deltic
Established Member
- Joined
- 8 Feb 2010
- Messages
- 3,224
Commuter traffic has collapsed and working from home for a considerable proportion of rail commuters is likely to continue long after Covid-19 is forgotten about. Business travel is also likely to reduce due to the massive take up of video-conferencing and organisations moving to net zero. This suggests that the reason for peak pricing is about to fall away, ie the need to discourage demand and to pay for extra infrastructure required to pay for peak services.
This offers an opportunity to simplify the fare system by scraping peak time tickets and discounted season tickets. The only fares would then be off-peak use on any train and advance tickets for specified services. Use of smart card or contactless cards would negate the need for daily buying of tickets for regular users.
There will of course be winners and losers but peak traffic as we knew it is unlikely to return
This offers an opportunity to simplify the fare system by scraping peak time tickets and discounted season tickets. The only fares would then be off-peak use on any train and advance tickets for specified services. Use of smart card or contactless cards would negate the need for daily buying of tickets for regular users.
There will of course be winners and losers but peak traffic as we knew it is unlikely to return