COMMUTING into London on Britain’s clapped-out private railways is four times more expensive than travel costs in other European capitals, new data has revealed.

Research by rail union RMT found that London commuters fork out twice as much as regular travellers to Amsterdam — and four times as much as workers in Germany and Italy.

Season ticket holders travelling the 35-mile journey from Maidstone to London pay £412.50 per month — which is over four times as much as the £99.80 monthly fare between Luckenwalde and Berlin.

Commuters to the capital from Milton Keynes, a 49-mile journey, pay £482.70 per month — whereas Italians travelling the similar length from Orte to Rome pay £116.

RMT general secretary Mick Cash said: “It is a national scandal that UK passengers pay the largest proportion of their salaries in the EU just for travelling to and from work and are forced to endure unreliable and rammed-out trains as part of the deal.”

Britain’s railways were privatised under John Major’s Tory government in the 1990s — but much of the network is now owned by the governments of other countries.

The state railways of Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands are among those currently holding franchises.

Mr Cash called for the renationalisation of Britain’s railways, adding: “It is time that the government stopped foreign rail companies treating commuters as a bovine herd to be packed in and routinely milked with the proceeds shipped abroad to keep fares down in other European cities.”

But Rail Delivery Group chief executive Paul Plummer, whose organisation represents the private operators, dismissed the findings as “it ignores that passengers here often have more frequent trains and better journey times.”