Bletchleyite
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I agree. A station block at Lancaster marking tickets in that manner would work, however.
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I agree. A station block at Lancaster marking tickets in that manner would work, however.
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Except if someone split their ticket at Lancaster and changed trains at Preston they would probably finish up with the same fate as the man mentioned in the original post. Even if they changed trains at Lancaster they could be missed by the RPIs if they didn't need to change between platforms.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Fair point. What it is, though, is yet another problem that would be completely solved by compostage.
So how would compostage work with a situation where you board at Carlisle with a Carlisle-Lancaster and Lancaster-Euston ticket?
Joe Paxton
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Either both tickets would need to be validated ('composted') at Carlisle, or the compostage system would kill off 'stay on the same train' split-ticketing.
Indeed it would. AIUI split ticketing of that type is specifically prohibited in France.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Stamp both at Carlisle. What that proves (give or take someone buying in advance) is that they did not start at Preston.
Joe Paxton
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I don't understand your point about someone buying in advance?
Haywain
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I think I know which would be more likely.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
It would be technically possible, if someone was so inclined, to purchase their ticket at Lancaster (or wherever) and validate it to start the journey then go home, and travel from Preston in the morning claiming forced overnight BoJ due to running out of trains. This would be near impossible to stop, and might be viable for someone living between the two. It is however so unlikely that spending money to try to stop it is probably pointless.
Signal Head
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Quite. I would be *very* tempted to write, requesting substantial compensation for business disruption (he missed his meeting), and public humiliation, and employing the same kind of language the TOCs use when contacting alleged fare evaders, offering similar choices (ie "pay up or I'll see you in court).
johnr57
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Having done many journeys YRK EXD using wads of split tickets, most TM mark all tickets not just the currently valid one, sometimes commenting on the initiative used to save cash!
All Line Rover
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As is well highlighted this evening by the 17:40 Glasgow to Euston having been waiting at Preston since arriving on time at 20:00, and not being expected to depart until after 21:30, due to - presumably - having to wait for a guard and/or driver on a late running service from London.
I'd argue that the entire edifice is rampantly anti-passenger (and I'm expecting a tediously officious response to this post, but we'll get to that later). The Preston/Lancaster discussion referenced early on in this thread was eye-opening for me, because (unlike most of you) I'm no more familiar with fare strategies than the average layman, and I've quite possibly been breaking the law for years.
I live near London. My parents live in Whaley Bridge, in Derbyshire. When I visit, I'll book a train from Euston to Stockport. If my Dad can pick me up I'll get off at Macclesfield; if not I'll continue to Stockport and get the appalling train to Whaley from there. Same process in reverse on the way back.
This has always seemed eminently sensible to me. In the event that I get off early at Macclesfield, I've thought to myself, the TOC is no worse off than the landlord of my local if I only drink 95% of my pint. Indeed, they're (insignificantly) better off because I've freed up the seat that I've paid for and I won't be requiring another cup of tea. It's certainly never occurred to me that I might be inadvertently criminalising myself.
I've no idea whether or not I'm actually allowed to get off at Macclesfield instead of Stockport. Perhaps there are "valid" demand-based pricing reasons why such a manoeuvre is disallowed, and I used the double quotes with deliberate intent because a typical passenger would have no earthly reason to believe that disembarking early might be an issue. Attempting to alight after the intended destination, absolutely. Before the intended destination, no, of course not. Why would it?
And so the crux of my complaint: to what lengths do the TOCs go, to inform passengers that they must not break their journey? I've never once, in twenty years of travelling to see my parents, had my attention drawn to any such stipulation. I've broken my journey on countless occasions, possibly illegally, but when printing my tickets at Euston I've never received a slip that says "By the way, do you know that you have to travel all the way to Stockport, or else you're committing an offence?" Likewise, no "Are you sure?" confirmation when buying my ticket. So, I will have to hope that I haven't committed any offences. Next time I will be sure to check the conditions of travel!
Which brings me to the tediously officious people that I mentioned earlier. "It's the passenger's responsibility to read the conditions of travel", bleat, baaa, etc. I've only encountered a couple of jobsworths over the years which, as I travel by rail a lot, means that the vast majority of rail staff that I've encountered are absolutely fantastic. Still, this being a popular forum, there are bound to be a few here who will trot out the line that it's "the passenger's responsibility to read..."
*snore*
Sorry, I'm boring myself now. So, sure, it's the passenger's responsibility, etc. And I will gracefully accept that advice from every single forum contributor who reads, in full, all of the text in the end-user license agreement that's available when they install a new piece of software on their phone or their computer. In the meantime, if the TOCs feel obliged to insist upon pricing strategies that defy common sense in the eyes of the typical passenger, then perhaps they might consider making the legal impact of those strategies more apparent at the point of purchase.
No problem with alighting early on that ticket (assuming it's a return).
I agree, the usual in-house argument that ensues is between Revenue Protection and Marketing.
Forget about any debate around anomalous pricing strategies for a moment
Long experience has been a party to various TOCs Revenue Protection managers frequently advising that 'putting up clear signs and issuing unambiguous information about restrictions on tickets is a pre-requisite for improving understanding and reducing conflict on both sides' whilst Marketing will argue that such 'in your face publicity and warnings about rules and possible penalties is not customer friendly'.
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Unfortunately WombatDeath has fallen into the trap of assuming that the service of a train journey from A to C on a train that may call at B is subdivisible into the services of train journeys from A to B and from B to C and that one may choose which of those services to consume, which assumption only holds on tickets that permit break of journey.
With respect, that is a reasonable logical assumption for a layman to make where A,B and C are in a line, and served by the same train. It is the railway's pricing strategies that introduce the problem.
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Oh god, I should have known that it would be Marketing's fault. Interesting information though, thank you!
A lot of these problems could be avoided by having one railway company which ran all services and had a unified ticket system with identical by laws and rules across the whole network.
We could even give it a patriotic name like "British Railways" ?
But I suppose I am just a dreamer.
We could even give it a patriotic name like "British Railways" ?
But I suppose I am just a dreamer.
The ticket restriction under discussion is based on BR-era rules.
Really depends what you mean by "based on".
Under BR, the restrictions from all stations the 'problematic' train called at in England were the same. It was Virgin who (i) introduced different restrictions from Lancaster & Preston (ii) increased the Anytime fares disproportionately - - see posts #84 & #182.
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I know. How dare Virgin give the people of Carlisle, Penrith, Oxenholme and Lancaster a better deal?!
If you are not going to read the quoted posts (or do read them and then ignore them), there seems little point in discussing further.
I read them, and stand by the comment that they've given Lancaster northwards a better deal than Preston southwards when it would have been simpler to have made all stations in England worse off.
So not telling the customer about the serious consequences of not using the ticket is the way it is supposed to be used is customer friendly?
Haywain
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That is not what was being said, the argument tends to be about how you tell the customer not whether you tell the customer.
I can think of one case recently where it was definitely about whether you tell the customer. Stop reading now if you don't like re-gurgitated stories.
In 2010 the London area TOCs forced TfL to introduce the Oyster Extension Permit to cover when people went further than the zones on their travelcard (generally to ungated stations in zones 4-6) and used PAYG to pay for the extra. Many people had been using Oyster cards before this as they were valid for travelcards before the PAYG rollout. Obviously there was nothing about the OEP in the booklet that these people received with their Oyster cards. The TOCs also decided (probably the marketing departments) that the concept was way too complicated and so zero publicity was displayed at stations. No effort was made to contact these people with pre-existing Oyster cards.
After a grace period the TOCs, most notably Southeastern, decided to start enforcing the use of this "switch" on the Oyster card. They also targetted people with travelcards ending in zone 2 who were extending to their fully barriered zone 1 terminal stations. We'll never know how many people were forced to pay a £20 penalty fare for failing to adhere to a condition that they had genuinely never been told about.
It wasn't long before TfL and the Mayor decided that this was likely to impact negatively on the Oyster system, so they scrapped the OEP shortly afterwards. And guess what the marketing departments were (probably) forced to do then ...
Yes, they displayed prominent posters at all stations informing people that they no longer needed to set OEPs.
You couldn't make it up!
Joe Paxton
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TfL and the Mayor were never in favour of the OEP system - I remember Transport Commissioner Peter Hendy had some pretty strong words to say about it. But OEPs was the compromise insisted upon by the TOCs for them to eventually start accepting Oyster. It wasn't in the power of TfL and the Mayor to scrap OEPs, but after lots of pressure, and real evidence of how poorly the OEP system worked, let alone understood, and perhaps also evidence of how it wasn't really needed, the TOCs relented on the absurd system and agreed to scrap it.
I agree it was a complete mess!
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