National Rail App locking out journey details

[modernrail]

The National Rail App seems to have developed a really annoying new feature. It locks out details of journeys and says ‘No fares available’.

1st, this is not true. It is an actual lie, because it is totally valid to buy a ticket for that train (or the return portion of a ticket you already used the outward portion on) and try and use the unreserved seating sections of the train. All long distance trains have unreserved sections which need to be used.

2nd, the National Rail App is not primarily a ticket buying app, it is an information service. There are a host of reasons you use it. For instance when your journey has been disrupted and you want to try and plan around it. At that point (a very frequent occurrence on the UK railway), you are likely straight into ticket restrictions being relaxed, first class being declassified etc. However, the National Rail App has just taken away your ability to try and work around the problem.

Who on earth is signing off on this stuff.

 

[island]

This isn't anything to do with the "National rail app" and has to do with a minority of train companies choosing to mark their services as "reservations compulsory" so that when there are no reservations left, tickets will no longer be sold.

There are many existing threads about this choice so I shan't try to rehash them.

 

[A Challenge]

Whatever the rights and wrongs of having so many trains as reservations compulsory, and I won't go into that, the National Rail app isn't designed to sell you tickets (I know the website doesn't, just redirects you, I assume the app is the same) and so should really be showing all available options, even those for which fares aren't available - it feels more equivalent to FastJP to me, and that doesn't get rid of journeys because there aren't any tickets available.

On the website, I can see the arguement for hiding them based on ticket availability, but on an app on the day, you're much more likely to have a ticket already

 

[modernrail]

Whatever the rights and wrongs of having so many trains as reservations compulsory, and I won't go into that, the National Rail app isn't designed to sell you tickets (I know the website doesn't, just redirects you, I assume the app is the same) and so should really be showing all available options, even those for which fares aren't available - it feels more equivalent to FastJP to me, and that doesn't get rid of journeys because there aren't any tickets available.

On the website, I can see the arguement for hiding them based on ticket availability, but on an app on the day, you're much more likely to have a ticket already

Is there not also the rather massive point that when there is disruption, this is an information app, and so is meant to give you information.

Case in point. I am about to attempt a journey from Southport to London. I have a return portion of a return. I am booked onto a train from Wigan. Loads of trains from Southport to London are suddenly showing as cancelled on the NR app. I can’t click into the journey to see whether the problem is between Southport and Wigan (and so I should go via Liverpool) or on the WCML (in which case I should possibly not travel).

How on earth am I meant to work any of this out when you can’t click into the journey. There is nothing on either Northern or Avanti site giving me any help but I shouldn’t need to go into those sites anyway. The whole bloody purpose of the National Rail app is to help in this situations, as it used to, hinder, as it is doing now.

Oh I know what I can do…. Use Trainline. That does show the required information. From which I have been able to work out in 1 min,
- some trains from Southport to Wigan are cancelled
- there is a problem on the Merseyrail City Line
- there is a problem between Watford and London.

That means yet another attempt to use UK rail has become a slog at best, but why on earth is the app that is meant to show this stuff not doing so when Trainline is? Somebody has obviously actively turned off this functionality and is a really, really stupid thing to do, especially on our massively unstable and unreliable railway.

 

[The exile]

Even if it tells you (incorrectly) that there are no fares available, it should still offer you timetable information. You might, after all, not be travelling at all, but meeting someone…

 

[modernrail]

Even if it tells you (incorrectly) that there are no fares available, it should still offer you timetable information. You might, after all, not be travelling at all, but meeting someone…

There are multiple reasons you might want to know the information. It’s an information service. The idea that its interface has been changed to only be relevant to ticket sales is gibberish.

What National Rail really needs to be explaining is why a private company that uses its feeds is managing to put together a much better information service than the railway itself.

Either this is by design, and somebody in the Tory party has a position in Trainline or is dogmatically stopping anything ‘official’ from being effective or this is by incompetence, in which case the public sector is showing itself up, badly.

 

[Wallsendmag]

Is there not a separate timetable info section? LNER has a buy tickets section and timetable only section.

 

[miklcct]

Some apps, like the Thameslink one, does not show non-ticketable itineraries such as Brent Cross West to Kettering with a single change at Luton. This can be misleading and result in people travelling on suboptimal itineraries.

 

[infobleep]

Is there not a separate timetable info section? LNER has a buy tickets section and timetable only section.

There is a timetable and then you click on tickets button to get tickets options.

So it will show journeys for which it cannot sell a ticket. For example Guildford to New Malden via Wimbledon, which isn't valid. This is in addition to other services, where you change at Surbtion, which it can show a ticket, as it is valid.

What matters most, is what is the fastest journey, as opposed to what is the fastest valid journey.