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From iNews (https://inews.co.uk/news/three-days-a-week-rail-season-ticket-lure-part-time-commuters-office-557167)


I think I recall these already for some Cornwall commutes?

Yes, it's a good way forward.  Perhaps they should become part of the general fares structure across the country?

"Part time season tickets" have been available for quite a few years on some journeys in the West. They are valid for the same three weekdays and Sats & Suns and one end of the journey has/had to be at a gated station.

Example Par to Plymouth.   
Looked up at BRFares ...  http://www.brfares.com/#!fares?orig=PAR&dest=PLY (http://www.brfares.com/#!fares?orig=PAR&dest=PLY)
Either there is a web site funny or the conditions look designed to confuse even the staff

Mon, Tue, Wed
Outward:    VALID BETWEEN 0830-1600 INC AND FROM 1830 M-F.
Return:    NOT VALID BETWEEN 1601-1829 INC MON-FRI.

Mon, Tue, Fri
Outward:    NOT VALID BEFORE 0929HRS MONDAY-FRIDAY
Return:    ANY TRAIN SAME DAY

Mon, Wed, Thur
Outward:    VALID ON DATE&TRAIN SHOWN ONLY.LMTD CHNGE.NO RFND.
Return:    Return

Tue, Wed, Thur
Outward:    VALID BETWEEN 0830-1600 INC AND FROM 1800 M-F.
Return:    NOT VALID BETWEEN 1601-1759 INC MON-FRI.


Noting that "gated station" rule and indeed the tickets are not offered Par to Devonport.  The way you write, old original, suggests that journeys on these tickets have to be include a gated station (you say end of JOURNEY and not end of VALIDITY) - does that mean that if I bourght a Par to Plymouth one, I would not be allowed to leave the train from Par at Devonport, as neither have gates?  If so, that's a restriction I'm not used to on season tickets which I've always thought to be (and used) for intermediate journeys too. [Added - just looked at National Rail Condits ... which suggest that intermediate journeys with both ends ungated are allowed]

NRCoT

Carnet tickets might be more convenient as there is no requirement then to stick to specific days of the week, so long as they don't require the user to write in a date into a small box on a cardboard ticket with a pen and risk being accused of altering it. Sell them in units of single trips, eg 10, 20, 50, 100, with the larger ones having a longer period to use than the smaller ones. Or is the e-ticketing / ITSO system not capable of doing this, even on a limited set of stations?

Grahame.... No, nothing wrong with getting off short of destination.  In my time we had someone who wanted one between Penzance & Redruth and was issued one through to Truro. Also there was a case of someone having one from St Austell to Truro and Truro to Falmouth, very rarely came through gates at Truro, not a problem.

Didcotdean... We also have Carnet tix down here, trouble is not particularly good value for money. 10 tix for the price of 9.

A word of caution....  this info comes from my dodgy memory, having been out of the loop (and free!) for 9 months.

Maybe for Carnet tickets to be deeper discounted they would have to be sold in the larger packages, and can be confined to one person's use as the season is.

Graham..

Looking at those weird restrictions...  up to last October there was nothing like that. P/T seasons were just like ordinary ones. No time restrictions, and they were refundable (fares for days used deducted (SDR OR 7DS) and an admin fee.)

This might have changed in the interim.

Possibly a screw-up where the validities for one (rare) ticket type are mistakenly applied to another? I've seen that happen before.

Yes, it's a screw-up, but a worse one than that. The restriction codes that have been defined for these ticket types (NH, NW, NT, NM) already exist for other ticket types. As the restrictions have not been redefined, they are - well, wrong!

NH: "OFF-PEAK DAY" used for  MO TU WE &WKND
Restricted Days:

Mondays to Fridays

Outward Travel

Not valid on trains timed to depart after 04:29 and before 08:30 or after 16:00 and before 18:30.

The restriction after 16:00 and before 18:30 includes any connecting train departing during this period (or re-commencing your journey following a break of journey) within the following areas:

    Transport for Greater Manchester area plus Alderley Edge, Birchwood, Burscough Bridge, Disley, Handforth, Hoscar, New Mills Central, New Mills Newtown, Padgate, Parbold, Styal, Warrington Bank Quay, Warrington Central and Wilmslow;
    Travel South Yorkshire area plus, Darton, Denby Dale, Moorthorpe and South Elmsall;
    West Yorkshire Metro area plus Cononley, Harrogate,  Hornbeam Park, Knaresborough, Pannal, Skipton, Starbeck and Weeton.

Valid trains can also be checked using the journey planner at www.nationalrail.co.uk 

Further information including maps of the restricted areas can be found on the Northern website.

 
Return Travel

Not valid on trains timed to depart after 04:29 and before 08:30 or after 16:00 and before 18:30.

The restriction after 16:00 and before 18:30 includes any connecting train departing during this period (or re-commencing your journey following a break of journey) within the following areas:

    Transport for Greater Manchester area plus Alderley Edge, Birchwood, Burscough Bridge, Disley,  Dove Holes, Handforth, Hoscar, New Mills Central, New Mills Newtown, Padgate, Parbold, Styal, Warrington Bank Quay, Warrington Central, and Wilmslow;
    Travel South Yorkshire area plus, Darton, Denby Dale, Moorthorpe and South Elmsall;
    West Yorkshire Metro area plus Cononley, Harrogate,  Hornbeam Park, Knaresborough, Pannal, Skipton, Starbeck and Weeton.

Valid trains can also be checked using the journey planner at www.nationalrail.co.uk 

Further information including maps of the restricted areas can be found on the Northern website. 

NW:  "NORTHERN DUO" used for MO TU TH or MO TU FR &WKND
Restricted Days:

Mondays-Fridays

Outward Travel & Return Travel
Not valid on any train timed to depart Mondays to Fridays after 04:29 and before 09:30

NT:  "NTH ADVANCE" used fpr MO WE TH or MO WE FR or MO TH FR &WKND
Outward Journey
Summary:   VALID ON DATE&TRAIN SHOWN ONLY.LMTD CHNGE.NO RFND.
 
Return Journey
Summary:   Return

NM: "OFF-PEAK DAY" used for TU WE TH or TU WE FR or TU TH FR or WE TH FR &WKND
Restricted Days:

Mondays to Fridays

Outward Travel

Not valid on trains timed to depart after 04:29 and before 08:30 or after 16:00 and before 18:00.

The restriction after 16:00 and before 18:00 includes any connecting train departing during this period (or re-commencing your journey following a break of journey) within the following areas:

    Transport for Greater Manchester area plus Alderley Edge, Birchwood, Burscough Bridge, Disley, Handforth, Hoscar, New Mills Central, New Mills Newtown, Padgate, Parbold, Styal, Warrington Bank Quay, Warrington Central, and Wilmslow;
    Travel South Yorkshire area plus, Darton, Denby Dale, Moorthorpe and South Elmsall;
    West Yorkshire Metro area plus Cononley, Harrogate,  Hornbeam Park, Knaresborough, Pannal, Skipton, Starbeck and Weeton.

Valid trains can also be checked using the journey planner at www.nationalrail.co.uk 

Further information including maps of the restricted areas can be found on the Northern website.

 
Return Travel

Not valid on trains timed to depart after 04:29 and before 08:30 or after 16:00 and before 18:00.

The restriction after 16:00 and before 18:00 includes any connecting train departing during this period (or re-commencing your journey following a break of journey) within the following areas:

    Transport for Greater Manchester area plus Alderley Edge, Birchwood, Burscough Bridge, Disley,  Dove Holes, Handforth, Hoscar, New Mills Central, New Mills Newtown, Padgate, Parbold, Styal, Warrington Bank Quay, Warrington Central, and Wilmslow;
    Travel South Yorkshire area plus, Darton, Denby Dale, Moorthorpe and South Elmsall;
    West Yorkshire Metro area plus Cononley, Harrogate,  Hornbeam Park, Knaresborough, Pannal, Skipton, Starbeck and Weeton.

Valid trains can also be checked using the journey planner at www.nationalrail.co.uk 

Further information including maps of the restricted areas can be found on the Northern website.

It looks as if NH and NM are the same, but for some reason both exist. I've not looked to see if the unpublished restrictions are the same - though obviously they are wrong too.

3 from 5 isn't quite enough to tempt me back into the office once that becomes an option.

Judging by how the trains use to be on a Friday many people work from home at least one day a week on a regular basis and I think where people have a choice they will probably want to WFH more. I know for my team its been a revelation - not for us but for some senior manages who always insisted we had to be more often than we really needed.

The Sunday Times article also mentions a 12 days a month option which would be a bit more attractive for me. While its only slightly fewer days it just offers more flexibility.

Ideally though I'd be looking at 8 days a month.

Why not just roll out Oyster nationwide?

Automatically gives you the cheapest fare...........ah, that's why the TOC's wouldn't want it!

You cynic you  ;D

It can actually be quite a nice little earner.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-50304437

(I've just cut your quite down to save a bit of space)

I suspect that this all comes down to a problem that was created when P/T seasons came into existence.
There wasn't enough space in the fares database for all the new ticket types that would have been required, so in effect as a ticket TYPE within the fares structure,  P/T seasons don't actually exist.
The days of validity are in fact a routeing.

Perhaps this should be sorted before they're rolled out across the board

I find that hard to believe. Based on the 2017 data feeds definitions data, the big files are Flow (100 MB) and "Non derivable fares override" (50 MB). The Flow file has an entry for each flow and each fare, both huge system-wide lists. For flows the size is limited by grouping stations together, to keep the number well below (number of stations)². For fares, each item is kept short - just 2 bytes of header, 6 for flow ID, 3 for ticket code, 8 for fare (in pence), and 2 for restriction code.

I'm not sure what's in the NDFO file - it's said to be any fares the standard processing in the system can't cope with. Since TfL's capping is mentioned, I suspect this file has grown fast and it's probably this one that will break the system at some stage. Note that these special fares still rely on ticket code and restriction definitons.

The ticket code (what we usually call the type - that term is used differently, and inconsistently, in the data feed system) is three characters. You could have 36³ or 24336 of them, and there's nothing like that number now. The codes are defined in the Ticket Types file (told you!) and each is quite long (about 113 bytes). However, the file was still only 130 kB - implying there were only about 1150 codes.

The restriction code is only two characters, giving a maximum of (36)² or 936. That looks quite likely to run out. The Restrictions file was 4 MB, but it's hard to say how much each code uses. The defining data are spread over many items, and it's not clear how many items are typically needed. Worse, multiple time restrictions use a sequence of Time Restriction Date Bands records, with each time restriction kept in another item in this file. However, if the codes were all used, each would have about 4250 bytes. Now, they could be longer (and thus codes not running out), but I suspect not by much.

There is an item type in that Restrictions file called a Ticket Calendar record. The Days field of this has 7 bytes, defined thus:

So that's the right place to code these restrictions. However, to invoke this you'd have to generate six extra restriction codes for each existing restriction code used by a season fare, each copying the existing definitions, and adding one of these new ones.  I suspect some work is going on to find a way of calling this up more directly. Incidentally, the route is part of a flow definition, calling up an machine-readable definition in the Routes file. There's nothing in that to call up a restriction, so this wasn't an "accidental feature" of the system.

Putting the days of use in as a route has an obvious problem - some season fares already have a route. It will need to be shown as one of six extra season ticket types, but as I said I don't think there is a shortage of such codes. The Description (i.e. name) field for ticket codes is only 15 bytes, so some abbreviation will be needed. But it will add complexity, because extra choices inevitably do. Of course there may be better (and probably a bit Oysterish) ways of getting a similar effect.