Great British Railways: opportunities for fares reform?

[Starmill]

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.

An Annual between Berwick-upon-Tweed and London £25,036.00. More for an Annual Travelcard.

 

[HSTEd]

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).

Is that a problem?

It likely costs the railway less to move people from Sheffield to York than Sheffield to Micklefield.

 

[Del1977]

If anything highlights how absurd the current fares system is, it's the reaction to the suggestion that, "If you travel further you should pay more."

So we have the silly situation of an Anytime Single from Hereford to London Paddington tomorrow (via Newport) costing £121.90. But if you start the journey in Newport, then the Anytime Single is still £121.90.

Then you have the pages of 'Special Offers' listed on the National Rail website, listing everything from a 'Dales Railcard' to the 'Kids for a quid promotion with SouthEastern'. No sensible person could possibly be able to work out what's available or what the overall best price is.

The current system is so complicated and such a mess that it would be much better to wipe the slate clean and reconstruct a rational, fair and easy to understand system.

 

[Watershed]

Is that a problem?

It likely costs the railway less to move people from Sheffield to York than Sheffield to Micklefield.

It probably doesn't, and in any case railway prices are only loosely related to costs.

The bigger point is that many people call for fares reform because of the anomalies in the system. So to reform it whilst keeping the anomalies isn't really fixing it at all - people would complain that they have to know to buy a ticket to York to get the cheapest fare.

 

[HSTEd]

It probably doesn't, and in any case railway prices are only loosely related to costs.

The bigger point is that many people call for fares reform because of the anomalies in the system. So to reform it whilst keeping the anomalies isn't really fixing it at all - people would complain that they have to know to buy a ticket to York to get the cheapest fare.

But a ticket to York would not be valid for travel to Micklefield?

 

[JonathanH]

But a ticket to York would not be valid for travel to Micklefield?

Certainly a PAYG system with the fares based on actual start and end points would require people to simply pay the fare on offer (although London-style PAYG then might allow people to make journeys like Sheffield - York - Micklefield without extra charge relative to going direct so long as they don't leave York Station - eg you can't be off route (on Contactless at least))

So we have the silly situation of an Anytime Single from Hereford to London Paddington tomorrow (via Newport) costing £121.90. But if you start the journey in Newport, then the Anytime Single is still £121.90.

That isn't necessarily silly - it is recognising that the route from Hereford to London via Newport doesn't need to be more expensive than the fare from Newport and the railway is prepared to offer the connection from Hereford to Newport (for free). A bit like zonal pricing really.

Who exactly is losing out because of this?

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?

Even blanket peak restrictions cause inconsistency - eg a return ticket from Plymouth to Birmingham valid on the 0927 service costs £288.50 and one from Totnes to Birmingham on the same train costs £108.10 because of the blanket 0930 restriction on off-peak returns with no easements.

 

[Wolfie]

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.

So anyone who has a ST that they currently use on their non-working days immediately loses out.

 

[Bletchleyite]

There's really no reason not to issue seasons as they exist now as e-tickets. The usage data you get from them would be far easier to automatically detect fraud than magstripe tickets. Great if you lose it, too - just go onto your online account, cancel the barcode and print a new one with a new barcode.

The only issue it leaves is, as ever, TfL. But you could work around that, e.g. issue an actual TfL Oyster for use on TfL services on production of a valid season ticket barcode, with "only valid with season ticket" printing on it so a manual inspector could ask to see the barcode e-ticket too.

 

[Watershed]

But a ticket to York would not be valid for travel to Micklefield?

If you base prices on the shortest route (via Pontefract Baghill) but don't restrict tickets to that route

My hypothetical was based on keeping something analogous to the current system of permitted routes, so you could indeed use a ticket to York to travel to Micklefield (as you can now).

But I also covered what would happen if you said that tickets are only valid via the route over which they're priced:

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.

 

[HSTEd]

My hypothetical was based on keeping something analogous to the current system of permitted routes, so you could indeed use a ticket to York to travel to Micklefield (as you can now).

But I also covered what would happen if you said that tickets are only valid via the route over which they're priced:

I'm not talking about a route, I'm simply saying that you would forbid stopping short or starting late.

 

[JonathanH]

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 CrossCountry and other similar operators were to go to Advance Purchase tickets only and be taken out of the walk-up system, this wouldn't matter. The ticket would only be valid on one service. You would potentially not have walk up fares between Sheffield and York (as York is outside of a metropolitan area) in a "PAYG for conurbation areas and Advance Purchase fares between them" model.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm not talking about a route, I'm simply saying that you would forbid stopping short or starting late.

That's pointless complication. All tickets should permit stopping/starting short and same day break of journey within their validity*. If everything was a Day Single the potential for misuse is very small.

* e.g. if your Advance is booked with an hour's layover at a station and you want to pop out for a walk, not allowing that is blindingly petty and a great example of the way the railway doesn't treat its customers right. Even airlines don't do that!

 

[Watershed]

I'm not talking about a route, I'm simply saying that you would forbid stopping short or starting late.

And how are you going to enforce that when the vast majority of stations are unbarriered?

Basing your pricing policy on not letting people break their journey leaves a system wide open for 'misuse', and again, it means it still has anomalies. People will, quite rightly, feel it is unfair they should pay more to travel a shorter distance - it is not their fault that the 19th Century railway barons decreed the indirectness of certain routes.

 

[JonathanH]

That's pointless complication. All tickets should permit stopping/starting short and same day break of journey within their validity*. If everything was a Day Single the potential for misuse is very small.

A 'proper' London-style PAYG system applied in local areas with single fares would prevent stopping short and allow the railway to charge what it felt the market rate to be between any given pair of stations.

 

[Watershed]

If CrossCountry and other similar operators were to go to Advance Purchase tickets only and be taken out of the walk-up system, this wouldn't matter. The ticket would only be valid on one service. You would potentially not have walk up fares between Sheffield and York (as York is outside of a metropolitan area) in a "PAYG for conurbation areas and Advance Purchase fares between them" model.

Where does it end? XC provide a significant portion of the service over many local journeys. Are you going to have to buy an Advance ticket (and hope they're still on sale) to travel from Burton to Derby?

In case anyone hasn't noticed, this is the inherent problem with fares reform.

Make it wholly mileage based and it has to be rigid and thus inconvenient and unattractive, not to mention unfair.

Make it partly mileage based and it is really no more than a like for like replacement of the current system, with a few people winning and lots more losing.

The only way that fares reform could properly and fairly be done is if the Treasury agreed to (permanently) increase rail subsidy. Of course, that's not palatable to them or to most voters, so the farce goes on.

 

[Bletchleyite]

A 'proper' London-style PAYG system applied in local areas with single fares would prevent stopping short and allow the railway to charge what it felt the market rate to be between any given pair of stations.

Only if you couldn't also buy paper tickets or e-tickets. 100% contactless is impossible, as is 100% barriering.

 

[Annetts key]

Surly if mileage is a factor in ticket pricing, it should be the distance between stations as a dead straight line between the two points (as the crow flies) rather than the actual line of route distance.

Obviously this will not be in the railways favour for some journeys where the rail route between them is a long way round. But the main competition is road vehicles, or for longer distances, aircraft and most of these will be taking a more or less direct route.

 

[HSTEd]

Only if you couldn't also buy paper tickets or e-tickets. 100% contactless is impossible, as is 100% barriering.

I decided to go and look:

50% of entries and exists are at 91 stations
90% of entries and exits are at 787 stations
99% of entries and exits are at 1718 stations

There are ~2560 ish stations on the network to my knowledge

I have the dataset open and sorted so if anyone else wants figures for another proportion I can do it.

Either way, barriering a very large fraction of journeys does not seem totally beyond the pale.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I decided to go and look:

50% of entries and exists are at 91 stations
90% of entries and exits are at 787 stations
99% of entries and exits are at 1718 stations

There are ~2560 ish stations on the network to my knowledge

I have the dataset open and sorted so if anyone else wants figures for another proportion I can do it.

Either way, barriering a very large fraction of journeys does not seem totally beyond the pale.

If you accept barriering one end only, you can probably get a very high number with fewer than 100 stations. That's Merseyrail's approach. Random inspections deal with the rest to a reasonable level, pursuing every single fare dodger is a "diminishing returns" thing.

However, I cannot accept that (other than practically for contactless) barring starting/finishing short and BoJ is sensible. It is unnecessarily confusing and results in people being penalised for doing something that to any normal human is perfectly reasonable - the use of less of something than you paid for, or using it in parts. And market pricing of individual station pairs is far more obfuscation; standardised fares based on zones, distance etc is better for local journeys, and yield management of train capacity for longer ones.

 

[Annetts key]

I decided to go and look:

50% of entries and exists are at 91 stations
90% of entries and exits are at 787 stations
99% of entries and exits are at 1718 stations

There are ~2560 ish stations on the network to my knowledge

I have the dataset open and sorted so if anyone else wants figures for another proportion I can do it.

Either way, barriering a very large fraction of journeys does not seem totally beyond the pale.

What about gate lines (as our local TOC calls them) not being in use all day? Some stations only have them in operation for part of the day...
And where you have a nearby less important station, that has very low passenger flows, and hence is not a staffed station, how do you stop people using these so they can avoid paying?

 

[Bletchleyite]

What about gate lines (as our local TOC calls them) not being in use all day? Some stations only have them in operation for part of the day...
And where you have a nearby less important station, that has very low passenger flows, and hence is not a staffed station, how do you stop people using these so they can avoid paying?

The answer, as ever (and this is the exact same issue I came up against when I proposed an e-ticket scheme on here which was slated as insecure but was remarkably similar to what actually happened) is that nothing has to be 100% secure, just secure enough.

It is probably not worth spending the massive sums necessary to go after the remaining couple of percent of fare dodging.

For instance, most commuters have season tickets, so if you check a typical early morning commuter train you'll just find lots of people with seasons and the very odd fare dodger (as the "scallies" won't have dragged themselves out of bed yet). Worth a check? Probably not.

Or if you check a Euston departure around 2000, you'll just find lots of people with return tickets and very few fare dodgers. That's why you'll find the Euston barrier open at that time of night.

 

[HSTEd]

What about gate lines (as our local TOC calls them) not being in use all day? Some stations only have them in operation for part of the day...

I've made no assumptions about whether gate lines are currently in place at these stations or not.

I am simply pointing out approximately how many gatelines you would be talking about to reach a given proportion of entries and exits

And where you have a nearby less important station, that has very low passenger flows, and hence is not a staffed station, how do you stop people using these so they can avoid paying?

Can you give examples of where this has been shown to be a major problem?

Most of the very low passenger count stations are in the middle of nowhere, have terrible service, or both.

 

[Annetts key]

Can you give examples of where this has been shown to be a major problem?

Most of the very low passenger count stations are in the middle of nowhere, have terrible service, or both.

I’m not saying it is a big problem, just pointing out that in some parts of the country, it’s possible. If you have a big station, say the main station for a town or city, and that same station also has a regular local all stops service, which calls at the smaller local stations some of which are in the same town/city, then it does not take a genius to work out how it’s possible to avoid presenting an expensive ticket at the gate line of the big station...

 

[quantinghome]

So anyone who has a ST that they currently use on their non-working days immediately loses out.

You'd have a cap at the season ticket value.

 

[TravelDream]

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).

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.

You're right that there's no simple solution that will suit everyone. Any changes in fares will see some winner and some losers. We have many winners and losers today though with our exceptionally complex, dog's dinner of a ticketing system.

On your points:
1 - As I said in my post above, it would probably be best to base it on the fastest valid route. That will cause anomalies in some places, yes, but far fewer anomalies than we have today. The one exception I could see if there was a once a day service or something which is probably best excluded from such a formula.
2 - It is a little complex, but is a) less complex than what we have now and b) it is totally transparent which is very different to what we have now.

Delay Repay is a totally unnecessary complexity brought into the rail system. How is it fairer too? It benefits those with the time and knowledge to get some compensation whilst the ordinary person gets.... a delayed train (?).

 

[Mikey C]

It'll be interesting how it affects fares going forward on routes where there is some competition, e.g. between London and Birmingham between Avanti, LNWR and Chiltern

And how will this work with advance tickets, will they still exist and who will set the prices? The models mentioned, the DLR and Overground in London are simple commuter railways with zonal prices.

 

[JonathanH]

It'll be interesting how it affects fares going forward on routes where there is some competition, e.g. between London and Birmingham between Avanti, LNWR and Chiltern

If all the money goes in the same pot, the fares are set by one organisation and the primary objective is simplifying fares then logically there is one fare for London to Birmingham.

Having said that, has the 'grand nationwide fare setter' actually been appointed yet? Does the mayor of the West Midlands have some say in the fares to London from Birmingham? I doubt the realities of any of this have yet really been worked through.

And how will this work with advance tickets, will they still exist and who will set the prices? The models mentioned, the DLR and Overground in London are simple commuter railways with zonal prices.

Isn't that where the 'commercial freedom' rhetoric comes in? However, that only appears to apply to long distance operators and advance tickets have spread well beyond those now. Advance fares on shorter distance journeys are surely part of the 'confusion' that this is meant to be casting aside.

 

[TUC]

This has the potential to push fares up on routes such as the ECML where multiple TOCs selling tickets only valid on their own services have had major benefits. Hard to see how passengers sill gain from this development.

 

[CentralTrainer]

Reading through the bit about "Flexible Seasons" - they reference being valid for 8 days out of 28 (which covers working 2 days a week per calendar month) - but then go on to specifically talk about "3-day a week" commuters.

Surely then it should be a validity for the 3-dayers of 12 days out of 28?

If that is the case - I hope they would then be releasing a longer validity ticket for those people?

 

[AM9]

Reading through the bit about "Flexible Seasons" - they reference being valid for 8 days out of 28 (which covers working 2 days a week per calendar month) - but then go on to specifically talk about "3-day a week" commuters.

Surely then it should be a validity for the 3-dayers of 12 days out of 28?

If that is the case - I hope they would then be releasing a longer validity ticket for those people?

Why would they need to have longer validity? You refer to 3/28 day tickets in the same context as 2/28 types. If you are a 3 day per week traveller, the validity would be the same as a 2 day per week traveller gets, i.e. 4 working weeks.