Great British Railways: opportunities for fares reform?

[JonathanH]

Why would they need to have longer validity? You refer to 3/28 day tickets in the same context as 2/28 types. If you are a 3 day per week traveller, the validity would be the same as a 2 day per week traveller gets, i.e. 4 working weeks.

If you are a 3 day per week traveller, you use your 8 journeys up before the end of the 28 days and have to buy another set of tickets sooner. If you don't use your 8 journeys in 28 days, you lose any you haven't used.

 

[Bigman]

They sound a bit like the old West Yorkshire Metro Saverstrips. Get 12 journeys for the price of 10, and just click/scan when you make a journey. Something similar on the Paris Metro I believe.

 

[duncanp]

It will be interesting to see what happens with fares on routes where there is currently some competition, such as Birmingham to London.

I also hope that long distance train operators don't all move to compulsory reservations as LNER are doing at the moment, and someone tell the operator of the Cross Country concession to get rid of that <expletive deleted> 10 minute reservation system whereby you can be turfed out of a seat that was free when you boarded the train, but was reserved en route by someone using an App.

 

[JonathanH]

One thing we didn't see coming but which seems to be entirely consistent is fares setting responsibility being taken away from the TOCs and a single location to buy tickets.

You can bet that the ticket purchasing facility will be dumbed down to the simplest possible point to point options.

 

[Bletchleyite]

One thing we didn't see coming but which seems to be entirely consistent is fares setting responsibility being taken away from the TOCs and a single location to buy tickets.

You can bet that the ticket purchasing facility will be dumbed down to the simplest possible point to point options.

Why can you bet that? In essence it looks a bit like the NRE planner gaining ticket sales ability, and the NRE planner is one of the most sophisticated of the lot.

 

[JonathanH]

Why can you bet that? In essence it looks a bit like the NRE planner gaining ticket sales ability, and the NRE planner is one of the most sophisticated of the lot.

The overwhelming desire is for simplicity - different booking engines currently offer functionality that NRE doesn't. The NRE website is quite unwieldy compared to other options.

 

[mike57]

Well, the dust is still settling, but a few takeaways:


Flexible ticketing, why are they complicating already with 2 or 3 days per week. Surely the carnet idea is the answer, buy say 12 tickets, priced at 10, and use them as you need them. That could apply to every type of ticket and route except advance tickets if they still exist post reorganisation.

And a question on ticketing, will the numerous anomalies be removed, like split tickets being significantly cheaper for some journeys

 

[gimmea50anyday]

This has the potential to push fares up on routes such as the ECML where multiple TOCs selling tickets only valid on their own services have had major benefits. Hard to see how passengers sill gain from this development.

TOC only fares are of no benefit to the punters whatsoever when the TOC specific ticket is just £1 cheaper than the equivalent any operator ticket and ticket machines don't make it clear that the cheapest fare shown is not only TOC specific but is also for the slowest service. Its these tickets that should be the first to go and I for one wil, be glad to see the back of them! More hassle for the bearer and the unfortunate member of staff having to deal with them than they are worth.

 

[Wolfie]

This has the potential to push fares up on routes such as the ECML where multiple TOCs selling tickets only valid on their own services have had major benefits. Hard to see how passengers sill gain from this development.

Ditto with the WCML to Brum.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Reading through the bit about "Flexible Seasons" - they reference being valid for 8 days out of 28 (which covers working 2 days a week per calendar month) - but then go on to specifically talk about "3-day a week" commuters.

Surely then it should be a validity for the 3-dayers of 12 days out of 28?

If that is the case - I hope they would then be releasing a longer validity ticket for those people?

I'm just really interested in how these are going to priced. For some routes (like Bristol - London), assuming you travel in the peak it is currently cheaper to buy a full 7 day season ticket than it is to buy two anytime returns. That doesn't leave much room for a "flexible season" allowing travel for 2/3 days a week without either a huge price cut on the anytime return or a large increase in the 7 day season. I think we know which is more likely with those two options!

 

[30907]

Flexible ticketing, why are they complicating already with 2 or 3 days per week. Surely the carnet idea is the answer, buy say 12 tickets, priced at 10, and use them as you need them. That could apply to every type of ticket and route except advance tickets if they still exist post reorganisation.

It refers to 8 day in 28 season tickets. That should mean unlimited travel on each day, BOJ etc - I'll wait and see...
The time limit will be, apart from anything else, an anti evasion measure - you can't hang on to it for months and take your chance on the barriers being open etc).

And a question on ticketing, will the numerous anomalies be removed, like split tickets being significantly cheaper for some journeyes

I don't think we know.

Interestingly, the report refers to existing fare caps (offpeak and season) remaining. Has anyone else spotted that in the ticketing section?

 

[JonathanH]

TOC only fares are of no benefit to the punters whatsoever when the TOC specific ticket is just £1 cheaper than the equivalent any operator ticket and ticket machines don't make it clear that the cheapest fare shown is not only TOC specific but is also for the slowest service. Its these tickets that should be the first to go and I for one wil, be glad to see the back of them! More hassle for the bearer and the unfortunate member of staff having to deal with them than they are worth.

A penny saved is a penny gained. Clearly most railway employees are keen to see them go because they aren't the ones paying (and I understand just how many people chance it). PAYG on the local flows will hopefully take away a lot of the conflict between users and those checking tickets.

 

[yorkie]

And a question on ticketing, will the numerous anomalies be removed, like split tickets being significantly cheaper for some journeys

I bet Derby to York does not reduce to £32.80 for an Off Peak Return after 9am, a reduction of nearly 20 quid.

And for a journey like Reading to Birmingham at around 8am, XC charge three times the price Trainsplit charges for the same journey; can you really see the rail industry wanting to give up the extra revenue paid by people who are not price sensitive?

The current model works very much on a market based pricing model, where savvy passengers will either use a split ticketing provider, while those who will pay any price will buy through the TOCs directly but be happy to pay through the nose to do so.

Some passengers are put off travelling because they are unaware of cheaper booking sites, but the industry is happy for that to happen as they are concerned about capacity constraints.

I can't see this changing; to change it properly in a manner that is not detrimental to the customer, would involve an increase in subsidy to the tune of many millions of pounds, in addition to building extra capacity to accommodate the passengers who are currently put off travelling by rail.

 

[Bletchleyite]

TOC only fares are of no benefit to the punters whatsoever when the TOC specific ticket is just £1 cheaper than the equivalent any operator ticket and ticket machines don't make it clear that the cheapest fare shown is not only TOC specific but is also for the slowest service. Its these tickets that should be the first to go and I for one wil, be glad to see the back of them! More hassle for the bearer and the unfortunate member of staff having to deal with them than they are worth.

Completely agree here.

There are essentially two types of TOC specific fare. The ones you refer to are the "predatory" ones that are a bit like "bus wars" where you get each company trying to run one minute in front of the other and snipe the passengers. They exist to make the "cheaper" TOC show up first on the journey planner, and they are of very little value at all. Obviously there will be a few people for whom saving just £1 is important, such as children travelling on pocket money/paper round earnings and people on very low incomes, but for most people £1 is not really that important, and stress caused by the confusion is much worse. Examples here are most of the Northern vs. TPE ones, most Avanti Only ones, and short distance flows like MKC-Euston and Gatwick.

The other ones are genuine market differentiation which can grow the market. Examples of that type are things like "LNR Only" fares for long distance on the WCML - in essence, that's a lower price for a slower service with (if it's a 350/2) a lower level of comfort. That type of TOC specific fare can mean that a group of lads who would be travelling in their mate's old banger (say) can afford to choose the train instead, for example, and there can also be inroads into competing with the road coach (though that isn't a huge market - everyone on every coach from London to Manchester in a whole day would easily fit in one Pendolino with space to spare).

The former needs to go because they do nothing but confuse people. The latter have value - and indeed if you look at the European nationalised operators most of them have something similar - in France, Ouigo and IC/TER vs classic TGV, in Germany IC/IRE vs ICE plus the Quer-Durchs-Land ticket, in Poland TLK vs. EIC/EIP. So I'd expect and hope they stay.

 

[JonathanH]

The other ones are genuine market differentiation which can grow the market. Examples of that type are things like "LNR Only" fares for long distance on the WCML - in essence, that's a lower price for a slower service with (if it's a 350/2) a lower level of comfort. That type of TOC specific fare can mean that a group of lads who would be travelling in their mate's old banger (say) can afford to choose the train instead, for example, and there can also be inroads into competing with the road coach (though that isn't a huge market - everyone on every coach from London to Manchester in a whole day

You have made exactly the point - coaches are not a huge market - therefore the railway has no need to chase that market with lower fares.

The "LNR only" fares simply add to the confusion that 'most people' want removed. (Personally I don't want them removed but I can see that they and any other fares below what the market can bear are extracting money from the railway).

One further point on this is that if you remove LNR only fares from London to Milton Keynes and keep them for London to Crewe, that is in direct contravention of one of the biggest bugbears of 'normal' travellers - ie cheaper fares for long distance travel than short distance travel.

 

[Watershed]

The "LNR only" fares simply add to the confusion that 'most people' want removed. (Personally I don't want them removed but I can see that they and any other fares below what the market can bear are extracting money from the railway).

I don't think there has to be confusion just because there is market segmentation. Really, it's no different to how everyone accepts there are standard and first classes - with this being the equivalent of "third class".

There are certainly ways that ticket restrictions could be made clearer, and easier to avoid falling foul of, but the concept exists in many other countries' railway systems, which tends to suggest there's some merit in it.

One further point on this is that if you remove LNR only fares from London to Milton Keynes and keep them for London to Crewe, that is in direct contravention of one of the biggest bugbears of 'normal' travellers - ie cheaper fares for long distance travel than short distance travel.

LNR (well, London Midland really) developed a fare structure whereby nothing is undercut.

Up until quite recently, Avanti only fares between Milton Keynes and London offered a decent saving - making splitting at MKC worthwhile on many services. However, last May they instituted a highly cynical increase to make most of their dedicated fares only 10p less than the Any Permitted equivalent.

 

[JonathanH]

I don't think there has to be confusion just because there is market segmentation. Really, it's no different to how everyone accepts there are standard and first classes - with this being the equivalent of "third class".

There doesn't need to be confusion. You understand that. I understand that. However, people see a ticket from London to Crewe for £9 and use it on an Avanti train then blame their mistake on confusion of there being multiple fares for the same journey.

LNR (well, London Midland really) developed a fare structure whereby nothing is undercut.

I was responding to a previous poster who suggested that LNR fares and short-distance advances for flows such as London to Milton Keynes should be removed whereas they should remain for London to Crewe, and noting that 'normal' passengers can't understand why it is cheaper to travel a longer distance.

 

[Watershed]

There doesn't need to be confusion. You understand that. I understand that. However, people see a ticket from London to Crewe for £9 and use it on an Avanti train then blame their mistake on confusion of there being multiple fares for the same journey.

If they're paying £9, they have an Advance ticket. That is a concept that exists in almost all railways worldwide. If they're not capable of getting on the right train, when there are clear announcements about checking your ticket on the platform and on the train prior to departure, I don't think the railway can really be blamed. Advance tickets aren't going away just because some people can't be bothered to check what they've bought.

Confusion over flexible, TOC restricted tickets I can understand a little more - you might not necessarily want to travel at the time you originally selected when booking. But again, plenty of other railways manage to communicate TOC restrictions clearly. It's not an impossible task and it certainly isn't the biggest issue when it comes to fares reform.

I was responding to a previous poster who suggested that LNR fares and short-distance advances for flows such as London to Milton Keynes should be removed whereas they should remain for London to Crewe, and noting that 'normal' passengers can't understand why it is cheaper to travel a longer distance.

It still wouldn't be cheaper. There aren't any fares that would be undercut, even if you scrapped the LNR only fares from MKC-EUS.

 

[30907]

I'm just really interested in how these are going to priced. For some routes (like Bristol - London), assuming you travel in the peak it is currently cheaper to buy a full 7 day season ticket than it is to buy two anytime returns. That doesn't leave much room for a "flexible season" allowing travel for 2/3 days a week without either a huge price cut on the anytime return or a large increase in the 7 day season. I think we know which is more likely with those two options!

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/...avel-arrives-with-new-flexible-season-tickets

Exact details of savings will be provided before tickets go on sale. However, analysis shows that 2 day-a-week commuters buying multiple new flexible season tickets could save the following in a year when compared to the cost of daily tickets:

• over £250 from Woking to London
• over £200 from York to Leeds
• over £60 from Southampton Central to Winchester
• over £160 from Stafford to Birmingham
• over £220 from Liverpool to Manchester

I've done a quick check on the two in bold, and both look like a saving of around 10% on the Anytime Day Return fare - obviously depending on how they've calculated it. In both cases the seasons are not heavily discounted.

It will be interesting to see how the longer-distance ones turn out.

There is a paragraph (36,p.70) saying capped fares will remain capped.

 

[Bletchleyite]

You have made exactly the point - coaches are not a huge market - therefore the railway has no need to chase that market with lower fares.

Coaches no, but budget cars on the motorway are and that is a market that does need to be chased.

The "LNR only" fares simply add to the confusion that 'most people' want removed. (Personally I don't want them removed but I can see that they and any other fares below what the market can bear are extracting money from the railway).

One further point on this is that if you remove LNR only fares from London to Milton Keynes and keep them for London to Crewe, that is in direct contravention of one of the biggest bugbears of 'normal' travellers - ie cheaper fares for long distance travel than short distance travel.

I don't think any of the LNR Only long distance walk ups are cheaper than Euston-MKC "full whack", are they? If they are, just increase them a little so they aren't.

My general view on Advances is that they should not exist at all on regional services (basically those not offering proper seat reservations). Give or take temporarily during COVID, counted places were a solution to something that basically wasn't a problem.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 May 2021 ==

It still wouldn't be cheaper. There aren't any fares that would be undercut, even if you scrapped the LNR only fares from MKC-EUS.

I also suspect that as most people buy LNR Only or Avanti Only for an off peak walk-up, you could scrap the TOC specific fares and reduce the interavailable fares while remaining revenue neutral. They actually did that at Bletchley and Leighton Buzzard a while ago to stop the anomaly of those being higher.

 

[Baxenden Bank]

Regarding season tickets, I suspect the normal punter is expecting to see a flexible ticket at a price very similar, pro-rata, to what they currently pay for their current annual season ticket, so £x,000 divided by 240 work days per year (480 single journeys as per station usage statistics methodology). Not a modest % off the Anytime Day Return. Can't wait to see the twitter backlash when actual details become available to people.

We may well understand the reasons for offering a massive discount in return for an annual upfront payment, but the punter doesn't care. They want value.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Regarding season tickets, I suspect the normal punter is expecting to see a flexible ticket at a price very similar, pro-rata, to what they currently pay for their current annual season ticket, so £x,000 divided by 240 work days per year (480 single journeys as per station usage statistics methodology). Not a modest % off the Anytime Day Return. Can't wait to see the twitter backlash when actual details become available to people.

We may well understand the reasons for offering a massive discount in return for an annual upfront payment, but the punter doesn't care. They want value.

Absolutely.
Taking my Bristol - London example just because it is such an extreme one.
Someone who does that journey on a season ticket, lets say a 7 day one for simplicity (although the idea can still be rounded upto the annual ones) will see that their season ticket is about £350, and if they are only going into the office for 2 or 3 days they will expect to get about half off that price, they won't care that actually doing that would make it cheaper than a single day anytime return.

 

[robbeech]

@Bletchleyite

We both know we will never agree on the removal of flexible returns and the subsequent slashing of flexibility for passengers for no reduction in price. That sort of loss of Value I find completely unacceptable. But I accept that this is because it is a feature I do use frequently and i am one of a very small number. With a better implemented system this would reduce numbers even further.
However, with such small numbers doing it you could also argue that the flexibility wouldn’t cost the railway anything either.

the remaining points I very much like and could see something like this, or very similar working well.

of course, back in the real world we will likely see something that has negative effects for everyone but I hope to be proven wrong.

 

[thenorthern]

How would this work on routes where most passengers get the Any Permitted option? I know for example from Stoke-on-Trent to Manchester Piccadilly most passengers travel on "Avanti Only" tickets as the fare for the Any Permitted ticket used to be quite a bit more.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

Remember NR already have a hand in the WTT, and on the fares front, it says only 'some' fares will be done by GBR

Do we have a GBR/Impact on fares thread yet? I can see it becoming of interest - although given the current level of information it perhaps should be in Speculative for the moment.

My feeling is that what are currently regulated fares will probably remain about the same (plus inflation, and possibly plus a bit extra as for the last few years). I'm not sure if the law allows otherwise (and even if it doesn't, laws can always be changed) but the Transport Secretary has talked a lot about fares not rising - and Anytime tickets and season tickets tend to be the headline fares.

But I suspect that a lot of the cheap, restricted fares will go. With fares no longer going to the operators, there'll be less incentive to undercut each other (e.g. single operator only fares) or to oversell Advances at the expense of walk-up capacity (e.g. XC (and many other operators))*. This will be bad news for those of us who are prepared to jump through hoops to get cheap fares: it won't impact on the majority who never use trains: I won't speculate on 'ordinary' passengers, who might object to the higher fares but might appreciate the simpler structure.

*My expectation is that Advances will continue, but back in their intended role of selling off excess capacity to maximize income. So there may still be cheap advances on the midnight train where there's not much full-price demand, but not on the shoulder of the evening peak any more.

 

[RPI]

Do we have a GBR/Impact on fares thread yet? I can see it becoming of interest - although given the current level of information it perhaps should be in Speculative for the moment.

My feeling is that what are currently regulated fares will probably remain about the same (plus inflation, and possibly plus a bit extra as for the last few years). I'm not sure if the law allows otherwise (and even if it doesn't, laws can always be changed) but the Transport Secretary has talked a lot about fares not rising - and Anytime tickets and season tickets tend to be the headline fares.

But I suspect that a lot of the cheap, restricted fares will go. With fares no longer going to the operators, there'll be less incentive to undercut each other (e.g. single operator only fares) or to oversell Advances at the expense of walk-up capacity (e.g. XC (and many other operators))*. This will be bad news for those of us who are prepared to jump through hoops to get cheap fares: it won't impact on the majority who never use trains: I won't speculate on 'ordinary' passengers, who might object to the higher fares but might appreciate the simpler structure.

*My expectation is that Advances will continue, but back in their intended role of selling off excess capacity to maximize income. So there may still be cheap advances on the midnight train where there's not much full-face demand, but not on the shoulder of the evening peak any more.

The cynic in me would also suggest that there's no incentive for the individual TOC'S to collect fares either, though the individual concessions may specify certain revenue/ticketless travel targets (hopefully for me!)

 

[Purple Orange]

The cynic in me would also suggest that there's no incentive for the individual TOC'S to collect fares either, though the individual concessions may specify certain revenue/ticketless travel targets (hopefully for me!)

Yeah you’d have thought that payment to the operator would also be linked to revenue collection and have it considered as a part of the overall operation - it’s not just running a train.

 

[RPI]

Yeah you’d have thought that payment to the operator would also be linked to revenue collection and have it considered as a part of the overall operation - it’s not just running a train.

Hopefully there will be a revenue element, even if its such things as 0.5% commission for the operator, anyway, im speculating and will probably get told off now lol.

 

[TUC]

Do we have a GBR/Impact on fares thread yet? I can see it becoming of interest - although given the current level of information it perhaps should be in Speculative for the moment.

My feeling is that what are currently regulated fares will probably remain about the same (plus inflation, and possibly plus a bit extra as for the last few years). I'm not sure if the law allows otherwise (and even if it doesn't, laws can always be changed) but the Transport Secretary has talked a lot about fares not rising - and Anytime tickets and season tickets tend to be the headline fares.

But I suspect that a lot of the cheap, restricted fares will go. With fares no longer going to the operators, there'll be less incentive to undercut each other (e.g. single operator only fares) or to oversell Advances at the expense of walk-up capacity (e.g. XC (and many other operators))*. This will be bad news for those of us who are prepared to jump through hoops to get cheap fares: it won't impact on the majority who never use trains: I won't speculate on 'ordinary' passengers, who might object to the higher fares but might appreciate the simpler structure.

*My expectation is that Advances will continue, but back in their intended role of selling off excess capacity to maximize income. So there may still be cheap advances on the midnight train where there's not much full-face demand, but not on the shoulder of the evening peak any more.

That's a key concern of mine. It's difficult to see how a loss of cheap Advance fares would be to passengers' benefit. Again, the risk is that there is a lack of understanding as to how important they are to parts of the country where longer distance journeys rather than commuter flows are a key reason for using rail.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That's a key concern of mine. It's difficult to see how a loss of cheap Advance fares would be to passengers' benefit.

Simplification. Provided the walk-up fare is reasonable (and if it isn't, why not?), get rid of all this undercutting by 50p-£1 here and there.

Yield managed fares for long distance travel do make sense, but this is a full range of Advances, not just ones aimed at slight undercutting.

To me, counted places serve no purpose - Advances (a full range of prices) only really make sense on services where proper reservations are available, those being the main long distance services.