London Northwestern Railway services merge into West Coast Franchise

[WAB]

New rules would be brought in the case of nationalisation, in which case all services could be categorised as High Speed, InterCity, Regional and Local, with tickets being allowed to be restricted to one sector only regardless of who is actually running the train.

 

[Meerkat]

On-rail competition is dead, and rightly so, aside from Open Access operations. The car is the competitor (and air for very long distance). The railway just needs to take that seriously and stop internal spatting - one railway is a stronger railway.

Without on rail competition the passengers will just get gouged, even if that means fewer passengers

 

[Hadders]

"Via West Coast Local ONLY"
Gatwick express manages to keep different fare levels under same TOC

The pricing situation on Gatwick Express is unlawful and a court case is pending.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Without on rail competition the passengers will just get gouged, even if that means fewer passengers

Which is bizarre, because rail has a tiny percentage of the overall market, yet it just ignores that constant traffic jam on the M1, M6 etc.

 

[Hadders]

New rules would be brought in the case of nationalisation, in which case all services could be categorised as High Speed, InterCity, Regional and Local, with tickets being allowed to be restricted to one sector only regardless of who is actually running the train.

What type of ticket would I be sold to make a local journey between Didcot Park way and Swindon? Or Warrington Bank Quay and Wigan North Western? Or Wellingborough and Kettering?

What type of ticket would I need to travel on the semi-fast service between Euston and Crewe?

 

[renegademaster]

The pricing situation on Gatwick Express is unlawful and a court case is pending.

If it is unlawful , the law is silly and should be changed.

 

[Bletchleyite]

If it is unlawful , the law is silly and should be changed.

I'm inclined to agree (with both points - that it's unlawful and that it's silly that it is), simply because a TOC won't be a thing any more in a few years' time, yet it is still beneficial to have price differentiation* between WCML slow and fast services in order to appeal to a wider market (in particular, one that is time-rich but cash-poor but needs flexibility that wouldn't be offered by just putting up cheap Advances on the ex-WMT services).

You can easily do that for Chiltern by having "route High Wycombe" but there isn't a comparable place to route via for the WCML services because they all go the same way (Northampton doesn't work as the Crewe goes fast line, unless you send it back that way which would be unpopular, and would make the low priced tickets valid on IC services in case of planned diversions).

* Price differentiation and competition aren't quite the same thing - they're appealing to a wider market by offering different types of service at different price points. Almost every European nationalised railway does this in some form (though notably the Swiss don't).

What type of ticket would I need to travel on the semi-fast service between Euston and Crewe?

That service is by German standards a regional express (there are plenty of that sort of length over there). Though curiously the ECML has something similar and it's just another LNER service.

 

[Bevan Price]

Whatever happens - if DfT is involved, we will probably get the worst possible case for passengers.....

 

[Mikey C]

The "stopping" services south of Northampton have been separate from the InterCity ones for a long time, considering NSE started in 1986, and sectorisation in 1982. Indeed I've sometimes thought that the lines out of Euston have a very continental arrangement of InterCity and "InterRegio" trains operating on related journeys, with different levels of speed and pricing.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The "stopping" services south of Northampton have been separate from the InterCity ones for a long time, considering NSE started in 1986, and sectorisation in 1982. Indeed I've sometimes thought that the lines out of Euston have a very continental arrangement of InterCity and "InterRegio" trains operating on related journeys, with different levels of speed and pricing.

Indeed so, though LNR would probably be RegionalExpress and not InterRegio (which Germany has dropped), which was more of an "IC lite" a bit like XC or the fast TPEs.

Germany of course has other reasons for differentiation - IC/ICE are commercially operated, RB/RE are subsidised by the regions. So in a sense all our services would get RB/RE.

Was there a "Network SouthEast only" fare before privatisation? I don't have any experience of local services south of MKC before about 2001.

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

Gatwick express is a rip off , but it just shows its technically pretty easy

No you seemed to have missed the point, which is that they do it illegally

EDIT:

The pricing situation on Gatwick Express is unlawful and a court case is pending.

Ahh, I didn't see I was on Page 1 and that this was actually from yesterday, and hence OP had already been told. Oops haha. Parrot, me.

 

[renegademaster]

No you seemed to have missed the point, which is that they do it illegally

EDIT:

Ahh, I didn't see I was on Page 1 and that this was actually from yesterday, and hence OP had already been told. Oops haha. Parrot, me.

The court case hasn't been decided, and the law can be changed especially now we are free of EU competition law

 

[infobleep]

The court case hasn't been decided, and the law can be changed especially now we are free of EU competition law

But it requires parliamentary time to change it amd there are lots of other things to takenuo parliamentary time.