase fares by 3.2%.

Virgin train over Fazeley Street
Virgin train over Fazeley Street

It means a Virgin Trains season ticket between London and Birmingham is set to cost £10,902 in 2019, up from £10,564 now and £8,028 in 2010.

That's a total increase of £2,874 a year.

And Birmingham commuters who make shorter journeys also face major increases.

  • The cost of a season ticket between Birmingham Northfield and Redditch will be up by £264 comparing prices in 2019 to 2010. That's an increase of more than a third.

  • A season ticket between Birmingham New Street station and Stafford will be £508 more expensive.

  • And a season ticket between Birmingham Erdington and Litchfield will have gone up in price by £295, comparing prices in 2019 and 2010.

It means prices have increased faster than wages.

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling has written to trade unions asking them to accept a pay cap for rail workers as a way of keeping costs down.

But Andy McDonald, Labour’s Shadow Transport Secretary, said: "Chris Grayling made no similar request for the bosses of train companies to take a pay cut or for shareholders to refuse dividends."

Labour says it would bring trains back into public control.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says fares should be frozen

Around 40% of fares will rise by this amount in January, including season tickets on most commuter routes, some off-peak return tickets on long-distance journeys and Anytime tickets around major cities.

The price of these fares is controlled by the Government.

It uses the July Retail Price Index (RPI) measure of inflation - announced by the Office for National Statistics on Wednesday - to determine the cap on the annual increase.

Mr Grayling wrote to union general secretaries on Tuesday, stating that he wants to "see lower levels of increase for passengers in future" by using the lower Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation figure, rather than RPI.

But he suggested that this can only happen if pay rises are also based on CPI.

The letter said: "As you will be aware, one of the industry's largest costs is pay. I support paying rail staff decent wages for the hard work they do, but I also now believe it is important that pay agreements also use CPI and not RPI in future when it comes to basing pay deals on inflation.

"I am not opposed to above inflation pay increases being individually negotiated between trade unions and employers in the industry where there are productivity or similar improvements that create the financial headroom for such deals.

"But it is difficult to justify using a different measure of inflation in the rail industry to the one that is widely used across services like the NHS.

"I think it is time to move the industry onto the same basis as elsewhere."