Ticket for whole journey

[philthetube]

Isn't the passenger obliged to have a ticket or tickets that cover the entire journey that they intend to make ?

I am starting a new thread rather than taking the other off topic

If this statement is correct, and others on this thread seem to agree

Magistrates Court Fines and ACRO (Criminal Record checks)

am I in the wrong buying the first part of my journey ticket on the train, no ticket office available, and splitting, buying the remaining part at a ticket office part way through the journey.

I am asking from a legal perspective through delay repay would be a totally different can of worms.

Just realised that this may be better placed on fares advice and policy, Mods please feel free to move.

 

[yorkie]

Not necessarily "a" ticket as it could be more than one, but yes a passenger should obtain (a) ticket(s) to cover their entire journey at the first available opportunity.

It will not be possible to buy the required ticket(s) before boarding a train, from many stations.

 

[island]

If you purchase the second ticket before you have reached the destination on your first ticket, you are certainly within the law.

If you purchase it afterwards, it will depend on the particular circumstances of your journey.

There are many circumstances in which it is legal to join a train whilst not in possession of ticket(s) that cover the entire journey one intends to make.

 

[SussexMan]

If you purchase the second ticket before you have reached the destination on your first ticket, you are certainly within the law.

Shouldn't that read "If you purchase the second ticket before you have reached departed from the destination on your first ticket, you are certainly within the law." on the basis that you may be changing trains at the interim destination.

 

[island]

Yes, that’s right.

 

[Brissle Girl]

The OP says they are buying the first ticket on the train. If that is the case then that is the first opportunity they have to purchase a ticket or combination of tickets for the whole journey, so if they continue past the first ticket destination without having purchased a ticket for the second part then surely they are in the wrong?

if the first ticket is bought at a TVM at a station without a ticket office then in most cases they won’t be able to purchase the second ticket. So in that situation it would be acceptable, provided they have not had their ticket checked during the first part of the journey, in which case they should at that point ask for the second ticket.

 

[Haywain]

The OP says they are buying the first ticket on the train. If that is the case then that is the first opportunity they have to purchase a ticket or combination of tickets for the whole journey, so if they continue past the first ticket destination without having purchased a ticket for the second part then surely they are in the wrong?

if the first ticket is bought at a TVM at a station without a ticket office then in most cases they won’t be able to purchase the second ticket. So in that situation it would be acceptable, provided they have not had their ticket checked during the first part of the journey, in which case they should at that point ask for the second ticket.

I disagree. If you want to split tickets for a journey you should accept that you need to purchase them prior to the commencement of each leg of that journey. Buying a ticket for the first leg and then turning up at the final destination claiming you have had no opportunity to purchase is unlikely to be looked upon sympathetically.

 

[Brissle Girl]

So how do you do that if your starting point has a TVM which will only issue tickets starting from that station? I buy the first ticket at the TVM and have never had an issue buying the second on board (either before or after the split point,Didcot), or occasionally at the barrier at Paddington. And that is not once or twice but many times over the years.

 

[philthetube]

I disagree. If you want to split tickets for a journey you should accept that you need to purchase them prior to the commencement of each leg of that journey. Buying a ticket for the first leg and then turning up at the final destination claiming you have had no opportunity to purchase is unlikely to be looked upon sympathetically.

There are many reasons why this may not be possible to buy in advance, such as
Boarding at an unstaffed station with a priv
and reasons why it may not be possible to buy on route, such as
Alate running service or guard on train selling bog roll tickets, or no tickets and so is unable to sell for cross London Journey

The question was am I legal in these circumstances, I suspect yes but would like to be sure.

 

[Haywain]

There are many reasons why this may not be possible to buy in advance, such as
Boarding at an unstaffed station with a priv
and reasons why it may not be possible to buy on route, such as
Alate running service or guard on train selling bog roll tickets, or no tickets and so is unable to sell for cross London Journey

The question was am I legal in these circumstances, I suspect yes but would like to be sure.

There are circumstances where you would be legal - for example, at an unstaffed station using Priv travel you would be unable to buy a ticket at all so splits do not come into it. However, a late running service is not, in my view, a reason for not being in possession of a ticket when, at the origin station, an opportunity was available to purchase a ticket to cover the whole journey being made. We have seen cases of this in this forum and actually have one thread running currently of this nature.

 

[island]

I personally am of the opinion that a passenger wishing to buy “split tickets” and finding only a TVM at their starting station is skating on thin ice if they buy a ticket for part of the journey rather than a through ticket, even if that is more expensive than the ticket combination they wanted. Unless of course they regularise the situation before travelling onward from the last station at which they ticket they do buy is valid.

The individual circumstances of a traveller and a journey may of course change this opinion further.

 

[PeterC]

Not necessarily "a" ticket as it could be more than one, but yes a passenger should obtain (a) ticket(s) to cover their entire journey at the first available opportunity.

It will not be possible to buy the required ticket(s) before boarding a train, from many stations.

As long as you are going "landside" at the point where the first ticket expires, as the OP says he does, to buy the second why should there be any issue? Thousands of people do this every day when changing at London terminii for journeys from NR stations to LUL stations.

 

[Starmill]

I personally am of the opinion that a passenger wishing to buy “split tickets” and finding only a TVM at their starting station is skating on thin ice if they buy a ticket for part of the journey rather than a through ticket, even if that is more expensive than the ticket combination they wanted. Unless of course they regularise the situation before travelling onward from the last station at which they ticket they do buy is valid.

The individual circumstances of a traveller and a journey may of course change this opinion further.

If this happened to me, I would buy the first ticket, then use the station help point, explaining the above, and asking for their views on what I should do.

 

[LexyBoy]

I personally am of the opinion that a passenger wishing to buy “split tickets” and finding only a TVM at their starting station is skating on thin ice if they buy a ticket for part of the journey rather than a through ticket, even if that is more expensive than the ticket combination they wanted. Unless of course they regularise the situation before travelling onward from the last station at which they ticket they do buy is valid.

Apologies if this has been covered extensively (I've not been up to speed with railway matters for some time), but your comment prompted me to dip into the NRCoT - indeed Condition 6 does indeed read this way to me. I'm sure that the old NRCoC was worded along the lines of "if the ticket you require is not available, you must purchase a ticket to cover part of your journey and amend at the earliest opportunity".

Surely it's not allowed to force passengers to buy a more expensive ticket than required due to the limitations of TVMs?

 

[Brissle Girl]

Apologies if this has been covered extensively (I've not been up to speed with railway matters for some time), but your comment prompted me to dip into the NRCoT - indeed Condition 6 does indeed read this way to me. I'm sure that the old NRCoC was worded along the lines of "if the ticket you require is not available, you must purchase a ticket to cover part of your journey and amend at the earliest opportunity".

Surely it's not allowed to force passengers to buy a more expensive ticket than required due to the limitations of TVMs?

Correct, and as I've said earlier, I've never, in over 10 years, had a problem with buying the first leg of a split ticket to Paddington at the TVM, and then the second onward from Didcot on the train, either before or after Didcot (but always at the first opportunity of course). I have even had to go to the excess fare window at Paddington on a couple of occasions and still not had an issue.

 

[strawbrick]

As I understand the question:

• The OP wishes to travel from A to C
• Buying tickets from A to B and B to C is cheaper than buying a through ticket
• The OP could not buy any tickets whatsoever at station A

I would suggest that:

• If the journey involves a change of trains at B then I would suggest that there is nothing wrong in buying a ticket from A to B on the train and then buying the tickets from B to C at station B
• Who is to know that the OP originally bought a ticket from A to B and then later decided to go to C?
• If the journey does not involve changing at B then the OP should buy both tickets on the train, this being the earliest opportunity for both tickets, in which case an "offence" has been committed
• If there is no change of train and there is not a Conductor on the train then the first opportunity to purchase both tickets would be at station C

In the event that at station A the OP could have bought a ticket from A to B but not from B to C then the above surely still applies.

 

[bkhtele]

In my opinion you would be at risk of a penalty fare if you are in a penalty fare area without a valid ticket: as in the example above having purchased a ticket to Didcot and as the pf regulations state "travel beyond the destination on your ticket." To avoid aggro & this risk the op might want to split using a mobile app or collect split tickets at his starting station.

 

[Kilopylae]

I think those saying that the passenger doesn't have to buy the through ticket misunderstand the strength of the right conferred by condition 14.1 of the NRCoT. It says that passengers are not breaking the rules if they use split tickets. I don't think that it elevates the passenger's preferred combination of split tickets to the status of being an equivalent to a through ticket that you have the right to insist upon (like, say, a Groupsave discount).

If you board the train at A with a ticket from A to B and travel to C, that is travelling beyond the validity of the ticket, plain and simple. The fact that you may have wanted to buy a ticket from B to C is irrelevant - the right conferred by 14.1 to use a combination of tickets for a single journey does not mean that you have the right not to purchase a through ticket because you would prefer to use your preferred combination of split tickets.

If it were me, I would probably ask the guard for permission to travel on her/his train given my situation, and if she/he were unwilling, I would chalk it up to experience and leave the train at B (or possibly buy an e-ticket on the train - but while a convenient workaround for those of us who travel with smartphones, it's been established before that there is never an incumbency on the passenger to do this).