Overhaul of Ticketing

[ajdunlop]

The more and more I book train tickets the more convinced that it is a complete mess I become. If hypothetically the following was done can anyone think of any downsides?

Ticket types:

• ADVANCED OFF PEAK - The base ticket price based on distance (not linearly but so that short distances aren't too cheap and long distance not too expensive).
• OFF PEAK - This is the Advanced ticket plus a plenty for not booking in advanced. This should be a percentage of the Advanced ticket cost so that not booking longer distance journeys is discouraged more than short ones.
• ADVANCED PEAK - This is the advanced off-peak cost plus a fixed amount as a disincentive to travelling at these times. PEAK fares should only be in place on routes that need them i.e. commuter routes.
• PEAK - This is the cost of the advanced peak plus difference between advanced and walk up off-peak tickets
• SEASON TICKETS - These should be the cost 5 return tickets for the route per a week for the period of the ticket minus a set percentage saving. This percentage should be larger for longer season tickets.

Other details

• The currently regulated tickets, esp. advanced tickets should be increased in price so that walk up fares can be decreased. The difference at the moment is ridiculous. The difference should be an incentive to book in advanced, not a disincentive to travel by train.
• There will be no difference between train companies in pricing it will all be effectively regulated.
• Franchises should be branded in such a way that it doesn't change if the operator changes. Like what is currently being done with ScotRail.
• Peak times will be the same for all routes which are deemed to be commuter routes. Non commuter routes will have no peak.
• Split tickets will no longer be an issue as they would cost the same as the through fare

There will probably be many flaws with this due to over simplification but I'm sure there must be a better way to do ticketing. What do other countries do? Also is there any current campaign trying to get ticketing reformed?

 

[yorkie]

I think that wouldn't help and in some cases be worse. Why the need for two Advance categories? And what is the "fixed amount" and how is it calculated?

Which routes count as "commuter" routes and which don't? You can't really commute from York to London but the fact that people do such journeys for business meetings means it carries a premium at peak times.

As for standardising peak times, are you suggesting an Off Peak from Peterborough to York would no longer be valid at certain times? If so you are proposing fare rises.

How will you stop split ticketing? Putting up cheaper fares?

 

[Mojo]

Also have to take issue with only one type of Off-peak - on some routes it's useful to have a morning only restriction, and a morning & evening on the other.

Also, what about many offers that only exist on weekends or evenings which are currently also issued under the "Super Off-peak header."

 

[EM2]

There is no such thing as a 'peak fare'. The fares charged at peak times are the standard fares, it's off-peak fares that are discounted from them. And also, if you are a Priv holder, your 75% off doesn't always seem so cheap!

 

[glynn80]

[*]OFF PEAK - This is the Advanced ticket plus a plenty for not booking in advanced. This should be a percentage of the Advanced ticket cost so that not booking longer distance journeys is discouraged more than short ones.

Not sure I understand what your getting at with this ticket. Is ticket the ADVANCED OFF PEAK plus a fixed amount for not booking in advance?

[*]ADVANCED PEAK - This is the advanced off-peak cost plus a fixed amount as a disincentive to travelling at these times. PEAK fares should only be in place on routes that need them i.e. commuter routes.

Why do commuter routes "need" ADVANCED tickets, most TOCs try to discourage "Advance" fares on peak routes. This is because in certain circumstances commuters block book advance fares on their route instead of buying a season ticket (especially if not travelling every working day).

[*]PEAK - This is the cost of the advanced peak plus difference between advanced and walk up off-peak tickets

This is too low a fare in my opinion, if we are to use fares as a discrimination base to stop peak travel (which we have to with restricted capacity) the difference between advanced and walk up off peak tickets, added onto the advanced peak fare seems too low an increase in cost to be an effective barrier to stop persons travelling in the peak on walk up fares (this being the main capacity issue where there is overcrowding).

[*]SEASON TICKETS - These should be the cost 5 return tickets for the route per a week for the period of the ticket minus a set percentage saving. This percentage should be larger for longer season tickets.

This is ridiculous. This gives very little incentive to purchase a season ticket if you don't travel every working day of the week and even if you do perhaps little incentive again if you have time to purchase your ticket in the morning. Season tickets being a large chunk of many TOCs revenue they are unlikely to reform season tickets as they work well now. Annual season tickets are priced at the 40 weekly season tickets, monthly season tickets are priced at 3.84 weekly season tickets and weekly season tickets are not exactly the multiple of any fare but are always lower than five return tickets valid at peak time.

[*]The currently regulated tickets, esp. advanced tickets should be increased in price so that walk up fares can be decreased. The difference at the moment is ridiculous. The difference should be an incentive to book in advanced, not a disincentive to travel by train.

Advanced tickets are not regulated at the moment at all, regulated tickets are basically most "Saver" and Commuter fares. If you increase advanced fares and lower walk up fares you lose the incentive for passengers to purchase advanced tickets and you are back to the situation of overcrowding on certain services while others cart fresh air around

[*]Franchises should be branded in such a way that it doesn't change if the operator changes. Like what is currently being done with ScotRail.

A good idea, reliverying is a waste of time and money. One national livery with small logos at the doors to inform customers who is operating their service (so as not to inform customer with TOC specific tickets) is something that should be put into practice.

[*]Peak times will be the same for all routes which are deemed to be commuter routes. Non commuter routes will have no peak.

This is unlikely to happen due to local timetabling issues meaning peak times on some routes do not fit into specific boundaries and various easements have to be issued, this would balloon in number if there were only one set peak time causing even more confusion.

 

[moonrakerz]

The more and more I book train tickets the more convinced that it is a complete mess

I really must heartily agree with this statement - but having said that, I must admit that there are some incredible bargains to be had if you can pick your way through the complete mess that the fares structure has become.

Unfortunately, even the fares that appear on the websites don't actually tell the whole story.

If I wish to travel to London, I have a choice of GWR or SWT. On their websites they both offer the same fares (6 Advance Standard Singles & 5 Advance First Singles !!!). These range from £5.95 to £61 (Full fare).

However, on closer examination the cheapest fares (First & Standard) are not actually available on ANY GWR service into Paddington and the only "allowed" service from Paddington involves 3 changes and an arrival home at 2330 - on a line with a direct service !

I have given up on GWR now, despite their trains being faster, swisher and free coffee/bikkies/newspapers/use of Lounge (in First).
I now use SWT which does take a little longer but I can get a First return to W'Loo for £21.10 (On a railcard), with about 7-10 days planning ahead.

The simple answer, of course, is to have 2 fares - "walk-up" and "advance", but of course "advance" would need some restrictions placed on many to stop pesky commuters taking "advantage" of these. We now have three types of tickets !............................... etc, etc, etc.

Perhaps someone from the Airline Industry could help ?

 

[yorkie]

If I wish to travel to London, I have a choice of GWR or SWT. On their websites they both offer the same fares (6 Advance Standard Singles & 5 Advance First Singles !!!). These range from £5.95 to £61 (Full fare).

Their ticket issuing websites are the same so of course they offer the same fares! The website is Thetrainline, and they have to be impartial so have to show the other operators fares.

Perhaps someone from the Airline Industry could help ?

Erm, yeah make every affordable fare advance and operator-specific, and walk-on interavailable fares so expensive no-one can afford them. Good idea! Oh, wait....D'oh!!

 

[ajdunlop]

Ok so maybe not so easy.
Does anyone know what other countries do? Are they any better?
When I look for a train on bahn.de I get one price per train. Would I be able to lower this by splitting my journey or are things done differently. I always thought that lots of companies on the continent used a distance based pricing structure.

Maybe what needs to be done is rather than changing the ticket system too much, make the websites and ticket machines more able to find the actual cheapest fare, including splitting journeys.

I think as long as there are separate companies setting different pricing for the same bits of track the ticketing prices are still going to be silly.

 

[moonrakerz]

Their ticket issuing websites are the same so of course they offer the same fares! The website is Thetrainline, and they have to be impartial so have to show the other operators fares.

Perhaps I didn't explain that too well, but as a "ticketing expert" I thought you would have immediately realised I was referring to two different routes, with different starting points and different finishing points. Especially as I did actually mention Paddington & Waterloo as the London stations for the two companies.
Your comment about "impartiality" and showing other operators fares is, I am afraid, factually incorrect. Looking at the Bristol Temple Meads to London route on the GWR website, not all of the "competing" SWT services are shown. Just to highlight the point made by the OP, there are two fares shown as "Advance Singles" at £13-85 each way - One is for use on GWR services only - the other is valid only via Salisbury (SWT). If that isn't lunacy ................. !
The fares structure on this one route alone is riddled with anonomolies, for example there are fares shown for journeys "through" London on SWT that are cheaper than with GWR and do not appear on either the GWR or National Rail websites. To find out about these you need to go to SWT's own Advance Fares mini-website !

Example: To get to Rochester in Kent (a trip I have done) on a day selected at random.
Fare on GWR website:- £27.45 (railcard)
Fare on SWT website:- £21-70 (railcard)
Both of these journeys are using exactly the same time trains: SWT to London, SE Trains to Rochester !

Erm, yeah make every affordable fare advance and operator-specific, and walk-on interavailable fares so expensive no-one can afford them. Good idea! Oh, wait....D'oh!!

Perhaps your "fares expertise" should also cover airfares - then you will see how much air fares have fallen over the years whilst train fares have risen inexorably.
Even with all the "deals" available on the trains, my sister-in-law finds it cheaper to fly from Southampton to Edinburgh - it takes an hour, she is guaranteed a seat - and the refreshments trolley WILL get to her before the end of the journey !

I said I didn't know the answer, but to blindly rely on all the various websites to come up with the "gospel truth" and the same fares is bordering on the gullible !

PS: No one in their right mind buys tickets from the trainline !

 

[Mojo]

Even with all the "deals" available on the trains, my sister-in-law finds it cheaper to fly from Southampton to Edinburgh - it takes an hour, she is guaranteed a seat - and the refreshments trolley WILL get to her before the end of the journey.

It may very well be cheaper, but you're comparing the 'plane ticket, that is only valid on a specific service, with little recourse in case of delays, to a train ticket that is valid on one of many trains. It's quite likely that booking in Advance will return a cheaper train fare.

 

[ashworth]

The more and more I book train tickets the more convinced that it is a complete mess I become. If hypothetically the following was done can anyone think of any downsides?

Ticket types:

• ADVANCED OFF PEAK - The base ticket price based on distance (not linearly but so that short distances aren't too cheap and long distance not too expensive).
• OFF PEAK - This is the Advanced ticket plus a plenty for not booking in advanced. This should be a percentage of the Advanced ticket cost so that not booking longer distance journeys is discouraged more than short ones.
• ADVANCED PEAK - This is the advanced off-peak cost plus a fixed amount as a disincentive to travelling at these times. PEAK fares should only be in place on routes that need them i.e. commuter routes.
• PEAK - This is the cost of the advanced peak plus difference between advanced and walk up off-peak tickets
• SEASON TICKETS - These should be the cost 5 return tickets for the route per a week for the period of the ticket minus a set percentage saving. This percentage should be larger for longer season tickets.

• 
  
  I have already expressed my views elsewhere in this forum concerning my views about AP Tickets.
  This would all work far better if it was a standardised national fares scheme, but it doesn't when the availabilty of AP fares vary so much from one TOC to another.
  
  Some TOC's, for example Northern, do not issue any AP tickets. Others. for example EMT (especially on the former Central Trains routes), do not issue AP tickets for journeys that involve a change of train, even when both trains are with the same TOC.
  
  For example, most long distance journeys from places in the East Midlands like Lincoln and Mansfield will require at least one change of train at Nottingham or Worksop/Sheffield. From Lincoln there does not seem to be any AP tickets available involving connections at Nottingham or Sheffield.
  Mansfield is not much better off when EMT can't even provide AP tickets to destinations on its own Liverpool-Norwich service.
  
  It is all very well saying buy an AP ticket from Nottingham or Sheffield and pay for the local connection, but what happens if the local connection is delayed or cancelled? Would your AP ticket from Nottingham or Sheffield be valiid on a later service if you didn't have a through ticket?
  
  A simplification of the ticketing system will only really work if it is a national system and is fair to all rail users in all parts of the country.

 

[yorkie]

It is all very well saying buy an AP ticket from Nottingham or Sheffield and pay for the local connection, but what happens if the local connection is delayed or cancelled? Would your AP ticket from Nottingham or Sheffield be valiid on a later service if you didn't have a through ticket?

That subject is on another topic altogether. It's already been covered. Here is one example of a topic where it has cropped up before (if you want to expand on that you can post a new thread).

Ok so maybe not so easy.
Does anyone know what other countries do? Are they any better?
When I look for a train on bahn.de I get one price per train. Would I be able to lower this by splitting my journey or are things done differently. I always thought that lots of companies on the continent used a distance based pricing structure.

Maybe they do but there are problems with that. For example, how do you price Nottingham to Peterborough? How do you price York to Whitby? What about York to Middlesbrough?

Do you calculate the longest possible distance for an Any Permitted and offer loads of route specific tickets that are cheaper? Or do you only make the shortest route valid?

I think as long as there are separate companies setting different pricing for the same bits of track the ticketing prices are still going to be silly.

Can you give an example of that? as if interpreted literally it actually makes perfect sense: e.g. London to Peterborough. Same track but FCC is slower so you'd expect it to be cheaper.... surely?

Perhaps your "fares expertise" should also cover airfares - then you will see how much air fares have fallen over the years whilst train fares have risen inexorably.

Walk-on fares have risen at a high rate but advance fares have not, so I assume that you are making a like-for-like comparison, so do you have some historical data of walk-on inter-available air fares to prove that they have fallen? (I'm not suggesting they haven't - I'd just like to see the prices and the evidence). I'm not interested in comparing advance air fares with walk-on rail fares.

Even with all the "deals" available on the trains, my sister-in-law finds it cheaper to fly from Southampton to Edinburgh - it takes an hour, she is guaranteed a seat - and the refreshments trolley WILL get to her before the end of the journey !

What was the final price she paid? The cheapest Advance price is £19.50 (with no hidden charges).

 

[glynn80]

Perhaps your "fares expertise" should also cover airfares - then you will see how much air fares have fallen over the years whilst train fares have risen inexorably.
Even with all the "deals" available on the trains, my sister-in-law finds it cheaper to fly from Southampton to Edinburgh - it takes an hour, she is guaranteed a seat - and the refreshments trolley WILL get to her before the end of the journey !

Well walk on fully interavailable airline tickets are both rare and extremely expensive. The full fare airline fare- YY fare code is the full fare economy class ticket, it is valid on all full IATA members airlines and is fully exchangeable and refundable. But even this ticket is not wholly interavailable in that many airlines do not fully participate in IATA ticketing this includes most budget airline and even some of the larger airlines like Lufthansa.

 

[yorkie]

Perhaps I didn't explain that too well, but as a "ticketing expert" I thought you would have immediately realised I was referring to two different routes, with different starting points and different finishing points. Especially as I did actually mention Paddington & Waterloo as the London stations for the two companies.

What? As I said, in response to your statement that "..On their websites they both offer the same fares...", this is because they both use Thetrainline as their booking engine with their own branding. I have checked and the fares offered by either site are identical.

Your comment about "impartiality" and showing other operators fares is, I am afraid, factually incorrect.

Err, nope.

Looking at the Bristol Temple Meads to London route on the GWR website, not all of the "competing" SWT services are shown.

Yep, 'cos they are slower. Try clicking on "Show routes with cheaper tickets may be available" link at the bottom.

Just to highlight the point made by the OP, there are two fares shown as "Advance Singles" at £13-85 each way - One is for use on GWR services only - the other is valid only via Salisbury (SWT). If that isn't lunacy ................. !

So? The AP via Salisbury are priced at various levels between £10 and £25 for standard class, one of those is priced at £21. Meanwhile, the AP fares via Great Westn Only are priced at various levels between £10 and £63.50. Some of these are at the same level including the £21 (£13.85 with railcard) levels you found.

The fares structure on this one route alone is riddled with anonomolies, for example there are fares shown for journeys "through" London on SWT that are cheaper than with GWR and do not appear on either the GWR or National Rail websites. To find out about these you need to go to SWT's own Advance Fares mini-website !

No, you don't - you just need to search for slower trains - or specify a via point.

I said I didn't know the answer, but to blindly rely on all the various websites to come up with the "gospel truth" and the same fares is bordering on the gullible !

In English please?

PS: No one in their right mind buys tickets from the trainline !

Well you were searching websites powered by Thetrainline

P
Example: To get to Rochester in Kent (a trip I have done) on a day selected at random.
Fare on GWR website:- £27.45 (railcard)
Fare on SWT website:- £21-70 (railcard)
Both of these journeys are using exactly the same time trains: SWT to London, SE Trains to Rochester !

I'll look into this if you can give me a date, and departure times for the trains in question.

 

[Matt Taylor]

Virgin are possibly the worst culprits when it comes to raising the price of unregulated fares and amending the restriction to make Off Peak Returns a lot less flexible than pre-1996.

Euston to Manchester Anytime Return is GBP247 (61.75 PRIV), the Off Peak Return is 66.10, the difference between the two should not be so great and now means that the PRIV discount is almost worthless on this route.

Having said that Virgin now have a majority market share on the route whereas five years ago the airlines were in charge.

For travel at 7am on Thursday with a return at the same time on Friday Virgin have a lowest available fare of GBP144, British Airways comes in at 315.20...which is why rail is winning in this market so although I don't agree with Virgin's fares policy I have to admit that from a business perspective it is the right thing to do-and it is clearly working.



Matt

 

[moonrakerz]

What? As I said, in response to your statement that "..On their websites they both offer the same fares...", this is because they both use Thetrainline as their booking engine with their own branding. I have checked and the fares offered by either site are identical.

Err, nope.

Yep, 'cos they are slower. Try clicking on "Show routes with cheaper tickets may be available" link at the bottom.

So? The AP via Salisbury are priced at various levels between £10 and £25 for standard class, one of those is priced at £21. Meanwhile, the AP fares via Great Westn Only are priced at various levels between £10 and £63.50. Some of these are at the same level including the £21 (£13.85 with railcard) levels you found.


No, you don't - you just need to search for slower trains - or specify a via point.


In English please?

Well you were searching websites powered by Thetrainline


I'll look into this if you can give me a date, and departure times for the trains in question.

I am not going to bother going through your response point by point - there seems little mileage in that. You just reject points that I raise as being incorrect when they are in fact - FACT.
If you say that black is white, I am not going to argue with you - there seems little point !
eg: "Err, Nope" Very profound and meaningful response !

My original premise was that all available fares are NOT shown on all the websites - you sated:- "they have to be impartial so have to show the other operators fares."

Imaginary journey from Warminster to Waterloo, via Salisbury. 0946 on 18 March 2009:

0946 because it is the first through train of the day, 18 March at random.

GWR Website:

GWR Website "Show routes with cheaper tickets may be available"

First fare actually available is £22-70.

SWT Website:

SWT offers fares which do not appear on the GWR site - FACT.

When the £9-90 fares have gone there are cheaper fares on SWT site than on the GWR site - FACT - been there, seen it, done it !

 

[whoshotjimmi]

Let's look at this in a different way. A commuter travels to work at a certain time and travels home from work at a certain time. I really only know one place in England where a 24 hour culture exists and that is London. And even that is not a true example of one. The only way passengers will move away from the peak services is if this country suddenly goes through a major cultural change, regardless of the price of a ticket.

Obviously there is no easy fix to any of this. I don't think many people really properly understand ticket prices. I certainly don't! And I pay interest to the ticket prices available to me.

Maybe we need to think a bit more European about this. For example, French trains are more expensive according to the quality and speed of the service. An off peak return from Leeds to Sheffield is approx £9. For that, I have a choice of a XC express which takes 40ish minutes, an express Northern service which takes about an hour or the local stopping services which take an hour and a half. All for the same price. Maybe different pricing structures would take commuters away from some faster trains and spread the load more evenly? I appreciate that there isn't as much choice over many parts of the network, but surely it could be implemented in some areas.

 

[yorkie]

eg: "Err, Nope" Very profound and meaningful response !

Other than repeat myself, what more can I say?

They do have to be impartial.

That doesn't mean that they always are. But that's the rules. Generally speaking, they do comply.

Rather than disagree with a fact I have stated, a more reasonable response would be "Thanks for that information but it appears they are not being impartial in this case".

When the £9-90 fares have gone there are cheaper fares on SWT site than on the GWR site - FACT - been there, seen it, done it !

I found a date when £9.90 fares have sold out and FGW site did then offer the next available quota. See attached file.

As I said before they have to offer the cheapest fare! If they do not they are breaking ATOC rules.

I don't think there is any issue of SWT selling a cheaper quota of fares than FGW. There may well be a completely separate routeing issue of FGW being biased against via Salisbury that I have identified, this does not appear to be the case on FSR for example, this needs further investigation...

If you would stop being so rude and if you would post more details (for example in your first post you did not even state where you were travelling from or that you are quoting Y-P fares!) then we can help.

BTW, I look forward to doing the comparison with plane fares on a like-for-like basis, do you have the fare data for planes yet?

 

[yorkie]

An off peak return from Leeds to Sheffield is approx £9. For that, I have a choice of a XC express which takes 40ish minutes, an express Northern service which takes about an hour or the local stopping services which take an hour and a half. All for the same price. Maybe different pricing structures would take commuters away from some faster trains and spread the load more evenly? I appreciate that there isn't as much choice over many parts of the network, but surely it could be implemented in some areas.

This is an interesting response because it's the opposite of what the OP suggested - this is actually about introducing TOC-specific fares and making the fares structure for this route more complex. Not that I am saying it's wrong, or right, just an observation.

NT set the fare, so XC cannot introduce a TOC-specific fare. XC could, in theory, throw another wobbler to ATOC and demand control of this route (like they did with the Chiltern route into Brum), and if they won NT could introduce a higher fare. I don't think XC would bother though as they can't raise the fare much as NT kindly changed the Saver into Anytime and it's regulated and very reasonably priced (£11.20), so all that would allow NT to do is introduce a cheaper NT-only fare. The only benefit to XC in doing this would be to prvent the £8.80 CDR being used in the evening peak, giving their conductors the right to charge excesses of £2 on peak departures from Sheffield. (I can imagine any XC pricing managers reading this salivating at the thought...).

The ticket system is a mess but I don't think there's an easy way out of this mess, and it's interesting that some think there should be more TOC specific fares in order to spread loads and some think that there should not be any TOC specific fares in order to simplify fares.