Unpublished restriction causes off peak journey to be priced as peak

[Iggy12a]

I am posting this here, hoping that a Southern pricing manager takes notice...

A few weeks ago, there was a post about Super Off Peak tickets not being valid when they should have been:

Industrial Action affecting Super Off Peak fare validity?

So I am needing to travel from Chichester to London tomorrow. Normally I can just purchase a Super Off Peak fare. However due to the industrial action this week I went to look to see whether the trains would be disrupted. Looks like will need to change trains at Horsham, but otherwise looking...

www.railforums.co.uk

This was primarily due to unpublished restrictions with an amended timetable, and on a normal service day is not a problem.

​

There seems to be a similar issue with Off peak day returns from Chichester, by way of example, where the restriction code is C0 which will happen every weekday, until it is corrected. The published restriction is "Not valid on trains timed to depart after 04:29 which arrive at London Terminals or Kensington Olympia before 09:45". Hence the first train on which the ticket to Victoria is valid is the 8:10 departure arriving at 09:45. As would be expected, to East Croydon, the 8:10 departure from Chichester is valid.

However if you ask an online planner for a journey to Clapham Junction on the 8:10 departure, the off peak fare is not valid. I believe this is due to the unpublished restriction I have extracted from BRfares

Look up fares for any train journey in Britain

Full details of all British rail Single, Return & Season tickets and Travelcards. Built-in Season Ticket Calculator.

www.brfares.com

Not valid to arrive​

CLAPHAM JUNCTION​

0430–0938​

on any TOC​

with the train arriving at Clapham Junction at 09:37.

If you ask for a journey to Redhill, an off peak ticket is again valid, but for Reigate it is not (still restriction code C0 for both journeys).
And I think that this is due to an unpublished restriction at Gatwick

Not valid to arrive​

GATWICK AIRPORT​

0430–0912​

on any TOC​

The 8:10 departure from Chichester arrives Gatwick at 9:09. The online planners tell you to change at Horsham, on to the following Thameslink to Redhill, thereby avoiding this restriction, whereas for Reigate the planner tells you to change at Gatwick for the GWR service, and hence arrive in the restricted time period.

I am presuming that when the restrictions were set up, the 8:10 service passed through these stations fractionally later; but now the arrival times have been tweaked but no-one has thought to make corresponding tweaks to the restrictions.

 

[Watershed]

Unfortunately the importance of regularly reviewing restriction data (at least once per timetable change, but ideally more often than that) just isn't appreciated by most British TOCs.

Timetables and fares are often treated as two completely separate domains when in fact, they have a lot of common ground and therefore you'd expect close collaboration between the relevant department.