– Campaigners urge people to tweet with #farefail hashtag
– People in South East face paying £4,000 for season ticket
– Manual workers in Birmingham spend 21% of their salary on commuting
RICHARD HARTLEY-PARKINSON
Mail Online
January 4, 2012
Commuters faced with an inflation-busting 11 per cent hike in prices will take little comfort from figures released today that show people are spending up to a fifth of their wages on getting to work.
As new year rises took effect, campaigners greeted people at railway stations across the country to highlight the cost of travel in the UK which is 10 times that of many places in Europe.
In Birmingham, manual workers travelling for longer than 50 minutes each day can expect to spend 21 per cent of their earnings, while in London the figure is 17 per cent, even before taking into account the cost of Tube trains and buses.
Stuart McMillan, from Hay Group consultants, which released the figures on the proportion of pay packets being spent on travel said: ‘As train fares continue to rise above inflation, and salary increases remain subdued, commuting costs are set to take up more of UK employees’ pay packets.
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