Stopping short with an SSH

[GW43125]

Evening all,

In a few weeks time I have an advance from Brum New St to Euston. For the return portion, I have a " weekend super off peak saver half" (SSH) from Virgin trains, priced at £11.90 (YP railcard). However, I am only going to Birmingham on the way south to meet a friend. Would I be permitted to stop short at Coventry on the (SSH) return portion (as I live near Cov), or would I have to carry on to New St?

I'll be back late on Saturday night so I'd like to not have to go to Brum and back if I can avoid it!

I'm hoping that paragraph reads alright, I'm half asleep thanks to an assignment.
Thanks.

 

[alistairlees]

Evening all,

In a few weeks time I have an advance from Brum New St to Euston. For the return portion, I have a " weekend super off peak saver half" (SSH) from Virgin trains, priced at £11.90 (YP railcard). However, I am only going to Birmingham on the way south to meet a friend. Would I be permitted to stop short at Coventry on the (SSH) return portion (as I live near Cov), or would I have to carry on to New St?

I'll be back late on Saturday night so I'd like to not have to go to Brum and back if I can avoid it!

I'm hoping that paragraph reads alright, I'm half asleep thanks to an assignment.
Thanks.

The SSH is a flexible ticket and permits break of journey so you are quite entitled to get off at Coventry and will have no problems doing so.

 

[GW43125]

The SSH is a flexible ticket and permits break of journey so you are quite entitled to get off at Coventry and will have no problems doing so.

Thank you very much.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The SSH is a flexible ticket and permits break of journey so you are quite entitled to get off at Coventry and will have no problems doing so.

Break of journey is indeed permitted on that ticket. As a wider point, though, not all of the SSHs will - they mostly take the same restrictions as the relevant SSS they derive from, and some of those on VT do bar break of journey. So check brfares.com if you come across another one.

However even if it was barred the chance of you being challenged is low, as there is realistically no action that can be taken against someone doing it other than asking them to return to the platform and complete the journey without further penalty.

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

Break of journey is indeed permitted on that ticket. As a wider point, though, not all of the SSHs will - they mostly take the same restrictions as the relevant SSS they derive from, and some of those on VT do bar break of journey. So check brfares.com if you come across another one.

However even if it was barred the chance of you being challenged is low, as there is realistically no action that can be taken against someone doing it other than asking them to return to the platform and complete the journey without further penalty.

The TOC is entitled to charge the passenger the difference to the cheapest fare that would have permitted break of journey. For some journeys that may be the Anytime Single - quite a pricey excess then!

 

[kieron]

Break of journey is indeed permitted on that ticket. As a wider point, though, not all of the SSHs will - they mostly take the same restrictions as the relevant SSS they derive from, and some of those on VT do bar break of journey. So check brfares.com if you come across another one.

Curiously, there are no SSH tickets with restriction codes which barred break of journey in last year's fare list. The only VT codes which bar it are 2U, 3A, 5F, VJ, VK, VM and VN, and they're only used for SVRs, SVSs and SVHs.

While this year's price list still hasn't been published a month after taking effect, this will probably still be the case now. Virgin's policy seems to be, for shorter journeys, to use off peak tickets with harsher off peak restrictions but which permit break of journey, and to use tickets which bar break of journey for longer distance ones. I think SSHs are only used for journeys in the London-West Midlands corridor, which is short for Virgin.

The TOC is entitled to charge the passenger the difference to the cheapest fare that would have permitted break of journey. For some journeys that may be the Anytime Single - quite a pricey excess then!

If it is the anytime single then that's only because the anytime single costs less than an off peak return in the opposite direction - there are very few restriction codes which claim to bar break of journey on the return leg, and Virgin don't price tickets with any of them.

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

If it is the anytime single then that's only because the anytime single costs less than an off peak return in the opposite direction - there are very few restriction codes which claim to bar break of journey on the return leg, and Virgin don't price tickets with any of them.

Indeed - but Virgin do price some 8A tickets, you know (mostly where they have route Virgin Trains only tickets, as these tend to mirror the underlying restrictions set by the interavailable fare setter).

 

[kieron]

Sorry, I should have said that they don't price SVH or SSH tickets with any of them, as that's all I'd looked at yesterday.

From last year's data, they used 8A for a number of Virgin-only SVR tickets. Nothing else, though - they have 2U for the flows they price themselves.