There may be some loss of flexibility but the walk up off peak single fare has actually gone down quite a bit in price from EDB-LDN. I suspect that if you asked an ordinary person (rather than a routeing guide afficianado) whether they would choose the reduction in fare or route availability, they would rather save the money...
a) Many of the people adversely affected will be making return journeys out by one route and back by another, or single journeys via the West Coast, and their fares aren't (currently) changing.
b) As I said on the earlier thread about the trial fares, why can't we have sensibly-priced walk-up singles
without the loss of flexibility? Suggested solutions in this case include:
But hang on a minute, isn't the Edinburgh Super Off Peak Single just a trial fare? It's only that that's causing the issue. So why not make that only routed via York, and add an Any Permitted at the old "10p less than the return" rate until the outcome of that trial is decided?
and
Adjusting the routeing guide so Edinburgh - London wasn't valid via Motherwell/Glasgow would have been better.
On a related subject:
Are there that many people still travelling on walk up tickets for a journey like Edinburgh to Scotland anyway? Can see a few singles for an urgent trip but not much else. Its the sort of journey that will be planned in advance.
I travel about three times per year between the Thames Valley and Scotland (usually a bit further north than Edinburgh/Glasgow), so I'm not directly affected by the subject of this thread, but it could be a sign of a worrying trend. For that journey I usually buy an Off-Peak return -- by the time I come to book, there are rarely any Advances that are cheap enough to be worth putting up with the inconvenience.
Maybe the involvement of an XC leg makes my journey untypical and London-Edinburgh has plenty of advances, but for what it's worth a quick look at NRE suggests that the next Saturday that currently has (at a time permitting me to make the journey in a day including the buses at each end) an Advance for my northbound journey* costing less than half the Off-Peak return is April 18th, and that's only about 20% cheaper and would add over an hour to the journey when I consider bus connections and the need to avoid any risk of missing the first train. (A more convenient train on the same date has Advances that are also less than half an off-peak return, but only by a few pounds). 9th May is the first Saturday with Advances at times and prices that seem worthwhile to me.
*I haven't checked southbound fares but I'm assuming they would be similar.
OK, I haven't looked at Trainsplit (this was a just a quick check), and yes, I do sometimes find worthwhile Advances**, but my experience is that that is a bonus rather than something I expect to happen.
**Usually for shorter journeys -- I'm guessing that on a longer journey there is quite a high chance that the quota of seats at lower price tiers will be sold out for one leg, and as I understand it, without splitting that means that the whole journey will be in a higher tier.
