Besides, the price of tickets has got nothing to do with the journey planning. At least not for the NRE website anyway. If you want to make a point about split ticketing I’d recommend you put it in a separate thread.
Agreed; I have split it into a new thread.
I wondered if this was down to ticket costs but was not surprised at the mad result of some experiments for a journey next Saturday
08:32 Shipley - Barrow Via lancaster £33.40 One ticket
or
Northern Rail charge longer distance journeys at quite a premium, and there are many journeys where Advance fares are not offered where a change of trains is involved.
At present, this can be circumvented by using a combination of more reasonably priced tickets (though I understand there are plans to increase the price of those cheaper fares, but that's another story and has been covered in other threads!)
08:32 Shipley - Carnforth £18.00
10:21 Carnforth - Barrow £10.80 Total £28.80 Split tickets
Actually if you try Trainsplit you will find it's cheaper to split at Arnside; this is a flexible fare.
or
08:32 Shipley - Lancaster £10.50
10:13 Lancaster = Barrow £12.50 Total £23.00 Split tickets
What you don't say is that the Shipley to Lancaster fare is an Advance fare.
Northern do not price Advance fares for many of their shorter distance journeys, and Shipley to Carnforth does not have any Advance fares.
Equally Northern don't price them for many longer distance journeys either.
Hence why it's useful to use a website that tries to identify these cheaper fares.
Northern
could show the combination of fares - as identified by you - on their website, but
choose not to.
If you are prepared to take the risk of one train not running then you can save £10.40 nearly a third of the NRE quoted fare
I don't see how there is any "risk" involved here! If the first train is delayed, you would simply change at Carnforth.
No-one is going to make you delay your journey by forcing you to double-back between Carnforth & Lancaster!
