Low-hanging fruit for fare reform

[BayPaul]

A few fairly low hanging fruits:
- Make the quickest journey automatically an acceptable option on all permitted routes tickets. Like the direct train rule, this would only be between the stations printed on the ticket, would not allow break of journey, and would be based on the fastest train at the planned time of travel, and would include double backs
- Have a maximum day ticket fare, which becomes a national day rover ticket. This would avoid silly headlines about the price of journeys that no-one is realistically doing on a walk up ticket. It might actually increase revenue, as it would be replacing tickets that few people actually buy, and if priced appropriately it could attract people who ideally want flexibility away from cheaper advances.
- Automate delay repay on advance etickets.
- Automatically re-issue advance tickets as a standard return in the event of disruption resulting in a missed connection or significant delay, with accompanying email explaining. This would mean no explanations would be necessary to ticket inspectors, as a valid ticket would be held.
- Allow etickets to be bought up to 5 minutes after boarding a train.

 

[A S Leib]

would not allow break of journey, and would be based on the fastest train at the planned time of travel, and would include double backs

Which ticket types, if any, would still allow break of journey under your system?

- Have a maximum day ticket fare, which becomes a national day rover ticket. This would avoid silly headlines about the price of journeys that no-one is realistically doing on a walk up ticket. It might actually increase revenue, as it would be replacing tickets that few people actually buy, and if priced appropriately it could attract people who ideally want flexibility away from cheaper advances.

Maybe priced at ~£400, or slightly higher than the price of an anytime Manchester or Newcastle to London return?

- Automate delay repay on advance etickets.

My only concern would be delay repay on split tickets where the system can't tell that having multiple tickets should mean a higher delay repay amount, but ideally either split ticketing would be unnecessary or the system would be able to recognise that.

 

[Mark J]

I personally have no interest in PAYG and contactless fares...

No railcard discounts can currently be applied.

Harder to do split ticketing.

Fares are generally more expensive due to the two points above.

Harder to prove delay repay on longer journeys.

Risk of being charged extra if system is down, or forget to touch out.

 

[A S Leib]

No railcard discounts can currently be applied

I'd count Oyster, KeyGo and Tap2Go as PAYG and they all allow railcards (except Two Together and Family ones).

 

[Mark J]

I'd count Oyster, KeyGo and Tap2Go as PAYG and they all allow railcards (except Two Together and Family ones).

Oyster - Also does not allow Network Railcard discount.

I also can't see how they will get around tying a Railcard to a credit/debit card on contactless.

Don't think I like the idea of my Card details being held onto for a long period.

 

[The exile]

What a stupid policy. You're telling me I can't go for a smoke or for a sandwich between trains? And if I come up on the A side of New St you'd send me back down rather than over to the other gateline?

Break of journey restrictions belong in the bin. When you are legitimately changing trains at a station you should be permitted to leave it if you want. You can at airports (and I've done it). Reduce the number of anomalies that necessitate such restrictions and there is no need for them.

I think the point would be that A -C via B (with A-B and B-C conveniently being the same distance for the purpose of illustration)would cost (say) £25, with each of A-B and B-C costing £12.50, so it would make no difference whether or not you broke your journey.

 

[Mark J]

I could see value in something like this:

1. Anytime fares based on a mileage based system with some adjustment (using "tariff miles" as Europe uses "tariff kilometres", so some rural lines might be priced down and the ECML might be priced up, say) using rather than a straight "per mile" value a curve, with increasingly longer journeys being cheaper than shorter ones and probably an absolute maximum Anytime Single of around £200 at current prices (by way of that curve tailing off at that cost). This would probably require the WCML Anytimes to reduce a bit but would keep London-Edinburgh about the same. These would be specifically routed in the manner German ones are, but a more expensive one would always be valid via a cheaper route.

2. Off Peak fares invalid for being on a train between 0430 and 0929 across the network* and being calculated as a specific discount, maybe a third or thereabouts. This would be higher than a lot are now but the validity is much greater, and they could be combined with Advances to keep the cost down given that most people know their outward train time even if they don't know their return.

3. Advance fares priced on a market basis but on a "per vehicle journey" basis, so no through fares to exist. The approach to these to change as was once proposed so you don't need to split them, i.e. each piece of the journey is priced based on the quota for that piece.

4. Break of Journey always permitted (as this system would have very few anomalies).

5. All fares priced as singles, though you could do Day Out Returns for Anytime+Off Peak (no need for Anytime for the way back, almost nobody would do a day return and want to both go out and back before 0930!) and Off Peak Day Out Returns for two Off Peaks.

6. No admin fee for changes, just the fare difference if the ticket is an Advance, thus if you want to change your return day on a walk up fare this is free of charge, but it avoids the ticket re-use fraud that is why the railway doesn't like period returns.

* Maybe except Sleepers, but to be honest given the specialist nature of these having them as an entirely dedicated fare set may be better, and single-fare pricing avoids this being an issue.

Booking engines would cobble the journey together out of those and issue against a single itinerary and possibly as a single coupon (though split coupons are for e-tickets sometimes actually easier!). Like with many of the planners that sell European tickets one could tweak with the options for different legs of the journey, such as taking a First Class Advance for the long distance bit but flexible singles for local parts of the journey - I often split to do this but it could be part of the core offering.

It's not perfect and some people would pay more (and some less) if we wanted to do it on a revenue neutral basis (as we'd have to - revenue negative won't** be accepted by the Treasury) - but it seems a fair hybrid and allows market based pricing as well as reasonably affordable walk up options.

** Or maybe it might. With the anomalies in it resulting in oddly low fares if one makes a combined rail and Tube journey, Project Oval can't not be massively revenue negative at the moment and I remain amazed those anomalies remain unfixed.

I really don't want to see the fares structure moved to single tickets only.

We've all seen what has happened with LNER, and that has largely not benefitted passengers at all. If anything, for most, has made their journeys even more expensive.

What about Super Off Peaks?

 

[Bletchleyite]

What about Super Off Peaks?

Super Off Peaks typically have swingeing and complex restrictions making them barely usable, as well as sometimes the complexity of Saturday restrictions. I would not favour having these; deep discount can be by way of Advances.

Where the Super Off Peak is the old Saver, that would become the Off Peak, and the old Business Savers replaced with Advances on shoulder peak trains.

 

[Mark J]

Super Off Peaks typically have swingeing and complex restrictions making them barely usable, as well as sometimes the complexity of Saturday restrictions. I would not favour having these; deep discount can be by way of Advances.

Where the Super Off Peak is the old Saver, that would become the Off Peak, and the old Business Savers replaced with Advances on shoulder peak trains.

I do quite like 'Sunday Out' tickets offered by (the former) SWR, and the 'Evening out' on shorter journeys.

From the greater Reading area, I can get a 'Sunday Out' to Southend-on-sea, but not to Southampton. Which is one of the absurdities of the fare setting situation by ToCs.

If these tickets are to eventually be replaced, then some kind of super off peak really needs to be offered instead.

With the journey to Waterloo taking considerably longer than Paddington, there should be some kind of financial incentive to encourage people to use the slower route.

Which I have done many times on a Sunday, due to the cost being somewhat lower.

 

[JonathanH]

I do quite like 'Sunday Out' tickets offered by (the former) SWR, and the 'Evening out' on shorter journeys.

They essentially only exist because SWT increased the price of off-peak day returns, and introduced a lower level of fare which has morphed into the Evening Out / Sunday Out returns. They were a way of dealing with the 'Saturday morning problem'.

 

[Trainbike46]

To do contactless with journeys of 3 hours in the UK you'd have to set an enormous failure-to-tap-out penalty.
People aren't going to like using contactless when a failure to tap out costs you £150!

Failure to tap out is €20 in the Netherlands. The highest fare I could come up with is €31.20 for Maastricht-Groningen, which appears to be the current maximum fare on NS journeys.

I believe there are some mechanisms in place to prevent people from routinely "forgetting" to check out after expensive journeys.

 

[crablab]

I also can't see how they will get around tying a Railcard to a credit/debit card on contactless

This is a trivial technical problem. The complexity, I imagine, is in the Railcard verification system that is needed to surround that, as well as contractual agreements between the various parties.

Don't think I like the idea of my Card details being held onto for a long period

I fear this is a lost cause.

 

[Trainbike46]

I really don't want to see the fares structure moved to single tickets only.

We've all seen what has happened with LNER, and that has largely not benefitted passengers at all. If anything, for most, has made their journeys even more expensive.

The big problem with LNER's antics isn't that they went for single leg pricing, which would have been in passenger's favour if it wasn't for the ~4% price increase added. The issue is the complete removal of all off-peak and super-off-peak fares, which was introduced separately and later than the single leg pricing.

Single leg pricing can be done without disadvantaging passengers, and this has been done in the project oval area.

 

[JonathanH]

Single leg pricing can be done without disadvantaging passengers, and this has been done in the project oval area.

Passengers travelling in the evening peak who previously bought off-peak day returns have been disadvantaged in the Project Oval area.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Passengers travelling in the evening peak who previously bought off-peak day returns have been disadvantaged in the Project Oval area.

Not necessarily by much, because an Anytime Day Single plus an Off Peak Day Single don't add up to hugely different from the old Off Peak Return and have similar validity combined.

I personally prefer the new structure, which is just going back to the old one before LM split it into 3 levels. It's also simpler.

 

[frankmoh]

Journeys that go against the direction of travel in peak times should be cheaper, like going from Zone 1 to Zone 5 at 8am since not many will be on those 'down' trains.

 

[telstarbox]

Not always true. Waterloo to Richmond, Feltham and Reading is a busy flow for example.

 

[frankmoh]

Not always true. Waterloo to Richmond, Feltham and Reading is a busy flow for example.

Selected routes then?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Selected routes then?

Again probably easier to do via Advances; having a load of different fare types that are only sometimes available is a bit confusing.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

My instinct would be to have flexible options for travelling on the slow train rather than just to manage it by Advance tickets – a lot of people who are most in need of cheap budget tickets are the ones who are least likely to be able to guarantee what time they will get to the station. Having flexible tickets available on the slow train at an affordable price is a way to make the railways genuinely more inclusive and to encourage people to travel who may find it difficult to do so otherwise. But I do realise that it isn't necessarily a straightforward proposition as to how to make it work effectively, with minimal risk of confusion.

Exactly. Not every rail passenger is the same or has the same needs. Some people are happy to pay for comfort/fast journeys. Others want the cheapest possible option and are happy to take a slower train to get it. If we want the railways to serve as many people as possible, and attract as many people as possible out of cars, then we need as far as possible to cater for both those groups of people. That's why charging lower fares for slower trains is a good thing to do (alongside advance tickets, and first class): All those things potentially increase the numbers of people willing to use the train. The trick is to provide those different fares for different standards of comfort/speed/flexibility without over-complicating the ticket system - which is the problem we currently have.

Personally I feel that providing only single tickets (or contactless), priced by distance travelled, with the only variants being first/standard, peak/off-peak, supplement for the fastest trains, and the option to buy limited-availability advance tickets for longer journeys on trains that are likely to be less crowded is where the right balance lies.

 

[BayPaul]

Which ticket types, if any, would still allow break of journey under your system?

Maybe priced at ~£400, or slightly higher than the price of an anytime Manchester or Newcastle to London return?

My only concern would be delay repay on split tickets where the system can't tell that having multiple tickets should mean a higher delay repay amount, but ideally either split ticketing would be unnecessary or the system would be able to recognise that.

The break of journey restriction would be only for trains that are only allowed due to the new fastest journey rule. This is a necessary restriction, as I would expect this rule to allow, for instance, someone to board at a suburban station, go into London, and then double back, at a price lower than the cost from London itself, so without this restriction people from London would just start short.

I'd price the day rover a bit cheaper than that. More like the anytime single price London to Newcastle. Not many people are making day returns that far, and it would still be cheaper for them to use advances anyway.

 

[yorksrob]

Super Off Peaks typically have swingeing and complex restrictions making them barely usable, as well as sometimes the complexity of Saturday restrictions. I would not favour having these; deep discount can be by way of Advances.

Where the Super Off Peak is the old Saver, that would become the Off Peak, and the old Business Savers replaced with Advances on shoulder peak trains.

I find the super off-peak out of Waterloo quite handy going to the West Country

 

[DynamicSpirit]

The break of journey restriction would be only for trains that are only allowed due to the new fastest journey rule. This is a necessary restriction, as I would expect this rule to allow, for instance, someone to board at a suburban station, go into London, and then double back, at a price lower than the cost from London itself, so without this restriction people from London would just start short.

I think the conclusion from that is that your suggested 'fastest journey' rule is unlikely to work if it allows people to travel by routes that take them far beyond their destination only to double back, thereby changing at stations to which the fares would be much more expensive. If you say, no break-of-journey allowed on those tickets (even where break of journey is normally allowed) that starts to confuse the fares system again, and I'm not sure it would be enforceable anyway: All a person has to do is say 'I need to use the toilet' or something similar to the gateline staff and then they get to exit the station without paying the correct fare. Particularly unworkable at London terminuses because there are so many facilities outside the barriers that a passenger might plausibly need to use.

I think any reasonable ticketing system is going to require rules to ensure a person going by an unreasonably long route pays a fare that reflects how long the route is, even if timewise it's shorter than the direct route. Though tbh I can't think of many examples where it would be a real issue in the UK anyway. Are there actually any journeys where it's quicker, but massively more miles, to double back via London?

I'd price the day rover a bit cheaper than that. More like the anytime single price London to Newcastle. Not many people are making day returns that far, and it would still be cheaper for them to use advances anyway.

Yes, I really like the idea of making the day rover a price that's comparable to most long-distance journeys. I'd slightly modify it by making a day rover that covers only England a similar price to a long distance English journey (London-Newcastle, say), and do similar for Wales and Scotland. That avoids the problem of the day rover undercutting London-Glasgow/Edinburgh fares while keeping it useful for people who are not travelling quite that far.

 

[stevieinselby]

Again probably easier to do via Advances; having a load of different fare types that are only sometimes available is a bit confusing.

Having advance purchase tickets for metro services is insane. This is categorically and without any question the wrong way to do things.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Having advance purchase tickets for metro services is insane. This is categorically and without any question the wrong way to do things.

Sorry, thought we were talking about long distance SWR services against the commuter flow. As others have said within London the flows are a lot more balanced anyway, and the difference between peak and off peak fares small, so I'd say the benefit of a simple "0930 or later" is strong over bothering to do anything about it at all.

That's within the Oyster/contactless area anyway, so the fares will follow the TfL model.

 

[A S Leib]

Though tbh I can't think of many examples where it would be a real issue in the UK anyway. Are there actually any journeys where it's quicker, but massively more miles, to double back via London?

Norwich to Liverpool (4:53 and 308 miles via London vs 5:33 and 252 miles direct, using National Rail planner routes at 10:00 on a weekday), although I'm surprised by the mileage on some routes like Rugby to Cambridge (141 miles and ~2:25 via London vs 131 miles and 3:24 via Nuneaton).

I'm sure there's plenty more, but it's impressive how few examples I can find quickly; even ones which include a fair bit of backtracking like St. Albans to Derby (40 miles of travelling via St. Pancras before being north of the starting point) is, by two minutes, quicker changing at Luton, Kettering and Leicester than at St. Pancras (although realistically most frequent travellers probably would plan a shorter connection at St. Pancras than 28 minutes).

Edit: Swindon to Leicester's another example of a journey being faster but not, I think, shorter via London, due to both having fast London services and no or poor non-London ones.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Until the last WCML timetable recast, on Sundays Euston-Bletchley was faster via MKC on a Sunday. Only recently was the WMT timetable expanded to have the fasts run all week; Sundays used to just be a half hourly stopper from Euston to Northampton, one calling at Cheddington, the other calling at Apsley/Kings Langley and one either connecting with a separate Birmingham or running through. With that taking an hour to Bletchley going to MKC on Virgin/Avanti and going back down was considerably quicker.

 

[HSTEd]

I think any reasonable ticketing system is going to require rules to ensure a person going by an unreasonably long route pays a fare that reflects how long the route is, even if timewise it's shorter than the direct route. Though tbh I can't think of many examples where it would be a real issue in the UK anyway. Are there actually any journeys where it's quicker, but massively more miles, to double back via London?

It will likely become an issue once HS2 is going, but not otherwise.

The fastest route to many stations south of Birmingham from London will likely ben to double back through Curzon/Moor street
That will also likely be the cheapest route for the passenger to take for the railway too - so we will likely want to encourage it somehow.

Norwich to Liverpool (4:53 and 308 miles via London vs 5:33 and 252 miles direct, using National Rail planner routes at 10:00 on a weekday), although I'm surprised by the mileage on some routes like Rugby to Cambridge (141 miles and ~2:25 via London vs 131 miles and 3:24 via Nuneaton).

I'm sure there's plenty more, but it's impressive how few examples I can find quickly; even ones which include a fair bit of backtracking like St. Albans to Derby (40 miles of travelling via St. Pancras before being north of the starting point) is, by two minutes, quicker changing at Luton, Kettering and Leicester than at St. Pancras (although realistically most frequent travellers probably would plan a shorter connection at St. Pancras than 28 minutes).

Edit: Swindon to Leicester's another example of a journey being faster but not, I think, shorter via London, due to both having fast London services and no or poor non-London ones.

Those sorts of increases are probably tolerable.

I think it only becomes an issue for distance based fares once the fractions become much larger.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It will likely become an issue once HS2 is going, but not otherwise.

The fastest route to many stations south of Birmingham from London will likely ben to double back through Curzon/Moor street
That will also likely be the cheapest route for the passenger to take for the railway too - so we will likely want to encourage it somehow.

As I've mentioned before, regardless of what may or may not be the case for other services, I would be surprised were HS2 services, certainly those involving the actual HS2 route, not compulsory reservation with fully airline style pricing and ticketing totally separate from the rest of the railway. Thus if HS2 is faster, you'll buy (presumably in one transaction) an HS2 ticket and a relevant local ticket.

 

[HSTEd]

As I've mentioned before, regardless of what may or may not be the case for other services, I would be surprised were HS2 services, certainly those involving the actual HS2 route, not compulsory reservation with fully airline style pricing and ticketing totally separate from the rest of the railway. Thus if HS2 is faster, you'll buy (presumably in one transaction) an HS2 ticket and a relevant local ticket.

Whilst I would not be surprised if HS2 was to try this given their previous behaviour, it would rip the heart out of the railway ticketing system.

If HS2 is, as its supporters have constantly claimed, supposed to be integrated within the railway to spread benefits across the country, it will have to be fully integrated within all railway ticket systems.
Trying to run it like an airline where the bulk of the journeys on the line will be well under an hour is silly.

You will force people to turn up far in advance of their journeys to the point where a high intenstiy conventional service would be far more attractive. That will end up costing the taxpayer a fortune as HS2 ends up empty.