Ridiculous journey on GWR

[MikeWh]

I've just been trying to help my mum with a journey on 17th July from Westbury to Longfield. She has the return portion of a Longfield to Westbury route Newbury super off-peak return. The earliest journey NRE says she can make takes her:

Westbury > Bath > Didcot > Newbury (bus) > Theale (bus) > Reading > Paddington, then as expected.

Given that the train from Bath to Didcot ends up at Paddington and the overall journey is already extended, surely it should be allowed to stay on that train. GWR customer services say she will probably be ok to stay on the first train, especially as she has a senior railcard, but surely NRE should have some easements in place to avoid such ridiculous routings.

 

[sheff1]

Of course they should.

It seems someone has attempted to introduce a routeing easement (700785) but has not worded it correctly as it only refers to journeys to Reading and Paddington rather than via Reading and Paddington.

"During engineering works between 04-07 June 2018, 09-12 July 2018, 16 July to 05 August 2018, 08-11 October 2018 and 19-22 November 2018, journeys from Warminster, Frome, Dilton Marsh and Westbury to Reading and London Paddington priced on fare route (00063) VIA NEWBURY are permitted on journeys via Swindon. This fare route easement applies in both directions".

 

[Haywain]

I think the problem could be that if you ask any journey planner for a journey from A to C via B (B in this example being Newbury), they will route you via B regardless of any easements that apply to a ticket already purchased. This is one of those cases where journey planners are just not smart enough to interpret the requirements of the request and try to give you a two legged journey rather than a journey using a "ticket route". To do so correctly they really need an option to input the details of a ticket already held, but I can see that being fraught with problems!

 

[MikeWh]

Thanks both. The easement looks a good reason to allow travel from Bath to London direct. And Haywain does appear to be correct because if I put in the same journey from Paddington to Westbury for the same dates, it still routes the return via two buses to get to Newbury.