Anglia day ranger up 25% .

Hi travelling in East Anglia today and noticed the ranger tickets up by 25% , from £19 to £24, I know it’s a non regulated fare , seems a bit steep though , as they are supposedly trying to encourage more off peak travel .

Not sure of the rationale for such an increase , when most fares went up , 3.5%. I have asked Greater Anglia no reply as yet .

It was always priced at roughly the same level as the longest Day Return across the area (e.g. Cambridge-Lowestoft) so it was always a case of you might as well buy a Day Ranger for such journeys.

But given the bus validity (taking some slice of the revenue), I wonder if GA were making slightly less money on them in these cases, compared to if people just bought a return?

The Wherry and Bittern line rangers have increased by 22% to £11

Rover said:

The Wherry and Bittern line rangers have increased by 22% to £11

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I assume similarly putting their cost now some margin higher than the relevant end-to-end day returns? Odd...

Yes and I have noticed recently that off peak advance tickets on the Harlow Essex to Norfolk western routes via Cambridge are disappearing too.

Could have something to do with the bus rotes from Norwich station being included but are they really worth a £5 extra on a Anglia plus ticket.? I messaged GA to ask via the facebook app yesterday got an answer right away saying sorry they have gone up which I knew, when I challenged the amount I'm still waiting to hear back.

Seems a strange way to fill off peak largely rural trains.? Travelled on one yesterday only five passengers in that carriage ,got busier later as football was on in Norwich.

For me all it means is less trips sadly. The three day Rovers also went up from around £37 to £48 .

Rover said:

The Wherry and Bittern line rangers have increased by 22% to £11

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They’ve got to pay for their new trains somehow! LOL

I spoke to my MP about it, they'd had other correspondence about this. They're a Conservative MP and seemed genuinely irritated at this PR disaster for the railways. They told me they hadn't got a response from the MD yet, but I haven't heard anything else.

On https://www.edp24.co.uk/business/bu...onal-greater-anglia-price-increases-1-5837547 there's a statement saying:
On top of this, Greater Anglia’s ‘Anglia Plus’ ranger ticket has increased in price from £19 to £24.

A spokesman for Greater Anglia said: “We have increased the price of our Anglia Plus Ranger and Rover tickets to more accurately reflect the great value of these passes, which allows unlimited rail travel across the whole of Norfolk, Suffolk and part of Cambridgeshire.

“While some of our ticket prices have gone up, we’re also freezing some fares, including advance fares, which start from just £5 and can be up to 60-70 per cent lower than walk-up fares.”

smsm1 said:

On https://www.edp24.co.uk/business/bu...onal-greater-anglia-price-increases-1-5837547 there's a statement saying:
On top of this, Greater Anglia’s ‘Anglia Plus’ ranger ticket has increased in price from £19 to £24.

A spokesman for Greater Anglia said: “We have increased the price of our Anglia Plus Ranger and Rover tickets to more accurately reflect the great value of these passes, which allows unlimited rail travel across the whole of Norfolk, Suffolk and part of Cambridgeshire.

“While some of our ticket prices have gone up, we’re also freezing some fares, including advance fares, which start from just £5 and can be up to 60-70 per cent lower than walk-up fares.”

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The disappointing thing for me is that I use (or did use) these passes extensively and very often on trains which were mostly running with a relatively high number of empty seats available. So if there is any downturn in the usage of these passes because of the price increases (and I accept that there might not be), then Greater Anglia is creating even more empty seats on trains outside of off-peak services.

By fortune for me most of my travels can be replaced by bus services, so I'm switching from rail to buses to a large degree, but it's a shame as I was looking forwards to using the new trains. I had discussions with a manager last year who was saying they had plans for these passes, but by that I thought they meant something constructive, not a 25% increase with no prior warning. Greater Anglia managers on their roadshows and talk to customers have been proudly saying to customers that prices wouldn't be rising (or at least not above inflation) to pay for these new trains and carriages, when it appears that they now are.

But, they're their trains, they can charge what they like for unregulated trains I suppose and I'm sure they know what they're doing as they have access to customer data which no doubt gives good cause for their decision.

sentry100 said:

I had discussions with a manager last year who was saying they had plans for these passes

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Hopefully it'll be something like expanding the buses that the ticket can be used on, in which case it'll be worth paying the extra for, especially if things like Ipswich have all the buses included instead of the limited buses that are allowed. Other places like Cambridge would be good to be added to the buses allowed on the ticket.

That would be a useful addition, indeed, I'm surprised just in PR terms that they've gone with the price rise without offering anything new. Although of course they've increased the prices of all the branch rover tickets as well by a similar percentage, which wouldn't benefit from that change. I have no inside knowledge of this, but from what a couple of staff have mentioned about this price rise, this was a decision made quite late on. I had thought Greater Anglia were really performing well recently in terms of making careful announcements about improvements, so although it's hardly the end of the world, I must admit to being disappointed.

Aren't GA in financial difficulties if so this would explain the desperate price increase.

Hadders said:

Aren't GA in financial difficulties if so this would explain the desperate price increase.

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I don't know, although I did see that they received a subsidy from their Dutch part-owners, so financial difficulties would explain the price increase, and perhaps the suggestion from a couple of staff that the price rise was decided at the last minute.

Unlikely surely? The vast bulk of GA's income is from shifting commuters into London, Cambridge and Norwich, not from a few leisure orientated tickets.

And there is the issue of season ticket sales dropping.

I've noticed that Greater Anglia have delayed the planed rollout of the flexiseason tickets, with the smart card rollout being prioritised instead. I'm particularly keen on the rollout of flexiseasons as I'm commuting only 2 or 3 days per week, so the season tickets aren't worthwhile.

I'm yet to see the new prices of the Anglia Plus season tickets, if they are going up in price similarly, hopefully they'll introduce proper season tickets between places like Ipswich and Cambridge, as the season ticket calculator just says there's no season ticket available for the route.

Ianno87 said:

I assume similarly putting their cost now some margin higher than the relevant end-to-end day returns? Odd...

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Off Peak Day Return Norwich to Great Yarmouth/Lowestoft stands at £9. The Anytime is £11.90 to Lowestoft and £10.90 to Great Yarmouth.