Any explanation - seemingly crazy fare

[SteveM70]

This is genuinely baffling so I’d be intrigued to understand the thinking behind this.

I’m travelling from Hebden Bridge to Norwich, going on the evening on May 17 and returning on the evening of May 20.

Outbound there’s an advance fare for the whole journey, changing Leeds and Peterborough, for £14.20 which is fantastic value in anyone’s book.

Coming back, Norwich to Hebden Bridge on the Monday evening is £99.20, yet the same trains as far as Leeds is £19.20 - how on earth can the marginal cost of Leeds to Hebden, where an anytime single is about £7, be £80?!?

Is that element of the fate set by Northern?

 

[Deerfold]

Northern trains are only reservable to 18 May so the booking engine won't be able to give you any advances including Northern trains yet.

LNER advance tickets are available for a further week.

£99.20 is the price of an off-peak single.

 

[Haywain]

£99.20 is the price of an off-peak single.

Meaning, for clarity, that the OP is being quoted the only fare available for the entire journey - albeit one with greater flexibility than the fare being quoted for the Norwich to Leeds segment of the journey.

 

[SteveM70]

Thanks for the info. That makes sense, but to the lay user of the railways it'll be incomprehensible and likely to lead to them buying a more expensive ticket than they need or maybe more likely enough to deter them from travelling.

Is it too much to expect either:

(a) consistency across TOCs in the release dates for advance fares

(b) some sort of advice at the time of booking that cheaper fares are likely to become available (and given that the fare quoted was a standard off peak single, no risk it could become more expensive)

It strikes me as yet another thing where the railway industry is sitting in its insular little world paying precious little consideration to its customers

 

[Deerfold]

Thanks for the info. That makes sense, but to the lay user of the railways it'll be incomprehensible and likely to lead to them buying a more expensive ticket than they need or maybe more likely enough to deter them from travelling.

Is it too much to expect either:

(a) consistency across TOCs in the release dates for advance fares

(b) some sort of advice at the time of booking that cheaper fares are likely to become available (and given that the fare quoted was a standard off peak single, no risk it could become more expensive)

It strikes me as yet another thing where the railway industry is sitting in its insular little world paying precious little consideration to its customers

I'd agree it's quite misleading - especially as, if you look at the companies' websites, they'll largely tell you that advance tickets are released around 12 weeks in advance - something few companies are managing at the moment.

 

[30907]

(a) would be simplest, but there would still be problems with weekend/major engineering work timetables until NR are able to commit 100% 12 weeks in advance.

(b) could be done but

(c) even better would be for Advance fares to be "booked train only" just for those legs operated by the main TOC and not "&connections," which is effectively what used to be the case (I await examples where this would be unworkable...).

 

[causton]

The problem here is that every TOC and their dog are now making every service reservable, so whereas before you could book an advance as soon as the "main" TOC opens their reservations now you can't!

For example Berkhamsted to Manchester Piccadilly and return for the middle of June, VT are already open but the LNR trains were not. Usually this was not a problem as there was always one unreservable (so you could just put "stop at Cheddington" and not get a reservation for that one) but now pretty much all services are reservable! Luckily the SN are not reservable so I forced a wait onto that one (of course it does not show up on the ticket so the customer doesn't know that!)

 

[Silver Cobra]

The problem here is that every TOC and their dog are now making every service reservable, so whereas before you could book an advance as soon as the "main" TOC opens their reservations now you can't!

I remember booking an advance from Arlesey to Glasgow Central back in 2017 nearly 24 weeks ahead of the date I was travelling on. Back then, as long as VTEC had opened up their reservations for the 24-week booking horizon and all other services were not reservable, you could book advances including connecting travel that far in advance (GN don't offer reservations and Scotrail services from Edinburgh Waverley to Glasgow Queen Street via Falkirk High were not reservable at the time). It's no longer possible to do that anymore for several reasons, which is quite a shame.