Great Western Coffee Shop

At yesterday evening's West Wilts Rail User Group meeting, one of the audience was recommending a ticket splitting / money saving website that puts up a map andlets you choose nearby stations as the first stage of a process (?). I heard "ticket split A to Z" but must have got it wrong, as nothing came up on Google when I searched for that (note my faith in Google to be all-encompassing!). I did, however, find no fewer that five sites offering split tickets.   

I suppose it's natural and encouraged market forces that a number of these systemd have sprung up in competiton with each other - and I wonder which forum members use / would recommend, if any?

http://www.splityourticket.co.uk


http://www.splitmyfare.co.uk


https://raileasy.trainsplit.com


http://splitticketing.co.uk


http://split.traintimes.org.uk


As well as the specific sites listed above, you could ask here  ;D ... where you'll usually get excellent suggestions taking a wider view than the sites do; split ticketing is not the only saving.   And you can also work it out / through for yourself - for those people with some experience already, that can lead to excellent results, backed up by a knowledge of the detail so that you can trade off flexibility versus price, and consider multiple journeys made in a period and other factors too.

Background

If you are travelling from a place "A" to a place "C", travelling on a train that calls at "B" on the way, or changing trains at "B", you are allowed to purchase a ticket from A to B and another from B to C to make up your journey, provided that each of the tickets is used within the conditions set out for it.

You might expect that buying a ticket in sections would be more expensive than buying a ticket all the way, but it turns out to be cheaper to "split" quite often.

If you purchase your tickets online, you can get a whole series of tickets ordered to be posted or to collect them from a ticket machine.  At a staffed booking office or you can normally purchase any ticket in the national database up to 3 months ahead, including tickets that start at different stations to the one that you're at to make your purchase.   There isn't the same flexibility, though, if you walk up to a ticket machine and try to find your combination through the front panel.

If you split your ticket, it's your responsibility to ensure that each ticket is valid as used.  I am unsure of the legal status if one of the ticket splitting websites above sells you an invalid combination, and you're likely to have trouble claiming compensation across a series of trains if a cancellation or failed connection causes a late arrival at final destination, or means you miss a train on which you have a "this train only" leg on your journey.

The Train Companies / government have set up the train fare system as it is - and there are good deals on some journeys, heavily marketed or specially priced to encourage traffic. So although there are some staff who take a dim view of split tickets (and indeed I have been challenged on a valid combination) the 'proper' line is that the lower fares for the individual legs have been set up to encourage you to use them.

As an aside ... there are other elements to making economic train ticket purchases. For example, if you're travelling out in the peak and back off peak, is a peak return best value, or would you do better with a peak single out and an offpeak single back?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38812175

..and a good picture as well

seems to have expanded to cover the country this morning....mods might want to move to "fares fair"

Just being discussed on BBC Breakfast - good news and long overdue - can't see GWR and the rest of them being too happy though!   ;)

From the BBC report


IIRC the only way from St Pancras to Grantham is Change at Nottingham.

However Kings Cross to Nottingham via Grantham always used to be the same fare (in 1975 at least) because the (old) Great Northern Railway trains used to run that journey (to Nottingham Victoria) direct (up to about 100 years ago) so I suspect they also ran on to Sheffield up the Leam valley. 

Sorry if I'm missing something, but surely if the fare income rapidly falls, the cost of fares will need to rise to provide the TOC's with their income?

Presumably there will be some rebalancing, or are they starting with some fares that they hardly ever sell?

The move to selling single ticket pricing could be part of the rebalancing

If the fare income is only at the current level due to not offering customers the lowest fares available, it would be disingenuous to say the least and I would imagine there would be considerable disquiet if they are obliged to do so and then raise fares in response?

The phrase giving with one hand and taking with the other springs to mind.

It is the TOCs undertaking this overhaul after all.

("Rebalancing" - great word though, I will look out for it in the coming months in this context!!!)

quite.  Whilst you could (and should) have a fare system overhaul which was broadly cost neutral (and therefore affordable) for the industry as a whole it would be very difficult to make it cost neutral for every TOC

Which is why, I suspect, the Rail Delivery Group (the trade body representing TOCs - formerly ATOC) are starting with a limited trial with just one operator and route.

There may well have been agreement with the DfT to underwrite any reduction in revenue that this trial brings.

CrossCountry is an interesting choice to look at. Most of their short distance Advance Purchase fares are priced below the walk on Day Single for a given station pair. Those Day Singles are often priced by another TOC who operate the local services between given station pairs. Because of this, huge savings can be made against the long distance XC priced fares, by splitting multiple times.

I know from experience that a weekend day trip from Bristol to York was over 60% cheaper than the lowest price through Advances there and back, after splitting at Cheltenham, Birmingham, Derby, Sheffield and Leeds.

As I understand it from the way it was described on the radio, splits are only going to be offered under this trial where there is a change of train. This won't pick up most of the cost advantages of splits en route on a single service, such as is often possible on XC.

For more details, this is the RDG press release (http://www.raildeliverygroup.com/media-centre/press-releases/2017/469771790-2017-02-01.html), which refers to a DfT paper published in December 2016 called "Action Plan for Information on Rail Fares & Ticketing" (https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/579850/action-plan-for-information-on-rail-fares-and-ticketing.pdf).

That Action Plan was drawn up by DfT (who published it) with Which?, RDG, ORR, and Transport Focus. The press release also refers to an Action Plan published by DRG, though I can't find that on line. There is actually a lot if interesting stuff (if stuff like that interests you) on the DRG site. It's hidden, but if you go to the foot of the front page and click "Site map", then "Publications", you get a long list of documents. It's in random order, which isn't helpful, but hovering gives you a date and size at least.

But even that will have an impact on other operators.  In fact XC is arguably the one TOC with the greatest potential to impact other operators.  But maybe that is why it is a good TOC to use as a trial in order to understand what those impacts will be. 

call me cynical, but I think that this might be yet more tinkering round the edges. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38812175

 Interesting development,  so my understanding will ticket office/ machines do it for you ?

Indeed, in an example given, a (flexible) all the way single ticket Scotland/Cornwall was well over the £100 mark, while the cheapest split ticket offering was around £80? - but these were advance fares, valid on one train(s) on one day. Whether you will still be able to find the more flexible ticket is unknown.

And there was talk of including TVMs in this - how do they offer Advances then? Because they're saying the same fare will be available, regardless of purchase method.

In my view this is a lot of spin and little substance.  I am sure there are hundreds of people travelling from Wick to Par every day and very few would want to travel from London to Sheffield via Grantham.  Interesting that Cross Country who have some of the highest fares and greatest restrictions are being used for the trial

So how will this work with a local favourite, the Didcot split?  Will the anytime single fare between SWI and PAD be reduced to the sum of the fares between those places and DID, thus reducing the fare from £64.50 to £54.10?  Or will you only get the reduced fare if your train calls at DID (as at present)? 

That saving, at 17% is handy, but not that dramatic.  But doing the same exercise from BRI reduces the fare from £102 to £61.60.  Don't expect the TOC's to agree to that kind of reduction without some change to the franchise agreement. Which I can't see the DfT agreeing to.

So what happens?  Do the fares from the west to Didcot increase?  That will in itself result in more squeals of protest, and rightly so.

Oh, and an added complication. In the evening the off peak fare from Didcot west is even cheaper, so that £102 fare reduces to £52.30, a reduction of almost 50%.



 

Surely any squeals from TOCs can be silenced by pointing out that customers should have been offered the cheapest fare in the first place, so actually the TOCs have been making hay whilst this has been going on, and this is in reality just ensuring that the lowest fare is offered?

There's more background to this than you may realise. So maybe the pretty words about reforming ticketing that have been coming out of DfT and others meant something for once.

At the same time as the DfT "Action Plan for Information on Rail Fares & Ticketing" (https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/579850/action-plan-for-information-on-rail-fares-and-ticketing.pdf) (13th Dec 2016 -mentioned before) there was an RDG press release (http://www.raildeliverygroup.com/media-centre/press-releases/2016/469771185-2016-12-13-1.html) and their own "Ticket Vending Machine: Ten Point Improvement Plan" (http://www.raildeliverygroup.com/about-us/publications.html?task=file.download&id=469771182). This had ten points (simplified here - there  is more explanation):

That's not just about TVMs, if you look at item 1.

In full


Key is definition of "unnecessary" and "undesirable" and who defines them.

I don't see much linkage between the programmes to change TVMs and fares, though both serve to simplify the process of using a TVM. For a start TVMs all over the country need to be changed in the same way, while fares can be simplified flow by flow (or in groups of geographically close flows).

For the fare pricing trial on XC, the description in the RDG press release is:

There's more than plenty of things there that sound specific, but could lead to quite a range of different new systems.

What's notably been missing from all of this is any discussion (let alone consultation!) on the principles of ticketing, and which to retain. That would include some description of the logic underlying the current fares structure. While it is often said to make no sense whatever, I'm sure every aspect of it made good sense to whoever introduced it at the time. Why bother to look at that? Well, until you can say what purpose a feature serves, or once served, and then look at whether that purpose is still valid, wholly or in part, how can you know what to change?

And why should they agree to it.  Enough of GWRs customers pass through Didcot and automatically applying the split ticketing saving to them would possible be enough to flip the franchise from profitable to loss-making.

The only way I can see a proper overhaul of the fare system is if TOCs first loose the right to set their own fares and keep the farebox and franchises become "concessions" along the DLR/overground model. 

The problem in overhauling the ticketing system is that even if this was to be a zero-sum game there would be individual winners and losers.

Faith seemed to previously been put into wider use of ITSO smartcards, but this seems to have been downplayed in recent years. It works quite well in the Netherlands, but is much more difficult to adapt to the UK system with widespread tickets restricted to particular services, different costs according to the time of day, and large discounts on returns completed within one day etc.

Some of the other solutions used elsewhere, such as restricting cheaper tickets (in relative terms) for short journeys to local stopping services, could work as it could eliminate the benefits of some splits but at the penalty of some people having much slower local journeys than they do at present - and in some cases there is only one 'type' of service anyway. Often this is XC doing double-duty.

The way I read it, the answer to John R's Didcot question, or any split-ticket question, is/might be that there would be a price for each leg - Swindon-Didcot and Didcot-London - which would be summed on one ticket.

But not in this May's trial, which is only for some XC "routes" - presumably just XC-priced fares.

Two things about XC may be relevant to their being chosen. One is that they are usually (or even always) an "overlay", so each part of their network has fares priced by other TOCs. That makes this trial easier to do, as it only involves automatic processes using existing fares, not setting new fares (which requires people and judgement).

The other point is the franchise timetable. For XC, the preliminaries are due to start in December 2017, with the ITT out in August 2018 and the award in June 2019. That makes it the first renewal (in other words the shortest still to run) that's compatible with a revenue-changing trial.

Of course one change that would not eliminate fare anomalies would be to lower the prices of the very expensive fares that people hardly ever buy but which are very bad PR for the railway.

I am sure that there were anomalies under BR and the old companies before them.  But they only become an big issue when you move to a system that has both dirt cheap fares and stupidly expensive fares.  Remove those extremes and split ticket savings would amount to a few quid here or there and we could live with that.

In relation to XC specifically, there's a suggestion that in recent years long distance travellers have been deterred by even advance fares booked well in advance over long routes not being particularly great value. For example a quick check now shows if you wanted to travel from Newcastle to Exeter on Tues 21st March and back on Weds 22nd March after 1030 - two dates I picked on the basis they're pretty unremarkable AFAIK - the cheapest singles are £91.50 each way - a saving of £1.50 on the off-peak return fare. Which you can't use if you leave your start point before 0930 (although you can split your tickets). A similar check for Birmingham-Exeter the same day reveals the cheapest fares are £36.80 each way - about £20 less than the OP return, but I still wouldn't regard it as an absolute bargain.

This and the fact most XC services suffer from overcrowding at some point during their journey (given most weekday services run through one or other weekday peaks, Sunday services are regularly overcrowded and Saturday services can have very high demand depending on sporting fixtures) may have suppressed demand or caused other passengers to travel via London. XC services are still overcrowded, but more with commuters or passengers on shorter distance advance tickets.

Most other TOCs offer far better advance deals on a £ per mile basis although TBF this is also capacity based as it should be. Given XC hasn't got much capacity they can't offer particularly cheap tickets to start with - there's no incentive.

Anyway, if XC start offering cheaper longer distance fares, will this tempt more longer distance passengers to use their services and if so does that mean if you don't have a seat reservation on a 4 car Voyager, you'll be standing for the entirety of your journey (admittedly this isn't uncommon anyway)? Or will they increase all advance tickets and save the cheapest ones for services operated by HSTs and doubled-up Voyagers?

Obviously I haven't used any stats so if anyone has any to refute my assertions feel free. To my mind however XC needs capacity increases as much as it needs cheaper longer distance tickets. I realise this topic has been done to death over the years and hopefully the intended changes in December 2017 will lead to improvements for the core of their network.

Is their Friday afternoon blackout on advance fares still in place?

Absolutely.  And to be fair they may be moving down that route.  To my mind, the rail problem XC has is the Voyagers.  They simply can't be very efficient trains to run singly or in multiple.  A 4 car Voyager has close to the same number of seats as a 2 car class 170 say and must be more expensive to run, fuel and maintain. 

If Voyagers were ever the answer, it must have been a bloody stupid question.

Quite. Is there a worse designed train for its intended purpose? I can't think of any other that makes such inefficient use of its internal space.

On the wider point, as others have noted above, much of the overcrowding is a particular locations where XC are serving local journeys. Birmingham to Oxford is a good example, which really prompts the question as to how much of this market XC should be trying to serve at all. Maybe XC should make fewer stops and we need a separate local' trains running Reading-Didcot-Oxford- Banbury-Leamington etc. to Birmingham. Clearly there are capacity constraints of course... the short sighted removal of 4 track between Dorridge and Tyesely being one of them.

Voyagers were ordered based on passengers figures at the time and projected very low growth. Had the projected growth in passenger numbers been correct then the Voyagers would have been an adequate replacement for the ancient loco hauled stock used on the Cross Country network. They provided substantial decreases in journey times, greater operational flexibility, and much improved reliability.

Yes, some mistakes were made. Virgin initially specified 3 classes of accommodation (Standard, Club, First), each requiring an accessible toilet that took up precious seating space. Said toilets were poorly fitted out, leading to odour problems. The Voyager design also didn't account for the regular washing they were to get along the Devon Sea Wall.

Virgin perhaps could have refurbished and re-engineered the HSTs in the post privatisation Cross Country fleet. That though would not have been enough to cover the whole network. There's no way they would have soldiered on with the elderly locos and Mk2s, so I can perfectly understand their wish to replace the entire CC fleet with a uniform new build. Of course, had they kept the HSTs then things would be very different on the Great Western franchise. First Group would have needed to order far more Class 180s to fulfill their timetable ambitions.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. And it's fashionable to be down on Voyagers. I've grown used to them and do tire a little of the constant criticism they get. Admittedly, before I knew of the full history of their order and introduction, I was down on them too.

My understanding the through fare will be cut to the price of the cheapest split combo,

Even with walkups that will get to be very interesting where a ticket split is part peak and part off peak ... more questions than answers in some aspects at the moment.

The trial is only on Scotland to southwest fares, which I suspect see very little sales anyway.

You've also missed the fact that XC are only working on simplying where the journey involves *a change of train*.

So no movement on split tickets