Technically a 'Discounted' fare is a fare that is reduced from the public rate, e.g. with a Railcard, PRIV, family & friends discounts and so on.
I think I misread your point slightly. A lot of the tickets I see as singles are not discounted. I take your point that returns other than anytime returns are discounted, although as you say people don't think of them as being discounted as such.
Some of course would argue that they are not discounted but the other fares are overpriced. I guess it depends on which fare as some may be overpriced, whilst others maybe a fare price or under priced.
It's all semantics and subjectivity.
...And this is probably why we need an overhaul of the ticketing system - you have all these hidden fares that your average member of the public won't be able to take advantage of.
If the train companies were forced to avoid ever having a situation where a fare undercuts another fare, it would generally result in the cheaper fares rising or being abolished, with only very few exceptions.
You shouldn't need to game to system in order to get the cheapest fare for your journey.
Would you apply this principle to air transport? If so, how? I'll create a new thread shortly and link to it here. Edit: here it is
https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/plane-fares.183749/
If the fares structure was simplified, it would undoubtedly be the case that some fares which currently represent bargains would have to increase or disappear entirely.
Absolutely.
But if the restructuring was done on a revenue neutral basis, there would be other fares which would be reduced.
But not by as much; see
https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...eturns-to-increase.178399/page-6#post-3884808. In order to be "revenue neutral", if £350 Anytime Return fares are reduced to, say, £200, I know no-one who will personally benefit from that, yet there will be £millions of lost revenue which will need to be recouped by putting all the reasonably priced fares up by several pounds.
The current structure is full of anomalies and oddities of which buying a return for a single journey to save £3.55 is one of the least ridiculous.
Market based pricing is deployed in all modes of public transport in this country; it can be cheaper to make a return plane journey than make a single on some routes, and the last time I bought a bus ticket for a single journey I bought a return to reduce the price. It's not a
railway thing.
Market based pricing is good for TOCs and its good for consumers who are on a tight budget e.g. leisure passengers. The people who really disbenefit from market based pricing are businesses; so in effect the proposals to abolish market based pricing are proposals to transfer costs from businesses to consumers.
Looking for fares from A the other day, I found that the return to B was £143.90, but a return from A to C, routed via B was £58.70. Similarly, where an annual season from A to X is £4,112.00, one from A to Z, routed via X and Y is just £1,492.00. In each case, the ticketed destinations of the cheaper options were so far removed from their required destinations, the average customer would not think to ask or look for them, let alone imagine they may be cheaper. And that's just for A.
The only way to abolish this is to move away from market based pricing (see above).
Those "in the know", who can take advantage of these anomalies, obviously have a vested interest in the current system staying exactly as it is, so it's not surprising they issue dire warnings should any kind of simplification be mooted.
It's not just knowledgeable people who will lose out if market based pricing is abolished, but anyone who makes short distance day returns at off peak times (e.g. Sheffield to Derby type journeys); there is no way those fares will remain good value in any new system. If you think you can make it work, please do create a thread with your proposals and we'll see if they are workable.
Points well made - of course 'revenue neutral' for the industry does not mean 'expenditure neutral' for the passenger, who may - to use this example - say - only ever travel London - Uckfield. But yes the reputation of the industry would be helped by any simplifciation that generally seemed 'fair' on the paying passenger.
Indeed, it will increase costs for most passengers; the aim is indeed to get positive reputation for being "fair"; As I said in the
other thread:
...the examples being used by RDG in the media seem to focus on primarily reducing headline anytime prices in order to reduce the "sky high rail fares" headlines, thus making the move popular with the government, whilst actually increasing costs for people who are far more likely to be actually paying the ticket price themselves rather than on expenses.
But any positivity generated by being "fair" and reducing headlines about £350 Anytime Returns between Manchester and London (which may "only" be £200 or so with a new system, so still out of most people's price range) will be far outweighed by negative publicity due to huge rises of the fares that many leisure passengers use.