Captain Haddock wrote:Next time someone says (or you read) "Britain has the highest rail fares in Europe", you'll know this is only 15% of the story. The other 85% is that we have similar or even cheaper fares, too.
The big picture is that Britain has the most commercially aggressive fares in Europe, with the highest fares designed to get maximum revenue from business travel, and some of the lowest fares designed to get more revenue by filling more seats. This is exactly what airlines have known, and been doing, for decades.
https://www.seat61.com/uk-europe-train-fares-comparison.html
You make a valid argument about high-paid city workers, I might counter that not everyone that commutes is highly paid.
Anyway, your source. A simple look at his "about me" section reveals:
I'm a career railwayman who ran away from Oxford to join the circus - or as we called it in those days, British Rail - as soon as he could. Starting out in delightful rural Kent on what was then BR's Southern Region, I was the Station Manager for Charing Cross, London Bridge & Cannon Street railway stations in London in the early to mid 1990s. After a spell as the Customer Relations Manager for two major UK train companies, I worked for the Office of the Rail Regulator and later the Strategic Rail Authority, ending up at the Department for Transport in charge of the team regulating fares & ticketing on the British rail network.
Hmmmm, vested interest is fabricating "commercially aggressive fares" spin, methinks.