Should GBR sell tickets for open access operators?

[Bletchleyite]

Should GBR even sell tickets for OAOs post nationalisation? I think it's questionable if they should. In most other countries they stand (and fall) completely on their own, none of that ORCATS nonsense etc.

Italo, for example, sells via its own website, TVMs and has its own booking facilities in stations.

It would be inherently non- impartial and unfair on both open access operators and to customers if they did not.

Does that matter? They are in competition - it is no longer one system with franchised operators. Does BA sell tickets for Ryanair? Of course not.

Does that mean no tickets being valid on both the state operator and the OAO?

Yes, it should mean that. OAOs should pay their full costs and should be required to stand on their own two feet in terms of fares and retail, and not gain revenue via the likes of ORCATS from the state operation. Post nationalisation they are not a valued part of the network - they are abstractive and wasteful of paths with their short trains - in essence they are the enemy, not to be co-operated with. Even if the state operator didn't want the paths they reduce resilience by filling them.

With a single-fare-priced system there's no real benefit of such validity anyway. Typically OAOs are cheaper (they wouldn't compete otherwise as their service offering is always strongly inferior, in Lumo's case both in terms of on-board accommodation and in terms of frequency) so if you wanted to switch from the state operator to the OAO on a flexible ticket you'd just refund your LNER ticket and buy a Lumo one at half the price. Only in severe disruption where one was stranded half way might this be of benefit, and realistically a 5 car Lumo isn't going to be able to hoover everyone up from several cancelled 9 or 10 car LNERs.

There is probably only one OAO that has genuinely been of network benefit - Hull Trains. Lumo is just a low quality "pirate" operation that is clearly primarily abstractive from LNER, both by taking their passengers and by causing LNER to have to lower their fares from what they could otherwise be (yes, I know). Grand Central is an appalling quality operation (typical Arriva) that shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the network until they have obtained rolling stock that doesn't break down all the time with LNER expected to pick up the pieces. The ECML would be better off without both of them, and if we have to have them the state operation should absolutely not be made to encourage them by selling their tickets.

DB doesn't sell Flixtrain tickets. FS doesn't sell Italo tickets. LNER shouldn't have to sell Lumo tickets either.

 

[Haywain]

Only in severe disruption where one was stranded half way might this be of benefit, and realistically a 5 car Lumo isn't going to be able to hoover everyone up from several cancelled 9 or 10 car LNERs.

Having worked on the ECML, it is notable that in the event of disruption it is almost always the case that the open access services are canned because of the shorter trains and shifting maximum numbers is the priority.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Having worked on the ECML, it is notable that in the event of disruption it is almost always the case that the open access services are canned because of the shorter trains and shifting maximum numbers is the priority.

And of course most if not all of those on the OAO will have OAO specific tickets, not inter available ones, as if you were going to travel on Lumo why would you buy a £200 LNER London-Edinburgh Anytime?

 

[redreni]

And of course most if not all of those on the OAO will have OAO specific tickets, not inter available ones, as if you were going to travel on Lumo why would you buy a £200 LNER London-Edinburgh Anytime?

Exactly.

In a perfect world I would prefer not to have open access, competition or market-based pricing. But since we do have those things, I agree it seems outrageous that LNER as the fare setter cannot have its own TOC-restricted ticket and must share revenue from walk-up fares (presumably including those sold *on its trains*?) with a competitor who undercuts the walk-up fares LNER sets and whose customers are therefore highly unlikely to buy the LNER-priced route Any Permitted version of the ticket.

How outrageous this is depends what the ORCATS split is and what data is available about the level of use of Any Permitted tickets on open access operators' trains.

 

[Zomboid]

How about through ticketing? If I buy a Southampton to Hull ticket would I be forced to change at Leeds or York despite there being a direct train on the departure board at KX? And how many people are going to get that wrong?

 

[Bletchleyite]

How about through ticketing? If I buy a Southampton to Hull ticket would I be forced to change at Leeds or York despite there being a direct train on the departure board at KX? And how many people are going to get that wrong?

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand the question. I'm not proposing abolishing OAOs (though I do wish they'd just go away of their own accord) simply that GBR should not be required to sell their tickets.

If you wanted to travel on Lumo you'd buy one of their tickets. It would almost certainly be cheaper to split than to buy a through ticket priced by XC as they like LNER are notoriously expensive.

The use-case of doing no planning at all and just deciding when you got to London that you'd use a Lumo train is purely an enthusiast thing, no normal passenger would do it these days. And the railway is not and should not be set up purely for the benefit of enthusiasts.

 

[NCT]

The railway should work for the passenger, not for itself.

At the end of the day the passenger wants to interact with 'the railway'. GBR should facilitate that and not exclude Open Access trains. Any GBR journey planners and ticketing platforms should present a train as a train to the passenger.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The railway should work for the passenger, not for itself.

At the end of the day the passenger wants to interact with 'the railway'. GBR should facilitate that and not exclude Open Access trains. Any GBR journey planners and ticketing platforms should present a train as a train to the passenger.

Do you feel BA should sell Ryanair tickets? If not, why is it different?

GBR's entire revenue setup could be much simpler if it didn't need to deal with selling tickets for organisations other than itself. And thus cheaper to operate.

 

[NCT]

Do you feel BA should sell Ryanair tickets? If not, why is it different?

GBR's entire revenue setup could be much simpler if it didn't need to deal with selling tickets for organisations other than itself. And thus cheaper to operate.

GBR's objective is offering passengers a uniformed railway. Doing a 'BA' would just be spiteful.

If passengers see a return of a state monopoly as opposed to a provider-agnostic integrated railway, then GBR will have failed.

 

[Bletchleyite]

GBR's objective is offering passengers a uniformed railway. Doing a 'BA' would just be spiteful.

If passengers see a return of a state monopoly as opposed to a provider-agnostic integrated railway, then GBR will have failed.

GBR needs to be a single national railway in my book. The OAOs are a pain in that regard and I see no reason they should not just be pushed out to do their own thing at their own cost, and hopefully go away in due course.

So in short I totally disagree. GBR needs to be a state monopoly like BR was. If it's not, complexity will remain and it will fail.

Yes, you've got TfW and ScotRail, but the integration with those should really be totally transparent and not reflected at the ticketing level, like mainland Europe used to be in the days of TCV* fares.

* tarif commun international pour le transport des voyageurs - communal international tariff for passenger transport

 

[Zomboid]

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand the question. I'm not proposing abolishing OAOs (though I do wish they'd just go away of their own accord) simply that GBR should not be required to sell their tickets.

If you wanted to travel on Lumo you'd buy one of their tickets. It would almost certainly be cheaper to split than to buy a through ticket priced by XC as they like LNER are notoriously expensive.

The use-case of doing no planning at all and just deciding when you got to London that you'd use a Lumo train is purely an enthusiast thing, no normal passenger would do it these days. And the railway is not and should not be set up purely for the benefit of enthusiasts.

I don't disagree in principle that OAO specific fares should only be available through their own retail channels/ agreements, but if I were to walk into the ticket office at Brighton and say "a ticket to Hull please" then I'd want to be able to buy a ticket that would be valid on the HT service. Not be sold a ticket to London and be told to buy a ticket elsewhere for the leg to Hull, or be given something that I can't use on the direct service I see at Kings Cross. Being sold a split ticket Brighton to London and London to Hull would be fine, but I'd want to be buying it from a single machine/ person in Brighton, or on the same (probably GBR) website.

One of the biggest issues I had with travelling round San Francisco and Tokyo was that there was seemingly no ability to even buy an integrated Bart/ Muni or JR/ Subway ticket. It seemed so backwards compared to a London 1-6 travel card, and I don't think it's the direction of travel we should be going.

 

[NCT]

GBR needs to be a single national railway in my book. The OAOs are a pain in that regard and I see no reason they should not just be pushed out to do their own thing at their own cost, and hopefully go away in due course.

Yes, you've got TfW and ScotRail, but the integration with those should really be totally transparent and not reflected at the ticketing level, like mainland Europe used to be in the days of TCV* fares.

* tarif commun international pour le transport des voyageurs - communal international tariff for passenger transport

That's such an SNCF mindset.

Providing an integrated railway network should not be about exclusivity. The state isn't infallible as we see time and again the private sector fills gaps where the state shows long-term inertia.

Things like the Ticketing and Settlement Agreement and ORCATS, the industry-wide Conditions of Carriage work well and there's no reason why these cannot remain at a supra-TOC or supra-authority level.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Things like the Ticketing and Settlement Agreement and ORCATS, the industry-wide Conditions of Carriage work well and there's no reason why these cannot remain at a supra-TOC or supra-authority level.

While ORCATS is an ex-BR system mostly tasked with statistics, the majority of this sort of thing is the kind of cost I want to see taken out of GBR. One organisation. No costly management of relationships and internal markets between many separate entities.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Tuesday at 11:38 ==

That's such an SNCF mindset.

It's something SNCF has right.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Tuesday at 11:40 ==

I don't disagree in principle that OAO specific fares should only be available through their own retail channels/ agreements, but if I were to walk into the ticket office at Brighton and say "a ticket to Hull please" then I'd want to be able to buy a ticket that would be valid on the HT service. Not be sold a ticket to London and be told to buy a ticket elsewhere for the leg to Hull, or be given something that I can't use on the direct service I see at Kings Cross. Being sold a split ticket Brighton to London and London to Hull would be fine, but I'd want to be buying it from a single machine/ person in Brighton, or on the same (probably GBR) website.

How many people walked into Brighton booking office and bought a ticket to Hull on the spot and wanted to travel on Hull Trains in the last 12 months?

I'm going to hazard a guess that it was 0.

People buying long distance walk up tickets aren't after the cheapest option, they want speed and frequency, so they'll have gone with LNER if any did. Those who want cheap can either use the two websites to buy separate tickets, one to London and one from it, or use a third party aggregator website like Trainsplit.

But if anyone did do that it'd not be too hard to buy a ticket to London and rebook at a Hull Trains TVM when they got there.

One of the biggest issues I had with travelling round San Francisco and Tokyo was that there was seemingly no ability to even buy an integrated Bart/ Muni or JR/ Subway ticket. It seemed so backwards compared to a London 1-6 travel card, and I don't think it's the direction of travel we should be going.

Urban networks are different from long distance ones. In urban networks the best model is indeed a fully integrated one between providers with one fare regardless of mode.

 

[NCT]

It's something SNCF has right.

SNCF is a state monopoly that works for itself, not an integrated railway that works for passengers.

We see in continental Europe that, with increased Open Access and regional PSOs, the absence of supra-TOC level mechanisms means passengers can no longer treat a train as a train in some instances, and the old national monopolies often behave in appalling manners in using their dominant power to marginalise competitors to the detriment of passengers. As we've seen time and again without the pressure of competition the old state railways sit on their laurels and do not actively increase train frequencies.

GBR should not behave like a spiteful state monopoly but continue what works well in the current system.

 

[Bletchleyite]

GBR should behave like a spiteful state monopoly but continue what works well in the current system.

The current system is utterly broken, and one key reason it is is that it's super-complex. A big efficiency gain for GBR is it only having to deal with itself.

Yes, it can and should provide APIs for other providers to sell its tickets. However, much of the baggage behind the ticketing system can and should go away, heavily reducing cost. Most of that baggage relates to the need to split money between lots of different organisations and do stuff related to it like Delay Repay and delay attribution.

 

[HSTEd]

ORCATS was nevr a proper revenue sharing system.

Its a statistical model designed to be better than nothing.
It's been tolerated up to now because the vast majority of operators are functionally arms of the state, so accuracy is not that important.

It's not really suitable for this purpose.

In any case, Open Access operators already receive heavy subsidies whilst attempting to cloak themselves in a veneer of commercialism.
I do not see why the state railway needs to assist them in burning heavily subsidised paths.

 

[Bletchleyite]

In any case, Open Access operators already receive heavy subsidies whilst attempting to cloak themselves in a veneer of commercialism.
I do not see why the state railway needs to assist them in burning heavily subsidised paths.

Bingo. If they are going to exist they should be paying the FULL cost of their operation.

I bet once they were they'd all fail, go away and we could concentrate on a single, simple nationalised railway again.

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

Worth remembering that the DfT do quite well out of Lumo and Hull Trains, who do you think provides their service recovery, control, incident management etc? It isn't FirstGroup. Same for Grand Central, it's outsourced to a TOC.

As much as possible is outsourced, including to DfT operators.

There is absolutely zero tension between GBR and Open Access - as I said on another thread, they both need each other to be successful.

Lumo and HT presence on the East Coast allows LNER to take bolder commercial decisions and increase their revenue with more aggressive yield management strategies, without being accused of abusing a dominant market position. It also forced LNER to maintain a different standard to open access, full service versus low cost. I suspect LNER would secretly concede that they are better off with open access there.

 

[Brubulus]

Worth remembering that the DfT do quite well out of Lumo and Hull Trains, who do you think provides their service recovery, control, incident management etc? It isn't FirstGroup. Same for Grand Central, it's outsourced to a TOC.

As much as possible is outsourced, including to DfT operators.

There is absolutely zero tension between GBR and Open Access - as I said on another thread, they both need each other to be successful.

Lumo and HT presence on the East Coast allows LNER to take bolder commercial decisions and increase their revenue with more aggressive yield management strategies, without being accused of abusing a dominant market position. It also forced LNER to maintain a different standard to open access, full service versus low cost. I suspect LNER would secretly concede that they are better off with open access there.

I agree that there is a close relationship, and this should be built on by still allowing through ticketing between OA and GBR. However this should be done by simply having OA websites resell GBR tickets in addition to their own tickets, enabling the facade of through ticketing, but with delay repay etc between them, so less of a free for all than Eurostar. This would also kick OA off ORCATS, reducing abstraction somewhat.

GBR would be required to be allowed to resell OA tickets, enabling passengers to use GBR ticketing seamlessly, but with an appropriate warning that the ticket they are buying (even if flexible) is only valid on a certain operator service.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Lumo and HT presence on the East Coast allows LNER to take bolder commercial decisions and increase their revenue with more aggressive yield management strategies, without being accused of abusing a dominant market position. It also forced LNER to maintain a different standard to open access, full service versus low cost. I suspect LNER would secretly concede that they are better off with open access there.

Interesting you take that view, because I definitely recall reading an article in the railway press somewhere where LNER management was moaning about Lumo being abstractive and forcing them to keep their prices lower than they wanted. I can't recall where though and can't find it online to quote I'm afraid.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Several posters seem to envisage that ‘revenue allocation’ will be un-necessary if GBR is totally isolated/ insulated from open access.

But surely there will still be through ticketing with ScotRail, Transport for Wales, Merseyrail, Elizabeth Line and London Overground. Then there’s things like cross-London journeys via the Underground, Plus-Bus, ferry to the Isle of Wight, Sail Rail through to Dublin, Hook of Holland and so on. Let alone more local promotions like through tickets with Heritage Railways, Luton Dart, etc..

How is this revenue to be shared and allocated?

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

I agree that there is a close relationship, and this should be built on by still allowing through ticketing between OA and GBR. However this should be done by simply having OA websites resell GBR tickets in addition to their own tickets, enabling the facade of through ticketing, but with delay repay etc between them, so less of a free for all than Eurostar. This would also kick OA off ORCATS, reducing abstraction somewhat.

GBR would be required to be allowed to resell OA tickets, enabling passengers to use GBR ticketing seamlessly, but with an appropriate warning that the ticket they are buying (even if flexible) is only valid on a certain operator service.

ORCATS abstraction just isn't a serious issue anymore, it would probably cost more to change all the retail systems, for both traditional and open access TOCs.

Most passengers are already travelling on a TOC specific ticket or a ticket with a negotiated settlement (i.e. the revenue split is mutually agreed).
That is largely the case all over the country for intercity travel.

ORCATS only divides the flexibly routed tickets, and even then, running such a limited timetable always means you're going to be left with the smallest slice of the small (and decreasing) pie. Especially on the East Coast, exceptionally few passengers are travelling with tickets that are even subject to ORCATS.

How can they be abstractive when the ORCATS pot is negligible?

This is where people are getting muddled. Open Access may be abstractive in some circumstances, but it's more to do with acquiring passengers from other TOCs, which causes LNER to lose the profit from having that passenger, rather than abstracting revenue from ORCATS.

If the passengers don't switch from LNER to Open Access, or wouldn't have travelled on LNER anyway (maybe a coach or car) - then there's no abstraction at all.

 

[Bletchleyite]

This is where people are getting muddled. Open Access may be abstractive in some circumstances, but it's so do with acquiring passengers from other TOCs, rather than abstracting revenue from ORCATS.

I suppose that kind of abstraction is hard to quantify. LNER might take the view that the passenger who paid Lumo £50 would have paid them £130 (which seems to be about the going rate for an on the day "off peak" Advance single from London to Edinburgh under the fare increase trial) but in reality they might well have flown, gone by coach, driven or not gone at all in preference to that.

 

[redreni]

Lumo and HT presence on the East Coast allows LNER to take bolder commercial decisions and increase their revenue with more aggressive yield management strategies, without being accused of abusing a dominant market position.

I agree with this. I draw from it the exact opposite conclusion you do.

Depends how keen you are on dealing with organisations that have an aggressive yield management strategy directed at you, I suppose.

I would very much prefer the railway to required to deliver against targets to increase capacity, passenger journeys and passenger rail's market share. Fares should be a balancing act between securing a fair contribution from fare payers to operational cost on the one hand, and making travel sustainable on the other. Open access has absolutely no role to play in the kind of railway I want to see.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I would very much prefer the railway to required to deliver against targets to increase capacity, passenger journeys and passenger rail's market share. Fares should be a balancing act between securing a fair contribution from fare payers to operational cost on the one hand, and making travel sustainable on the other. Open access has absolutely no role to play in the kind of railway I want to see.

I'd agree with this. At present the Treasury via the DfT seems to be tasking LNER with just extracting as much money as possible in order to reduce the subsidy on the network as a whole. I would agree that this is not the right strategy, and that the strategy of the railway should be something like "minimise road and air travel while maintaining an affordable subsidy level" - a much more "bums on seats" or transport sustainability type target that would certainly deprecate the idea of running peak trains half empty because it costs £300*. To provide the capacity that this requires (see my other thread I just created on simplifying the ECML) half length trains on odd patterns aren't of much benefit, and this describes all of the OAOs with the exception of the very occasional Lumo or Hull ten car. Particularly as most Edinburghs presently run near full even at the swingeing fares - at more reasonable ones you'd easily fill four full length trains an hour every day of the week.

* That is, we should prefer three tickets at £95 each rather than one at £300, despite the £300 one bringing in more money, because the three at £95 provide more overall benefit by avoiding those other two people driving or flying.

 

[Dr Hoo]

I would very much prefer the railway to required to deliver against targets to increase capacity, passenger journeys and passenger rail's market share. Fares should be a balancing act between securing a fair contribution from fare payers to operational cost on the one hand, and making travel sustainable on the other. Open access has absolutely no role to play in the kind of railway I want to see.

How does freight (which only pays a bare minimum ‘wear and tear’ access charges) and is all ‘open access’ fit with this?

 

[Bletchleyite]

How does freight (which only pays a bare minimum ‘wear and tear’ access charges) and is all ‘open access’ fit with this?

I don't know much about the financial structure of freight. But I do know it rather gets in the way of things and often totally unnecessarily. For one example I'd like to see freight over Shap to be mandated to have two diesel locomotives if not being electric hauled in order to ensure it can reach and maintain linespeed over Shap and thus stop wasting scarce WCML paths.

 

[redreni]

How does freight (which only pays a bare minimum ‘wear and tear’ access charges) and is all ‘open access’ fit with this?

I don't know much about it. Passenger open access has no role to play, is what I should have said.

I would expect GBR to have a high degree of control over paths and timetabling.

 

[eldomtom2]

I don't disagree in principle that OAO specific fares should only be available through their own retail channels/ agreements, but if I were to walk into the ticket office at Brighton and say "a ticket to Hull please" then I'd want to be able to buy a ticket that would be valid on the HT service. Not be sold a ticket to London and be told to buy a ticket elsewhere for the leg to Hull, or be given something that I can't use on the direct service I see at Kings Cross. Being sold a split ticket Brighton to London and London to Hull would be fine, but I'd want to be buying it from a single machine/ person in Brighton, or on the same (probably GBR) website.

One of the biggest issues I had with travelling round San Francisco and Tokyo was that there was seemingly no ability to even buy an integrated Bart/ Muni or JR/ Subway ticket. It seemed so backwards compared to a London 1-6 travel card, and I don't think it's the direction of travel we should be going.

I don't know when you went to San Francisco or Tokyo, but both cities have had contactless smart cards (comparable to Oyster cards) valid on pretty much all public transport for over a decade now.

 

[Zomboid]

I don't know when you went to San Francisco or Tokyo, but both cities have had contactless smart cards (comparable to Oyster cards) valid on pretty much all public transport for over a decade now.

SF would have been when Jim Harbaugh was coaching and Alex Smith was QB of the 9ers, so about 2012.

Tokyo was 2019, but to be fair I had a JR pass so didn't do too much research into the metro once I was there. I definitely couldn't find a useful ticket on the internet before leaving, though.