Great Western Coffee Shop

A question for those with a working knowledge of Avantix Mobile.

My local line (The Severn Beach Line) has a zonal fares structure with an inner zone, outer zone and all line zone. The fares on this line are the same for different journeys within the relevant zone.

I'm often sold tickets that cover the whole zone I'm travelling in rather than from my origin to destination.

As an example, today I was travelling from Stapleton Road to Shirehampton, the fare for which is the all line zone fare of ^2 single. I was actually sold a ticket with the origin Bristol Temple Meads and the destination Avonmouth which is also ^2.

I queried this with the conductor and he said that they have the the three zonal fares, Bristol TM↔Clifton Down (inner zone), Clifton Down↔Avonmouth (outer zone) and Bristol TM↔Avonmouth (all line zone), programmed in as the most popular options to save time issuing tickets. (Leaving aside St Andrew's Road and Severn Beach which are also in the outer/full line zones)

My question is, won't this affect accurate passenger figures for the individual stations on the line? I asked the conductor this and he said that, no, they still input the correct stations for passenger count purposes but then select one of the three popular options relevant to the journey being undertaken. Is this correct or was I being fobbed off?

Hmmm, sounds fishy to me. If the conductor has to put in the correct stations anyway, how would it save time having the presets?

_{This shocking policy is probably going to be used as an excuse to massacre the service from certain stations in the future. :P ;)}

guards have to input manual pax counts into avantix for each train.

And do those manual counts just cover the bods on the train at a particular point in time or do they include the stations where individual pax boarded and alighted?

It saves time at the actual point of sale on board the train because there is such a short period of time between stations for the staff to walk the length of the train while carrying out a ticket check.

However, when they collate the Avantix inputs, they will specify from which station that ticket was sold.

And there is no 'shocking policy' to 'massacre' any services or stations on the Severn Beach Line service, Btline.  ::)

On the contrary: there are plans to further expand the Severn Beach Line service, and it is upheld nationally as one of the best examples of the success of a Community Rail line - thanks to Friends of Suburban Bristol Railways (FoSBR) and Severnside Community Rail Partnership (SCRP), among others.  ;)