My idea to abolish market based pricing and implement pricing based on distance and train category

[py_megapixel]

This is easy to solve. If a premium service runs over a line where it provides the only service, over that line it is not considered a premium service and it can be used without supplement.

I assume the policy would be along the lines "if there is no non-premium service scheduled within an hour (or other suitable amount of time) of a given premium service from a given station, that premium service may be boarded at that station without supplement".

But then you'd have to add additional exceptions, for example:

• What about cancellations? Presumably if a non-premium service is cancelled and the next service is premium, it may be used without supplement, otherwise it would amount to further delaying passengers who've already been disrupted for no good reason. What if a premium service is cancelled and the next service is non-premium? Can premium passengers claim a refund of the supplement?
  
  
• What if a premium service is the last train of the day on a particular route? It would be extremely poor service for the railway to elect to strand passengers when it has a train that could get them home, so presumably that would have to be usable with a non-premium ticket.
  
  
• What about effectively managing the use of capacity? When travelling from Stoke-on-Trent to Manchester, for example, the premium offering would be the CrossCountry and Avanti services - 24 to 30 cars an hour - while the non-premium offering would be Northern, which runs a 3-car unit which also has to serve several stations where it provides the only service. There is little to no scope to increase the capacity of the Northern service because the bay platform it uses is too short. It would be counter-productive for the fare structure to incentivise Stoke-Manchester passengers to cram onto the short Northern trains and possibly prevent passengers further up the line from travelling altogether, so presumably there would have to be an exception there.
  
  
• What about stations where the premium and non-premium services go to completely different places? For example I don't think it would make sense for Scarborough-York (a TPE service, so premium) to attract a premium supplement because it shares the line as far as Seamer with Scarborough-Sheffield stopping services (Northern).
  Presumably it would count as premium over the Scarborough-Seamer section and then non-premium from Seamer to York, but that would mean passengers with non-premium tickets from Scarborough to York would have to travel one stop on a Northern service to Seamer, then change for a TPE service from Seamer to York, which has just from come through from Scarborough!
  This is nonsensical, so presumably an exception would be needed to make the TPE service non-premium all the way from Scarborough to York.

Sorry I forgot to exclude the class 185 service on TPE, not familiar enough with that area.

It doesn't really make any sense to exclude 185 and include Nova fleet (the rest of TPE) for two reasons:

• The 185 since refurbishment has actually had a rather similar interior to the Novas; in fact, some people find it more comfortable than, for example, the 802.
• Many if not most TPE routes have a mixture of the fleets and the specific allocations can change from day to day; there aren't really that many "185 services" and "Nova services".

All tickets should be single and should be restricted to a geographical route. The passenger should buy a ticket according to which route the train will take.

Do passengers generally know which route their train is taking? Almost all passengers at London Euston heading for Stockport or Manchester with walk-up tickets, for example, will just look for the next "Manchester Piccadilly" on the board. They don't know or care whether they're going via Crewe or Macclesfield, and the fact that the mileages are slightly different is an irrelevance.

 

[yorkie]

I agree with this, railway ticket pricing just isn't competitive with driving, if you have access to a car.

Even during the dark days of 2022 when petrol was almost £2 a litre, I was on holiday in Devon with my partner and child, driving was still a much cheaper option.

I agree that many prices (but not all) are too high; I would absolutely support reducing the cost of the more expensive tickets, but what concerns me is that all proposals I've seen so far would result in good value fares increasing. For me, that's a huge no!

Also if all fares were reduced to match the level of the best value fares, I can't see the Government funding the shortfall in revenue, nor increasing capacity to cater for increased demand. I'd love to see that happen but I don't think it's at all likely to happen.

Do passengers generally know which route their train is taking? Almost all passengers at London Euston heading for Stockport or Manchester with walk-up tickets, for example, will just look for the next "Manchester Piccadilly" on the board. They don't know or care whether they're going via Crewe or Macclesfield, and the fact that the mileages are slightly different is an irrelevance.

Indeed not; the proponents of mileage based pricing, who often have to implement various exceptions/caveats along with different rates for each mile of track, usually argue that you'd have one price, along the lines of the shorter route being assumed, but allowing travel via the fastest route.

But then that causes complications/anomalies, for example the longer route could undercut intermediate fares, so you then either have a situation where the intermediate fares also have to be capped, or you create anomalies.

The main motiviation for "mileage based" pricing appears to be people who percieve it as "unfair" that you can either go further for less money and/or "split" your tickets, however no-one has yet come up with a mileage based pricing proposal that actually addresses all of these concerns. When I come up with requests for a quote for example journeys, excuses are trotted out as to why they can't provide the pricing for the examples.

I'm all up for listening to proposals to change the system but so far any proposals either result in unpalatable fare rises, or decreased in revenue that are unrealistic, or are simply half-baked and no figures can be quoted.

People say things like "Italy has mileage based pricing" but it's increasingly becoming market driven, and you often are either forced to "split" or you may experience an anomaly. I was on a train where the ticket inspector (I assume Guard) tried to claim we shouldn't be travelling on a particular route because it was too cheap, even though we were following an itinerary.

People also like to say things like Switzerland has no anomalies but that is completely untrue; notwithstanding the proliferation of advance fares there, some fares are priced zonally and some by distance. If you want to travel from a suburb of Zurich to a suburb of Basel, you want zonal tickets for each area at either end, and a point to point ticket that covers the "gap" between the zonal tickets (travelling the shorter route via Frick for best value).

I doubt there is any country in the world with a complex network such as we have in GB, where there is never ever a need to split and it is never ever cheaper to go further and all the other boxes required by everyone are ticked!

One person's idea of a fair system is another person's unfair system. One person's idea of simplification is another person's complification.

 

[reduke]

I think the underlying premise is good but I would go about it a different way:

10p per mile for the distance from the start station to the end station, as the crow flies (it isn't the commuters fault the line isn't more direct). 5p extra for first class, 5p extra for journeys starting, ending or wholly including 7-9am or 5-7pm. Minimum 10 mile fare. Same applies for underground systems, 20p per mile, 10 mile minimum fare. 10p extra for peak.

Touch in at your starting station, touch out at the end. Failing to touch charges you Penzance to Thurso first class peak fare.

"Unviable" lines are irrelevant, it is up to providers to run a required service level - the tax payer is going to be subsidising everything anyway.

Delay repay is set as a percentage of travel time and fully automatic. If for example, a 5 minute journey is 10 minutes delayed, you get twice your fare back (the maximum limit). If, for example, a 100 minute journey is delayed by 1 minute you get 1% of your fare back (the minimum).

Intercity fares require a pre-booked free seat, booked at any time right up to departure. Data feeds to publish booking levels. Failure to use a pre-booked seat charges a penalty. Train cancellations waive this requirement(and any fare), with passengers carried on a best effort basis with a legal requirement to get them to their destinations.

Proper competition reintroduced between providers - ie the distance between Liverpool and Manchester will always be the same, so commuters can actually choose based on things like how likely they are to get a seat, how friendly the staff are, how reliable the stock is, and how comfortable the seats are! Providers still required to provide minimum service levels to stations on their routes, and profits are determined entirely by how many passengers they carry and penalties by how many delays they are responsible for.

 

[The Planner]

I think the underlying premise is good but I would go about it a different way:

10p per mile for the distance from the start station to the end station, as the crow flies (it isn't the commuters fault the line isn't more direct). 5p extra for first class, 5p extra for journeys starting, ending or wholly including 7-9am or 5-7pm. Minimum 10 mile fare. Same applies for underground systems, 20p per mile, 10 mile minimum fare. 10p extra for peak.

One way of making the subsidy required completely unviable. That would make Euston to Manchester about £25 single peak time. Paddington to Reading £5,25 peak single.

 

[yorkie]

I think the underlying premise is good but I would go about it a different way:

10p per mile for the distance from the start station to the end station, as the crow flies (it isn't the commuters fault the line isn't more direct). 5p extra for first class, 5p extra for journeys starting, ending or wholly including 7-9am or 5-7pm. Minimum 10 mile fare. Same applies for underground systems, 20p per mile, 10 mile minimum fare. 10p extra for peak.

Kyle to Mallaig, anyone? Radyr to Coyton would be good too!

Touch in at your starting station, touch out at the end. Failing to touch charges you Penzance to Thurso first class peak fare.

What if people don't have a bank card? What if they have a low credit rating or a debit card with no overdraft, or a pre-pay card?

"Unviable" lines are irrelevant, it is up to providers to run a required service level - the tax payer is going to be subsidising everything anyway.

But if Whitby and other branches (which are currently cheap; Sherburn to Whitby is one of the best value fares in GB) become more costly, demand would reduce, therefore a "required service level" (which is subjective) could be worse than today.

Delay repay is set as a percentage of travel time and fully automatic. If for example, a 5 minute journey is 10 minutes delayed, you get twice your fare back (the maximum limit). If, for example, a 100 minute journey is delayed by 1 minute you get 1% of your fare back (the minimum).

Automatic DR is fraught with difficulties; I suppose by forcing people to tap in and out you do eliminate some of them, but I can't see that it would be palatable to abolish all methods of travel other than PAYG requiring a card.

Intercity fares require a pre-booked free seat, booked at any time right up to departure.

So after a Newcastle United game, on any train heading towards Durham and further south, you're basically screwed. How would you prevent the crowds boarding the train? An army of BTP at every door?

Data feeds to publish booking levels. Failure to use a pre-booked seat charges a penalty. Train cancellations waive this requirement(and any fare), with passengers carried on a best effort basis with a legal requirement to get them to their destinations.

Good luck charging that penalty on packed trains. On a train I got from Leeds last Thursday there were all sorts of menacing threats about penalty fares etc, when the train was packed like sardines, so no-one would be able to get through!

Proper competition reintroduced between providers - ie the distance between Liverpool and Manchester will always be the same, so commuters can actually choose based on things like how likely they are to get a seat, how friendly the staff are, how reliable the stock is, and how comfortable the seats are!

I thought you said it was going to be a PAYG type system of tapping in/out? How does the system know if I take a TPE train or a Northern from Manchester Victoria to Leeds? (there are times when the journey time is similar and I've even known Northern to be quicker when there are engineering works)

Providers still required to provide minimum service levels to stations on their routes, and profits are determined entirely by how many passengers they carry and penalties by how many delays they are responsible for.

So low profits for intercity operators and high profits for metro type operations then.

 

[miklcct]

OK but how would you propose to achieve this?


York to Doncaster wouldn't be premium then, despite being charged at a premium today.

Yes. There are no alternative non-intercity services on the route so it won't be fair to charge a premium.

You will charge a discount for travelling via Darlington between York and Middlesbrough (the opposite of today)?

Yes. However via Darlington is longer so the extra mileage may cancel the saving out.

That makes York to Sheffield via Leeds a lot more premium than via Doncaster?

Yes. Because York - Doncaster doesn't have a non-intercity operator.

Can you give us any examples of what the actual fares would be and/or how they would be calculated? I suspect not as I don't think you have actually thought it through properly.

Assume that, in the London commuter area (extending approximately 50 miles out of London to a suitable terminus), the base off-peak rate is £0.20 per mile, peak hours x 2 and intercity operator x 1.5, and round up to the next 5p (subject to a minimum fare of £1 for all journeys).
Reading - Paddington (35.94 miles according to routing data) will then be £7.20 off-peak on non-intercity service, £10.80 on intercity service; and during the peak it will be £14.40 non-intercity, £21.60 intercity. This is a decrease from the current fare level.

London Bridge - Brighton (50.54 miles) will then become £10.15 off-peak single, £20.25 peak single, so a large increase for return journeys on weekends and a slight increase for peak day return.

So 185s aren't premium but 80x are? How do you know which will operate any given service?

If a route is regularly served by both, then they will be non-premium.

So you won't charge a premium for any service operated by West Midlands Trains, so a fast train from Rugby/Milton Keynes to London is going to be (much?) cheaper than a stopping train which calls additionally Watford Junction operated by Avanti?

True. Taking an LNR from Milton Keynes to London will be cheaper than taking Avanti. This is to encourage shorter distance passengers staying away from intercity train service.

But the West Coast Main Line can be done entirely on non-premium services (albeit on very slow trains), so it would be cheaper to go from London to Glasgow via the ECML than the WCML?

It will be the cheapest to to via the WCML on slow trains.

Even if you get a 68+Mk5s? How are they any less "Intercity"-like than 80x units?

How is frequently defined/determined?

If a line has a regular off-peak non-intercity service (at least two hourly) on that route, the intercity trains become a premium.

What if trains are diverted e.g. ECML closures so LNER uses WCML and travels further distance? Does the ticket price go up due to the extra distance travelled?

No. The train is assumed to travel on both the original route and the revised route, just like today. The fare is calculated whichever the less.

I assume the policy would be along the lines "if there is no non-premium service scheduled within an hour (or other suitable amount of time) of a given premium service from a given station, that premium service may be boarded at that station without supplement".

But then you'd have to add additional exceptions, for example:

• What about cancellations? Presumably if a non-premium service is cancelled and the next service is premium, it may be used without supplement, otherwise it would amount to further delaying passengers who've already been disrupted for no good reason. What if a premium service is cancelled and the next service is non-premium? Can premium passengers claim a refund of the supplement?

Whenever there is a delay / cancellation, all ticket holders can board the next train travelling on the same geographical route without an excess.

• What if a premium service is the last train of the day on a particular route? It would be extremely poor service for the railway to elect to strand passengers when it has a train that could get them home, so presumably that would have to be usable with a non-premium ticket.

See above.

• What about effectively managing the use of capacity? When travelling from Stoke-on-Trent to Manchester, for example, the premium offering would be the CrossCountry and Avanti services - 24 to 30 cars an hour - while the non-premium offering would be Northern, which runs a 3-car unit which also has to serve several stations where it provides the only service. There is little to no scope to increase the capacity of the Northern service because the bay platform it uses is too short. It would be counter-productive for the fare structure to incentivise Stoke-Manchester passengers to cram onto the short Northern trains and possibly prevent passengers further up the line from travelling altogether, so presumably there would have to be an exception there.

This is unfortunate however I can't think of a general rule here to exclude such scenario, without losing the premium on GWR Paddington - Reading service (which provides a higher frequency than the non-intercity slow trains). Possibly a local exception is needed.

• What about stations where the premium and non-premium services go to completely different places? For example I don't think it would make sense for Scarborough-York (a TPE service, so premium) to attract a premium supplement because it shares the line as far as Seamer with Scarborough-Sheffield stopping services (Northern).
  Presumably it would count as premium over the Scarborough-Seamer section and then non-premium from Seamer to York, but that would mean passengers with non-premium tickets from Scarborough to York would have to travel one stop on a Northern service to Seamer, then change for a TPE service from Seamer to York, which has just from come through from Scarborough!

This may not warrant an exception. West of Didcot the only service is GWR Intercity trains, so a non-premium ticket can only be used by changing at Didcot onto non-intercity services as it carries a premium to travel all the way to Paddington.

• 
  This is nonsensical, so presumably an exception would be needed to make the TPE service non-premium all the way from Scarborough to York.

It doesn't really make any sense to exclude 185 and include Nova fleet (the rest of TPE) for two reasons:

• The 185 since refurbishment has actually had a rather similar interior to the Novas; in fact, some people find it more comfortable than, for example, the 802.
• Many if not most TPE routes have a mixture of the fleets and the specific allocations can change from day to day; there aren't really that many "185 services" and "Nova services".

I am not really sure about this as, in the south, train allocations are generally fixed and there aren't routes where intercity and non-intercity rolling stocks mix together, because they travel at different speed on the line which has to be taken into consideration when making the timetable.

Do passengers generally know which route their train is taking? Almost all passengers at London Euston heading for Stockport or Manchester with walk-up tickets, for example, will just look for the next "Manchester Piccadilly" on the board. They don't know or care whether they're going via Crewe or Macclesfield, and the fact that the mileages are slightly different is an irrelevance.

If the mileage difference is small (v.s. via Redhill or not; or via Lewisham or not; or the various routings between Blackfriars and East Croydon), it is ignored and the shortest route is used for calculation. However if one route is significantly longer, or if it will create anomaly (including splitting opportunities or starting short opportunities), separate routed fares have to be given.

 

[miklcct]

usually argue that you'd have one price, along the lines of the shorter route being assumed, but allowing travel via the fastest route.

I won't allow this. If the fastest route is significantly longer than the shortest route, they will be separate routed fares to avoid anomaly. For example, the fastest route from Brighton to Dover is via London, which is much longer than the shortest route along the coast. Routed fares will be needed to avoid anomaly.

 

[reduke]

One way of making the subsidy required completely unviable. That would make Euston to Manchester about £25 single peak time. Paddington to Reading £5,25 peak single.

Why? It's not like the exorbitant fare money is disappearing from thin air, it's just being spent on other things that attract different taxes. Trains should be a public service.

Kyle to Mallaig, anyone? Radyr to Coyton would be good too!


What if people don't have a bank card? What if they have a low credit rating or a debit card with no overdraft, or a pre-pay card?

Then ticket machines will still be available - enter your start and end points and choose an itinerary from the screen. You wouldn't get auto delay repay or easy journey updates on the app though.

But if Whitby and other branches (which are currently cheap; Sherburn to Whitby is one of the best value fares in GB) become more costly, demand would reduce, therefore a "required service level" (which is subjective) could be worse than today.

Not sure how this would make Sherburn to Whitby more expensive?

Automatic DR is fraught with difficulties; I suppose by forcing people to tap in and out you do eliminate some of them, but I can't see that it would be palatable to abolish all methods of travel other than PAYG requiring a card.

Automatic DR is automatic? The itinerary you chose and touched in and out for got you to your destination % late, your compensation arrives quickly and automatically. If you choose to use another method of payment that is up to you.

So after a Newcastle United game, on any train heading towards Durham and further south, you're basically screwed. How would you prevent the crowds boarding the train? An army of BTP at every door?

If there aren't enough seats available then stats will show that and provide easy targets for further investment (which is a whole other subject...)

Good luck charging that penalty on packed trains. On a train I got from Leeds last Thursday there were all sorts of menacing threats about penalty fares etc, when the train was packed like sardines, so no-one would be able to get through!

It's automatic. You book but don't cancel or touch in then it gets applied. Simples.

I thought you said it was going to be a PAYG type system of tapping in/out? How does the system know if I take a TPE train or a Northern from Manchester Victoria to Leeds? (there are times when the journey time is similar and I've even known Northern to be quicker when there are engineering works)

You choose the itinerary on your phone, and then you tap.

So low profits for intercity operators and high profits for metro type operations then.

Operators would be required to sign up to a variety of different routes so that the entire network would be covered and none would be able to hog the more profitable routes at the expense of other routes.

 

[Huntergreed]

I think the underlying premise is good but I would go about it a different way:

10p per mile for the distance from the start station to the end station, as the crow flies (it isn't the commuters fault the line isn't more direct). 5p extra for first class, 5p extra for journeys starting, ending or wholly including 7-9am or 5-7pm.

So under your proposal, Euston to Glasgow would be £34.35 one way (currently £119.20). Given the significant loss in revenue (71% of the off peak fare), how are you going to compensate for the astronomical revenue loss?

This isn’t the only journey with this issue:

Kings Cross to Edinburgh becomes £33.10 (Anytime Day Single on Lumo is £75.00 so an over 50% loss)

Paddington to Penzance becomes £25.31 (Super Off Peak Single is £79 so a 67% loss).

Aberdeen to Glasgow becomes £12.10 (Anytime day single is £48.90 so a 75% loss).

(Distances calculated with: https://www.freemaptools.com/how-far-is-it-between.htm)

I understand that advances exist and that overall revenue is lower than this, but some of these fares are just as cheap as even the lowest advance tiers!

Same applies for underground systems, 20p per mile, 10 mile minimum fare. 10p extra for peak.

How would you work (for example) the Glasgow subway, where the entire route (as the crow flies) is significantly less than 10 miles?

You could charge £2 per journey (which would be the “minimum fare” under this system, but then anyone making 3 or more journeys significantly loses out under this system (current all day ticket is less than £5) especially as the distances covered are so short (but this isn’t taken into account by the “minimum fare”).

Touch in at your starting station, touch out at the end. Failing to touch charges you Penzance to Thurso first class peak fare.

"Unviable" lines are irrelevant, it is up to providers to run a required service level - the tax payer is going to be subsidising everything anyway.

Given the level of revenue would be massively reduced under your proposals, where do you propose this extra subsidy for “unviable” lines (of which there would be many more under this fares structure) comes from?

We already have a very stretched budget, and there’s no way we would be able to justify increasing the level of subsidy for rail to the level required to make this a profitable system.

Delay repay is set as a percentage of travel time and fully automatic. If for example, a 5 minute journey is 10 minutes delayed, you get twice your fare back (the maximum limit). If, for example, a 100 minute journey is delayed by 1 minute you get 1% of your fare back (the minimum).

What’s to stop someone tapping in during disruption and making very short journeys which are delayed to profit from this, as they would get up to twice their fare back. Where is the extra money for this going to come from?

During severe disruption, darting back and forth between Victoria and Clapham Junction or Haymarket and Edinburgh could become a very profitable exercise under these reforms!

Intercity fares require a pre-booked free seat, booked at any time right up to departure. Data feeds to publish booking levels. Failure to use a pre-booked seat charges a penalty. Train cancellations waive this requirement(and any fare), with passengers carried on a best effort basis with a legal requirement to get them to their destinations.

What do you propose the penalty is? This would significantly reduce the capacity of intercity trains which are designed (and often need) to carry a large amount of standing passengers during busy periods.

Proper competition reintroduced between providers - ie the distance between Liverpool and Manchester will always be the same, so commuters can actually choose based on things like how likely they are to get a seat, how friendly the staff are, how reliable the stock is, and how comfortable the seats are!

Without a financial incentive for passengers to use “less desirable” services, this will likely result in severe overcrowding on the fastest, most direct trains, and hardly anyone on the slower, less comfortable services. How do you intend to manage this?

Providers still required to provide minimum service levels to stations on their routes, and profits are determined entirely by how many passengers they carry and penalties by how many delays they are responsible for.

Profits purely by passenger quantity creates a significant bias towards commuter type services and against intercity trains.

It also means that the operators who run the fastest, most direct services (as described above) will make significantly more revenue than those who run slower, less comfortable services (as with no financial incentive to take less direct routes, the fastest routes will gain a significant majority of the passenger share).

 

[zwk500]

Why? It's not like the exorbitant fare money is disappearing from thin air, it's just being spent on other things that attract different taxes. Trains should be a public service.

Why charge at all then?

Automatic DR is automatic? The itinerary you chose and touched in and out for got you to your destination % late, your compensation arrives quickly and automatically. If you choose to use another method of payment that is up to you.

Is there verification the itinerary selected is the one actually used or is it entirely an honour system?

If there aren't enough seats available then stats will show that and provide easy targets for further investment (which is a whole other subject...)

Being able to target investment isn't a lot of comfort for people left locked out of stations in the meantime when they could have got home standing.

It's automatic. You book but don't cancel or touch in then it gets applied. Simples.

This is just an easy way to make the railway extremely customer-hostile to unfamiliar users.

You choose the itinerary on your phone, and then you tap.

And if you don't/can't use a phone, or are using a service that doesn't have clearly advertised times like the Overground for a portion of your journey?

Operators would be required to sign up to a variety of different routes so that the entire network would be covered and none would be able to hog the more profitable routes at the expense of other routes.

So you'd use the current franchising model?

 

[The Planner]

Why? It's not like the exorbitant fare money is disappearing from thin air, it's just being spent on other things that attract different taxes. Trains should be a public service.

At what cost though? how do you then deal with the increase in growth, which the system certainly couldn't cope with, when the subsidy required increases at an unprecedented level? You cannot just throw money at it ad infinitum, something else will lose out and politics will always play its part.

 

[Starmill]

All the three train companies (excluding open access) between Newcastle and Edinburgh are operating intercity trains, so the line won't be charged at premium rate.

That would make an inter-available single from Morpeth to Edinburgh for use on LNER no longer permitted on Lumo if the LNER train didn't run. How are you going to deal with all of these perverse incentives you're creating?

 

[reduke]

Why charge at all then?

To prevent people using the railways for things other than needing to go somewhere.

Is there verification the itinerary selected is the one actually used or is it entirely an honour system?

Im not proposing getting rid of inspectors.

Being able to target investment isn't a lot of comfort for people left locked out of stations in the meantime when they could have got home standing.

I am sure there can be a way to designate specific trains as standing allowed as and when required. The point is not to stop people travelling, it is to stop them being required to stand unreasonably.

This is just an easy way to make the railway extremely customer-hostile to unfamiliar users.

Why? If you book a seat you pay the journey price, just like now, and if you don't use that journey you don't get your money back, or perhaps only a percentage.

And if you don't/can't use a phone, or are using a service that doesn't have clearly advertised times like the Overground for a portion of your journey?

Ticket machines would allow choice of itinerary.

So you'd use the current franchising model?

I don't know enough about the intricate workings of the current system but it would reintroduce proper competition with providers rewarded for actual performance not just arbitrary targets.

At what cost though? how do you then deal with the increase in growth, which the system certainly couldn't cope with, when the subsidy required increases at an unprecedented level? You cannot just throw money at it ad infinitum, something else will lose out and politics will always play its part.

Yes like many ideas politics would get in the way

 

[Starmill]

I am sure there can be a way to designate specific trains as standing allowed as and when required. The point is not to stop people travelling, it is to stop them being required to stand unreasonably.

Nobody is currently unreasonably being required to stand, though. They're entitled to get the next train if they can't sit down and had a reserved seat. If you're saying this should also apply for cases where the seat wasn't reserved then I'd agree, but you haven't said that.

 

[reduke]

Nobody is currently unreasonably being required to stand, though. They're entitled to get the next train if they can't sit down and had a reserved seat. If you're saying this should also apply for cases where the seat wasn't reserved then I'd agree, but you haven't said that.

Well that was my whole point. Intercity journeys without reserved seats is not something a modern society should be proud of.

Bring able to get the next train because there aren't any seats and still having to pay the same as someone who was lucky to get a seat on their preferred service is not something to be thankful for.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Well that was my whole point. Intercity journeys without reserved seats is not something a modern society should be proud of.

Bring able to get the next train because there aren't any seats and still having to pay the same as someone who was lucky to get a seat on their preferred service is not something to be thankful for.

Would you prefer to be told "sorry, all trains today are full", as that's the alternative?

 

[zwk500]

Well that was my whole point. Intercity journeys without reserved seats is not something a modern society should be proud of.

Tell that to Belgium and the Netherlands.

 

[reduke]

Would you prefer to be told "sorry, all trains today are full", as that's the alternative?

Why is it ok for airlines to say that but not train companies?

You know what happens when planes are regularly full? More capacity gets added. But as I said earlier, actual investment in the railways is a whole other argument.

 

[zwk500]

Why is it ok for airlines to say that but not train companies?

Because the safety implications of standing on an Aircraft are much more severe than those for standing on a train.

You know what happens when planes are regularly full? More capacity gets added. But as I said earlier, actual investment in the railways is a whole other argument.

You know what happens before capacity is added? Prices go up.

 

[reduke]

Tell that to Belgium and the Netherlands.

Perhaps I was inaccurate - what I meant was - Intercity journeys without enough seats for all passengers is not something a modern society should be proud of.

Because the safety implications of standing on an Aircraft are much more severe than those for standing on a train.

Why? Just make sure they have a tight grip on a pole for the entire journey and everything will be fine!

You know what happens before capacity is added? Prices go up.

Are you advocating pricing people out of travelling? That is the exact opposite of my original suggestion.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Why? Just make sure they have a tight grip on a pole for the entire journey and everything will be fine!

Have you tried holding onto a pole during severe turbulence?

Planes, unlike trains, are not always safe for standing. Plus the weight of those on board matters much more.

Perhaps I was inaccurate - what I meant was - Intercity journeys without enough seats for all passengers is not something a modern society should be proud of.

Certainly CrossCountry is nothing to be proud of! I can't recall the last time I didn't get a seat on Avanti.

 

[zwk500]

Perhaps I was inaccurate - what I meant was - Intercity journeys without enough seats for all passengers is not something a modern society should be proud of.

Standing is also not unknown in the low countries.

Are you advocating pricing people out of travelling? That is the exact opposite of my original suggestion.

Not as such - although it's an outcome of what I actually advocate which is a balance between available capacity, social utility, and the revenue the market is willing to provide. I would therefore suggest that journeys where high capacities are provided and are still oversubscribed should be charged higher in order that the railway has additional revenue to use to cross-subsidise the less popular services that run a lower frequencies, or to distribute demand across the available capacity and 'smooth out' the peaks.

 

[6Gman]

This is easy to solve. If a premium service runs over a line where it provides the only service, over that line it is not considered a premium service and it can be used without supplement.


Even within the Communist China the lines within Guangdong Province (a developed area) attracts a premium.


Sorry I forgot to exclude the class 185 service on TPE, not familiar enough with that area.


Therefore I am proposing setting up sensible train categories. Avanti and LNR services are different enough that they should be charged differently.

So there will, for example, be two prices between Crewe and Stafford depending on which train I use.

And if I get on the wrong one you're proposing a £100 penalty ?



What problem is this solving ?

 

[Bartsimho]

Kyle to Mallaig, anyone?

Can I ask you how many people would consider that journey?
No route planner ever suggests the train for that.
Everything for that is ferry based.

Radyr to Coyton would be good too!

Again how many consider that journey.
These are geographical edge cases with no way for the railways to compete with other modes of transport.

An actual good example to Scarborough to Whitby but again the railways are not competitive and the ridership would be startlingly low.

 

[yorkie]

To prevent people using the railways for things other than needing to go somewhere.

Who decides a "need"? This conversation is getting more and more bizarre; those of us who actually understand and work with the system only have a limited time to debunk these unworkable ideas.

Im not proposing getting rid of inspectors.

Tickets are regularly not inspected though; my last few journeys on TPE have not seen any inspectors, and I've only had my tickets scanned once or twice ever on TPE trains, despite being a regular user.

I am sure there can be a way to designate specific trains as standing allowed as and when required.

I'm all ears!

The point is not to stop people travelling, it is to stop them being required to stand unreasonably.

Feel free to propose how you'd achieve that.

Why? If you book a seat you pay the journey price, just like now, and if you don't use that journey you don't get your money back, or perhaps only a percentage.

What if I travel York to Doncaster and don't know which train I will get? Does this route effectively become like an airline, with no walk-up travel allowed?

Ticket machines would allow choice of itinerary.



I don't know enough about the intricate workings of the current system but it would reintroduce proper competition with providers rewarded for actual performance not just arbitrary targets.



Yes like many ideas politics would get in the way

With all due respect, that's the problem with these threads: people who do not understand or work with fares data come up with all sorts of ideas; people who do understand and/or work with the data will ask questions and/or give reasons why it won't work, but the unworkable ideas persist.

Well that was my whole point. Intercity journeys without reserved seats is not something a modern society should be proud of.

Reservations are not compulsory in Germany and only rarely made in Switzerland. Both have better rail networks than we do.

Bring able to get the next train because there aren't any seats and still having to pay the same as someone who was lucky to get a seat on their preferred service is not something to be thankful for.

I don't understand what you are advocating; are you saying we should allow trains to become fully booked up or leave seats free in case people have to take the next train?

Why is it ok for airlines to say that but not train companies?

Airlines have no choice but to say it.

Rail and air are in competition for e.g. London to Edinburgh. But for shorter journeys it's the bus/coach/car that is the alternative.

You know what happens when planes are regularly full? More capacity gets added.

Not always

But as I said earlier, actual investment in the railways is a whole other argument.

Agreed

Can I ask you how many people would consider that journey?
No route planner ever suggests the train for that.
Everything for that is ferry based.

Yes but if you are doing mileage based on the "crow flies" distance, you would buy that ticket to travel from either place to Glasgow and finish short

Again how many consider that journey.
These are geographical edge cases with no way for the railways to compete with other modes of transport.

An actual good example to Scarborough to Whitby but again the railways are not competitive and the ridership would be startlingly low.

All I am doing here is demonstrating that mileage based pricing is very flawed if you use a "straight line" methodology. It is also flawed, for opposing reasons, when using railway geography.

So there will, for example, be two prices between Crewe and Stafford depending on which train I use.

And if I get on the wrong one you're proposing a £100 penalty ?



What problem is this solving ?

Exactly!!

 

[urbophile]

Do passengers generally know which route their train is taking? Almost all passengers at London Euston heading for Stockport or Manchester with walk-up tickets, for example, will just look for the next "Manchester Piccadilly" on the board. They don't know or care whether they're going via Crewe or Macclesfield, and the fact that the mileages are slightly different is an irrelevance.

In the case of alternative routes between two places, with different mileages, surely it would be common sense for the standard fare to be based on the average distance.

 

[SargeNpton]

In the case of alternative routes between two places, with different mileages, surely it would be common sense for the standard fare to be based on the average distance.

Then you may get higher rates for any intermediate stations that may be on the longer route - costing more to get to them than to the station at the end of the line that is also served by the shorter route and so has an "average" mileage applied.

That's the trouble with just about any proposed change to fares - there will always be anomalies that have to have workarounds applied.

 

[Silenos]

In principle your proposal is workable - the Netherlands has single-leg pricing based on distance with supplements for some train categories. However will your proposal involve increasing fares overall, or will you be expecting the treasury to make up the shortfall?

I think this hits on the key question that underlies many of the debates on this forum: is rail travel a thing that brings social and environmental benefits beyond the mere movement of people from A to B? Or is it a relic of a time when the car was less affordable, with at best limited benefits in a few specific situations? Because if the first, then it makes sense for it to be well funded from the public purse. But if the latter, then the original analysis of Dr Beeching makes sense, and we should not encourage anything that involves growth of rail unless it is self-supporting economically.

It’s a debate that the UK has never properly had, and one on which forum posters are quite divided. Do we want to be Luxembourg, or the USA?

 

[A0]

My opinion is that, public services should not have market based pricing. These include water, electricity, public transport, medical system, etc., which are essential items with infrastructure.

So what are you saying ? They shouldn't cover their costs ? So how does that work - the shortfall would have to be made up somehow.

 

[zwk500]

It’s a debate that the UK has never properly had, and one on which forum posters are quite divided. Do we want to be Luxembourg, or the USA?

The problem is that the UK is neither, nor can it ever pretend to be otherwise. Luxembourg is a county, and the USA is a continent. The UK is too big for the network to be a single hub system all about moving people in and out of a single city (Luxembourg) but it is too small to focus on bulk movement of cargo across multi-day distances (USA).

Our network is much closer to the French or German models, where Intercity traffic is a much more commercial affair than social, but rural passenger traffic is far more social than commercial. Therefore the fare system needs to be flexible enough to allow for subsidised fares on routes where it is needed, but also revenue optimisation on routes where it is possible.