FARES are set to rise steeply when Kent’s railway system finally steams out of the 19th century. Passengers will be in for a nasty surprise in 2009 when new high-speed commuter trains enter service.

If they choose to use the new services on smart Hitachi trains, they face a 30 per cent premium above other fares. But passengers still using existing services will not escape fare pain. They will also have to pay more, possibly as much as the rate of inflation plus four per cent.

Christopher Garnett, chief executive of GNER and leading one of the four bids for the Integrated Kent Franchise, claims that Kent passengers have had it too cheap for too long. Historically, that’s because its railway system has been poor, with some journey times virtually unchanged since the late 1800s.

Mr Garnett warned: "Kent cannot have the investment in railways without people having to pay for it."

It may not feel like it to season ticket holders paying thousands of pounds a year, but Kent has lagged massively behind the rest of the country in fare levels for years, Mr Garnett says. "Its subsidy per mile per passenger is enormous."

The onus was on the bid winner to deliver them a better quality service to support those fares.

Mr Garnett admits that passengers will not be happy about the new fare pricing structure. Rail travel has soared in the rest of the country while growth in Kent, despite lower fares, has been little better than two per cent.

The questions for the four bidding groups, who submitted their proposals in the summer and now await a verdict next month, are: Will rail business soar come 2009? Will housing growth in Ashford and the Thames Gateway bring a surge in business? Or will more people work in the county and use their cars - or public transport systems like Fastrack in North West Kent - to go to work?

Mr Garnett says the answers are all hard to predict for a business keen to invest in the system, reduce subsidy, improve service and still make a profit.

Mr Garnett says: "Why has Kent not had the same railway growth as elsewhere? Will Kent get the growth when the railway gets better and better? That’s the difficult bit to tell."

But the possibility of steep fare rises has not been well received by the Rail Passengers Council.

An RPC spokesman said the council knew of proposals to charge premium rate fares on the new high speed routes but said these increases should not apply to existing services. If the current bid included that option then it would look into that vigorously.

"Any fair rises have to be justified. To suggest price increases of the inflation rate plus four per cent is quite radical.

"We would also not accept that passengers using these services should be expected to make up for the slow increase in fares because the discounted fares were as a result of poor performance.

"If Kent is being singled out in this way then we would be challenging any increases unfairly targeting Kent passengers."