ForTheLoveOf
Established Member
- Joined
- 7 Oct 2017
- Messages
- 6,416
I think a renaming of Advances to something like "Value" would indeed help. They are, of course, not always good value (especially if they are only marginally cheaper than a much more flexible walk-up ticket). However, differentiating Anytime, Off-Peak and Value tickets could help a lot. The standard announcement could go something like this - "If you have a ticket marked "Value" then you please make sure you are on the train you have reserved yourself on. This should be shown either on the ticket, or on the accompanying reservation. If you were delayed earlier in your journey then you are allowed on a later train."
People don't expect Value tickets to be valid on any train, in the same way they wouldn't expect the cheapest tier of airline ticket to be flexible. Perhaps the issue with renaming Advance as "Value" is that you would also have to rename Anytime and Off-Peak tickets to something like "Flex" and "Semi-flex" to stay within the same naming 'scheme' - yet Anytime and Off-Peak is broadly quite descriptive of what the ticket lets you do.
I think the problem in general is that two of the ticket types - Anytime and Off-Peak - describe when you can use the ticket. Yet somehow Advance tickets describe when you must buy the ticket - in advance of travelling. I think another alternative consistent naming scheme might therefore be "Flex", "Semi-Flex" and "Non-Flex", with perhaps "Mini-Flex" for Super Off-Peak tickets. Of course whilst that's a nice pattern which you can understand if you see the choice (e.g. on a poster or on a ticketing website), it then means that people who have a ticket which says "Mini-Flex" wouldn't have a clue what that actually means, as it's not very intuitive.
So I think the real heart of the issue is two-fold. Firstly, the names of walk-up tickets tell you one thing whilst the name of APs tells you another. This mismatch can, in itself, cause confusion. Secondly, whilst the current names of walk-up tickets mean that most people can intuitively understand the rough validity, the names of Advances is very unclear as it does not imply any of the key conditions (booked train only). At the end of the day, summarising the conditions of a ticket in a few words is always going to be an exercise in compromise, but perhaps another possible naming scheme could be "Any Train, Any Off-Peak, Booked Trains Only". Yes, it's wordy and doesn't exactly roll off the tongue but it does at least impart a basic understanding of the key conditions.
I think the rail industry also needs to take another long, hard look at making the difference between reservable and non-reservable trains much clearer to the average traveller, if they are to continue to allow people to use any non-reservable train on the relevant parts of Advance tickets. A differentiation of reservable "express" trains (whether intercity or regional), and non-reservable "local" trains, like many continental railways have, would be the first step, in my view. Heavy advertising and omnipresent explaining signage would be needed to explain that, for instance, "You can take any train shown as "local" for parts of your Booked Trains Only ticket journey where you haven't got a reservation. You must travel on the booked "express" trains, except in the case of delays."
People don't expect Value tickets to be valid on any train, in the same way they wouldn't expect the cheapest tier of airline ticket to be flexible. Perhaps the issue with renaming Advance as "Value" is that you would also have to rename Anytime and Off-Peak tickets to something like "Flex" and "Semi-flex" to stay within the same naming 'scheme' - yet Anytime and Off-Peak is broadly quite descriptive of what the ticket lets you do.
I think the problem in general is that two of the ticket types - Anytime and Off-Peak - describe when you can use the ticket. Yet somehow Advance tickets describe when you must buy the ticket - in advance of travelling. I think another alternative consistent naming scheme might therefore be "Flex", "Semi-Flex" and "Non-Flex", with perhaps "Mini-Flex" for Super Off-Peak tickets. Of course whilst that's a nice pattern which you can understand if you see the choice (e.g. on a poster or on a ticketing website), it then means that people who have a ticket which says "Mini-Flex" wouldn't have a clue what that actually means, as it's not very intuitive.
So I think the real heart of the issue is two-fold. Firstly, the names of walk-up tickets tell you one thing whilst the name of APs tells you another. This mismatch can, in itself, cause confusion. Secondly, whilst the current names of walk-up tickets mean that most people can intuitively understand the rough validity, the names of Advances is very unclear as it does not imply any of the key conditions (booked train only). At the end of the day, summarising the conditions of a ticket in a few words is always going to be an exercise in compromise, but perhaps another possible naming scheme could be "Any Train, Any Off-Peak, Booked Trains Only". Yes, it's wordy and doesn't exactly roll off the tongue but it does at least impart a basic understanding of the key conditions.
I think the rail industry also needs to take another long, hard look at making the difference between reservable and non-reservable trains much clearer to the average traveller, if they are to continue to allow people to use any non-reservable train on the relevant parts of Advance tickets. A differentiation of reservable "express" trains (whether intercity or regional), and non-reservable "local" trains, like many continental railways have, would be the first step, in my view. Heavy advertising and omnipresent explaining signage would be needed to explain that, for instance, "You can take any train shown as "local" for parts of your Booked Trains Only ticket journey where you haven't got a reservation. You must travel on the booked "express" trains, except in the case of delays."