Great Western Coffee Shop

Furious Totnes commuters have condemned rail bosses for increasing London fares by a quarter and squeezing them out of their cheap travel slot.

Passengers using early morning services to travel from Totnes railway station to Paddington have seen their return ticket price rise by some 25 per cent thanks to an increase in the 'off peak' return fare and a move which bans cheaper 'super off-peak' ticket holders from travelling before 10.30am.

Members of the Totnes Rail Transport Group are complaining direct to First Great Western over the changes which, they claim, will hit early morning travellers trying to get into London for a day's work.

But First Great Western's train bosses say the aim is to take the pressure off peak morning and evening services. A spokesman said: "People who will be advantaged by this are the leisure travellers. Those who will be slightly disadvantaged are business travellers."

Until now commuters aiming to catch the 8.14am or 9.22am trains to London from Totnes were paying ^68.35 return. First great Western has increased the fare up to ^84. At the same time, the company introduced a super off-peak fare of ^69.

But, explained Totnes rail group coordinator Ronnie Plagerson, this new ticket cannot be used by anyone at Totnes travelling before 10.30am, which means if they use a direct service they can't get to London until 3.23pm which is 'much too late for people travelling for work'. She also said group members were angry the new super off-peak fare had been trumpeted as cheaper and declared that was only true because the alternative fare had been increased.

"We were given the misleading impression that the new arrangements were an improvement for passengers," she said. "In fact people wanting to continue getting to London by late morning now have to pay ^15 more per journey, the third increase within a year.

The rail group has been trying to get a response from First Great Western over their concerns for the last month but without any joy, revealed Ms Plagerson. She said the rail group was planning to meet on Monday to decide what to do next.

The spokesman for First Great Western said there was a 'financial reason' for the changes but more importantly it was designed to address 'capacity' by encouraging more people to use the quieter off-peak services by giving them a financial incentive. He said: "A lot of people are now travelling during the day using a highly discounted ticket. The converse side of that is that those people who need to arrive by a certain time and cannot be flexible will pay a little more."

All well and good and pretty much factually correct, but just how many commuters are there from Totnes to Paddington? 6 hours plus for a return daily journey.....

But then again, I did do a "commute" on Tuesday from Totnes to Paddington, if you can call it that considering I got the first up and last down.

having been working in totness for the past couple of weeks i can tell you that it is infact another world! is a nice place.. just different, i guess they are also losing there cheaper alternative to london in southwest trains

How do you get the ^5 fares to London? would like to travel from Exeter if poss.

If there are any promo codes, please let me know :D