Is it time to scrap operator specific tickets when Great British Railways begins?

[Marty82]

Having witnessed several occasions today of passengers having an operator specific ticket and the time and effort it takes for the train manager to explain that the ticket isn't valid I was wondering whether these tickets will or should be part of the future of our railways?

I feel so sorry for those who have to check tickets for the arguments that they have to have over tickets and I admire their patience.

 

[bramling]

Having witnessed several occasions today of passengers having an operator specific ticket and the time and effort it takes for the train manager to explain that the ticket isn't valid I was wondering whether these tickets will or should be part of the future of our railways?

I feel so sorry for those who have to check tickets for the arguments that they have to have over tickets and I admire their patience.

In general yes I think they should be scaled back for sure. In a lot of cases it makes little sense to crowd out slower trains - to the detriment of people who don’t have choice - whilst faster trains sail through with spare capacity.

I’m not sure it will ever fully happen though - London Midland and Chiltern for example were heavily into it, and I can see people kicking up a fuss given how long some of these cheaper options have existed. Perhaps the new franchising structure will make it less valuable to the industry.

I suspect TOC specific will disappear, but route or service specific will be the new thing.

 

[Hadders]

A great idea in principle, especially on short routes like Stockport to Manchester or Stevenage to London.

It would however the removal of operator specific fares would result in huge fare increases for many passengers.

With no price differential between, for example, the slower West Midlands Trains service and faster Avanti service between London and Birmingham the Avanti trains would quickly become over crowded.

There will always be ticketing issues on trains, if it’s not invalid operators it’ll be a dispute over whether an off peak ticket is valid, or someone sat in 1st class with a standard class ticket. There is always going to be some complication with over 2,500 stations involved…

 

[Harpers Tate]

My view is, yes - except, of course "Advance" fares which are, kind of by definition, operator specific.

 

[Hadders]

My view is, yes - except, of course "Advance" fares which are, kind of by definition, operator specific.

Far less flexibility for passengers though…

 

[pdeaves]

For as long as the system allows open access operators, there will be a need for some sort of operator specific ticket, even if it only distinguishes between OA/non-OA.

 

[RT4038]

A great idea in principle, especially on short routes like Stockport to Manchester or Stevenage to London.

It would however the removal of operator specific fares would result in huge fare increases for many passengers.

With no price differential between, for example, the slower West Midlands Trains service and faster Avanti service between London and Birmingham the Avanti trains would quickly become over crowded.

There will always be ticketing issues on trains, if it’s not invalid operators it’ll be a dispute over whether an off peak ticket is valid, or someone sat in 1st class with a standard class ticket. There is always going to be some complication with over 2,500 stations involved…

If there are not operator specific tickets, how are you going to encourage passengers to use slower local trains on main lines, with spare capacity? If the answer is that passengers should always be able to take the fastest train, what future for otherwise sparsely used local services on main lines? Beeching was well aware of the drain that slow (empty) local trains were on the finances.

 

[Randomer]

Surely the simple answer is to remove the completely artificial limit on excessing them?

Most of the heated or prolonged discussions I have seen onboard services have been because a passenger has been told they have to purchase a completely new ticket.

A discussion of "this is a faster train operated by X your ticket cost less because it is valid on Y is simpler than sorry your ticket isn't valid at all.

I understand why they couldn't be originally, i.e. reallocation of revenue wasn't possible but in an age of a modern retailing systems I can't see it being a good argument anymore.

Having said that the silly £1 or £2 less than the flexible ticket price ones need to disappear.

 

[bramling]

If there are not operator specific tickets, how are you going to encourage passengers to use slower local trains on main lines, with spare capacity? If the answer is that passengers should always be able to take the fastest train, what future for otherwise sparsely used local services on main lines? Beeching was well aware of the drain that slow (empty) local trains were on the finances.

What are these slow local trains?

If we look at routes like Birmingham to London, Peterborough to London or Ipswich to London, the slower trains are all heavily used further in. These aren’t quiet backwaters, even the Trent Valley section is busier than it once was.

 

[RT4038]

What are these slow local trains?

If we look at routes like Birmingham to London, Peterborough to London or Ipswich to London, the slower trains are all heavily used further in. These aren’t quiet backwaters, even the Trent Valley section is busier than it once was.

Then the service only needs to be enhanced 'further in'. If there wasn't a good proportion of discounted (operator specific) long distance ticket holders, the Trent Valley trains would be a lot emptier and there wouldn't be so many travelling between Milton Keynes, Northampton and Coventry to justify the kind of frequency offered. Same applies on Chiltern, and Peterborough I expect. Plus the problems of overcrowding the fast trains, often over short distances.

The differentiation doesn't have to be by Operator per se - some countries do it by train type (Regional or Inter City)

Surely the simple answer is to remove the completely artificial limit on excessing them?

Most of the heated or prolonged discussions I have seen onboard services have been because a passenger has been told they have to purchase a completely new ticket.

A discussion of "this is a faster train operated by X your ticket cost less because it is valid on Y is simpler than sorry your ticket isn't valid at all.

I understand why they couldn't be originally, i.e. reallocation of revenue wasn't possible but in an age of a modern retailing systems I can't see it being a good argument anymore.

Having said that the silly £1 or £2 less than the flexible ticket price ones need to disappear.

So I'll always buy the cheaper ticket and just pay up if a conductor appears?

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think I would say "yes and no".

Clearly the situations like most of Northern/TPE, MKC-Euston, Gatwick-Vic and the likes where there is little difference between the TOC fares do not make sense and these should be removed.

However, the considerable difference/speed balance between long distance fares on Avanti and LNR genuinely split the market - most people would only consider one of the two, either slow and cheap or fast and expensive. Therefore there would be value in retaining these, even if they were routed differently, e.g. "regional trains only" or whatever GBR uses to differentiate between trains. You can do it with Advances, but competing with a well-loaded budget car does need flexibility to be offered. Perhaps it could be done with Advances in a different way than the usual quota control by releasing an very large quota of fixed-price Advances on all "LNR" long distance trains and binning the admin fee for a change, so if you needed to change your ticket or buy one on the day you could. This could be advertised in its own right, potentially.

On DB IC services are cheaper than ICE, say, so the European nationalised operations see the value of this.

 

[Joe Paxton]

Having witnessed several occasions today of passengers having an operator specific ticket and the time and effort it takes for the train manager to explain that the ticket isn't valid I was wondering whether these tickets will or should be part of the future of our railways?

GBR is coming.

What will be interesting is if, under GBR, there might be different types of tickets for different categories of train services - i.e. intercity and regional - if that might be beneficial in terms of controlling passenger flow and encouraging pax making shorter journeys away from filling up intercity / long-distance trains for short stretches.

Edit - Bletchleyite got there first to make much the same point.

 

[Kite159]

Remove the "TOC only" fares on local flows, ie Crewe/Stockport - Manchester but keep them for the longer distance services where they do offer a cost saving over the "any permitted" for the trade that you are on a slower service

Ie Crewe/Birmingham to London

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

GBR is planned to be regionalised, mapped to the NR Regions (which might change, of course).
But you could imagine a situation where London-Birmingham was in a single Region (ie containing what are currently Avanti, LNW/WMR and Chiltern services).
It will be up to a GBR pricing manager to devise a system which works on all 3 groups of services and maximises total revenue.
There will still be a need for a premium on fast "Avanti" services and incentives to use spare capacity on "LNW/WMR" and "Chiltern".
The result might not be that different from now, but it might be marketed differently.
Would we see a coordinated definition of "peak time"? Probably not, the differences between VT/LM/CH are deeply ingrained.
Commuting revenue on the slower services, and long-distance revenue on Avanti, will still need to be protected.
Meanwhile, next door, the Western Region will be doing the same job from Paddington, with possibly different results, and the routes overlap in the south Midlands.
The successor to XC will be in there as well, complicating the scene (and not Regionalised?).
It's not going to be an easy job.

 

[unlevel42]

Just before Covid, between Sheffield and Manchester there has been a reduction in the via Stockport traffic(EMR/TPE)making for a more pleasant journey. The quiet Northern stopping services has discounts and is proving to be increasingly popular.
How would GBR keep a fare structure that moves people off the overcrowded services onto a slower but cheaper service?

 

[bramling]

Just before Covid, between Sheffield and Manchester there has been a reduction in the via Stockport traffic(EMR/TPE)making for a more pleasant journey. The quiet Northern stopping services has discounts and is proving to be increasingly popular.
How would GBR keep a fare structure that moves people off the overcrowded services onto a slower but cheaper service?

The solution here is of course to provide sufficient capacity on the faster services. Cramming out the stopping services isn’t helpful if someone wants to board at somewhere like Edale and finds the train packed with through journeys.

I’d say this is exactly the sort of situation we should be trying to move away from.

 

[JonathanH]

How would GBR keep a fare structure that moves people off the overcrowded services onto a slower but cheaper service?

We must get away from the idea that slow = cheap. Does it actually cost less to provide the Northern service than the faster ones on a route like Sheffield to Manchester?

There is no point filling up Sheffield to Manchester stopping services with through passengers if it takes away from the ability of people at intermediate stations to board that service.

A lot of ticketing complications are going to change with PAYG applied on a regional basis because people will have to pay for the journey from A to B.

 

[PeterC]

It would be a PR disaster but the easy solution would be to go back to three classes of accommodation.

As a general rule I don't like the ideab of operator specific fares, in an ideal world the public should just see "the railway".

 

[unlevel42]

Increasing the number of people using the stopping trains benefits everybody. The locals can justify more trains and better trains. Through passengers can guarantee a seat for most of the journey. The taxpayer is not paying for the transporting mountain air into Manchester and Sheffield.
The number of passengers using the Hope Valley stations is minimal and the journey time differential will put most people off the stoppers.
Increasing passenger use might encourage some new thinking around a new P&R station at New Mills or terminating at Chinley.

 

[JonathanH]

It would be a PR disaster but the easy solution would be to go back to three classes of accommodation.

As a general rule I don't like the ideab of operator specific fares, in an ideal world the public should just see "the railway".

That idea just wouldn't work - if an intercity train had two classes and a regional train the third class, people would cry foul about the intercity train not having the third class.

Increasing the number of people using the stopping trains benefits everybody. The locals can justify more trains and better trains. Through passengers can guarantee a seat for most of the journey. The taxpayer is not paying for the transporting mountain air into Manchester and Sheffield.
The number of passengers using the Hope Valley stations is minimal and the journey time differential will put most people off the stoppers.
Increasing passenger use might encourage some new thinking around a new station at New Mills or Chinley

No it doesn't. The overall revenue take will be the same whether someone takes the fast or slow service and if the same fares are charged for all the trains, more revenue will be taken overall.

 

[Randomer]

So I'll always buy the cheaper ticket and just pay up if a conductor appears?

Doesn't that happen now anyway?

Pay when challenged will always be a thing but if TOC only for short flows are abolished (i.e. the silly low discount ones like TPE Vs Northern round Manchester) there isn't any reason a long distance operator shouldnt be able to deal with it.

 

[unlevel42]

Everybody who knows anything about travel between Sheffield and Manchester knows how unattractive the commute is.
The prospect of standing all the way every day is very real. There are times you physically cannot get on.
The loss of revenue must be enormous.
The damage to the economy of Sheffield is real.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

There probably isn't a perfect solution - if we split into inter-city and regional services, there will always be arguments about the edge cases - is TPE inter-city or regional?

But as a first cut, the idea of having open tickets (use any train, presumably keeping the anytime/off-peak split) on the one hand, and increased numbers of advance tickets seems fairly appealing. Yes, we lose the flexibility of TOC-specific tickets to use any train from SlowCo - but we stay with ticket types that the market is familiar with while maintaining the possibility of there being cheap (but slow) fares from A to B, and there's still an opportunity for SlowCo to encourage passengers on to their trains.

As I say, not perfect, but is this a compromise that we could live with?

 

[oddiesjack]

Increasing the number of people using the stopping trains benefits everybody. The locals can justify more trains and better trains. Through passengers can guarantee a seat for most of the journey. The taxpayer is not paying for the transporting mountain air into Manchester and Sheffield.
The number of passengers using the Hope Valley stations is minimal and the journey time differential will put most people off the stoppers.
Increasing passenger use might encourage some new thinking around a new P&R station at New Mills or terminating at Chinley.

The idea of a Park and Ride at New Mills Central actually made me laugh out loud then. Have you ever got off a train there, and looked at your vertiginous surroundings? Also, every time I use Chinley, there are always others either getting off or on there, so its definitely not minimal, and the stations through the Hope Valley itself always seem busy with lots of hikers and cyclists using them.

 

[Joe Paxton]

[...]
However, the considerable difference/speed balance between long distance fares on Avanti and LNR genuinely split the market - most people would only consider one of the two, either slow and cheap or fast and expensive. Therefore there would be value in retaining these, even if they were routed differently, e.g. "regional trains only" or whatever GBR uses to differentiate between trains. You can do it with Advances, but competing with a well-loaded budget car does need flexibility to be offered. Perhaps it could be done with Advances in a different way than the usual quota control by releasing an very large quota of fixed-price Advances on all "LNR" long distance trains and binning the admin fee for a change, so if you needed to change your ticket or buy one on the day you could. This could be advertised in its own right, potentially.
[...]

The WCML is probably the best example of such fares making a real difference and having a real effect.

The one point I would make on this is that I think some have commented on how 'LNR' services can get pretty busy with people making longer journeys, to the potential detriment of those making shorter journeys. I think the improvements in the 'LNR' service (dating back to London Midland days, which were enabled by the WCML modernisation project) have also contributed well to passenger growth on these 'LNR' routes.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The one point I would make on this is that I think some have commented on how 'LNR' services can get pretty busy with people making longer journeys, to the potential detriment of those making shorter journeys. I think the improvements in the 'LNR' service (dating back to London Midland days, which were enabled by the WCML modernisation project) have also contributed well to passenger growth on these 'LNR' routes.

Yes, this is very true, and it was a massive problem when the Trent Valley service was 4-car. But with reduced commuting there is potentially scope to extend more "off peak" trains to deal with the issue.

 

[bramling]

Everybody who knows anything about travel between Sheffield and Manchester knows how unattractive the commute is.
The prospect of standing all the way every day is very real. There are times you physically cannot get on.
The loss of revenue must be enormous.
The damage to the economy of Sheffield is real.

So your solution is an unattractive commute on a packed fast train, or an unattractive torturously slow commute on a crowded all-stations train.

The solution is extra capacity on the fast trains. Aren’t there now an increased number of 6-car TPE trains on the route?

 

[STINT47]

I can see TOC specific fares being removed as part of fares simplification along with a number of other things that can save people money.

The overall result is that the cheaper fares will disappear. Those who think simplification will save them money may find that it's not like that. Similar to those who called for flexi season tickets thinking they would get a much better deal and were then disappointed.

 

[Joe Paxton]

GBR is planned to be regionalised, mapped to the NR Regions (which might change, of course).
But you could imagine a situation where London-Birmingham was in a single Region (ie containing what are currently Avanti, LNW/WMR and Chiltern services).
It will be up to a GBR pricing manager to devise a system which works on all 3 groups of services and maximises total revenue.
[...]
It's not going to be an easy job.

Bear in mind the Treasury will be a heavy prescence on the shoulders of the GBR pricing team. They won't want any lost revenue, and I guess they'll be guided by pre-pandemic fares revenue takings.

But they'll be pulled in other directions too - Boris Johnson's (rather empty) 'levelling up' agenda might result in all sorts of demands for cheaper fares (think MPs from 'Red wall turned blue' areas making various pitches for cheaper fares). And who in givernment is going to enjoy defending the high Virgin/Avanti level of Anytime walk-up fares in the publically-owned GBR era - I doubt any pleading about GBR being 'operationally independent' or some such will cut the mustard there!

It'll be an unenviable job!

 

[unlevel42]

The idea of a Park and Ride at New Mills Central actually made me laugh out loud then. Have you ever got off a train there, and looked at your vertiginous surroundings? Also, every time I use Chinley, there are always others either getting off or on there, so its definitely not minimal, and the stations through the Hope Valley itself always seem busy with lots of hikers and cyclists using them.

The idea of you misreading a "...Park and Ride at New Mills Central..." instead of "...around a new P&R station at New Mills", didn't actually make me laugh out loud. I've made mistakes like that myself.
From my nearly 50 experience of New Mills Central (and 35 years since the Chord at Hazel Grove!) and its history I know it does not have to be there anymore. On closure of the Hayfield branch it should have been re-sited to between the Coop and South Junction and the trains from terminating there or in the former bays at Chinley. This would have provided an interchange.

Cyclists on trains? Hikers on commuter trains? I was thinking more about the permanent residents not the seasonal visitor.