Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner!I have been having a place with some milages from an old timetable and have come to the conclusion that however you price rail fares you are equally likely to end up with anomalies.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner!I have been having a place with some milages from an old timetable and have come to the conclusion that however you price rail fares you are equally likely to end up with anomalies.
I have been having a place with some milages from an old timetable and have come to the conclusion that however you price rail fares you are equally likely to end up with anomalies.
I have been having a place with some milages from an old timetable and have come to the conclusion that however you price rail fares you are equally likely to end up with anomalies.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner!
I agree. But I'm not sure if that's a bit of a red herring in the context of this discussion, as I don't think anyone is claiming that you could produce a system that has no anomalies anywhere.
You could, because provided you have prescriptive routeing a rail-mile based system will not have any actual anomalies at all (i.e. situations where splitting or buying long is cheaper). That's even true if it has a taper, or if it uses notional tariff kilometres.
Agreed, there is, by my mind, no peak/off peak differentiator that avoids anomalies *other than* basing it on journey segments which would require all tickets to be Advances so the correct peak/off peak segment was selected for each train.
If you change at Leyland then it is valid under the shortest route rule. If you change at Preston then it is valid because:
Wigan North Western is a routeing point itself (technically a member of Wigan Group)
Preston passes the fares check as a destination routeing point for a Wigan to Chorley journey
Preston to Chorley is a valid local journey in itself (through train)
The Virgin train from Wigan to Preston follows a valid mapped route between those two routeing points.
Because the mapped route and the local journey are validated in separate steps, the doubleback is irrelevant.
Does the average passenger need to understand and figure that out for himself? The average passenger goes to a ticket office or website and buys the best ticket on offer.I'm assuming the above is correct because noone has contradicted it, but ... how could any reasonable passenger possibly be expected to understand and figure that out for himself?
Does the average passenger need to understand and figure that out for himself? The average passenger goes to a ticket office or website and buys the best ticket on offer.
I would say in this case, quite possibly. If you have a ticket to somewhere for which multiple routes look reasonable, you do need to be able to tell fairly easily if the ticket is or isn't going to be valid by any of those routes.
Requires the passenger to be clear about their requirement and to be aware that day and/or time of travel can affect the price.Does the average passenger need to understand and figure that out for himself? The average passenger goes to a ticket office or website and buys the best ticket on offer.
At least that would stop people complaining that Paper Roll Tickets are too big!The best way to do that is to list them on the ticket. With barcodes, tickets could easily be A4 sheets from a laser printer (or otherwise larger) so have much more room for this, or you go DB style and base it on 3 character codes. Again makes no odds as to what esoteric method was used to work it out.
Remember that, in this world, all tickets are Advances so you would be tied to a given train, not a given route.If I want to travel from London to Dartford I would not want to be tied to one of the four different routes. If I had to be I'd probably find another way of travelling.
If I want to travel from London to Dartford I would not want to be tied to one of the four different routes. If I had to be I'd probably find another way of travelling.
I've possibly jumped into a conversation mid-way through, but are we really saying that commuters would have to book advances for every journey?Remember that, in this world, all tickets are Advances so you would be tied to a given train, not a given route.
Well we're talking about commuter type routes. It often happens that trains arrive out of sequence so while I might intend to get the Sidcup line train to Dartford, the train which actually turns up first is the Blackheath and Woolwich line train. These are all DOO trains so no chance to swap on the train, and if I had to go back to the ticket office at London Bridge I'd probably end up needing a completely different ticket.If a return was twice a single, what would be the problem with deciding your outward route and purchasing a single, then deciding your return route when you arrive at the station and purchasing another single? Or, if you changed your mind mid-journey, exchanging your ticket for one for the route you did take and are intending to take? (that could replace actual excesses)
Under Neil William's proposal, effectively yes. All tickets would be train-specific.I've possibly jumped into a conversation mid-way through, but are we really saying that commuters would have to book advances for every journey?
I've possibly jumped into a conversation mid-way through, but are we really saying that commuters would have to book advances for every journey?
Under Neil William's proposal, effectively yes. All tickets would be train-specific.
Well we're talking about commuter type routes. It often happens that trains arrive out of sequence so while I might intend to get the Sidcup line train to Dartford, the train which actually turns up first is the Blackheath and Woolwich line train. These are all DOO trains so no chance to swap on the train, and if I had to go back to the ticket office at London Bridge I'd probably end up needing a completely different ticket.
If I want to travel from London to Dartford I would not want to be tied to one of the four different routes.
I might intend to get the Sidcup line train to Dartford, the train which actually turns up first is the Blackheath and Woolwich line train. ... if I had to go back to the ticket office at London Bridge I'd probably end up needing a completely different ticket.
Not quite. Of the places mentioned above, Dartford is in Kent and the others in Greater London. Until recently, Dartford was outside the Oyster zones. It has now been included in Oyster zone 8.This is within Greater London, I guess?
A zonal system with a single management is sensible in and around large cities, but giving that job entirely to TfL will cause howls of outrage from towns such as Broxbourne, Dartford, Redhill and Watford. It seems to me that the northern cities have handled this better, forming City Regions which extend beyond the boundaries of the old metropolitan counties to cover the whole travel-to-work area. It can lead to oddities like Barnsley being in both Leeds City Region and Sheffield City Region, but it does seem to encourage co-operation and avoid the democratic deficit which is such a problem on the edge of Greater London.Not sure I wouldn't just go for a zonal German-style joint tariff system managed entirely by TfL (and exactly the same as Tube fares) for those services.
If devolution is to be genuine, it will lead to anomalies at boundaries. If the government's plan to devolve local transport to city regions is implemented in full, there will be a very large number of anomalies at boundaries. But will it give us better local rail services across the north of England? Despite the anomalies, I tend to think it will.Outside of the big cities there are far fewer similar cases.
If devolution is to be genuine, it will lead to anomalies at boundaries. If the government's plan to devolve local transport to city regions is implemented in full, there will be a very large number of anomalies at boundaries. But will it give us better local rail services across the north of England? Despite the anomalies, I tend to think it will.
route specific, in the manner that Swiss and German tickets are.
So we start getting back into permitted routes - which is a large part of what people find too complex about the current system.And note that German routes are, at least as I understand it, not restricted to routes in the narrow sense of the word (simple A-B-C-D style linear routing) but can use "Raumbegrenzungen" (area restrictions?) which describe a kind of polygon à la "A-(B-C/X-Y)-D" which means "A to D via either B and C on the one hand, or X and Y on the other hand, or any route in between".
So we start getting back into permitted routes - which is a large part of what people find too complex about the current system.
A major problem with the current GB system is finding out what the permitted routes are
What would you print on a Poppleton to Shireoaks ticket?Agreed; I think a specification that's printed on the ticket is a different beast from the vague "any reasonable route" or "Any Permitted".
What would you print on a Poppleton to Shireoaks ticket?
Routeing by implication... And I thought this was going to be a better system....implying that anything between ...
Routeing by implication... And I thought this was going to be a better system.