My ideas for fares reform

[modernrail]

I believe there is a review going on at the moment about whether to reorganise the fares so that there is less disparity. I think the target is to make any proposal revenue neutral over all. Let's take the Leeds-London for example, how would people feel if we ended up with something like:

All fares - singles. All fares can be mixed and matched.

Off-Peak
Early Booker - £35, Later Booker - £45

Ideally reservable seats would be split 50/50 between these two levels, and that is the limit of availability of the Early Booker ticket.

Peak
Early Booker - £50, Later Booker, £65

My thought is Early Bookers get 1/3 of reservable seats (and that is the limit of the availability of this ticket)

Early Bookers can pay for a seat reservation, say £3 per seat - Later bookers get it for free. If you don't reserve a seat - you take your chances - and people would be strongly advised to reserve.

If you miss your booked train - you pay the difference between the fare you paid and the maximum fare for that journey, and you are not guaranteed a seat. That removes any point in gaming the system. People will generally try and get it right because they know UK trains can be packed and they will not want to sit on the floor.

I would allow the option to reserve your seat up to 2 hours before that train leaves its original destination. If you don't - may the best runner win. The Cross Country system of turfing people out of their seat is just ridiculous and undignified and should not be copied.

I would consider a shoulder peak but would rather not as it gets complicated.

I would also have a family ticket and allow a railcard level discount for 3-6 people travelling together to try to stay competitive with a car journey. However, these tickets must be booked in advance and for a specific train, so that the TOCs can restrict these tickets per train. It would be up to the train companies to be able to offer additional discounts beyond this, but the prices would be the guaranteed maximum price for each leg.

and of course - this system gets around the very silly and unfair system where your existing ticket is disregarded where you miss your train. Instead, your 'punishment' is that you may have some extra to pay but it will not kill you and you may well not get a seat.

I would also simplify delay repay so that you only ever get a refund on that leg. This should actually help the revenue of the TOC's and therefore the ability to achieve a better pricing structure.

 

[Spartacus]

I would also simplify delay repay so that you only ever get a refund on that leg. This should actually help the revenue of the TOC's and therefore the ability to achieve a better pricing structure.

So if your service into, let's say, Leeds from Batley was late so that you missed the one LNER service to Inverness of of the day you'd only give compensation for the bit into Leeds? No matter how many unreserved seats there were (and at that time there wouldn't be too many), people would be seriously unhappy even if they were carried on the next vomiter to Edinburgh.

 

[yorkie]

I believe there is a review going on at the moment about whether to reorganise the fares so that there is less disparity. I think the target is to make any proposal revenue neutral over all. Let's take the Leeds-London for example, how would people feel if we ended up with something like:

All fares - singles. All fares can be mixed and matched.

Off-Peak
Early Booker - £35, Later Booker - £45

When would the cutoff for an early booker be?

Ideally reservable seats would be split 50/50 between these two levels, and that is the limit of availability of the Early Booker ticket.

Are you saying that the "early booker" ticket would actually be an Advance ticket?

Peak
Early Booker - £50, Later Booker, £65

Again when would the cutoff be, and are these effectively Advance tickets or is the latter available for immediate travel? I can't see LNER being happy to charge £65 for a walk-up Antime Single.

Also, how do you define "peak"?

My thought is Early Bookers get 1/3 of reservable seats (and that is the limit of the availability of this ticket)

On lightly loaded services, could you get the early booker tickets at late notice?

If you did not want to restrict yourself to one train, would you have to buy a late booker ticket or something else?

Early Bookers can pay for a seat reservation, say £3 per seat - Later bookers get it for free. If you don't reserve a seat - you take your chances - and people would be strongly advised to reserve.

But I thought you said that availability of the ticket was subject to reservations being possible?

If you miss your booked train - you pay the difference between the fare you paid and the maximum fare for that journey, and you are not guaranteed a seat. That removes any point in gaming the system. People will generally try and get it right because they know UK trains can be packed and they will not want to sit on the floor.

What would the 'maximum fare for that journey' be?

I would consider a shoulder peak but would rather not as it gets complicated.

OK but, depending on the price differential, this could result in services at the extremity of what is considered "peak" being lightly loaded.

I would also have a family ticket and allow a railcard level discount for 3-6 people travelling together to try to stay competitive with a car journey. However, these tickets must be booked in advance and for a specific train, so that the TOCs can restrict these tickets per train. It would be up to the train companies to be able to offer additional discounts beyond this, but the prices would be the guaranteed maximum price for each leg.

How would this actually work in practice?

and of course - this system gets around the very silly and unfair system where your existing ticket is disregarded where you miss your train. Instead, your 'punishment' is that you may have some extra to pay but it will not kill you and you may well not get a seat.

I agree people should not be punished but there isn't much detail in your proposal.

I would also simplify delay repay so that you only ever get a refund on that leg. This should actually help the revenue of the TOC's and therefore the ability to achieve a better pricing structure.

It's not a "refund"; it's compensation. How would you define leg? e.g. if I am delayed between Doncaster and York on a journey from London to Poppleton, and the delay is 10 minutes, but I miss my onward train and become 1 hour late, why shouldn't it apply to the whole journey? What "leg" would you count as qualifying for delay in that case?

These ideas to make things simple often end up falling at various hurdles. If it was that easy to come up with something simple, someone would have done it, and published all the details, by now.