Government must make rail travel cheaper

IT'S a funny old time to be a commuter right now especially one who relies on trains to get from A to B.

- Vicky Jessop

On the one hand, the strikes have slowed down. It's early days, but I'm cautiously optimistic - if only because I cannot bear to catch a bus to Gatwick again. That two-hour journey via Heathrow still crops up in my nightmares from time to time.

On the other, is it just me or do the fares keep going up and up? Last week, it was announced that LNER was discontinuing off-peak fares on its longer-distance routes in favour of something it introduced in January called "semi-flexible" fares-essentially a 70-minute window of time in which a customer can catch a train to their intended destination.