thedbdiboy
Member
- Joined
- 10 Sep 2011
- Messages
- 960
The current fares structure was not designed with a routeing guide in mind - it used the concept of 'any reasonable'. In my BR days, 'Any Reasonable' meant just that and was enforced with BR being judge, jury and executioner. There was no waving a routeing guide or an itinerary if you were on a train that the guard considered bore no relation to your ticketed journey. Because the BR system was transposed lock, stock and barrel into the privatisation regulation, the lawyers deemed a routeing guide neccessary. It was a ring bound folder of such complexity that no-one - staff or passenger - really used it, relying instead on common sense. Then journey planners came in and being computerised immediately started exposing hundreds of gaps and errors in the routeing guide - trying to plug those is what has caused the proliferation of restrictions, but the root cause is that modern computerised journey planning is just not compatible with trying to keep track of every conceivable theoretical route possibility. All the proposals do is to set out a framework for a fares structure that is capable of working out the correct price for any journey by any route.RDG/TOCs are very fond of claiming the current design has been around for decades. In fact, it is their actions which have caused many of the problems in the choosing of a ticket - introducing more and more routing restrictions (as stated many times, the original Routeing Guide contained 26 maps - the latest version contains over 350) and timing restrictions (until they started meddling, 'saver' tickets almost never had time restrictions expect for travel to/from/via London and day return tickets outside of London & the South East had no evening restrictions).
Interesting, also, that despite all the devices available to help staff, many refuse to use them and trot out the line "I have worked here for xx years" with the clear implication that things have been set in stone since pre-digital days - they obviously subscribe to the RDG/TOC mantra.
To be crystal clear - the routeing guide has NEVER worked properly. If what you are saying is that it was simpler to spot the errors in 1995 if you knew where to look, then that is true - but that doesn't make it right.
Of course, if the actual concern is that train operators might be able to set fares for journeys and be able to ensure that passengers actually pay them, without any opportunity for a select few to be able to spot the errors and omissions and use them to advantage, that is a different thing. But this is a government specified and contracted railway so the notion that somehow it must retain a fares structure full of mistakes just to give people some sport is unsustainable.