That is true, plus it came with the quid pro quo that if you touch in at 0630 or just before you benefit from the off peak price on a train departing at or just after 0630. This can be an enormous boon, for example being able to arrive at London Paddington at around 0700 having paid the off peak price from Reading of £10.90. Less than half of the fare for an Anytime Day Single and less than a quarter of an Anytime Day Return. Overwhelmingly paper tickets don't offer an easement for very early services.
But this is not necessarily the case because you only don’t think about what fare you will be pay for the duration of the journey. As soon as people tap out they see the charge for their specific journey on the barrier and on their online account. In a car you don’t see the journey cost on the dashboard as you get out and this only applies to a taxi.
The railway most certainly isn't going to move to a fixed distance model. There are different market forces on different routes that need to be taken into account. Some routes twist and turn while others offer location pairings have multiple routes.
It is pretty apparent that people are happy with PAYG regardless of that point.
In an ideal world, the railway should be a lot more transparent with the public about the different fare options on offer. That way everyone would be able to make an informed choice based on their needs and budget. Although they won't as that would reduce revenue and they would like people to pay more. If people are fine with paying the first price they see then fair enough. Although ignorance really is not bliss and can come at huge price. Especially when it comes to Heathrow Airport, but let's keep that can of worms firmly shut. Those savvy enough to find savings will pay less and those who aren't, won't. But does that make it right? Ethically and morally no, but commercially and legally yes.
Using that analogy many people would not be happy with using taxis as like PAYG you don't know the cost of your journey until you have completed it. I'm not saying that the cost of a journey shouldn't be available prior to undertaking it but that it may not be as much of a deterrent as you think. Personally I like to know in advance and so, as you mention, paper tickets have the advantage in that respect. I suspect however that most people find the convenience of using PAYG worth not knowing their fare in advance.
No they havn't but there would be space. At least on the 5:14 Guildford to Waterloo via Woking stopping service there is.
AUIU It's quite common around the world for public transport to/from airports to have a surcharge, because it functions effectively as a "tourist tax".
The fare paid on a taxi (as in a hackney cab) is displayed throughout the journey, and extras are displayed on notices. So at the point of paying, the cost is visible to the payer. Non hackney drivers usually declare the cost at the beginning of the journey, - I've never used an unlicensed car, (e.g. Uber) so I'm not familiar with how that works. But in general terms, the taxi analogy is nothing like a PAYG gateline where the price is only revealed to tell you how much your bank account has been depleted.
I got caught out in Glasgow where they didn't even tell you, the bus didn't give change. I think that was underhand myself. It my have been in some poster in very small print. This was in 2013.
It is relatively common, but in this case it's not targeted towards tourists really at all, as bus and London Underground services are priced effectively the same as anywhere else in London, and Heathrow Express with commercial fares is sometimes cheaper than TfL Rail because of their offers, discounts or buy in advance deals. Tourists are therefore not necessarily paying the premium. In this case the price is just driven by one tunnel's specific amortisation costs, which is clearly a really inefficient way to operate compared to paying for investment centrally and spreading the amortisation cost over a wide area and a long time period. It would also come with operational advantages to TfL if more Heathrow passengers used it's TfL Rail services in place of London Underground because that would create a virtual capacity increase on the Piccadilly line, but the perverse incentives are too deeply-rooted. Anyway there are plenty of other examples, such as the Zone 1 mixed mode premium, using a train between London St Pancras and Stratford International, or cases where an Off Peak Day Return ticket is cheaper than PAYG. I just picked up on Heathrow as an example, and a very large price discrepancy.
Off-topic, but are you aware that you have the right to request to pay in 12 instalments rather than 10 for council tax? Spreading it more equally across all the months makes the finances easier to manage.
Yup. And then of course you also have the ability to use a Network Railcard discount from most places nearby which you cannot use on PAYG.
As previously discussed, it will also be the case for some weekly season tickets - eg Winchester to London - where the weekly season ticket multiple of anytime day returns is under 2.
That might irk some leisure travellers who need to take Anytime tickets for some of their journeys.
Another interpretation would be that the season ticket is the "undiscounted" price and the Anytime ticket is simply a ripoff... Which is the interpretation that many members of the public will, quite reasonably in my view, hold.
I suspect that has nothing to do with it. Season tickets and anytime tickets in London and the South East are regulated - it is partly a function of what British Rail did and probably a desire to make money from one-off business travellers who aren't paying for themselves.
