LNER to pilot removal of Off-Peak tickets

[Bikeman78]

The fees for flexability are a common feature throughout the travel and accomodation market though in my experience.
The likes of premier inn and booking.com youll be most likely be looking at a premium of the best part of a tenner for the ability to reschedule and more than that for a refundable booking. The airline industry even for domestic flights that equate to LNERs services probably more. Why should long distance rail travel a lot of which wouldnt exist anymore without huge taxpayer subsidy be any different?

If I wanted airline style conditions then I'd fly. My friend has done exactly that this weekend, 20 quid each way Edinburgh to Birmingham and back. For that price, I wouldn't care if I had to cancel and chuck the tickets in the bin.

 

[GoneSouth]

Because in return for the subsidy we have a country in which those who don't or can't drive get to travel without having to plan their lives in advance?

It's all very well saying that airlines do it so trains should as well but that's not much use to people who use the train not the plane precisely because of that flexibility.

Yes, as someone who can’t drive, I find LNER’s trial an attack on my freedom to travel whenever I need to. I know many of you will just think I should just get over it, but to me the railway is a lifeline and if I have to pay 200 quid in future for something I now pay 80 for, then I just won’t be able to do it.

Oh, and yes I do spend a LOT on rail fares already, it genuinely would be cheaper for me to acquire and use a car than my current rail expenditure. I fear for the future

 

[AdamWW]

Yes, as someone who can’t drive, I find LNER’s trial an attack on my freedom to travel whenever I need to. I know many of you will just think I should just get over it, but to me the railway is a lifeline and if I have to pay 200 quid in future for something I now pay 80 for, then I just won’t be able to do it.

Oh, and yes I do spend a LOT on rail fares already, it genuinely would be cheaper for me to acquire and use a car than my current rail expenditure. I fear for the future

Quite.

Perhaps the country just can't afford this any more and we have to acccept that those who can't drive are just going to find their lives made even harder than it is at the moment. (And I really, really, hope this isn't the case - it's very much the wrong direction to be going in in my view. Aside from those who can't drive, we should be making it easier to get by without having a car at all, not harder).

But if that's the case, it should be a properly considered act, not sneaked in under the pretence that it's an improvement for passengers or with specious arguments like "well airlines do it so why shouldn't rail?"

And they absolutely need to change the rules around Advance tickets because they certainly aren't appropriate if they are to effectively become the only ticket available.

 

[Starmill]

Yes, as someone who can’t drive, I find LNER’s trial an attack on my freedom to travel whenever I need to. I know many of you will just think I should just get over it, but to me the railway is a lifeline and if I have to pay 200 quid in future for something I now pay 80 for, then I just won’t be able to do it.

Oh, and yes I do spend a LOT on rail fares already, it genuinely would be cheaper for me to acquire and use a car than my current rail expenditure. I fear for the future

In my view it's crucial because for the future of our society we need more people who don't live in car-owning households. Currently only a tiny minority of us live in such households, but decent quality urban neighbourhoods without parking are something we should easily be able to achieve, and yet the quality of public transport is the main planning blocker to this. Obviously it's only going to be a small proportion of any new houses but it'd be a start. Nobody would suggest those living outside big cities should have to give up their car parking space.

And I really, really, hope this isn't the case - it's very much the wrong direction to be going in in my view. Aside from those who can't drive, we should be making it easier to get by without having a car at all, not harder

I agree strongly. It's of benefit to those who can't drive because they're ineligible, those who can drive but who live somewhere that doesn't have a parking space, and it's even to the benefit of those who have to continue to drive for their own reasons (tradespeople, delivery workers, emergency services, taxis, people who find public transport too inaccessible because of their disability, someone commuting to a job in a rural area like on a farm, those parking and riding from small villages etc etc etc) because it lowers peak congestion.

 

[AlterEgo]

A train is not a plane, and as a result seat reservations are much more complex and costly to administer, so we should move back to a system where the normal thing to do is to just walk into the train and find a seat

I’m afraid that isn’t the expectation of a lot of travellers now. Selecting your seat is pretty normal on front rank expresses in many European countries and as per usual there are people on the forum using reverse exceptionalism. Britain is too unique, special, backward for this to happen. Sorry but it’s cope and laziness.

Seat reservations are not costly or complex to administer at all.

 

[yorksrob]

I’m afraid that isn’t the expectation of a lot of travellers now. Selecting your seat is pretty normal on front rank expresses in many European countries and as per usual there are people on the forum using reverse exceptionalism. Britain is too unique, special, backward for this to happen. Sorry but it’s cope and laziness.

Seat reservations are not costly or complex to administer at all.

Why not just give people the option of reserving a seat if they want to, rather than churning them out with every advanced ticket.

Just because somewhere in Europe does something, it doesn't automatically make it a good idea.

 

[Starmill]

I’m afraid that isn’t the expectation of a lot of travellers now. Selecting your seat is pretty normal on front rank expresses in many European countries and as per usual there are people on the forum using reverse exceptionalism. Britain is too unique, special, backward for this to happen. Sorry but it’s cope and laziness.

Seat reservations are not costly or complex to administer at all.

I find that a lot of the time this is compensating for something else.

For example, Transport for Wales binned seat reservations because they said RARS2 transition with them would be more difficult. Funnily enough four years on they've never come back. It's actually genuinely improved the experience for me personally as now you know if you see a free seat it's available and you can simply sit in it. But of course it's only like that because of the real underlying issue: overcrowding. Reservations make overcrowding worse because people hang back and don't sit down in a seat that's reserved, resulting in them being in the way. The actual solution isn't to stop offering reservations, it's to provide adequate capacity. To their credit, TfW's long term fleet planning probably can achieve that, though currently it certainly doesn't.

There are other issues in different train layouts and a possibility of a transition to electronically displayed labels making reserved seating awkward, but certainly nothing intractable there. In reality the loss of reserved seating is really poor for people who don't feel able to stand or have lower mobility, or people making a three hour plus journey starting at a peak time for office commuting.

Incidentally in 2019 Transport for Wales and Arriva Trains Wales before them did the best job with Advance reservations, removing them completely. People were able to get one if they really wanted one by contacting customer service or going to a station.

 

[AlterEgo]

Why not just give people the option of reserving a seat if they want to, rather than churning them out with every advanced ticket.

Just because somewhere in Europe does something, it doesn't automatically make it a good idea.

This is why making it chargeable is a good idea. Only people who need one will then obtain one. (My proposal is they should be free for DSB railcard holders)

 

[Starmill]

Why not just give people the option of reserving a seat if they want to, rather than churning them out with every advanced ticket.

Indeed every ticket of any kind on LNER, Avanti West Coast and so on with the ridiculous "reservations compulsory" ...

 

[Hadders]

This is why making it chargeable is a good idea. Only people who need one will then obtain one. (My proposal is they should be free for DSB railcard holders)

Charging for seat reservations really isn’t a good idea. Just think where it would end up:

Window seat £10
Table seat £10
Seat with a window view £5
Seat with no view £3

Etc etc.

Then what happens when seat reservations aren’t displayed (which is frequent). Who’s going to process the refund?

What happens where a connection is missed onto a train where I’d paid for a seat reservation? How do I get a refund?

There are many more scenarios I could think of…

 

[AlterEgo]

Charging for seat reservations really isn’t a good idea. Just think where it would end up:

Window seat £10
Table seat £10
Seat with a window view £5
Seat with no view £3

Or "sit anywhere in any seat, no reservation" £0. This isn't a proposal to introduce compulsory reservations.

Then what happens when seat reservations aren’t displayed (which is frequent). Who’s going to process the refund?

LNER manage to do this if you don't get a seat, so I would imagine the same process would be followed. It doesn't appear to be rocket science to me.

What happens where a connection is missed onto a train where I’d paid for a seat reservation? How do I get a refund?

Delay Repay.

There are many more scenarios I could think of…

Ultimately most of these are "it seems too hard", when in fact this sort of thing works perfectly well on many European networks with far greater standards of service than here. If Delay Repay didn't exist and someone proposed it on this forum today, there would be a fusillade of objections and "too hard" in the replies. While Delay Repay is far from perfect, I don't see many people calling for its abolition because it's too hard or too complicated.

Imagine Delay Repay was proposed by an anonymous poster for a moment:
"What happens if the delay wasn't the railway's fault?"
"Some people travel on more than one ticket, even sometimes combinations of seasons, rovers, singles - what do you do about that?"
"What if there is more than one delay on an itinerary?"
"What if the delay was caused by staff saying a train was too full to board but it still ran on time?"
"What if the person doesn't have a bank account? Are we going to have to give them special vouchers or something?"
"What happens if one train was only 5 minutes late but a 2 hourly connection was missed, seems unfair to hang £200 of delay repay for a return ticket on that?"

That all sounds like it's quite difficult and complicated, but ultimately the wit of man manages to overcome these problems.

Britain is a significant cultural outlier in that reservations are mostly ignored and treated as worthless. This has big customer service implications for long distance travellers and works against people who really value them - perhaps for pleasure or convenience, or perhaps for mobility or accessibility reasons (eg needing an aisle).

 

[Adam Williams]

Britain is a significant cultural outlier in that reservations are mostly ignored and treated as worthless

I agree with this, but do think there's a lot we could do before resorting to charging for them. For example, requiring retailers to make it very easy to cancel a reservation that's no longer needed (perhaps asking on the day "Do you still intend to use these reservations?") and make new ones as well as stopping TOCs doing things that result in lots of wasted reservations (like requiring pax who want to travel on certain operators to get a reservation on a train they don't even intend to use).

If we had more sophisticated rolling stock with occupancy sensors you could release reservations if the seat didn't get occupied at the origin station etc. Hell, if you really wanted, you could make reservations free only for customers who demonstrate that they cancel their reservations in advance / actually use them.

 

[weeklycommuter]

Looking at the quarterly passenger numbers up to and including October to December 2023 in the following statistics LNER quarterly passenger numbers returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2022 but did not significantly increase on this in 2023 after LNER stopped selling return fares. It will be interesting to see passenger numbers in further quarters when these are published and to compare them with previous years to see what happens to LNER passenger numbers which currently look like they have levelled off. With a lot of LNER passengers paying advance fares higher passengers numbers do not in any case necessarily translate into more revenue, there is no financial benefit in high passenger numbers if this is the result of selling a lot of cheap fares. I cannot see this 'pilot' being a success in attracting passengers from planes or cars. Travel by car is totally flexible so forcing passengers to buy advance tickets tied to a specific train at a specific time surely will not attract people who travel by car. London to Edinburgh by train is unlikely ever to take less than four hours so the train will never compete with flying on point to point travel time. People travelling by plane and car could be attracted by flexibility in train travel being able to turn up buy a ticket and go on any train, I always want to do this myself, but LNER have in effect removed this by setting a fare of around £400 return (unless people use the workarounds). The only remaining possible way to attract more passengers is to complete with air travel with low fares but that means much lower revenue so costs will have to be low to make a profit and Lumo has probably taken the low fare air passenger market from London to Edinburgh.

https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/1476/table-1223-passenger-journeys-by-operator.ods

 

[bakerstreet]

London to Newcastle on Good Friday morning not looking good.

RIP the walk up railway

 

[Bletchleyite]

What that does show is a need for more capacity - given that LNER do counted places on top of reserving almost every seat those trains are going to be pretty busy.

Looking at the quarterly passenger numbers up to and including October to December 2023 in the following statistics LNER quarterly passenger numbers returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2022 but did not significantly increase on this in 2023 after LNER stopped selling return fares. It will be interesting to see passenger numbers in further quarters when these are published and to compare them with previous years to see what happens to LNER passenger numbers which currently look like they have levelled off. With a lot of LNER passengers paying advance fares higher passengers numbers do not in any case necessarily translate into more revenue, there is no financial benefit in high passenger numbers if this is the result of selling a lot of cheap fares. I cannot see this 'pilot' being a success in attracting passengers from planes or cars. Travel by car is totally flexible so forcing passengers to buy advance tickets tied to a specific train at a specific time surely will not attract people who travel by car. London to Edinburgh by train is unlikely ever to take less than four hours so the train will never compete with flying on point to point travel time. People travelling by plane and car could be attracted by flexibility in train travel being able to turn up buy a ticket and go on any train, I always want to do this myself, but LNER have in effect removed this by setting a fare of around £400 return (unless people use the workarounds). The only remaining possible way to attract more passengers is to complete with air travel with low fares but that means much lower revenue so costs will have to be low to make a profit and Lumo has probably taken the low fare air passenger market from London to Edinburgh.

It's not about getting people to switch from aircraft. It's quite openly about getting more money from existing passengers, because there isn't really any room for any more.

It is an experiment in increasing fares. That's what it's for - the flexibility thing is a bit moot.

 

[weeklycommuter]

It's not about getting people to switch from aircraft. It's quite openly about getting more money from existing passengers, because there isn't really any room for any more. It is an experiment in increasing fares. That's what it's for - the flexibility thing is a bit moot.

Unless all the existing passengers are distress purchasers with no alternative but to travel by LNER train and pay whatever fare is demanded I would expect the result of raising fares to be fewer passengers and less revenue overall. This is the usual result of attempting to increase prices when there is a working market. Some of the passengers at least could travel by a means other than an LNER train or decide not to travel. LNER are planning to add a third service each hour between London and Newcastle in December with many thousands of extra seats each day in total. If they want to make this pay they will need a big increase in the number of fare paying passengers to fill these additional trains and seats. A more sensible strategy to attract more passengers and increase revenue would be to make the choice of paying to travel on an LNER train more attractive by reinstating fully flexible off peak tickets including off peak return tickets with affordable fares and actually encouraging people to buy the off peak return tickets. The whole point of fully flexible off peak return rail tickets is to make travel by train attractive, a point that is clearly missed by the current LNER management.

 

[Krokodil]

I cannot see this 'pilot' being a success in attracting passengers from planes or cars.

That isn't the objective. The objective is to price off any standing passengers and fleece the remainder for as much as they can get away with.

London to Edinburgh by train is unlikely ever to take less than four hours

Even with just the remaining stub of HS2 the journey time to Edinburgh via Preston might be cut to sub-4hr. Glasgow certainly can. Shame that neither will be substantially below without Phase 2.

 

[Sleepy]

London to Newcastle on Good Friday morning not looking good.

RIP the walk up railway

View attachment 155221

View attachment 155222

You can see the same with GWR on Friday for Paddington to Penzance handful of First Advance left only, I do think it's unrealistic to hope to see many seats left now on Bank Hol. weekend 2 days away, of course the difference being you can still buy a Super Off Peak ticket and stand which LNER are trying to stop (never ceases to amaze me how many do this and moan train is full up !!) Easter and late May bank hol are probably the worst for travel as everyone wants to go at the same time. Even the Thursday night sleeper to Cornwall only has 1 seat left !!!

 

[BRX]

the difference being you can still buy a Super Off Peak ticket

Well exactly - a very big difference.

 

[CyrusWuff]

No Advances available on Chiltern for Marylebone to Birmingham after 10:02 on Thursday (10:45 from Moor Street), with no availability at all on Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday due to the West Coast block. Normality resumes on Tuesday, though again Super Off-Peak tickets are still on sale and Chiltern don't offer specific seat reservations of course.

 

[Haywain]

No Advances available on Chiltern for Marylebone to Birmingham after 10:02 on Thursday (10:45 from Moor Street), with no availability at all on Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday due to the West Coast block. Normality resumes on Tuesday, though again Super Off-Peak tickets are still on sale and Chiltern don't offer specific seat reservations of course.

LNER's fault?

 

[yorksrob]

LNER's fault?

It's LNER's fault for not having the same mitigation of off-peak fare availability.

 

[Haywain]

It's LNER's fault for not having the same mitigation of off-peak fare availability.

But there is off peak fare availability on Chiltern.

 

[yorksrob]

But there is off peak fare availability on Chiltern.

Which just serves to highlight the iniquity of LNER in removing the option.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Which just serves to highlight the iniquity of LNER in removing the option.

And also means Chiltern is going to be awful this weekend, unlike if people could be routed via the ECML from Manchester which, while it would mean a lot of standing, would get people moved.

Hopefully they'll use the freed-up units from the Aylesbury line being closed to max-out lengths on everything, but Chiltern being Chiltern there'll probably be 2 car sets out...

 

[NER1621]

Ditto London-Darlington on Good Friday morning. Except, of course, if you find a retailer who’ll sell you the still-existing off-peak single, at which point you can get in any of these supposedly unavailable trains. And sit in one of the many supposedly reserved seats which will, in reality, be available for some, if not all, of your journey.

 

[Bletchleyite]

There are some trains with availability that day so you could buy a flexible ticket. And don't forget Manors and Haymarket!

 

[BRX]

It's just blatant false advertising isn't it? The fact is, tickets are available for these services.

There will be lots of people who do a search, see all these "not available" notes, and choose to travel by some other route, probably much slower and possibly more expensive. If they were able to obtain an off peak single for the LNER trains then yes maybe they'd be crowded and they might have to stand. But the same could be the case on any alternatives. If you dont want to risk standing, you can find a train with reservations available.

Have there been any attempts to report LNER to trading standards or similar?

I questioned them once on Twitter; there was a lot of fluffing about before admitting that actually no, reservations aren't compulsory on that service. Then a comment that they would look into the wording on the website, which of course didn't happen, then they just stopped responding.

 

[43066]

It's just blatant false advertising isn't it? The fact is, tickets are available for these services.

There will be lots of people who do a search, see all these "not available" notes, and choose to travel by some other route, probably much slower and possibly more expensive. If they were able to obtain an off peak single for the LNER trains then yes maybe they'd be crowded and they might have to stand. But the same could be the case on any alternatives. If you dont want to risk standing, you can find a train with reservations available.

Have there been any attempts to report LNER to trading standards or similar?

I questioned them once on Twitter; there was a lot of fluffing about before admitting that actually no, reservations aren't compulsory on that service. Then a comment that they would look into the wording on the website, which of course didn't happen, then they just stopped responding.

Presumably all they’re doing is declining to sell tickets on their website to try to damp down demand, thereby turning away business. In which case the statement that the tickets are “not available” through the site is quite correct. They aren’t actually stating that you can’t travel if you have a valid ticket purchased from another source.

I’m not saying I necessarily agree with their approach, but it’s hard to see how they’re making any false or misleading statements.

 

[AlterEgo]

Unless all the existing passengers are distress purchasers with no alternative but to travel by LNER train and pay whatever fare is demanded I would expect the result of raising fares to be fewer passengers and less revenue overall.

It isn't what we're seeing at the moment - absolutely full trains with often, no reservations or tickets left.

This is the usual result of attempting to increase prices when there is a working market. Some of the passengers at least could travel by a means other than an LNER train or decide not to travel.

That is the point - those particular passengers won't travel, but others will - who are prepared to pay more.

LNER are planning to add a third service each hour between London and Newcastle in December with many thousands of extra seats each day in total. If they want to make this pay they will need a big increase in the number of fare paying passengers to fill these additional trains and seats.

Or, as capacity and fares are inextricably linked, you might find the fares become more tolerable given there are now more seats to fill.

A more sensible strategy to attract more passengers and increase revenue would be to make the choice of paying to travel on an LNER train more attractive by reinstating fully flexible off peak tickets including off peak return tickets with affordable fares and actually encouraging people to buy the off peak return tickets.

That only makes sense in a world where the high fares are resulting in empty trains and wasted capacity, and it is not the world I see, or one evidenced in the thread either.