I already said, a nationwide PAYG system is not on the cards. We have a separate thread about PAYG proposals. It's not going to be nationwide. The proposals for a national fares structure are different.
Yes I know! But pay as you go can be used for shorter journeys so could be part of a solution!
Please remember that not every solution has to be universally applicable to all journeys and all ticket types to be worthwhile. Look at Oyster and contactless travel in London.
Exactly, so it is not going to be politically acceptable. To drop fares of the £350 variety significantly will take a lot of good value £12 type fares to go up significantly to make up the difference.
Three points:
1. I disagree that it's not politically acceptable. What you mean is that you don't like it as you might have to pay more.
2. If we take the view that no leisure traveller can ever see their fare rise, then we can't solve any of these problems. (BTW I'll tell you secret - business travellers buy leisure tickets too, especially if they are 75% cheaper!)
3. We don't know how many 12 pound fares are sold on a train. A TOC could reduce the number from 10 to 2 and we would never know for sure.
I created this thread to highlight the huge threat posed to leisure customers because it is very clear that affordable day return fares are under threat and are likely to increase substantially.
It is far less clear if commuters have anything to worry about. I do not think there is enough detail to know what is going to happen to those fares.
If you had simply said you are concerned about those too, I could agree and say that once more information becomes available one of us can create a thread about that.
But it looks to me that you are disagreeing with my concerns about good value day return fares. If you are disagreeing, that's fine, we'll agree to disagree. If you are not disagreeing then you are doing a good job of confusing me and making it look like you are!
My point is very clear! I think your point is also now clear, thanks to your last post.
You think it is absolutely unacceptable for leisure travellers to ever see their fares rise. They must be set in stone as they are now, even if we have to raise more revenue. I don't agree with that.
That's not how market based pricing and yield management techniques work, but really this is a discussion for a different thread.
In what way is it not? My example is obviously highly simplified and based on walk up fares. But market based pricing is not actually about allowing you to travel for 12 pounds. It might do so, or it might ask you for 200 pounds for the same seat instead. It depends which will make more money, overall, for the TOC.
Except it's not true; the fact is that an Anytime Return from Sheffield to Derby is three times higher than an Off Peak Day Return, precisely because your statement is considered to be the opposite of the reality by the train company that sets that fare.
You are completely missing the point! My point is that, if we have to make difficult choices to raise more revenue, maybe we should consider getting leisure travellers to pay their share of that. Of course, this is subject to the (very highly simplified) formula I posted in #180 and #65 above.
I think we can summarise our differences in this way:
- You reject any increase ever in leisure fares, even if fares overall have to rise and increasing leisure fares would raise more money and make better use of capacity. Business travellers with their magic money tree and commuters will have to suck it up.
- I think that leisure travellers should share the pain of higher fares, if higher fares are necessary. This is subject to using the magic formula of to determine if higher leisure fares would actually raise more money, and also please note that I am not actually in favour of higher fares at all.
I think some people envisage about 40,000 people getting their phones out to book tickets on their way out of the ground, while estimating how long they are going to be in the queue for.
It's fantasy.
I see you once again ignore the idea of pay as you go, which would probably solve the problem for a large proportion of the crowd.
(Which is not to say that I am in favour of this proposal)