Of course I do. I was responding to a specific point that was suggesting that reservations for standees should be sold. I have no issue with people without a reservation boarding a train and choosing to stand.
One benefit of privitisation, from a passenger point of view, has been fares regulation. Had it not existed for the last 25+ years just imagine how much fares would cost. You've only got to look at the prices LNER are charging now to see this.
Also look at Anytime Returns between London and Manchester. In NFM64 (September 1996) what was then the Standard Open Return was £95.00 (£242.00 today when adjusted for RPI inflation) and the First Class Open Return was £135.00 (£343.00) with only "Any Reasonable" route fares available.
It's now £369.40/£535.00 on route "Any Permitted" and £278.00/£382.50 on route "via Chesterfield", giving increases of 52.6%/56.0% and 14.9%/11.5% respectively.
But these are BOTH effects of regulation. The collar put round off-peak fares in regulation created a distorted approach to pricing peak fares. It wasn't the optimum solution to raise revenue if no regulation had existed but was the one that achieved the best outcome with a very narrow, tightly defined regulatory collar on specific fares
So more opportunities for fares anomalies then. I thought the idea was to make things more simple, not introduce more complication.
The rail industry doesn't have a good track record when it comes to this sort of change and in my opinion cannot be trusted. Some examples:
- 2008 Fares simplification which was anything but
- Introduction of evening peak restrictions in many areas of the country which has introduced confusion for staff and customers
- LNER single fares trial, changing tickets like London to Edinburgh from 'Any Permitted' to 'via York' removing at a stroke the ability to travel via alternative routes like the WCML or MML
- Removal of LNER priced return fares and the associated removal of off-peak fares and a sneaky price increase so the new single price was more than half the cost of the previous return
You cannot look at the trial journeys in isolation as they form part of the overall network. Once again the industry says it wants to remove anomalies but its action actually result in more anomalies.
Amplifying the point above, the 'rail industry' doesn't have a good track record because post-privatisation, there was a legal requirement for through, interavailable ticketing but no overall organisational structure to deliver it, and a regulatory regime that effectively provided fixed inputs at almost random points in the overall structure without any accountability for how these might be used. The subsequent issues led to increased restrictions on the regime (such as abolition of flex) without any thought for the consequences (e.g. more anomalies).
Are you really suggesting that rail pricing be undertaken somewhere other than the rail industry? Should we turn GBR into the NHS, where the equivalent of Prescription prices are set by Government?
A GBR approach will create an overall organisation to manage pricing. It will also be tasked with achieving no doubt tough financial targets so there will be unpopular decisions, but it is going to be far better to argue for the best outcomes in any new structure than to fight to return to one that (but for privatisation and regulation) would have been superseded 20 years ago. There is a strong argument for affordable flexibility, but I don't think that arguing we should retain a fare type introduced in 1973, rolled out nationally in 1985 (before the internet, digital ticketing and The Simpsons) and subsequently indexed to the September 1995 Fares Manual is a way to do it.
