Great Western Coffee Shop

If you use national journey planner, and put in crowthorne to Reading - the 17:38 and the 17:48 are both options.  An anytime single is 4.90 route - any permitted.  So you would think, thats available on both trains.


WRONG.

The 17:48 you have to go to Farnborough and double back on yourself - this is given by the journey planner - but for that train it seems its 8.20 route - any permitted.

How can the 4.90 ticket be an "any permitted" when it clearly isnt - the Farnborough change has to be a permitted one otherwise why does the journey planner return it.

"ANY PERMITTED" is exactly what it says. It's not "ANY POSSIBLE".

Before the wonderfully arcane National Routeing Guide was drawn up the designation was "ANY REASONABLE". However this was seen as ambiguous, as one person's idea of reasonable may differ from another's.

In your case, you fall foul of the 'no doubling back' rule (there are, however a few easements to this rule).

Journey Planners can and do give options that appear to go against the NRG*, but unless an easement is in place you will always have to pay for multiple tickets. As to why NRES occasionally gives these strange journey options, who knows! (I suspect poorly written software).


*This was also the case when there was an online program of the NRG available. It occasionally contradicted the paper version. ATOC now only provide public access to a 'paper' version in the form of .pdf files. I'm not sure whether ticket offices are still obliged to hold a hard copy (or even if one is still published) for public perusal.

You can find the National Routeing Guide here (http://www.atoc.org/rsp/Routeing_Guide/). Good luck if you attempt to use it. Fiendish, to say the least.....

If I'm reading right, it looks like the 8.20 fare is in fact two single tickets to cover Crowthorne-Farnborough and Farnborough-Reading. The planner must think that's the best option for the journey; I'd have thought a Reading-Farnborough return would work out cheaper for the single journey, although it would be no help if the Crowthorne-Reading journey were a return journey.

So yet another case where the passenger falls foul of an ambiguous law.......

You have a return Reading to Crowthorne which you have previously bought - then realise you dont know the times.....got to the journey planner and look up the timings and you dont go to the check fares as you already have a ticket - you see you can get the 17:48 with a change and think oh goody.......so you get on.....

The in theory - and rightly according to many arguments on here - revenue protection get on, you dont have a valid ticket, then have to pay the full fare again.........plus a penalty.

That is a scenario that could quite easily have happened to me tonight when I realised I would not get the 17:38....as it happens, it didnt but it COULD have....


Except revenue protection

It's a shame that the National Rail site only seems to show the multiple tickets bit when you select check fares. It should in an ideal world be there to start with..

A perfect scenario, FallenAngel. Like I said, I suspect poorly written software. It would be interesting to see someone PF'd after being misdirected by NRES and then challenge the legality of the penalty in court. That might set a precedent and force ATOC to do something serious about ticketing anomalies, rather than just tinkering at the edges. However, having said that, I wouldn't want to lose the anomalies that work in my favour!

But if you already have a crowthorne to Reading return and the NJP says the 17:48 is a train you can get - would your average punter even know what the multiple ticket sign was implying? 

It was only because I was bored this afternoon and wondered if it would benefit a farnborough commuter to get a crowthorne ticket and just claim crowthorne to Reading that I even looked at the fare break down