Agreed. Though I'd suggest that this is not about what "the railway" should prioritise, but what government should prioritise with the railway as the delivery mechanism. We can't blame the railway for not doing that when government policy doesn't support them doing it.
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Would fares reform be acceptable if it led to price increases?
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A very good point. Just to take the thought process a little bit further.
To encourage one person in a car (ie single occupancy) to choose to go by train would cost X (in the form of subsidising the fare)
To encourage four people in a car (ie a family in a car) to choose to go by train would cost 4X (in the form of subsidising the fare)
The outcome in the form of reducing road congestion / road traffic pollution is the same (one car) but the cost ranges from X to 4X.
Therefore common sense would dictate to allocate resources to getting the single occupancy driver off the road as the highest priority as it has the highest cost: reward ratio
mike57
Established Member
What I find interesting is the range of cost per mile on walk up tickets, to demonstrate I have tabulated a few routes I am familar with. Note: Fares are basic off peak and anytime, no attempt at split tickets. Heathrow anytime is Heathrow Express, which has to be one of the most expensive. King Cross - York Super Off Peak is quite restricted I think, and anytime seems to come back with 2 prices, I have taken cheaper one. My view anything over 45p per mile, car is going to be slightly cheaper, and maybe a lot if the car is electric. There are a lot of variables, I'm just tryiing to show how much variation there is.
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Part of the issue is caused by the industry selling Advances that clearly can't cover their costs, leading passengers to believe that walk up fares are automatically poor value for money.
Case in point: Chiltern sell Advance tickets from Marylebone to Kidderminster (131 miles by the eNRT) for as little as £6.40 (4.9p a mile) with the Super Off-Peak Return (broadly equivalent to Avanti's Off-Peak Return) costing £33.10 (12.6p a mile).
For a more extreme example, Marylebone to Wrexham General (183.25 miles via Moor Street and a walk to New Street) starts at £12.00 for an Advance (6.5p a mile) and the Super Off-Peak is £44.50 (12.1p a mile).
With passengers thinking those are poor value, the industry's already lost!
Case in point: Chiltern sell Advance tickets from Marylebone to Kidderminster (131 miles by the eNRT) for as little as £6.40 (4.9p a mile) with the Super Off-Peak Return (broadly equivalent to Avanti's Off-Peak Return) costing £33.10 (12.6p a mile).
For a more extreme example, Marylebone to Wrexham General (183.25 miles via Moor Street and a walk to New Street) starts at £12.00 for an Advance (6.5p a mile) and the Super Off-Peak is £44.50 (12.1p a mile).
With passengers thinking those are poor value, the industry's already lost!
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AlterEgo
Veteran Member
The main objection is the feeling that a public utility, which is being run (ostensibly) privately, is ripping you off.
Expensive fares are on thing but passengers discovering that using numerous tricks to undercut the price legitimately sours the pill even more.
The marginal cost of a passenger turning up for a seat which is unsold anyway is so minimal as to be inconsequential to consider.
Cheap advances are a vital part of the fares mix.
It's marginal to this thread, but whether or not the railways are a public utility is a moot point. I also observe that the time in which they were run with public utility objectives was when they started to go deep into the red, were unable to adjust rates to respond to changes in costs, and ended up with the Beeching closures. We should beware what we wish for.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I would say anything receiving public subsidy in the way the railway does is a public utility. How it's delivered isn't important, for instance many towns have a private company empty the bins.
No, I would not support fare increases even if it leads to a 'simpler' system.
In the Network Railcard area, fares are what I would consider reasonable *at the railcard rate*. Non-railcard fares are rather on the expensive side, and peak fares very expensive. In particular, to get to somewhere which necessitates a via-London trip towards the end of the morning peak (e.g. Southampton to Canterbury arriving late-morning, all time-efficient routes pass through London) the fares are - or have been in the past - distinctly and disproportionately expensive, though not sure what can be done about cases like this if the aim is to discourage casual travel on London-bound peak trains to reduce overcrowding. Perhaps reducing the 'peak' definition to London arrivals between 0730-0900 would help, and likewise restricting the evening 'peak' definition to departures between 1700-1900 where this is not already the case.
In the Network Railcard area, fares are what I would consider reasonable *at the railcard rate*. Non-railcard fares are rather on the expensive side, and peak fares very expensive. In particular, to get to somewhere which necessitates a via-London trip towards the end of the morning peak (e.g. Southampton to Canterbury arriving late-morning, all time-efficient routes pass through London) the fares are - or have been in the past - distinctly and disproportionately expensive, though not sure what can be done about cases like this if the aim is to discourage casual travel on London-bound peak trains to reduce overcrowding. Perhaps reducing the 'peak' definition to London arrivals between 0730-0900 would help, and likewise restricting the evening 'peak' definition to departures between 1700-1900 where this is not already the case.
AlterEgo
Veteran Member
But that is the general perception of the public, so while the discussion of whether public transport is a public utility is academic, the fact it is perceived so is not, in the context of fares reform.
miklcct
On Moderation
Therefore I believe the best fare system is a single-only system with short distance fares reduced a lot by extending
In such case, people will leave their cars at home in off-peak hours because it will be cheaper and faster to take the train, but in peak hour, as driving is a nuisance, people will still pay the price premium to avoid congestion.
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Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Advances on high frequency local routes are silly. Zonal tickets or PAYG work best for local services.
The role of Advances is on InterCity type journeys where they can effectively spread demand because people have various price-flexibility ratio preferences, and many people would reserve in advance to guarantee a seat anyway even if it was only Anytime Singles available. We should look to remove them from local journeys (e.g. almost everything operated by Northern), not add more.
A reasonable guide might be that if you can reserve an actual seat (not a counted place) it's probably a suitable train for Advances.
My two cents:
If I didn’t have a 26-30 railcard then the railway would, by and large, be prohibitively expensive. And that’s with a full time job. From my point of view, a national railcard (of some sort, not getting into the specifics here) would be an essential part of fares reform.
Some Advance fares are too cheap. For example, I can travel from Liverpool to Manchester for £1.90 on a Northern advance, purely because they feel like sticking a middle finger up at TPE and EMR. For a 35 mile journey, this is just over 5p/mile - it’s effectively a free journey.
I can get from Birmingham to London for £4.60 with WMT - 2.5p/mile. Although there’s a significant time penalty & I recognise this pricing may be competing with the coach, I would still consider it good value if I were paying at least twice this.
These are the types of fare that under a nationalised railway, might be under threat. Yes, okay, we all love paying a pittance to travel but I can’t imagine that the lowest tiers of Advance fare, on a number of routes, will realistically survive.
On the other hand, many walk up fares are too expensive. I live & work in Birmingham and to see my friends in Manchester, an Off Peak return (before splitting) is £27.55 with a railcard, which I consider reasonable, or £41.80 without a railcard, over 25p/mile, which I consider over the top, especially given the horrendous overcrowding XC is famed for. Edited to add that under single-leg pricing, paying £13-£15 each way would seem about right.
And this may be controversial but I don’t think fares should be influenced by train length or capacity. If a section of railway, eg Birmingham - Cheltenham, is (in normal times) too busy for a couple of 4/5 car Voyagers to cope, then instead of raising fares to obscene levels to price people off, investment should be made in additional units to provide the capacity needed. No, there isn’t a magic money tree, but I’m of the opinion that there’s a lot of suppressed demand due to a perception that the railway is “too expensive” and furthermore, in some areas, “too busy to get a seat”.
So to answer the question, yes I’d be happy to pay more on the minority of journeys where I’m effectively getting a free ride, but on the majority of journeys, I wouldn’t be happy paying more unless there was investment to match.
If I didn’t have a 26-30 railcard then the railway would, by and large, be prohibitively expensive. And that’s with a full time job. From my point of view, a national railcard (of some sort, not getting into the specifics here) would be an essential part of fares reform.
Some Advance fares are too cheap. For example, I can travel from Liverpool to Manchester for £1.90 on a Northern advance, purely because they feel like sticking a middle finger up at TPE and EMR. For a 35 mile journey, this is just over 5p/mile - it’s effectively a free journey.
I can get from Birmingham to London for £4.60 with WMT - 2.5p/mile. Although there’s a significant time penalty & I recognise this pricing may be competing with the coach, I would still consider it good value if I were paying at least twice this.
These are the types of fare that under a nationalised railway, might be under threat. Yes, okay, we all love paying a pittance to travel but I can’t imagine that the lowest tiers of Advance fare, on a number of routes, will realistically survive.
On the other hand, many walk up fares are too expensive. I live & work in Birmingham and to see my friends in Manchester, an Off Peak return (before splitting) is £27.55 with a railcard, which I consider reasonable, or £41.80 without a railcard, over 25p/mile, which I consider over the top, especially given the horrendous overcrowding XC is famed for. Edited to add that under single-leg pricing, paying £13-£15 each way would seem about right.
And this may be controversial but I don’t think fares should be influenced by train length or capacity. If a section of railway, eg Birmingham - Cheltenham, is (in normal times) too busy for a couple of 4/5 car Voyagers to cope, then instead of raising fares to obscene levels to price people off, investment should be made in additional units to provide the capacity needed. No, there isn’t a magic money tree, but I’m of the opinion that there’s a lot of suppressed demand due to a perception that the railway is “too expensive” and furthermore, in some areas, “too busy to get a seat”.
So to answer the question, yes I’d be happy to pay more on the minority of journeys where I’m effectively getting a free ride, but on the majority of journeys, I wouldn’t be happy paying more unless there was investment to match.
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Skymonster
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Fares reform and pricing should really be two different issues.
For reform:
Now onto fares:
The political climate at the moment clearly will not provide for greater subsidy from the treasury, so if some "expensive" fares are to be reduced then it follows that some cheaper fares will have to rise OR more people will need to use the railway. Public transport has one inherent and massive problem in that it gets more expensive per person as a group travelling together (e.g. family) gets larger, while car travel gets cheaper per person as the number of occupants increases. There is no way to solve this problem. So any attempt to increase cheap fares will put off more budget-conscious travellers, thus defeating the idea of growing the ridership as a means of increasing revenue and thus enabling some of the super-expensive tickets to be reduced in price. However, I would question whether anytime tickets need to be reduced - they are there for a purpose, and if travellers need the flexibility of anytime they pay for it while those who can be a little more flexible will take the lower cost options. Nevertheless there is clearly some imbalance between offpeak fares in certain markets when compared to others and with no more funding likely to be available there is a choice of leaving things as they are or making things more equitable - and the only way I can think of to do that effectively is pence per mile.
So why not...? (the 20p and 40p are just random figures, not precise costed examples)
Anytime 40p / mile
Offpeak 20p / mile
Exacttime <20p / mile (still tiered depending on availability / demand)
Not that the distances would be important or even obvious to the customer - it would just be the basis on which the fares were set. Distance based on shortest rail between two points although alternative allowable routes would not be more expensive.
For reform:
- Ditch operator-specific fares which are confusing to the average / occasional traveller (although this will inevitably lead to everyone having to buy potentially higher-priced any operator fares)
- Ditch route-specific fares for the same reason (within the constraints of the "routing guide" any allowable route between two places should have the same fare, even for cross London / not London)
- Simplify the tiers: anytime, offpeak, exacttime (advance is a stupid name now that they can be bought almost up to departure time in some cases)
- Standardise "offpeak" start and end times across the whole UK network
- etickets on all routes - retain paper tickets for those who wish to use them
Now onto fares:
The political climate at the moment clearly will not provide for greater subsidy from the treasury, so if some "expensive" fares are to be reduced then it follows that some cheaper fares will have to rise OR more people will need to use the railway. Public transport has one inherent and massive problem in that it gets more expensive per person as a group travelling together (e.g. family) gets larger, while car travel gets cheaper per person as the number of occupants increases. There is no way to solve this problem. So any attempt to increase cheap fares will put off more budget-conscious travellers, thus defeating the idea of growing the ridership as a means of increasing revenue and thus enabling some of the super-expensive tickets to be reduced in price. However, I would question whether anytime tickets need to be reduced - they are there for a purpose, and if travellers need the flexibility of anytime they pay for it while those who can be a little more flexible will take the lower cost options. Nevertheless there is clearly some imbalance between offpeak fares in certain markets when compared to others and with no more funding likely to be available there is a choice of leaving things as they are or making things more equitable - and the only way I can think of to do that effectively is pence per mile.
So why not...? (the 20p and 40p are just random figures, not precise costed examples)
Anytime 40p / mile
Offpeak 20p / mile
Exacttime <20p / mile (still tiered depending on availability / demand)
Not that the distances would be important or even obvious to the customer - it would just be the basis on which the fares were set. Distance based on shortest rail between two points although alternative allowable routes would not be more expensive.
Not really... One of the original aims of Advance tickets was to increase occupancy on trains that would otherwise be carrying round lots of empty seats. As such, any fare that covers the incremental cost of carrying a passenger versus not carrying a passenger is good revenue to the operator (same concept works with very cheap airline tickets). The cheapness only becomes a problem if it moves customers from more expensive tickets that they would otherwise have been willing to buy - and if that happens, the advance tiers, availability and fares are not being managed correctly.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
And potentially recast timetables to allow for it. If there's a huge commuter demand for fast trains from Banbury to Birmingham, say, but the 5-car Voyager would be fine for the rest of its route, then you want to be getting in some DMUs or bi-modes and running a long train on that route, and taking those passengers off XC either by removing stops, adding pick up/set down restrictions or just pricing them off in some way.
It doesn't have to be a perfect regional-IC split like somewhere like Germany, but running long IC trains for them to be full for a tiny fraction of the journey is incredibly inefficient.
miklcct
On Moderation
Let me take a local example:
A Parkstone - Poole anytime single is £3.1 for a 3 km journey, with no weekday off-peak ticket available, and an off-peak day return is £3.6. If someone has a car, this is not a particular good value when compared to driving unless you are in a hurry, and people getting to the supermarket may well drive their car out instead of taking the train. If a single is £1 instead for a such a short trip, people may prefer taking the train for their local supermarket trip instead of logging unnecessary mileages on their cars where efficient public transport is available.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Nobody is going to take the train to the supermarket if they own a car. Nobody. The reason being that you need to carry your shopping.
£1/km is too high, however. That does need an Off Peak Day Single adding.
Edit: or ideally there'd be a South Coast/New Forest Verkehrsverbund and the same fare and ticket would be valid by bus and rail and more attractively priced.
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Some route-specific fares do have their merits. Where do the via London / not London fares meet for Reading to Redhill, Southampton to Ashford International?
That can only be done by defining off-peak by arrival time in a major centre. The blanket 0930 restriction on Cross Country has some very awkward effects. However, a clear 0930 restriction on PAYG probably is the kind of simplification the Railway / Treasury might go for.
Skymonster
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I think that’s a pointless example because in almost all cases trains don‘t go from people’s homes to supermarkets - and most people will thus take the car when they’ve got heavy shopping to bring back no matter what the price incentive in favour of public transport is. In many cases, a station is further away from people’s homes than the supermarket. For many, very short train journeys are pointless because the network isn’t granular enough to pick them up and get them to where they want to go compared to using the car or even taking a bus.
I have a couple of thoughts on this.
I don't like the concept of 'revenue neutral'. More relevant is 'subsidy neutral' - i.e. if fares reform could also reduce costs, then that could give scope to reduce overall revenue by some cost reductions. For example - changes around peak ticketing to spread the peaks could reduce the requirement for rolling stock and major infrastructure spend. Equally, if ticketing can be simplified to such an extent that ticket offices can close, this saving can and should be pumped back into fares.
There seems to be an assumption that low fares reduce revenue, and high fares increase it. In many cases this is logical, but there are many examples where it probably isn't the case.
I'm not sure I like some of the ideas of simplification, especially those that seem to make the 'back office' side simpler, but don't necessarily help passengers. I would take advantage of the flexibility gained by PAYG systems, and perhaps have more different fares (e.g. have a narrower peak, but also have a shoulder peak), but make it such that you can't accidentally buy the wrong ticket - like on TfL, it charges you the cheapest fare based on your time of tapping in and tapping out, and doesn't care whether you took an indirect route for example. Similar to at Heathrow, where a faster train has a fare premium, this could be calculated automatically, if you ytap out before the slow train has arrived then clearly you took the fast train and pay that fare. Paper tickets could perhaps have simpler fares, but probably would miss out on some of the savings. This would also simplify things like delay repay, which could be applied in real time, but that's more for another thread.
I don't like the concept of 'revenue neutral'. More relevant is 'subsidy neutral' - i.e. if fares reform could also reduce costs, then that could give scope to reduce overall revenue by some cost reductions. For example - changes around peak ticketing to spread the peaks could reduce the requirement for rolling stock and major infrastructure spend. Equally, if ticketing can be simplified to such an extent that ticket offices can close, this saving can and should be pumped back into fares.
There seems to be an assumption that low fares reduce revenue, and high fares increase it. In many cases this is logical, but there are many examples where it probably isn't the case.
- High walk up return fares that are quoted on national news channels, and make the railway look expensive are very poor advertising - does the extra revenue the small number of people who actually use the tickets bring in cover the lost bookings the media coverage causes?
- Very cheap fares with restrictions generally bring customers onto the railway who wouldn't otherwise travel by train. Removing these fares would mean the money was lost - the chances that they would just use a more expensive ticket is unlikely. The area where a ticket is a 'distress purchase', and so there is little elasticity of demand tends to be commuter travel, which tends to be at fairly high fares anyway
- Some fare reductions on more flexible tickets might bring in more revenue if they can make people move away from less flexible tickets. For example, I would imagine that a decent Oyster-style system across the South-East (or ideally the country), where walk-up tickets on short-medium length journeys were a reasonable price would make people move away from season tickets and cheap day returns to just tapping on and off at a time to suit themselves, perhaps paying a little more over a year, but happy to benefit from the simplicity
- Some fare restrictions only serve to make rail unattractive. For example, I would add to the routing guide that the fastest train between two stations is always valid on an 'all reasonable routes' type ticket.
- As miklcct, the railway rarely seems to be a good option for short journeys within a large town. Reducing these prices to similar levels as busses would probably increase revenue.
I'm not sure I like some of the ideas of simplification, especially those that seem to make the 'back office' side simpler, but don't necessarily help passengers. I would take advantage of the flexibility gained by PAYG systems, and perhaps have more different fares (e.g. have a narrower peak, but also have a shoulder peak), but make it such that you can't accidentally buy the wrong ticket - like on TfL, it charges you the cheapest fare based on your time of tapping in and tapping out, and doesn't care whether you took an indirect route for example. Similar to at Heathrow, where a faster train has a fare premium, this could be calculated automatically, if you ytap out before the slow train has arrived then clearly you took the fast train and pay that fare. Paper tickets could perhaps have simpler fares, but probably would miss out on some of the savings. This would also simplify things like delay repay, which could be applied in real time, but that's more for another thread.
Skymonster
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You don’t “price people off”, you offer a variety of fares that drive buying behaviour - especially among price-sensitive customers - onto trains that are less likely to be full (by using offpeak and advance fares). Only when all trains become full is strengthening necessary - again treasury will nolonger fund additional rolling stock that’s going to just sit in sidings for part of the day.
I agree with you here.
Again, agreed.
Under a nationalised railway, with fares reform, where all revenue essentially goes to the same place, there will/should be no competition between TOCs to “steal” revenue from each other, so the situation with Northern offering £1.90 tickets to undercut TPE’s £2.00 tickets, which were introduced to undercut Northern’s £2.10 tickets, introduced to undercut TPE’s £2.50 tickets, will cease to happen. There will/should be no race to the bottom, purely to grab revenue from another operator. That is the point I was making - anyone paying £1.90 to make this journey will almost certainly be happy to pay slightly more.
Why should some people have to pay 4x per mile (or worse) more than others, for no other reason than geography/how busy trains are at that particular point?Skymonster said:
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miklcct
On Moderation
For anything more than these extremely short journeys, the off-peak day return fares are, IMO, reasonable already. For example, between Poole - Bournemouth, off-peak day return is £4.8 for 19 km in total, which can be competitive with driving already; for Bournemouth - Southampton, off-peak day return is £16.3 for 93 km in total, which is a really great value.
The problem is the ridiculous single fare which penalises passengers who need to go to multiple places on a day where a return ticket can't be used, or who don't return on the same day. By moving into single-only ticketing, this problem can be solved.
My opinion about your points are: the high walk up fare is just a way for the media to attract eyeballs as kind of exaggeration, and if a passenger wants to take the train off-peak and find the fare much cheaper, they will buy the ticket and no longer believe in the media.
And I agree on your third point as well, this will definitely lead to an increase of discretionary travel which may lead to higher fare revenue.
Also, a simpler ticketing system can definitely reduce compliance cost and lost revenue as well, as the cost for catching fare dodgers decreases and the incentive to evade fares decreases as well because people know they can't get away with it.
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Skymonster
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One more thing: for simplicity get rid of day returns. I’m sure @yorkie will tear his hair out at the suggestion (and no doubt there would have to be some adjustment to period return fares, maybe even bringing them into line with current day returns) but there is no logic to changing more for the same journey depending on whether the return is on the same day or a different day to the outward.
Very good point.
It could mean a national railcard for middle aged single people.
Skymonster
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The middle aged man in the Beemer isn’t going to change to rail, because he’s typically on expenses.
The real challenge is public transport’s inherent problem: the more people in a group, the more expensive it becomes (based on shared cost for the group/family) whereas a car becomes cheaper [per person] the more people who are in it. No amount of fancy rail cards are going to make rail the same price for a family of four as it is for one person travelling alone, which is what the car represents.
The real challenge is public transport’s inherent problem: the more people in a group, the more expensive it becomes (based on shared cost for the group/family) whereas a car becomes cheaper [per person] the more people who are in it. No amount of fancy rail cards are going to make rail the same price for a family of four as it is for one person travelling alone, which is what the car represents.
If it's not to be revenue neutral who is expected to meet the shortfall?
miklcct
On Moderation
A fully-occupied car is an efficient mean of transport and we don't need to get them out of their cars. We want to reduce the number of single-occupancy cars on the road which is a major factor in traffic congestions.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Which is fine in a way, because the more people there are in the car, the less you need it off the road.
ABB125
Established Member
I disagree. Get rid of open returns, to be replaced by singles which are half the price. Basically what GWR have done around Bristol.
But that comes back to the principle of single fare pricing. It is the difference between day and period returns that causes part of the issue of how to set those single fares.
The reforms around Bristol aren't really that great although they are on relatively short distance flows for period returns constructing single fares that are half the old period returns. There is still a notion of a day return which is cheaper than a period return journey. For PAYG to work, there will need to be a off-peak day return cap and, passengers will most likely have to return to the same station they departed from for that cap to apply.
We will have to await the next steps with interest to see how it is actually implemented.
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