Great British Railways: opportunities for fares reform?

[Bletchleyite]

It's sadly been stated in the other threads that big fares reform is unlikely because of the Government wishing to cut costs.

However, is there anything small we could do for big "ease of use" gains even if the complexity of the system isn't fundamentally addressed, and how they might be paid for?

I would be putting serious effort into achieving the following:

Single fare pricing
One of the biggest benefits that can be imagined is a switch to single fare pricing, that is that a single fare would be available for every period return fare at half the period return price, and period returns be abolished. This can allow for removal of a number of complexities:

• Excesses: with everything priced as a single, you could abolish them entirely and do "refund and replace" instead. This would also allow the replacement to be more than one ticket, e.g. if you're off route and the route you want is not sold as a through fare.
• Journey planners: most people buy tickets using these, and having "single screens" and "return screens" is unnecessary confusion.
• Overnight break of journey: no faffing about with "is it allowed, isn't it", just split at your desired break point, with no need to lose flexibility in the other direction as well. Near enough nobody does an overnight break without planning to do so, as accommodation is needed - even if staying with someone you'd not just rock up as that would be quite rude!
• Same day break of journey: could be allowed on all tickets as it de-facto is anyway - picky Clapham Junction barrier staff excepted!
• First Class: eases doing Standard one way and First the other way, so selling more First Class fares.
• Ticket re-use: won't happen any more as all tickets would only be valid until 0430 the following morning unless the passenger got stranded. This would offset a bit of the lost revenue. Tickets could be endorsed for an additional day's validity if used on one of the Sleepers or if stranded overnight, or Sleepers could be removed from the main fares system entirely (again enabled by single fare pricing - if you want to go Sleeper one way and day train the other, just buy two tickets at no penalty).
• Starting/finishing short: should be allowed in all cases.

Advances and Splitting
Splitting has become ingrained in the public psyche, and Trainline has made it mainstream. So simplify it and embrace it:

• Advances only issued for a single journey on a single vehicle. Booking engines to split any journey when offering a non-flexible option, and offer a set of Advances/walk-up fares as appropriate to make up the journey splitting at any change point.
• If a cheaper quota is available for part of the journey on that one vehicle, automatically calculate a split.
• Get rid of &Connections etc. Planners can deal with this by just issuing walk-up fares at either end of the Advance.
• Advances only to be issued on trains where seats can be reserved, thus abolishing them on local type trains. Counted places to be abolished.

E-tickets

• E-tickets to be available for ALL flows other than those involving travel on LU.
• Start negotiations with LU to see how to solve the through ticketing issue. This might cost the railway something to fit barcode readers, but will save on reduced need for TVMs for collecting tickets - they are 20K a pop remember!

Carnets

• Instead of bothering with these if they will only be a 10% discount, calculate how many people are likely to use them and reduce Anytime Day Single fares on a revenue neutral basis instead, which is also more compatible with any future contactless scheme(s).

Other funding aspects
Clearly single fare pricing will reduce income from people who are actually making one-way journeys. I'd suggest this is likely a small number of people, and it might be offset adequately by the following:

• Single fare pricing enables "complex" journeys and so may attract more people to make them.
• Abolition of "predatory" Advances and TOC specific fares on local and regional journeys will increase fares slightly on those specific flows (but fairer to everyone overall). Consider retaining some specific longer distance fares such as "not InterCity" where this genuinely differentiates the market and so attracts people from coaches and budget cars. If booking systems considered change-point splits automatically, these would show up if cheaper so no need for any through versions.
• Tweak with time restrictions and maybe move to 3 rather than 2 levels of walk-up restrictions as LNR did.
• Consider an increase to the price of Railcards, enabled by moving to payment by monthly direct debit. "£5 a month" for example sounds really cheap, but that would be a doubling in price of the basic Railcards to £60 pa, which sounds expensive.
• Reduced need for TVMs and booking offices because of reduced ticketing complexity.
• Any more thoughts?

 

[Del1977]

I think more than anything I'd like to see a simplification in fares with fixed prices based on distance travelled and a simplification of all of these various Advance ticket options.

I'd have the following structure for standard class:

Single IC journey - (priced per mile) (With a minimum standard to be offered to qualify as IC)​

Single non-IC journey - (priced per mile at 90% of the IC journey)​

Advance IC ticket (20% discount off the buy-on-the-day tickets) - compulsory reservation / not exchangeable etc.​

Advance non-IC ticket (20% discount off the buy-on-the-day tickets) - not exchangeable etc.​

Charging fixed prices per mile will remove all the fare splitting. Offering advance tickets on a fixed discount will still offer an incentive for booking in advance, but not excessively penalise a same-day travel option.

Obviously, changing all fares to be priced-per-mile will create winners/losers - but would be fairer overall.


I'd abolish Season tickets entirely - the post-Covid return might not work with the traditional weekly/monthly/annuals anyway.


Railcards -> I'd change the Railcard system entirely to offer a discount (TBD) to everyone who purchases one, rather than restricting them to Seniors, Youth, Family, Forces etc.

Why not allow a business customer who regularly travels for business to get a Railcard? Season ticket holders who no longer get their discounts can get a Railcard to access discounts on their commuting flows, if, they are regular travellers.

The cost of the 'new' Railcard would be up-for-debate.

 

[Watershed]

The fundamental problem with any kind of fares reform is threefold:

1. The Treasury has the power to veto any change, and would likely do so for anything that isn't guaranteed to be (at worst) revenue neutral.
2. Fare levels are a political hot potato (particularly in the SE). Property prices also reflect fare levels to an extent, and people would be very unhappy if their property devalued due to fare rises.
3. If change is to be revenue neutral, that must mean some losers for there to be winners. The losers will, quite reasonably, complain - and then it becomes a political issue again (see 2).

The public view of fares is generally that they are too expensive and complicated. Whilst both charges are often true, there appears to be little appreciation of the scale of fare rises that would be needed to deliver any notable discount elsewhere.

For example, the oft-quoted case of Derby-Sheffield is currently £12.90 for an Off-Peak Day Return. For the Anytime Day Return of £24 to have even a modest cut to £20, whilst being overall revenue neutral, would probably require the CDR to be abolished - a 55% increase for leisure travellers.

As for the proposals in this thread:

Single fare pricing
One of the biggest benefits that can be imagined is a switch to single fare pricing, that is that a single fare would be available for every period return fare at half the period return price, and period returns be abolished. This can allow for removal of a number of complexities:

• Excesses: with everything priced as a single, you could abolish them entirely and do "refund and replace" instead. This would also allow the replacement to be more than one ticket, e.g. if you're off route and the route you want is not sold as a through fare.
• Journey planners: most people buy tickets using these, and having "single screens" and "return screens" is unnecessary confusion.
• Overnight break of journey: no faffing about with "is it allowed, isn't it", just split at your desired break point, with no need to lose flexibility in the other direction as well. Near enough nobody does an overnight break without planning to do so, as accommodation is needed - even if staying with someone you'd not just rock up as that would be quite rude!
• Same day break of journey: could be allowed on all tickets as it de-facto is anyway - picky Clapham Junction barrier staff excepted!
• First Class: eases doing Standard one way and First the other way, so selling more First Class fares.
• Ticket re-use: won't happen any more as all tickets would only be valid until 0430 the following morning unless the passenger got stranded. This would offset a bit of the lost revenue. Tickets could be endorsed for an additional day's validity if used on one of the Sleepers or if stranded overnight, or Sleepers could be removed from the main fares system entirely (again enabled by single fare pricing - if you want to go Sleeper one way and day train the other, just buy two tickets at no penalty).
• Starting/finishing short: should be allowed in all cases.

Single leg pricing does have a lot of advantages. The thing is, 95% of the advantages (if not more) are available simply by reducing the cost of existing singles. I don't see any need to abolish period returns, which offer a notable level of flexibility that single tickets can't.

However, I'll admit that it's probably unrealistic to expect such flexibility to remain in a "simplified" system, particularly given the revenue protection implications. People who currently break their return journey over several days will simply end up having to pay more, and there will be longer queues as you will have to buy each journey's ticket separately (unless doing a day trip). Such is sadly the cost of "progress"!

Advances and Splitting
Splitting has become ingrained in the public psyche, and Trainline has made it mainstream. So simplify it and embrace it:

• Advances only issued for a single journey on a single vehicle. Booking engines to split any journey when offering a non-flexible option, and offer a set of Advances/walk-up fares as appropriate to make up the journey splitting at any change point.

That's fine but would mean a significant increase in fares for certain journeys, just as cross-London tickets often cost less than the separate halves put together (plus a Zone 1 fare). That's where it gets thorny - do you make the system more complicated by saying (for example) "25% off any connecting train's fare"?

If a cheaper quota is available for part of the journey on that one vehicle, automatically calculate a split.

That would require some reworking of the current system, as you'd be issuing two fares as one ticket. Also sometimes the reason for varying quote availability is that there isn't one seat that's free throughout the entire journey - how would you handle that?

E-tickets

• E-tickets to be available for ALL flows other than those involving travel on LU.

Here I agree, there's no excuse for e-tickets not to be universally offered.

Start negotiations with LU to see how to solve the through ticketing issue. This might cost the railway something to fit barcode readers, but will save on reduced need for TVMs for collecting tickets - they are 20K a pop remember!

Probably the simplest solution (although it would not be very passenger friendly, and would not be revenue neutral) would be to take off the cost of a cross-London transfer and make people use PAYG instead.

If you wanted to maintain the current "through ticketing" system you could issue free "Zone U12*" tickets at all recognised NR-LU/DLR transfer stations, at their booking offices and suitably fitted TVMs. That could lead to quite the queue - but it is the solution adopted in several European countries.

Carnets

• Instead of bothering with these if they will only be a 10% discount, calculate how many people are likely to use them and reduce Anytime Day Single fares on a revenue neutral basis instead, which is also more compatible with any future contactless scheme(s).

I agree, 10% off carnets are a waste of space. It needs to be 25% or more to really be worth anyone's while.

Abolition of "predatory" Advances and TOC specific fares on local and regional journeys will increase fares slightly on those specific flows (but fairer to everyone overall). Consider retaining some specific longer distance fares such as "not InterCity" where this genuinely differentiates the market and so attracts people from coaches and budget cars. If booking systems considered change-point splits automatically, these would show up if cheaper so no need for any through versions.

Again, another area where you will create losers who will (rightly) complain if they have relied on the cheaper fares until now.

I think establishing a minimum level of price differentiation may be better - as well as banning such fares on stretches so short that tickets couldn't possibly be checked (ahem, Manchester Piccadilly-Oxford Rd, route TfW only). That would force TOCs to offer a decent discount, or else give up their blatant ORCATS raids (e.g. Birmingham Intl-New St, route Avanti only for 10p less than Any Permitted!).

Tweak with time restrictions and maybe move to 3 rather than 2 levels of walk-up restrictions as LNR did.

A difficult one - 2 levels of walk-up restrictions is simpler to understand (the name "Super Off-Peak" is not very descriptive either) but 3 probably balances loadings and revenue better.

Consider an increase to the price of Railcards, enabled by moving to payment by monthly direct debit. "£5 a month" for example sounds really cheap, but that would be a doubling in price of the basic Railcards to £60 pa, which sounds expensive.

Personally I think that everyone should be eligible for a Railcard, like with the Bahncard in Germany, but just that the price should vary.

"Social" Railcards should probably be free and give a 50% discount (16-17 and Disabled, also one for people on benefits), then there should be another tier (£30 is about right) for everyone else currently eligible for a Railcard, and then say £100 or £200 for 30-59 year olds. The latter two being 34% off, as now.

Reduced need for TVMs and booking offices because of reduced ticketing complexity.

There are stations with booking offices that don't really need them, but you can't do without TVMs apart from on Paytrain routes. TVMs should be able to issue e-tickets though, printed on existing CCST stock.

Single IC journey - (priced per mile)

Fine in theory - but a uniform price per mile across the entire country? Surely you can see the problem with that?

Some lines are much more attractive than others in terms of their service. Some are simply much more circuitous than the equivalent roads (e.g. Inverness-Wick) so are you going to artificially reduce mileage?

And what about journeys where there are multiple plausible routes (putting to one side those journeys with certain permitted routes that most wouldn't use)? Do you use the longest route to calculate mileage? In which case splitting becomes worthwhile if you use a shorter route, and vice versa...

Mileage based pricing can work, but it would be very difficult to implement without everyone losing out!

(With a minimum standard to be offered to qualify as IC)

How would you set the definition for this? It'd be a minefield. For example, is Plymouth-Penzance IC? How about Stevenage-London, or Peterborough-Grantham?

I agree with the principle but it's simply unworkable in the context of many local services being operated by "IC" trains (indeed some local journeys and stations only have IC services).

Single non-IC journey - (priced per mile at 90% of the IC journey)

10% seems quite a low discount when that could be the difference between London-Reading, a journey averaging 94mph with 10tph fasts Off-Peak, and Middlesbrough-Whitby, averaging 24mph with 6 trains a day.

Advance IC ticket (20% discount off the buy-on-the-day tickets)

Advances currently offer much more than 20% discount in many cases. So are you going to reduce the cost of walkup tickets significantly, or is the minimum cost of travel on the quietest trains going to increase massively?

not exchangeable etc.

Why shouldn't people be able to change their train? I understand non-refundable, but not non-exchangeable.

Advance non-IC ticket (20% discount off the buy-on-the-day tickets) - not exchangeable etc.

Should we be offering Advances on Crossrail or Thameslink, which should both (eventually) have 24tph? If not, where do you set the boundary?

Charging fixed prices per mile will remove all the fare splitting.

The only way it can remove all splitting opportunities is if you abolish all routing flexibility and require people to choose which one route they want to take before they buy their ticket. All X Stations tickets would have to be abolished.

That would significantly reduce the effective frequency for journeys like York-Sheffield, Bristol-London and Leeds-Manchester, as well as lots of London area journeys.

Any other approach wouldn't eliminate fare splitting opportunities - see above.

Having one national price per mile would also make many regional journeys become a lot more expensive. Those lines would then inevitably lose custom, and the vicious cycle of decline would begin.

I'd abolish Season tickets entirely - the post-Covid return might not work with the traditional weekly/monthly/annuals anyway.

Why should people who currently rely on seasons for affordable commuting (often those who have to come to work 5 days a week) have to pay much more? Or are single fares going to cost 1/10th of a weekly season (which couldn't possibly hope to be revenue neutral)?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Single leg pricing does have a lot of advantages. The thing is, 95% of the advantages (if not more) are available simply by reducing the cost of existing singles. I don't see any need to abolish period returns, which offer a notable level of flexibility that single tickets can't.

They do, but they also complicate the offering and require excesses to be a thing (refund-and-replace of singles is a much simpler idea).

However, I'll admit that it's probably unrealistic to expect such flexibility to remain in a "simplified" system, particularly given the revenue protection implications. People who currently break their return journey over several days will simply end up having to pay more, and there will be longer queues as you will have to buy each journey's ticket separately (unless doing a day trip). Such is sadly the cost of "progress"!

An overnight break would not necessarily cost more - sometimes a split saves money! The upside over the present situation with returns is that if you want to say do Euston-Oxenholme, overnight break for 2 days, Oxenholme-Glasgow then back Glasgow-Euston, you're presently penalised for doing so because you can't break the outward Off Peak, and if you split returns you have to use a train stopping at Oxenholme on the way back.

I do get that it causes some niche inflexibility, plus the need to refund-and-replace if travelling back on a different day, but I think overall the simplicity benefits of "everything is a day single" possibly give or take some form of Off Peak Day Return (given how deep-discount these are) win out.

That's fine but would mean a significant increase in fares for certain journeys, just as cross-London tickets often cost less than the separate halves put together (plus a Zone 1 fare). That's where it gets thorny - do you make the system more complicated by saying (for example) "25% off any connecting train's fare"?

This might actually help make up some of the shortfall without annoying too many people.

That would require some reworking of the current system, as you'd be issuing two fares as one ticket. Also sometimes the reason for varying quote availability is that there isn't one seat that's free throughout the entire journey - how would you handle that?

Issue two.

Probably the simplest solution (although it would not be very passenger friendly, and would not be revenue neutral) would be to take off the cost of a cross-London transfer and make people use PAYG instead.

That would do, and I question the need for the outboundary Travelcard when it's just as easy to use contactless. The other option with those is to issue only on ITSO like the Merseyrail tickets, you'd still need that for season tickets so it won't go away.

If you wanted to maintain the current "through ticketing" system you could issue free "Zone U12*" tickets at all recognised NR-LU/DLR transfer stations, at their booking offices and suitably fitted TVMs. That could lead to quite the queue - but it is the solution adopted in several European countries.

Yes, it did occur to me that at the main interchange stations you could have "TVMs" that do nothing but scan an e-ticket and spit out a magstripe or even re-usable contactless gate pass.

A difficult one - 2 levels of walk-up restrictions is simpler to understand (the name "Super Off-Peak" is not very descriptive either) but 3 probably balances loadings and revenue better.

I don't think it's that confusing, but you could come up with other names, I'm sure the Forum will have a decent go

There are stations with booking offices that don't really need them, but you can't do without TVMs apart from on Paytrain routes. TVMs should be able to issue e-tickets though, printed on existing CCST stock.

Or till roll if it's cheaper. And booking offices could issue them on A4 from a laser printer (like DB do) rather than a costly dedicated ticket printer.

You could reduce the number of TVMs needed at stations that have several of them was more my thought, e.g. the large bank of them (8 I think) at MKC would not be needed if ToD wasn't really a thing any more.

 

[quantinghome]

How about this as an alternative to season tickets / carnets:

Sell e-tickets as follows:

• Full peak price paid for the first time someone purchases a day return ticket.
• Subsequent purchases of same ticket over the following week are charged at 75% of peak price. For simplicity this could also be the off-peak fare.
• If travelling every weekday this would work out the same as a weekly season ticket.

So for my local station to the nearest big station it would be £7 for the first ticket, then £5.25 for any subsequent ticket. For 5 days' travel this would be £28.

This could also work for zonal fare systems to give more flexibility, and the % reduction could also be flexed depending on the current price of day tickets and weekly tickets.

 

[JonathanH]

How about this as an alternative to season tickets / carnets:

Sell e-tickets as follows:

• Full peak price paid for the first time someone purchases a day return ticket.
• Subsequent purchases of same ticket over the following week are charged at 75% of peak price. For simplicity this could also be the off-peak fare.
• If travelling every weekday this would work out the same as a weekly season ticket.

So for my local station to the nearest big station it would be £7 for the first ticket, then £5.25 for any subsequent ticket. For 5 days' travel this would be £28.

This could also work for zonal fare systems to give more flexibility, and the % reduction could also be flexed depending on the current price of day tickets and weekly tickets.

That sounds like the sort of complexity people don't like.

 

[quantinghome]

That sounds like the sort of complexity people don't like.

Why is it complex? You just buy your ticket as normal, except the app would give you a cheaper ticket the second and subsequent times, in a given week.

Of course if you knew you were going to be commuting all week you'd just buy a season ticket as normal. Or if you lived in an area that had Oyster or equivalent you'd just touch in and touch out.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Another option from carnets would be a National Railcard also allowing discounts on peak-time fares at a higher price. If you travel often enough this would save you money, and the railway would also get some extra money from people who bought one but didn't travel enough to make it save.

 

[NoRoute]

I'd start with a review of railcards, they seem unnecessarily bureaucratic as a means of encouraging people to use the train when the same discounts could be offered using alternative forms of ID. They're just too much of a faff for the occassional train user, it's easier to just jump in the car.

To get people out of their cars for leisure travel there needs to be better deals on group travel. Cars offer a brilliant group deal, they get the driver and upto 4 other people to any destination for the same cost. I don't expect the railway to match this like for like, but the huge ticket pain for group travel needs reducing, there needs to be hefty discounts for couples, families and groups to attract people onto the railways.

Another idea I've seen in other countries is bundling regional rail travel with things like a hotel stay, so your hotel booking includes a local rail ticket allowing visitors to other local towns, destinations or for rail travel back to the local airport etc.

 

[py_megapixel]

To get people out of their cars for leisure travel there needs to be better deals on group travel. Cars offer a brilliant group deal, they get the driver and upto 4 other people to any destination for the same cost. I don't expect the railway to match this like for like, but the huge ticket pain for group travel needs reducing, there needs to be hefty discounts for couples, families and groups to attract people onto the railways.

Something like that would be good. Possibly the railway should offer a family ticket in addition to the current adult and child ones - something like up to 3 adults and 3 children for a decent discount compared to paying for them separately

 

[JonathanH]

Something like that would be good. Possibly the railway should offer a family ticket in addition to the current adult and child ones - something like up to 3 adults and 3 children for a decent discount compared to paying for them separately

That is what a Family and Friends Railcard is for, no? It would appear that just offering that discount as of right would not be revenue neutral.

Holding the railcard should encourage its holder to make more discretionary travel than if the offer was available to all.

 

[NoRoute]

That is what a Family and Friends Railcard is for, no? It would appear that just offering that discount as of right would not be revenue neutral.

Holding the railcard should encourage its holder to make more discretionary travel than if the offer was available to all.

Most families or couples won't go through the faff and expensive of getting a railcard for the journey, they'll look at the cost and take the car, with the railways getting zero revenue.

 

[py_megapixel]

That is what a Family and Friends Railcard is for, no?

Well, in principle, yes. In practice, with the current railcard system, my view is that they just need to wipe the slate clean and start again, because it's a convoluted mess. There are so many different types of railcards for different people, and yet the average person who travels by train alone regularly but isn't under 30, over 65, disabled or an armed forces veteran doesn't have access to any of them.

My opinion is that they should just offer two types of railcard:

• A general railcard, which applies a discount of X percent to all fares
• A group railcard, which is much more expensive and which additionally entitles the holder to apply the discount to tickets for up to 4 others as well as themself, as long as they all travel together

Those railcards could be provided at a lower cost for disabled people, veterans or whoever else.

That said, railcards are no good, as @NoRoute has already implied, for encouraging families to give the train a try for the first time. Possibly rather than a family ticket - which, you are correct, is not a very revenue-neutral idea - some kind of advertising campaign distributing discount vouchers would be a good idea, with the aim of building a base of new passengers who will hopefully take the train next time, hopefully buying railcards.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Something like that would be good. Possibly the railway should offer a family ticket in addition to the current adult and child ones - something like up to 3 adults and 3 children for a decent discount compared to paying for them separately

In the principle of "keep it simple" I would extend GroupSave, of a flat discount of 34%, to child tickets and Advances, and remove the supposed limit of 10 people on a GroupSave group (which is easily circumvented by just buying more than one). All other group travel schemes could then be removed.

However, in line with the thread title, what would we increase the price of to compensate?

I also don't think that full cars are the problem as they are environmentally, road-space and financially efficient, and even better once electric. The railway might be better concentrating on individuals and couples. Yes, @Ianno87 might enjoy a family train ride, which is good, but we need to use the money we have to the best advantage and that may not be it for now.

 

[NoRoute]

However, in line with the thread title, what would we increase the price of to compensate?

The case for trying reductions in fares is to see whether it can increase demand enough to increase revenue overall. For example, if you cut fares by a 33% and it increases sales by more than 50% then beyond that point revenue increases (assuming fixed costs).

It hinges on the price sensitivity of demand, so cutting prices is probably less effective on journeys which are unavoidable like commuting into London or major cities during the week. But for journeys which are discretionary, trains running far below capacity and the car is a good alternative, then it might be a viable approach.

 

[JonathanH]

For example, if you cut fares by a 33% and it increases sales by more than 50% then beyond that point revenue increases (assuming fixed costs).

An increase of 50% in the numbers travelling relative to levels before March 2020 is a long way away from where we are at the moment.

 

[biko]

I basically agree with the ideas in the opening post. Single fare pricing is much better than returns and removes lots of problems without creating major new ones.

In the Netherlands, we moved to single fare pricing more than 10 years ago so I will make some comments with my experiences of single fare pricing in mind. Before the change, single fares were about 70% of returns I think (I was quite small back then, so don't remember exactly). Single fare pricing has been implemented in a revenue-neutral way by making singles a bit cheaper and returns a bit more expensive and after a number of years singles were 50% of a return. In the UK, singles are nearly 100% of a return, so this wouldn't be feasible in the same way, but the gist of it is that you can phase it in. In the UK I would suggest making singles quite a bit cheaper year after year, while increasing the price of returns by just a bit more than inflation. After a few years the returns can then be abolished without sudden shocks to some users.

That's fine but would mean a significant increase in fares for certain journeys, just as cross-London tickets often cost less than the separate halves put together (plus a Zone 1 fare). That's where it gets thorny - do you make the system more complicated by saying (for example) "25% off any connecting train's fare"?

Although the Netherlands doesn't do advances for domestic journeys, we do have those for international ones. Eurostar and Thalys only provide tickets between stations they serve. For journeys connecting to Eurostar or Thalys, the booking systems give two tickets: the actual Eurostar or Thalys ticket and a single ticket from the starting station to the connecting point which is only valid in combination with the international ticket. These tickets are a fixed price and often much cheaper than normal domestic tickets if you travel a medium or long distance. From where I live, these add-on tickets are even cheaper than the railcard-discounted regular price!

Fine in theory - but a uniform price per mile across the entire country? Surely you can see the problem with that?

Some lines are much more attractive than others in terms of their service. Some are simply much more circuitous than the equivalent roads (e.g. Inverness-Wick) so are you going to artificially reduce mileage?

And what about journeys where there are multiple plausible routes (putting to one side those journeys with certain permitted routes that most wouldn't use)? Do you use the longest route to calculate mileage? In which case splitting becomes worthwhile if you use a shorter route, and vice versa...

Mileage based pricing can work, but it would be very difficult to implement without everyone losing out!

Again a Dutch example: we do have some kind of mileage-based fares. However this always causes strange things as the journey planner is based on travel time. So for some journeys a faster route is longer in distance and it can then be cheaper to travel to a station which is further down the fast route, but closer if you would travel the slow route. A bit complicated to explain, but it really is weird. Also, the system uses 'fare-kilometres' to make sure alternative routes between for example Amsterdam and Rotterdam are a similar length but that has weird effects in that some local journeys become very expensive. So all in all, it is nearly impossible to do this well.

 

[Kite159]

One issue I can see with single fare pricing at half the price of the period return with the period return being abolished is for those with railcards which have minimum fares (i.e Network Railcard). For example if an off-peak return from Station A to Station B is £20 non-discounted, it gets reduced to around £13.40 with the network railcard. Get rid of that return and only have single tickets at £10 each way, then the passenger with the railcard will loss out if travelling both ways on weekdays

 

[Bletchleyite]

One issue I can see with single fare pricing at half the price of the period return with the period return being abolished is for those with railcards which have minimum fares (i.e Network Railcard). For example if an off-peak return from Station A to Station B is £20 non-discounted, it gets reduced to around £13.40 with the network railcard. Get rid of that return and only have single tickets at £10 each way, then the passenger with the railcard will loss out if travelling both ways on weekdays

The Network Railcard all-day minimum fare is silly and needs to be abolished, with the Railcard price increased a bit to compensate, perhaps. My pointy finger is firmly at Chiltern who I believe pushed for it.

I would look to standardise Railcard T&Cs which would I'm afraid mean a move from the morning minimum fare on 18-25s to no validity before a certain time (though possibly 0930 instead of 1000). In essence there would be one* Railcard, offering 34% off all fares in both classes after 0930 (all day weekend/BH), but sold at different prices by demographic. An enhanced national GroupSave would replace the Family and Friends and there would be a non-demographic one priced at about £120 per annum (tenner a month) optionally payable as an ongoing membership by direct debit.

* I could be tempted to add a Premium Railcard ("All Day Railcard" or "Anytime Railcard"?), which would be considerably more expensive, and would also offer the 34% discount before 0930 in both classes, aimed at encouraging business travellers, both on expenses and not, to commit to rail. A price point of £30-50 per month by direct debit might be a start for the price level, but it could potentially go a bit higher. This could be instead of Carnets.

 

[HSTEd]

How much would a UK Bahncard 100 / Generalabonnement equivalent have to cost?

 

[Bletchleyite]

How much would a UK Bahncard 100 / Generalabonnement equivalent have to cost?

Well, an annual season from Manchester to London is £16,268. So it would have to be somewhere around that as a minimum, I guess. Ouch.

 

[HSTEd]

Well, an annual season from Manchester to London is £16,268. So it would have to be somewhere around that as a minimum, I guess. Ouch.

A 14 day All Line rover is £818.
26 of them would be £21,268.

With a suitable railcard it is "only" £14037.40

If you can get a railcard that is certainly worth it!

EDIT:

This sort of fare madness is what drives me towards Volume above all else.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Those of course aren't valid from certain stations before 0930 after Mr Portillo (I think) made the idea of using them as seasons a bit too well-known.

 

[JonathanH]

The Network Railcard all-day minimum fare is silly and needs to be abolished, with the Railcard price increased a bit to compensate, perhaps. My pointy finger is firmly at Chiltern who I believe pushed for it.

Is silly the right word? Admittedly it is a compromise between allowing longer distance 'days out' on weekdays and preventing short distance commuters paying full fare in the morning and a discounted fare in the evening. It hasn't been increased for ages and should have got to about £18 by now if it had kept up with inflation.

The rail companies claimed that it also prevented them from making their own specific offers available which could be more focused around times when there is genuine capacity to fill, rather than at already busy times.

The RDG PAYG proposals, as last published, include a blanket evening peak, like Oyster, again intended to address the issue, perceived by the railway, that there are ways round paying what they think the value of peak time travel is.

There is a sweet spot between fare increases and people saying "well if that is what they are charging, I will just have to pay it to get where I want to go".

 

[TravelDream]

Some interesting ideas on this thread, but lots of downsides with them too like with the current pricing structure. I think the basic issue with the current structure is that it's far too complex and unwieldy for the average person.
Here's my two-penny worth...

Have a unified national formula on pricing. Basing it just on mileage would be a disaster. It doesn't account at all for demand or how direct a route is (as stated above). It would have to deal with a lot of things other than mileage. That would mean getting rid of advanced tickets too - The railway is a public transport provider and not an airline. I'd consider all of these to be valid considerations in a formula:
- Mileage (on fastest valid route). - Average route speed. - Whether it touches London. - Average load-factor on route at peak and off-peak. - Route punctuality/ service.
Fares would be adjusted annually based on these factors.
Tickets would be reduced to: Anytime single and return (day or period dependent on length). Off-peak single and return. Season. Then with variants for standard, reduced and child discounts.

Make season tickets more flexible. Allow 1+Weekend, 2+ Weekend... 5+Weekend tickets allowing them to be used on a designated day/ days and the weekend and priced accordingly. Allow the designated day/ days be changed every week for a reasonable fee.

Expand radically the use of e-tickets. It could be incentivised in a number of ways. An additional fee could be charged for printed tickets or ticket machines could be adapted to send tickets to phones. It could also be used to soften the blow of the loss of advanced tickets. Something like 10% off if the e-ticket is booked 72 hours+ in advance excluding the morning peak. This should be combined with making all urban areas penalty fare zones with real enforcement.

Get rid of all railcards. I don't get why people talk about tinkering around the edges to get rid of conditions they don't like. The things are just too complex and are unnecessary. Just give younger people 16-21, the elderly (bus pass age) and disabled a set 25% discount if they have proof. It would probably be sensible to limit it to outside of the morning peak. I'd favour retaining local rover/explorer tickets though.

Unify T&Cs across all TOCs (Well, I would nationalise the railway, but that's really the topic of this thread). What is peak in one location should be peak in another - though there is an argument for having a different London peak. What is a penalty fare zone in one area should be one in all. Get rid of all TOC only tickets.

 

[HSTEd]

Surely the obvious way to handle routing issues with "mileage" based ticket programmes is just to apply a multiplier to each route that is used to calculate "equivalent mileage".

A less crowded route might have a multiplier of 1, whilst a more crowded one might have a multiplier of 2. If we wanted to encourage people to use HS2, as capacity is cheaper to provide their than on the conventional system, you could even have a multiplier less than 1.

Price would be set by the most expensive route for which the ticket is valid.

EDIT:

I concur with getting rid of railcards.
They are so cheap to obtain that they do not meaningfully increase income for the railway, they are essentially a tax on people who don't know about them

 

[TravelDream]

Surely the obvious way to handle routing issues with "mileage" based ticket programmes is just to apply a multiplier to each route that is used to calculate "equivalent mileage".

A multiplier is a formula. That is what I meant too.

Something like this is what I had in mind:
Take the raw price of a route from its mileage. Then use the following factors to calculate the actual price.
Load Factor: x0.75 for very quiet trains, 0.8 for quiet... 1.0 for normal.... 1.5 for very busy trains calculated separately for peak and off-peak.
Average Route Speed: 0.7 for under 20mph, 0.8 for 21-34mph... 1.3 for over 120 mph.
Touches London: 0.9 if it doesn't touch London/ South East, 1.0 for outer London and South East, 1.1 for central London. This could easily be linked to 'leveling up' giving a greater discount for the most deprived areas.
Route Punctuality: 0.8 if 74% or less on-time... 1.1 if 99.5% or more on time.

Obviously these aren't exact percentages, but hypothetical ones.

 

[JonathanH]

A multiplier is a formula. That is what I meant too.

Something like this is what I had in mind:
Take the raw price of a route from its mileage. Then use the following factors to calculate the actual price.
Load Factor: x0.75 for very quiet trains, 0.8 for quiet... 1.0 for normal.... 1.5 for very busy trains calculated separately for peak and off-peak.
Average Route Speed: 0.7 for under 20mph, 0.8 for 21-34mph... 1.3 for over 120 mph.
Touches London: 0.9 if it doesn't touch London/ South East, 1.0 for outer London and South East, 1.1 for central London. This could easily be linked to 'leveling up' giving a greater discount for the most deprived areas.
Route Punctuality: 0.8 if 74% or less on-time... 1.1 if 99.5% or more on time.

Obviously these aren't exact percentages, but hypothetical ones.

While recognising that you could take all of the tickets sold in 2019 and come up with a set of multipliers which satisfied the equation for revenue neutrality, you would also have to take into account whether the increase in fares resulting from applying such a rigid formula would actually lead to more or fewer people travelling.

Is this sort of formula based pricing really what people want?

 

[Watershed]

A multiplier is a formula. That is what I meant too.

Something like this is what I had in mind:
Take the raw price of a route from its mileage. Then use the following factors to calculate the actual price.
Load Factor: x0.75 for very quiet trains, 0.8 for quiet... 1.0 for normal.... 1.5 for very busy trains calculated separately for peak and off-peak.
Average Route Speed: 0.7 for under 20mph, 0.8 for 21-34mph... 1.3 for over 120 mph.
Touches London: 0.9 if it doesn't touch London/ South East, 1.0 for outer London and South East, 1.1 for central London. This could easily be linked to 'leveling up' giving a greater discount for the most deprived areas.
Route Punctuality: 0.8 if 74% or less on-time... 1.1 if 99.5% or more on time.

Obviously these aren't exact percentages, but hypothetical ones.

Two problems for starters.

Firstly, how you define "mileage"? Easy enough for a journey with only one plausible route (e.g. Penzance-Plymouth). But what about areas like York to Sheffield with lots of possible routes? (It's by no means the only example of its type)

If you base prices on the shortest route (via Pontefract Baghill) but don't restrict tickets to that route, it would cause lots of anomalies (e.g. it would be cheaper to buy a ticket from Sheffield to York than one from Sheffield to Micklefield).

If you base prices on the shortest route and restrict tickets to that route, how many other routes do you have to price fares over? Via Leeds? Via Doncaster? How about via Doncaster and Leeds (any of these can be the fastest routes at times)? And of course that means that your choice of trains is severely curtailed - under XC's pre-Covid TT they had 1tph running via Doncaster and another via Leeds. So you would go from 2tph to effectively a 1tph service, as your ticket would be restricted to one specific route.

If you base prices on the longest plausible route (via Doncaster and Leeds), you're then penalising people who take a shorter route, and make splitting worthwhile. It's not really truly mileage-based pricing anymore.

Secondly, surely you can see that mileage-based pricing with modifiers is a highly complex and obscure model that simply ends up more or less replicating the current situation? The only factor that isn't currently taken into consideration when setting fares is the punctuality - but I would have thought that Delay Repay is accepted as a much fairer way of administering such a discount, or alternatively incentives like the 10% season ticket discount that WMT did last year.

There is simply no easy answer to the issue of fares reform - like the Castlefield corridor, it's a problem you can't solve without upsetting someone.

 

[adrock1976]

Something that ideally should have happened in the early years of privatisation was for the flexible fares (i.e. non Advance/APEX) one way singles to be frozen while the returns increased.

When the return fare would have more or less be equal to twice the single fare, flexible returns could have been abolished in that scenario. However, it would only have worked for day returns, with the former Saver Returns (Return portion enables that direction to break of journey, useable up to a calendar month of making the outward - mainly traditional InterCity flows) requiring some extra thought.

Perhaps the present day Anytime fares to have 28 days validity with no break of journey restrictions, with the present day Saver fares (which would be Saver Singles) having no travel between 04:30 - 09:00/09:30, but no break of journey restrictions but validity covering 7 days?