Raileasy campaign for changes to the reservation system, to make it easier to show the cheapest fares

[jthjth]

I got an email from Raileasy/Trainsplit today asking me to sign a petition to back their ADS availability campaign. To be honest, after reading their linked blog page I’m no further forwards in understanding the issues and why this data is apparently being restricted.

https://beta.trainsplit.com/improving-uk-rail-fares-and-train-ticketing

The UK rail industry is losing out on hundreds of millions in potential revenue all because train fares are not presented in a clear, consumer-friendly way — unlike flights.

The CEO of Raileasy (owners of TrainSplit), George Sikking shares the solution to fix this, calling for the Availability Distribution Service (ADS) to be opened up to all retailers, with real-time Skyscanner-style calendar views that show cheaper, quieter trains.

"The industry must open up fare and availability data (ADS) to all independent retailers, because 65% of travellers are currently put off by the prices they see first when searching for fares".

This change is low-cost, high-impact, and could unlock £500m in incremental revenue while making train travel more appealing and accessible — especially for leisure travellers, students, and flexible passengers...

Can anyone explain?

(ADS - Advanced Distribution Service, and no, I don’t know what that means either)

 

[Benjwri]

I believe it is about how retailers are restricted in how many requests they can make for reservation info, to know the availability of advances, and so it isn’t possible to have things like calendars of fares, or prompt customers that there are cheaper fares available at another time or another day.

 

[Haywain]

ADS?

 

[OscarH]

I believe it is about how retailers are restricted in how many requests they can make for reservation info, to know the availability of advances, and so it isn’t possible to have things like calendars of fares, or prompt customers that there are cheaper fares available at another time or another day.

Pretty much this. The way you have to get availability for advance tickets (and even walkups on the TOCs playing those silly games) has ridiculously low limits - frankly the limits don't even account for people making journeys with multiple legs, or routes with slower alternatives like LNWR, they genuinely are insane.

Everyone is bodging horrible caches that have their issues, and things like calendar views are essentially impossible - one or two TOCs have managed it for a very limited set of journeys, but it has serious flaws, as well as not being able to be expanded.

 

[hexagon789]

ADS?

Advanced Distribution Service

 

[jthjth]

Pretty much this. The way you have to get availability for advance tickets (and even walkups on the TOCs playing those silly games) has ridiculously low limits - frankly the limits don't even account for people making journeys with multiple legs, or routes with slower alternatives like LNWR, they genuinely are insane.

Everyone is bodging horrible caches that have their issues, and things like calendar views are essentially impossible - one or two TOCs have managed it for a very limited set of journeys, but it has serious flaws, as well as not being able to be expanded.

So what is the rationale behind the limits? Lack of computer resources, commercial considerations?

 

[OscarH]

So what is the rationale behind the limits? Lack of computer resources, commercial considerations?

The former is the official line. I think I risk getting in trouble if I say what I think the actual reasoning is :P

 

[styles]

I mean I agree with the campaign, but it's not as if it's impossible as it stands?

From Trainline:





I note that ScotRail (which uses Trainline's booking engine) doesn't display these options mind.

Presumably the issue is having to cache such large amounts of data.

 

[Tom]

I mean I agree with the campaign, but it's not as if it's impossible as it stands?

It is not impossible, no, but Trainline benefit from having a huge volume of sales including white label for TOCs so are able to cache a huge number of responses. Equally it isn't allowed to just throw speculative queries out there to the reservations system as I understand it, so only the largest players can do this to any degree. Whether they do it well is a different ballgame.

ADS would also benefit RTT's own Daytripper product in that we can only at the moment surface walk-up tickets as an 'up to' price. How many people are going to query, say, Freshford as an origin enough to allow us to build a reasonable up to date cache? Caching major flows are all very well and good but if we want a true end to end journey there needs to be a lot more data.

 

[Adam Williams]

I mean I agree with the campaign, but it's not as if it's impossible as it stands?

If you've ever used it, you'll find that TTL's implementation can quite often display nonsense that doesn't actually exist at the point it goes ahead and does a live RARS query (i.e. when you click-through for a specific date).

Such are the perils inherent with any unofficial cache.

Presumably the issue is having to cache such large amounts of data.

The actual data storage is trivial. It's not "big data" by any means.

ADS - Advanced Distribution Service

Advanced Distribution Service

I'm not sure why the page suggests that this is what ADS stands for; was not my understanding! What independent retailers are calling for is an Availability Distribution Service.

 

[jthjth]

If you've ever used it, you'll find that TTL's implementation can quite often display nonsense that doesn't actually exist at the point it goes ahead and does a live RARS query (i.e. when you click-through for a specific date).

Such are the perils inherent with any unofficial cache.



The actual data storage is trivial. It's not "big data" by any means.





I'm not sure why the page suggests that this is what ADS stands for; was not my understanding! What independent retailers are calling for is an Availability Distribution Service.

Are you able to clarify why there is a reluctance to provide this information/service? It’s hard to get behind the campaign without knowing both sides of the argument.

 

[Haywain]

Are you able to clarify why there is a reluctance to provide this information/service? It’s hard to get behind the campaign without knowing both sides of the argument.

There are limits to the number of enquiries that can be made against the reservation system to provide the information. This is a particular disadvantage to smaller retailers compared to Trainline, who have many more 'real' enquiries to populate their availability charts.

 

[jthjth]

There are limits to the number of enquiries that can be made against the reservation system to provide the information. This is a particular disadvantage to smaller retailers compared to Trainline, who have many more 'real' enquiries to populate their availability charts.

I’m trying to find out why there are limit and if it is viable to increase them. Do retailers have to pay for each enquiry?

 

[Tom]

I’m trying to find out why there are limit and if it is viable to increase them. Do retailers have to pay for each enquiry?

The problem with this is where you raise it to. Some products may desire or need a never-ending number of queries and so you're killing off the potential for innovative products and services by just keeping with the status quo which will always have artificial limits applied whether they be for technical or purely for commercial reasons. For my needs, I'd need something in the region of about 500-600 queries against the reservation for every user query to do something I'd like to do.

The flip side of ADS is that you would need to 'run once' on change and have it available for everyone as it would be more of a streaming service of changing reservation availability to each retailer. There is a cost with setting up said service but the overall incremental costs per additional retailer and product are minimal.

 

[Mike@Raileasy]

I got an email from Raileasy/Trainsplit today asking me to sign a petition to back their ADS availability campaign. To be honest, after reading their linked blog page I’m no further forwards in understanding the issues and why this data is apparently being restricted.

https://beta.trainsplit.com/improving-uk-rail-fares-and-train-ticketing


Can anyone explain?

(ADS - Advanced Distribution Service, and no, I don’t know what that means either)

ADS will hopefully be a real time feed from RARS updating changes to availability - hence it stands for "availability" distribution service. So retailers' and TOCs' websites/apps will query their own local availability caches populated by that rather than RARS. That will enable calendar views for example as opposed to results for half a dozen or so services. There's been a requirement for a calendar view in something like 5 recent TOC tenders. Why should everyone have to use Iptis to get its cache (primarily powered by NR.co.uk?), I'm sure people on here know full well that consumers need a choice of journey planners to get a better range of journey options/fares.

The IRR commissioned Jacobs research - some of you on here might have completed the survey so thanks if you did - revealed that with weekly or calendar views of when the quieter/cheaper services are available and being able to "push" real time journey/fare options to consumers, both powered by ADS, could generate £500m per annum in incremental revenue. And yes, that is taking abstraction and supply side constraints into account.

One (Jacobs) stat that amazed me was that about half the customers on an average long distance train are compromising on their preferred time, day and even destination because of the price of the services first returned in their search. Whilst they have booked, it's not a "good look" for your customers to have to always hunt down a fare that suits them. ADS will make that hunting simple. It will also make it simple to straightaway see cheaper fares that might convince the 23% who walk away/choose to travel another way to take the train.

So it's a win for consumers, a win for the industry and a win for HMT cos the IRR has said it will fund any development work required.

The thing that has amazed me (about the Jacobs research) is that no one from all the stakeholders we have presented it to has said "wow, £500m pa, that's a lot of money!" Maybe members of this forum could give this a like, or the equivalent on here, if you reckon £500m is a lot of money

 

[Adam Williams]

So it's a win for consumers, a win for the industry and a win for HMT cos the IRR has said it will fund any development work required.

I think this is a really key point worth underlining, in that independent retailers have "put their money where their mouth is" and agreed to fund the CapEx.

 

[Haywain]

The IRR commissioned Jacobs research

IRR?

 

[Mike@Raileasy]

I think this is a really key point worth underlining, in that independent retailers have "put their money where their mouth is" and agreed to fund the CapEx.

Indeed, and as someone, who did a load of number crunching about the data requirements, said about its feasibility, for £500m anything should (technically) feasible.

IRR?

Independent Rail Retailers

 

[35B]

The thing that has amazed me (about the Jacobs research) is that no one from all the stakeholders we have presented it to has said "wow, £500m pa, that's a lot of money!" Maybe members of this forum could give this a like, or the equivalent on here, if you reckon £500m is a lot of money

From experience elsewhere, this doesn't surprise me - the misalignment between the business (which might want to make that extra income) and the operational and technical (who can only see the cost of the change) means that no brainers like this get lost in the ether.

 

[Mike@Raileasy]

From experience elsewhere, this doesn't surprise me - the misalignment between the business (which might want to make that extra income) and the operational and technical (who can only see the cost of the change) means that no brainers like this get lost in the ether.

The operational side for availability queries, inc the costs, would move to retailers or TIS suppliers with perhaps a final "sanity check" with RARS on what the customer wanted to book before proceeding through the booking flow. As above, cost of implementing it will be borne by IRR members. No brainer indeed in our opinion too.

 

[jthjth]

ADS will hopefully be a real time feed from RARS updating changes to availability - hence it stands for "availability" distribution service. So retailers' and TOCs' websites/apps will query their own local availability caches populated by that rather than RARS. That will enable calendar views for example as opposed to results for half a dozen or so services. There's been a requirement for a calendar view in something like 5 recent TOC tenders. Why should everyone have to use Iptis to get its cache (primarily powered by NR.co.uk?), I'm sure people on here know full well that consumers need a choice of journey planners to get a better range of journey options/fares.

The IRR commissioned Jacobs research - some of you on here might have completed the survey so thanks if you did - revealed that with weekly or calendar views of when the quieter/cheaper services are available and being able to "push" real time journey/fare options to consumers, both powered by ADS, could generate £500m per annum in incremental revenue. And yes, that is taking abstraction and supply side constraints into account.

One (Jacobs) stat that amazed me was that about half the customers on an average long distance train are compromising on their preferred time, day and even destination because of the price of the services first returned in their search. Whilst they have booked, it's not a "good look" for your customers to have to always hunt down a fare that suits them. ADS will make that hunting simple. It will also make it simple to straightaway see cheaper fares that might convince the 23% who walk away/choose to travel another way to take the train.

So it's a win for consumers, a win for the industry and a win for HMT cos the IRR has said it will fund any development work required.

The thing that has amazed me (about the Jacobs research) is that no one from all the stakeholders we have presented it to has said "wow, £500m pa, that's a lot of money!" Maybe members of this forum could give this a like, or the equivalent on here, if you reckon £500m is a lot of money

So are you able to clarify why this isn’t happening and why a petition is needed?

 

[Mike@Raileasy]

So are you able to clarify why this isn’t happening and why a petition is needed?

We're trying to convince stakeholders and just wanted to tell our customers and social media followers how it could change things for the better, get some support

 

[miklcct]

I will not sign this petition. I have read the newsletter and the mockups appear to make the booking experience of train travel more similar to air travel, and the need of getting availability only applies on Advance tickets.

Instead, I think that the experience should be more like finding information for bus and metro timetables and fares, where a list of routes, alongside with the average journey time on that route and peak / off-peak fares, are listed with the search result. TfL's journey planner is a good example of that.

 

[jthjth]

I think this is a really key point worth underlining, in that independent retailers have "put their money where their mouth is" and agreed to fund the CapEx.

So who is blocking this and why?

 

[ThisIsSurbiton]

There are limits to the number of enquiries that can be made against the reservation system to provide the information. This is a particular disadvantage to smaller retailers compared to Trainline, who have many more 'real' enquiries to populate their availability charts.

And even a big retailer isn't seeing the full picture, under various names this cache has been discussed for years, back to the original RARS (RIP). ADS would take a massive amount of load off the core system, which would only need to be queried once a ticket is being bought (simplifying a bit of course). Typically a hundreds to one ratio for online sales (and that's a bit controversial at the moment as well!). I hope RDG really look at this. I think it would alleviate a lot of their problems as well as putting all retailers on the same footing. Where can I go for £20 next Tuesday is a very expensive question to answer at the moment.

 

[js517]

the need of getting availability only applies on Advance tickets.

This is is not correct. Various TOCs set services as having mandatory reservations which means retailers must query availability for walk-up ticket types.

 

[Haywain]

Instead, I think that the experience should be more like finding information for bus and metro timetables and fares, where a list of routes, alongside with the average journey time on that route and peak / off-peak fares, are listed with the search result.

So, for a journey I made last week, I should be told how long the journey takes and that it will cost me £70, even though Advance tickets will mean it costing £25 for exactly the same journey time? I doubt many people would regard that as helpful.

 

[Mike@Raileasy]

So who is blocking this and why?

RDG "looks after" RARS. As for why, I'm not sure really but something was said recently to one retailer that the amount of data being transferred would be costly to handle and only the big boys could afford to "host/use" ADS. There are plenty of small companies integrating Darwin which is comparable data wise. Our tech guys reckon it would be trivial/like streaming Netflix

And even a big retailer isn't seeing the full picture, under various names this cache has been discussed for years, back to the original RARS (RIP). ADS would take a massive amount of load off the core system, which would only need to be queried once a ticket is being bought (simplifying a bit of course). Typically a hundreds to one ratio for online sales (and that's a bit controversial at the moment as well!). I hope RDG really look at this. I think it would alleviate a lot of their problems as well as putting all retailers on the same footing. Where can I go for £20 next Tuesday is a very expensive question to answer at the moment.

It's a not allowed question as is a comparison site - 85% of Jacobs respondents said they'd use a comparison site. Flight/holiday searches have had "anywhere" as a destination option for ages. GB rail customers could have that with ADS - perhaps with a budget like RTT's solution. Back to Jacobs - 60% of respondents said they are looking for new places to visit by train.

So, for a journey I made last week, I should be told how long the journey takes and that it will cost me £70, even though Advance tickets will mean it costing £25 for exactly the same journey time? I doubt many people would regard that as helpful.

I will not sign this petition. I have read the newsletter and the mockups appear to make the booking experience of train travel more similar to air travel, and the need of getting availability only applies on Advance tickets.

Instead, I think that the experience should be more like finding information for bus and metro timetables and fares, where a list of routes, alongside with the average journey time on that route and peak / off-peak fares, are listed with the search result. TfL's journey planner is a good example of that.

What you're suggesting reminds me of Qjump I think and that is going back some That used to display all the (valid) fares, so advances and walk ons, and the user had to select a fare and check the availability. When a few of the cheapest advances came back with no availability, it drove me nuts.

 

[35B]

The operational side for availability queries, inc the costs, would move to retailers or TIS suppliers with perhaps a final "sanity check" with RARS on what the customer wanted to book before proceeding through the booking flow. As above, cost of implementing it will be borne by IRR members. No brainer indeed in our opinion too.

Some of the experience I refer to is in the back end systems required to allow streaming rather than point lookups - an area of the infrastructure that really challenges cost/value equations even where the wider implementation costs are being met externally.

 

[Mike@Raileasy]

Some of the experience I refer to is in the back end systems required to allow streaming rather than point lookups - an area of the infrastructure that really challenges cost/value equations even where the wider implementation costs are being met externally.

Even for £500m in incremental revenue per annum?