Cheaper commute advice

[johnnyBravo21]

I will be travelling from Richmond, London to Farnborough, Hampshire for work. Looking to buy season tickets for the next few months (will relocate afterwards). Monthly tickets are £300 on south western railway website, which is not that different from daily. Do I have any cheaper options?

 

[30907]

Not an answer but, assuming you travel 5 days a week at conventional times:
An Anytime return FROM Richmond TO Farnborough NOT LONDON is priced very competitively and is valid via Clapham Jn, which is the quickest route normally. The season price you quote is ROUTE VIRGINIA WATER which you may find inconvenient, the NOT LONDON one is £337.

If you decide you want the flexibility of a season, then it is always possible to have it issued for a specific period, to cover from Monday week 1 to Friday week 5 (for example) to allow for Christmas, planned holidays, etc.)

 

[cuccir]

I will be travelling from Richmond, London to Farnborough, Hampshire for work. Looking to buy season tickets for the next few months (will relocate afterwards). Monthly tickets are £300 on south western railway website, which is not that different from daily. Do I have any cheaper options?

The monthly Season Ticket does seem oddly poor value for this route, unless you're also making use of the ticket for leisure travel. An Anytime Return not via London terminals is is £15.10, whereas a monthly ticket with the same validity is £337.60. In a month with 22 working days, that produces a cost of daily Anytime Returns of £332.20.

You can get slightly better value buying dated tickets. You can use the season ticket calculator to work out the cost of a ticket between two exact dates. For example, a ticket starting on Monday 5th November valid until Friday 21st December is £517.80; this comes out better value than using Anytime Returns for the 35 working days until then.

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

The monthly Season Ticket does seem oddly poor value for this route, unless you're also making use of the ticket for leisure travel. An Anytime Return not via London terminals is is £15.10, whereas a monthly ticket with the same validity is £337.60. In a month with 22 working days, that produces a cost of daily Anytime Returns of £332.20.

You can get slightly better value buying dated tickets. You can use the season ticket calculator to work out the cost of a ticket between two exact dates. For example, a ticket starting on Monday 5th November valid until February 21st December is £517.80; this comes out better value than using Anytime Returns for the 35 working days until then.

I suspect the poor value of the season ticket is because the Anytime Day Return has asymmetrical pricing - i.e. it is substantially cheaper in the away-from-London direction than in the towards-London direction. It is £27.00 from Farnborough to Richmond, but just £15.10 from Richmond to Farnborough. The season ticket is priced in line with the more expensive Farnborough to Richmond direction of travel, which unfortunately is the only sensible option available to SWR, given that a season ticket is valid for unlimited journeys in either direction, so they could not feasibly price the Farnborough to Richmond one more than the reverse one! Of course another option would be to reduce the season ticket's multiple, but that would make far too much sense!

@johnnyBravo21 ultimately I think the best solution here is to buy an odd-period season ticket in order to maximise the value you get out of your season ticket (i.e. reducing the number of 'wasted' days).

 

[wibble]

A carnet would be cheaper than a season if you travel via Clapham Junction - 10 Anytime Day Returns with a 5% discount is £143.45 (£286.90 per month, assuming you travel 20 days per month). You'll need to get an SWR smartcard tho: https://www.southwesternrailway.com/train-tickets/smart-ticketing/carnet

 

[MichaelAMW]

I suspect the poor value of the season ticket is because the Anytime Day Return has asymmetrical pricing - i.e. it is substantially cheaper in the away-from-London direction than in the towards-London direction. It is £27.00 from Farnborough to Richmond, but just £15.10 from Richmond to Farnborough. The season ticket is priced in line with the more expensive Farnborough to Richmond direction of travel, which unfortunately is the only sensible option available to SWR, given that a season ticket is valid for unlimited journeys in either direction, so they could not feasibly price the Farnborough to Richmond one more than the reverse one! Of course another option would be to reduce the season ticket's multiple, but that would make far too much sense!

Or you could say it's a good value season but just doesn't save you much, because in that direction the rush-hour fare is only 10p more than the Off Peak return. It's the latter point where the good value arises.

 

[Haywain]

The monthly Season Ticket does seem oddly poor value for this route,

This is undoubtedly because South Western Railway (and previously South West Trains) has maintained lower contra-peak fares whereas season tickets are bidirectional and take their level from the peak flow direction. This results in anomalies where contra-peak season tickets do not represent such good value as the same tickets in the peak flow direction. The only solution to this is to increase the non-season fares.

 

[infobleep]

This is undoubtedly because South Western Railway (and previously South West Trains) has maintained lower contra-peak fares whereas season tickets are bidirectional and take their level from the peak flow direction. This results in anomalies where contra-peak season tickets do not represent such good value as the same tickets in the peak flow direction. The only solution to this is to increase the non-season fares.

Without mentioning names, in the past it was the case that buying a season tickets between two stations was more expensive than if you bought them every day for a year. That's 365 days. Not that one woild actually travel for that many days. Not usre if that is still the case.

Again it related to contraflow pricing.

 

[RJ]

Watch out for the season ticket pricing in this part of the world - the Hampshire area has some pretty nasty anomalies. At one point some weekly seasons were over 10x the price of the Anytime Day Return.

 

[infobleep]

Watch out for the season ticket pricing in this part of the world - the Hampshire area has some pretty nasty anomalies. At one point some weekly seasons were over 10x the price of the Anytime Day Return.

I'm surprised they haven't tried to correct some of these anomalies. Perhaps it is not in their interest to do so.