Under Treasury Railways it won’t be undercutting - the ‘cheap‘ ticket will stay the same and the more attractive one will go up. Headline price doesn’t look expensive in the papers……as long as you are happy to sit on the stopper all day….
-
Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Great British Railways: Branding options?
- Thread starter Sad Sprinter
- Start date
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
I can only presume that you're unfamiliar with platform 13 at Manchester Piccadilly. There are eight trains per hour between the two stations, seven of which use that one platform at Piccadilly.
Plenty of people (be they foreign tourists or British nationals who don't otherwise take the train) buy a ticket for a given train, turn up on the platform, ask "is this one for the airport?" and board the train in front of them, regardless of whether it is their train or not. It multiplies when things start running a few minutes late (which is more often than not) and trains end up in the following train's path. Then even the passengers who have checked their watches and matched the departure times to the actual time of day often board the wrong train.
At the Airport a similar issue happens. At least the booking office has the presence of mind to write departure times and platform numbers as the issue the tickets. Passengers who have bought online or using the TVM will have to make sure that they get on the train specified rather than just following the "next train to Manchester" board. Guards waiting to dispatch are mobbed by passengers asking "is this for Manchester" to which the response is "what kind of ticket have you got?"
It's a confusing nightmare.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
In a sensible world there'd be one single fare from Manchester to the airport whether you use Northern, TPE, Metrolink or Stagecoach, or indeed any sensible combination thereof. It makes no sense to have competition within an urban transport authority area - integration has far more benefits.
Burnham does seem to be making sensible noises on this, so this nonsense may well not persist too
long.
Burnham does seem to be making sensible noises on this, so this nonsense may well not persist too
long.
Last edited:
Because they want the option to buy cheaper tickets.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
It's a very MoneySavingExpert style view - the overriding view is that people here prefer complexity because they are skilled enough to get best value from it.
Kite159
Veteran Member
GBR only within England, you will still have TfW having their own tickets which revenue heading to Wales. Same in Scotland with Scotrail, although that isn't such a large issue as the overlap is more limited.
Randomer
Member
- Joined
- 31 Jul 2017
- Messages
- 334
A lot of the grief with TOC only on the day tickets could be resolved by allowing them to be excessed to the more expensive ticket. It seems ridiculous that route restrictions can be excessed, presumably without the ticket allocation of revenue changing, but TOC ones can't. If you have a more expensive ticket then it should be dealt with as a zero fare excess if needed for revenue allocation purposes which would cover things like TfW or Scotrail allocations.
I get the initial problem with revenue allocation not being able to be sorted out due to the systems in use but if the revenue is all going to the treasury anyway why does it matter anymore? Longer term I presume how revenue is taken and allocated to operators or operating units is going to return to something along the original purpose of ORCATS allocation for GBR. If local travel is going to become smartcard or contactless based even easier to deal with.
Its such a passenger unfriendly thing for infrequent travellers or tourists not familiar with the sheer number of possible operators on some routes. Seems like very low hanging fruit for shadow GBR to be looking at as the bill passes through parliament, even without bigger fares reform.
I get the initial problem with revenue allocation not being able to be sorted out due to the systems in use but if the revenue is all going to the treasury anyway why does it matter anymore? Longer term I presume how revenue is taken and allocated to operators or operating units is going to return to something along the original purpose of ORCATS allocation for GBR. If local travel is going to become smartcard or contactless based even easier to deal with.
Its such a passenger unfriendly thing for infrequent travellers or tourists not familiar with the sheer number of possible operators on some routes. Seems like very low hanging fruit for shadow GBR to be looking at as the bill passes through parliament, even without bigger fares reform.
I agree we should not have TOC specific fares that historically were set up to be an ORCATS raid and effectively offer very little saving but come with the loss of considerable flexibility.
Consider Crewe to London:
LNR only £52.70 off peak/£99.20 Anytime (there’s even a super off peak at £41.10)
Any Permitted £99.20 off peak/£284.20 Anytime
I assume you’d like to see the LNR only fares abolished, resulting in a substantial increase for many. It would also have the effect of causing over crowding on Avanti trains leaving LNR ones carting fresh air around.
You could say let’s harmonise the fares but I bet you’d end up with something like £80 off peak and £220 peak.
So be careful what you wish for…
What's the experience of supplements on Inter-City trains in Europe (i.e. fare differentiation by type of train rather than operator)? Is that a model we could adopt in the UK?
Who goes to a station ticket office to buy a ticket?
It's not that they are skilled enough to get value from complexity. It's that many people are used to using price comparison sites for multiple products and so are very comfortable with rail ticketing apps guiding them to the cheapest ticket for the criteria they set.
The issues cited above of passengers from overseas are also a smokescreen. Not only are they an irrelevancy for most of the country, but when, for example, my wife and I visited Berlin several months ago, one of the things I did in advance was look up the rail services and ticketing from the airport (and found a very helpful app with an English language option aimed at visitors).
In both of the examples above, the world has moved on, and there are large numbers of people, not rail enthusiasts, who are very comfortable with both finding information for themselves online and in expecting to be able to drive getting best value from doing so.
An energy switch is (for me) a once a year transaction for a four figure sum. The T&Cs are reasonably obvious as are the early termination penalties. I’ve also got weeks to research it and can do that because its only once a year, same as insurances etc..
To me, that is not remotely comparable with a system that sells a suburban train ticket 10p cheaper than the train before it but could incur penalities 100s of times more than that if used on the wrong colour/time train.
To me, that is not remotely comparable with a system that sells a suburban train ticket 10p cheaper than the train before it but could incur penalities 100s of times more than that if used on the wrong colour/time train.
Weeks to research it? A energy comparision site will give you results in less than five minutes.
That only tells you todays prices.
There are 49 penalty-free days at the end of each fix so I check the trend before that (going up or down?), factor in any expected price cap announcement, judge what ‘good’ looks like and decide when to jump, so about an 8 week window, which…
Back to topic - is way more than most train journies.
LNW-GW Joint
Veteran Member
That's no different from the French passenger who gets on a TGV with a TER ticket between the same stations, and finds it is invalid.
GBR could easily move to a similar setup (intercity v regional).
It is not. The TGV and TER offerings are completely different in terms of train type, calling patterns, etc. The LNER and TPE offerings between York and Newcastle are almost identical.
Is it really beneficial to anyone to sting a customer with what’s effectively a substantial penalty if they paid slightly less at the point of sale? Let them buy an excess if it matters that much. I’m not convinced it does. Better to have paying bums on seats than have express trains hauling fresh air around.
And in any case I don’t think we should be looking to the famously confusing French railways as a shining example.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I'm no fan of SNCF, but remember that the least complex ticket is one that can only be used on the train that's printed on it in the seat that's printed on it. People don't get on the wrong flights all the time.
No - because the whole process is designed to ensure they don’t- and even if it wasn’t, for many journeys the only way they could end up on the wrong flight to their destination would be to turn up on the wrong day.
Between York and Newcastle the TPE and LNER might be nearly identical and so may end up in the same bucket in a GBR ticketing system, but that doesn't make the whole system invalid.
On the WCML where there are Avanti and LNR, on the MML with EMR and Thameslink, or lines where Northern provide the stopper and TPE are doing what is says is on the tin?
Those are services with clear differentiation between them where it is meaningful to be able to guide customers to different trains.
The second least complex ticket may be that (and so many people still board the wrong train, either in ignorance or deliberately) but the least complex ticket type in existence is an Anytime, Any Permitted one.
Not a great example. To be remotely comparable every TOC would need a check-in desk at every station they serve and staff at entry gates on every platform. (Avanti tries to do the latter at Euston. Badly)
MarlowDonkey
Established Member
- Joined
- 4 Apr 2013
- Messages
- 1,402
In my view, ticketing apps increasing start from the wrong place. I would like to know how much it can cost from A to B (and return), what trains and routes are available, how long they take and how much they cost. From that you make a decision about which train and ticket. Most now seem designed that you specify a train or trains first before you find the price and restrictions. One of the options that seems to have disappered in recent years at a competitive price is the Advance (restricted to a single train) one way and flexible return. It was called Saver Half I think, being only available as a pair with an Advance. I don't think it helps those less familiar with ticketing to use the term "Advance" in place of "Restricted". After all, unless you buy just before the train leaves, you are buying in advance of travel even if it's actually a flexible ticket. That people refer to "advanced" tickets is evidence of this.
The forum's ticket site makes a clear distinction between restricted Advance tickets and flexible ones, Rather less so between all operators and restricted to one or two operators.
I am not sure we should encourage a ticketing system where individuals don't benefit from being able to enjoy the full speed benefits that rail can offer. "Slow" trains should essentially exist for the intermediate journeys.
Nor should we have tickets where you can use the blue coloured trains but not the red coloured ones.
It’s not complex - the website gives you the cheapest ticket and explains the restrictions.
The emphasis should be on forcing sales channels to make it clearer what the restrictions are and what it costs to reduce them.
It’s a bit weird if they don’t do that - pretty standard to attract customers with a cheap offer then try to upswell them some flexibility.
KNN
Member
At the risk of going down the "speculative discussion" alley, I think there is a simpler way to manage it if you take branding out and can honestly apply the hierarchy which exists.
Call it something like Standard and Express. Let's say you can have a standard open, express open or fixed ticket. Have a big launch which makes it clear things have changed. Tie it in with liveries so it's obvious if you are getting on an express train.
While I'm at it I'd change it so buying on the train is never allowed. It's hard to justify a fine when the previous day the guard sold you a ticket. I know what the rules say, but if they aren't applied the first 20 times you travel then you get a fine, that doesn't seem reasonable to me.
Just because you don't find it complex doesn't mean that is true for the general public.
43096
On Moderation
- Joined
- 23 Nov 2015
- Messages
- 16,754
But the bigger issue is that when people talk “fares reform” what they actually mean is they want to keep the cheapest option as the baseline. That’s an impossible dream: if you want reform then people have to accept some fares will go up and others come down. That’s not popular - so we are left with the status quo.
And conversely just because you think it’s complex it doesn’t mean it’s true for the general public.
I think a lot of the noise comes from people who are just repeating something they have heard and haven’t personally had any issues. They will then complain tickets are too expensive after just saying they want to get rid of cheap tickets.
If rail fares weren’t complex, there’d be no need for many of the threads on here!