Easement that seems to serve no purpose - why does it exist?

[alistairlees]

Hi

Anyone any idea why this routeing guide easement exists:

"Customers travelling from Tunbridge Wells or High Brooms to Sevenoaks and beyond, and whom are in possession of tickets routed Any Permitted, may travel via Tonbridge. This easement applies in both directions."

As this is the only way you can go, and it's the shortest route, it seems rather pointless!

 

[maniacmartin]

My guess is that its there to work around a bug in some journey planner.

 

[Paul Kelly]

It's a routeing point easement, and I would guess is just there to cover specific fares anomalies, either because there's a genuine anomaly or because the fares to somewhere from HIB/TBW are routed differently to the fares from TON, which would make the fares check tricky.

I've been looking for half an hour but can't find a specific example where the easement is needed using NFM64 fares (maybe someone else has more patience?), but using current fares, for example to Brighton, from HIB the SDS is priced by Southern at £37.10, whereas from TON it's priced by Southeastern at £38.40. Both are routed ✠ANY PERMITTED and valid to travel via London Bridge, but clearly TON would fail the fares check at today's prices.

 

[kieron]

I've just had a look at a couple of things.

I looked for stations which have an ANY PERMITTED NFM64 fare from both Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells (or High Brooms) but where the Tonbridge fare is lower for all relevant ticket types. Ignoring stations associated with Hastings (where you wouldn't use the fare check at all), only Eastbourne and a few stations west of there (Hampden Park, Polegate and Berwick) match. None of these would have a valid route via Tonbridge and Sevenoaks just using that easement, but I haven't checked if anything else would change this.

I also looked for stations where all of the NFM64 fares from Tonbridge are higher than the Tunbridge Wells/High Brooms one (matching ticket codes but ignoring routes), but didn't find any extra stations.

You might be able to come up with something by using the rules ticket sites use, but I don't think they've been made public.

There are easements which are useless, of course. Anything which refers to "Direct" fares is, as well as quite a few of the ones which refer to "any permitted" ones.

As for the reason for that easement, it's probably just "it used to be more useful".