Surely that is fourth rail?
There is a massive irony in those first six words given that HMG pushed exactly that very hard in the EU before we left. I am inclined to agree the overall tenor of your comment though.
It's important to be really clear here. It's an OA operator, no different from Lumo, Grand Central, or Hull.
That's not quite correct.
From my understanding it was hopeful that one minor ECML application was going to be decided upon, but I've not heard anything.
I want the legislation that creates Great British Railways to end any sharing of fare revenue between GBR and open access operators. Tickets sold for GBR train services should only be valid on GBR train services and not on any open access train services. Open access passenger train operators need to sell tickets for their own services only which are valid only on their own services and not valid on any GBR train services. Open access passenger train operators must no longer be entitled to any share of any GBR ticket sales.
I think that might be unhelpful for those who want the ease of turning up and being able to get any train going in the right direction.
So how would that work if I wanted to travel from, say, Doncaster to Howden for the day where there is an option of a two-hourly Hull Trains service via Selby or a less attractive journey by Northern, changing at cheerless and non-accessible Gilderdyke, which might be more frequent?
Just a further thought - what about a journey that is partly on open access and partly on a state train?
This is just adding a whole bunch of extra inconvenience to save pennies of expense. Does this apply to TfL/Scotrail/TfW too?
Genius, Not!
Surely a perfect argument there for having a single unified system?
Is there any reasoning behind this aside from a personal dislike of open access?
Or use tickets on both GBR and open-access? In a GBR world, there will still be other state operators (e.g. Scotrail, TfW), if anything, this is likely to increase as Merseytravel and particularly Bee Network have an interest in taking on trains themselves.
Well that reduced revenue from lower fares is made up by increased taxpayer subsidies.
I’m not clear what you mean here. Does “lower fares” mean individual ticket prices that OA users might have been paying (and to some extent other ‘cheap tickets’ from LNER that they have felt compelled to introduce to bolster passenger numbers)? In that case, abolition of OA would presumably lead to a ‘rebound’ of ticket prices that would increase LNER revenue. Hopefully enough passengers would simply be priced off rail or deterred from travelling by having to schlep over footbridges or through subways at Leeds, Doncaster, Darlington or wherever in order to change trains en route in future. This would avoid the need to replicate any OA capacity.
Well that is one way it could go.
Well we are in a position where state support to the (non HS2) industry is comparable to the entire passenger farebox.
Moderation of competition requirements imposed on the likes of Hull Trains to prevent them simply turning into abstraction machines constrain their stopping patterns.
Note here the budget airline model:
I support open access. I want it to continue. I do not see why it should be a problem when most open access train journeys are to and from London terminal stations because that is where the money is. Lumo sell their own anytime single fares only valid on their train services.
No. TfL/Scotrail/TfW would share tickets and ticket revenue with Great British Railways train operators.
TfL does not. London Underground is vertically integrated, but London Overground, DLR, and Elizabeth Line are run by private companies. (As are their buses, but that may be straying slightly).
TFW and nationalised Northern play the same petty revenue allocation game against each other with the advance 10p less than the Off peak ticket. In reality they should all accept the relatively small revenue drop in exchange for convenience that would likely attract more people anyway.
The open access operator should negotiate that with GBR.
Separate tickets would be required for the part of the journey with the open access operator and the part of the journey on Government train services.
I did say *effectively*. OK some delivery is contracted, but TfL carries branding, train spec, revenue risk & decides what runs; ticketing is unified even between modes. That's an entirely different model to OA and it works.
On the flipside it carries negligible harms, "stealing" money from services that DfT was never going to run anyway , so why ban it?
The purpose of GBR is to run the railway, so DfT step back, isn't it?
Unless GBR runs a much enhanced network so that open access operators are completely superfluous, and are left running nothing more than Lumo-style raids and heritage/charter specials like the Jacobite then that absolutely and categorically MUST NOT be the case. Passengers making some journeys must not be disadvantaged compared with others just because their route happens to be one that open access operators contribute to. Passengers have every right to expect a universal booking and ticketing system that covers all of the network, and should not have to consult numerous different websites and potentially have to book split tickets to make a reasonable journey.
Quite. Two of the most common journeys I make are from Selby to Doncaster (out on LNER, back on HT) and Selby to Croydon (through ticket covering HT and Thameslink) – with no revenue sharing, buying tickets for both of these journeys would be more expensive and more complicated. This is not some arcane theoretical point, these are actual journeys that I personally make on a regular basis.
Treasury spending rules