LNW-GW Joint
Veteran Member
I guess we can kiss goodbye to Fares regulation then. That would be a real sting in the tail.
My memory of BR was that there were at least 3 groups of fares, controlled by the sectors - ie IC, NSE and Regional (plus things like sleepers, international etc).
They are the ones who had their own time restrictions, decided whether (eg) Day Returns or Savers were available, determined the routes you could use, and set premium levels of fares wherever they could.
There was certainly no "standard" set of nationalised fares which worked across the country.
Then there were the PTE/LU fare structures and their local rules.
All that's really happened under privatisation is that several more layers of complexity have been built in, but the underlying BR structure is still there.
Today you have stronger localisation from PTEs, city regions, devolved authorities etc, plus a larger/more dominant TfL reaching further into "BR" territory.
It's still very difficult to perceive a single nationwide fares system with the need to integrate with all these disparate (but publicly owned) interests.
The extreme TOC-specific rules might well disappear, but we'll still likely have an over-complex system even under public ownership.