I see no reason why season tickets, or even open tickets, could could not be retained. These are just additional tweaks. The system would presumably "learn" what services get full with holders of open tickets and price the walk up fares higher for these services. Add in holidays and so-forth, and the system has even more data to play with.
Modern systems allow the cost for the next journey leaving any given station to be shown in real time, so whilst it might be an "advance fare" it is still turn-up and go. Open tickets would presumably only be used by businesses who want to buy travel for their employees, so these would be priced accordingly. Most smaller businesses would probably reimburse fees paid out of pocket from their employees as this would be cheaper.
I conceded "touch in / touch out" systems make more sense in metropolitan areas, but the physical oyster card is yesterdays news. The option to use this for longer journeys might be available, but as a duress option as it would be more expensive than booking your seat!
Want something more radical: I think it worth considering that all seats on all journeys get allocated between two or more ticketing agencies who can then set their own fee structure in competition with each other to keep prices low.
Advance fares have been in existence since
before privatisation and yet it still isn't a way of ensuring balanced loadings. It is, and always has been, about
maximising revenue. Nothing more, nothing less. It's been quite effective in doing that, whilst giving the TOCs the 'excuse' that it's about balancing loadings. The general public has swallowed the lie.
As for having different ticketing agencies, surely that already exists, by way of the many different retailers we have? OK, many of them share a common system, but there are at least five different ones out there, so there is hardly a lack of competition, and individual TOCs or retailers can and do offer special discounts on specific fares.
The RDG want to get rid of fares regulation. If this happens we need to be very, very concerned.
Regulation isn't perfect but at least it keeps the price of some fares in check and provides a benchmark. Without regulation a London - Manchester Off Peak fare would not cost £89.
Agreed. If there is anything I am most worried about when it comes to the proposed changes, it is this - but then again, the relaxation of fares regulation is a central part of the proposals, so the two are intertwined. I quietly fear that the DfT will agree, because it has the potential to further decrease subsidies.
RDG's Press Release says this when it comes to the regulation of long distance fares:
https://www.raildeliverygroup.com/media-centre/press-releases/2019/469762745-2019-02-18.html
The very specific time bands that they refer to are the fault of the TOCs. They could relax them tomorrow if they wanted to. In fact they were far less restrictive when privatisation started, it's the greedy TOCs that made them more restrictive
Exactly. It's PR spin, nothing more. This bit:
The regulation of these fares at very specific time bands of travel has led to underutilised, more expensive services at natural peak times, and typically over-crowded, cheaper services during the ‘shoulder peak’ (immediately before and after peak times).
Is nothing more than an outright
lie. It is the TOCs' commercial interests, and their self-interested efforts at increasing revenue, that has led to this situation. Nothing more, nothing less. If there were no peak/off-peak divide there would still be overcrowding, but it would be spread more widely across services.
You
cannot trust a single word of the RDG's PR tripe. Unfortunately they have managed to infect the mainstream media with their disinformation and lies.
What a load of rubbish. There's absolutely nothing stopping the TOCs from offering good value fares throughout the day now. Advance fares are not subject to regulation and if the TOCs wanted to fill up the fresh air on all these empty 'peak' trains then I don't understand why they don't already offer cheap Advance fares on these services.
It's down to commercial interests, nothing else. XC had no need to introduce a blanket 2V (not before 09:30) restriction on their Off-Peak fares. They chose to do so for commercial reasons, and they are reaping the rewards of it now.
So they want to abolish regulation on long distance fares and replace it with an overall turnover based target. So in a franchise bidding competition a company wins by offering the best return to the Government. After a while they're not reaching their turnover target because their bid was 'too ambitious', guess what happens to fares? In case anyone's wondering we're already seen this on VTEC/LNER. They got into financial difficulty and Advance fares have risen significantly - thankfully regulation on Off Peak fares at least provides a cap. If we didn't have this regulation I dread to think how high the fares would become.
Exactly - this is a simply ridiculous situation. We have already been there, with turnover-based targets - see the original fares-basket based regulation (which was swept away in 2003). All
that does, is to increase the gap between Peak and Off-Peak. See, for example, Swindon to Didcot. £48.40 Anytime, £24.80 Off-Peak. At the time of privatisation, the fares were £24.17 and £18.88, respectively (adjusted for inflation). The difference couldn't be clearer - the Off-Peak has risen to the level of the old Anytime (though I'm not sure the Off-Peak would even have had any restrictions at privatisation). An the Anytime has more than doubled,
in real terms, despite the service remaining largely similar in terms of time and frequency. Completely unjustifiable, in other words.
The only benefit is Off-Peak Daytrippers, who have seen a new fare introduced at what is now £11.90, so a decrease in real terms. But everyone else has been ripped off royally, and a real-terms 36% reduction in
one fare does
not excuse the doubling of another, much more popular, fare.
They are not "abolishing fares regulation", but changing the basis for it to a capping process rather than on specific fare types.
As stated, we have been there, done that and got the T-shirt.
They talk about "small increases" in off-peak fares
Make no mistake, if they are targeting a reduction of overcrowding of a
third then the "small increases" - which, notably, there is no commitment to cap at a certain level - will end up having to be
massive increases from the perspective of passengers. Some Off-Peak fares could double, or even more. That will simply destroy a lot of the price sensitive leisure market.
One thing that I think needs changing is the availability of Anytime and Off-Peak tickets on routes with either no peak flows, or a very sparse service. For these trains there should just be one fare.
This already exists in some places, for example Transport for Wales has all their Off-Peak Returns set with restriction 8A, which means that there are no time restrictions whatsoever. Northern also converted a number of their former 8A Off-Peak Returns to Anytime (Short) Returns. It's clearly possible (although, for instance in the case of Transport for Wales, using more appropriate terminology - i.e. Anytime (Short) Return - is desirable).
Another thing is that if, say, there is a two-hourly service, and one train runs just before the peak cut-off for a few stations, before suddenly becoming off-peak, it should be valid for off-peak fares throughout.
This already happens in a number of places, with easements to general time restrictions. There's nothing stopping the TOCs from rolling this out further.
Why not make the £89 Off Peak ticket less restrictive and allow it to be used on some of the emptier peak trains?
Exactly - Virgin have already done this on Fridays out of Euston, so what's to stop them rolling it out over the entire week? Commercial interests, nothing more, I'd have thought.
TBH I think this needs to be enshrined in the franchise agreements. Something like incentivising TOCs for off peak "bums on seats" (but NOT overcrowding) - in order to prevent more car and air journeys.
Then they'd simply sell the seats at silly prices in order to ensure that they met the targets, resulting in overcrowding. It's very difficult to ensure that this is done correctly.
The two main players in this are the government and the TOCs. If you don't trust either of them to act in passengers' interests, we're basically s*****d, aren't we?
Absolutely, we are. The worst part is, the general public will be lapping up the disinformation that the media have lapped up from the RDG.