As someone recently retired, I very rarely these days need to travel at peak times. I don’t like the inflexibility of Advance tickets, especially the fact that to get the best prices you have to book so far in advance and they are mainly non cancellable without a fee. Since getting my Senior Railcard, I rarely buy advance tickets as I now find the Railcard discount brings most off peak walk up fares down to an acceptable level.
Therefore, as I mainly travel off peak and would, if they were a little more flexible, consider advance tickets, Option C would appear to be the one for me. However, I’m going with B because I’m not sure that C would be implemented throughout the system in a uniform and fair way for all journeys.
If walk up fares became more expensive, and apart from short local journeys the main format of ticket was advance tickets they would have to be available for all journeys over a certain distance. Currently, it is very much like a postcode lottery whether advance fares are available or not, depending upon the TOC and the number of train changes required and number of TOCs used during a journey. For long intercity journeys Advance fares are usually available but not for many cross country journeys by secondary routes involving a number of TOCs and changes of train. For example, tomorrow I am travelling from Mansfield to Bangor, a long journey involving changes of train at Nottingham, Derby, Crewe and Chester. Although I have been able to reduce this fare slightly by split ticketing there are no advance fares available for this journey as with many journeys of this type. If advance fares, under Option C were not made available, I could see this type of journey being even more expensive.
Therefore, as I mainly travel off peak and would, if they were a little more flexible, consider advance tickets, Option C would appear to be the one for me. However, I’m going with B because I’m not sure that C would be implemented throughout the system in a uniform and fair way for all journeys.
If walk up fares became more expensive, and apart from short local journeys the main format of ticket was advance tickets they would have to be available for all journeys over a certain distance. Currently, it is very much like a postcode lottery whether advance fares are available or not, depending upon the TOC and the number of train changes required and number of TOCs used during a journey. For long intercity journeys Advance fares are usually available but not for many cross country journeys by secondary routes involving a number of TOCs and changes of train. For example, tomorrow I am travelling from Mansfield to Bangor, a long journey involving changes of train at Nottingham, Derby, Crewe and Chester. Although I have been able to reduce this fare slightly by split ticketing there are no advance fares available for this journey as with many journeys of this type. If advance fares, under Option C were not made available, I could see this type of journey being even more expensive.
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