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MML Franchise impact on Megabus

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JonathanH

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And this is the problem I had with it - you had to know about it rather than it being available at all railway sales channels, and it also had inferior T&Cs to a real Advance (I recall that no cycle carriage was permitted, for instance).

As people point out the advertising for Megabus+ is on the motorway, at bus stops, Victoria coach station. It has been about getting car and coach users to use it, not people who are already rail users.
 
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BJames

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And this is the problem I had with it - you had to know about it rather than it being available at all railway sales channels, and it also had inferior T&Cs to a real Advance (I recall that no cycle carriage was permitted, for instance).
Agreed. At first, I was disappointed that Megatrain wouldn't be continuing - as I'm moving up to Nottingham later this year - but I only discovered it after my last journey was completed, when I'd paid for a fairly expensive advance ticket, and realised this service was there. It would make sense just to maybe reduce the cost of advance fares on the really quiet services, and encourage people to use these instead.
 

Bletchleyite

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Not if it meant that the tickets were not offered at all.

Fair point.

In any case, as I mentioned above, my ire is mainly directed at Megatrain, which is just an attempt at price differentiation through obscure sales channels. It should always be possible to purchase the cheapest fare from all railway sales channels in my view - I would not even allow temporary fares. There's not even much excuse for not offering things like Rovers and Advances from TVMs these days. The technology exists.
 

RT4038

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Fair point.

It should always be possible to purchase the cheapest fare from all railway sales channels in my view - I would not even allow temporary fares. .
But to whose advantage would this 'rule' be, if the effect was that these special offers/tickets were then not offered at all?
 

extendedpaul

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Reading this thread brings back memories of being on the computer at the stroke of midnight to grab £1 tickets on Megatrain services when they went on sale exactly 45 days in advance. Usually only one on each train and all gone by 00.02. I nabbed at least 20 £2.50 London to Sheffield or Leicester returns over the years. The times were ideal for matinees at the theatres there. Going back even further there were London - Birmingham and even Birmingham - Glasgow tickets on Virgin @ £1.

As soon as Megabus was prevented from advertising £1 coach and train tickets by the Advertising Standards Authority they understandably dropped them. There are fewer Megatrain journeys left now on the remaining routes and they start AFAIK at a still-reasonable £9.
 

dadadrummer

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So it turns out Megatrain isn't disappearing. I spoke with Megabus customer services yesterday and they confirmed that Abellio will be taking on Megatrain/Megabus+. How long this will last however is another question!
 

LowLevel

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It's being kept going 'for now' while they decide if they're interested long term
 

BJames

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That's interesting. Wasn't expecting that at all, good news for now. But as said above, I wouldn't be completely surprised if that was to disappear at some point in the future if it costs Abellio too much.
 

Llandudno

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Are you sure it’s continuing. Can’t seem to make a booking for after 30 September?
 

Scott1

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I've never been a fan of Megabus, its just hiding the cheapest fares from the majority of passengers. I appreciate the idea that it is to move coach passengers to rail, but in reality the marketing has ensured that the average passenger has no idea it exists. Everyone should see every available fare, and this kind of special website undermines that.

As it is it will continue on a temporary agreement with EMR until they make a final decision on if it is worth saving, it was being discussed on EMT's twitter today.
 

Robertj21a

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I've never been a fan of Megabus, its just hiding the cheapest fares from the majority of passengers. I appreciate the idea that it is to move coach passengers to rail, but in reality the marketing has ensured that the average passenger has no idea it exists. Everyone should see every available fare, and this kind of special website undermines that.

As it is it will continue on a temporary agreement with EMR until they make a final decision on if it is worth saving, it was being discussed on EMT's twitter today.

I don't follow what you are saying at all. Megabus is simply the Stagecoach equivalent of National Express and fares are calculated in much the same way as airlines and train operators, to manage a satisfactory yield. The use of Megabus Plus to use both coaches and trains, via East Midlands Parkway, has been publicised for many years.
 

edwin_m

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The train part of Megabus costs very little to run because it uses the Nottingham fast train which generally has seats available and stops at Parkway (I'm guessing it doesn't run in peaks or if it does it's a lot more expensive). According to a post in another thread somewhere, the Nottingham fast will cease to stop at Parkway, and most of the off-peak workings will be a single 5-car unit (some doubles may run if they decide to leave the ones that do the busiest peak diagrams coupled together all day). So I'd expect MegabusPlus to be drastically cut back or terminated when that happens.
 

Starmill

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The train part of Megabus costs very little to run because it uses the Nottingham fast train which generally has seats available and stops at Parkway (I'm guessing it doesn't run in peaks or if it does it's a lot more expensive). According to a post in another thread somewhere, the Nottingham fast will cease to stop at Parkway, and most of the off-peak workings will be a single 5-car unit (some doubles may run if they decide to leave the ones that do the busiest peak diagrams coupled together all day). So I'd expect MegabusPlus to be drastically cut back or terminated when that happens.
I have always thought it's really daft for Beeston passengers travelling to London to have to use the slow train, or change at East Midlands Parkway (which is actually still quicker overall than using the through train). If it were up to me I would definitely say that enticing more people who use Beeston onto the fast train would be more successful than enticing long-distance bus passengers.

Against this, I really love the idea of genuinely low-cost travel challenging budget airlines and groups in their car. Making use of rail and coach packages seems like an excellent way to do this, because the coach routes can be provided at very low cost. The problem arises because EMT and soon EMR are not really a budget operator at all. Nor really would we be well served by them becoming one. Indeed this is something the UK mostly lacks - Hull Trains never tried to be low-cost and Grand Central tried but have kind of given up. West Midlands Trains is the only really successful example of long-distance budget rail operation, although Northern have tried to muscle in on short and medium distance routes with reasonable success. If a bus coach service were to be run connected with WMT services to London, that would probably be a genuinely low-cost operation. For example, a coach service from cities in the East Midlands and Yorkshire to Rugby, for WMT services to London Euston, would probably be able to be packaged at a market-beating price given the huge availability of bargain tickets from Rugby to London that currently exist. There is no real reason to believe WMT might try it, though. There are also some capacity implications.
 

Robertj21a

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I have always thought it's really daft for Beeston passengers travelling to London to have to use the slow train, or change at East Midlands Parkway (which is actually still quicker overall than using the through train). If it were up to me I would definitely say that enticing more people who use Beeston onto the fast train would be more successful than enticing long-distance bus passengers.

Against this, I really love the idea of genuinely low-cost travel challenging budget airlines and groups in their car. Making use of rail and coach packages seems like an excellent way to do this, because the coach routes can be provided at very low cost. The problem arises because EMT and soon EMR are not really a budget operator at all. Nor really would we be well served by them becoming one. Indeed this is something the UK mostly lacks - Hull Trains never tried to be low-cost and Grand Central tried but have kind of given up. West Midlands Trains is the only really successful example of long-distance budget rail operation, although Northern have tried to muscle in on short and medium distance routes with reasonable success. If a bus coach service were to be run connected with WMT services to London, that would probably be a genuinely low-cost operation. For example, a coach service from cities in the East Midlands and Yorkshire to Rugby, for WMT services to London Euston, would probably be able to be packaged at a market-beating price given the huge availability of bargain tickets from Rugby to London that currently exist. There is no real reason to believe WMT might try it, though. There are also some capacity implications.

The whole point of MegabusPlus was that Stagecoach could entice passengers on to their (Stagecoach) East Midlands Trains from areas that their trains didn't serve (and thereby take passengers away from competitors).
 

peri

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The cheapest MegabusPlus tickets from Hull to St. Pancras have increased to £10 from £5.
 
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