Great Western Coffee Shop

The much heralded introduction of Off Peak/Super Off Peak at half the price of the return fare appears to be coming to an end in January.

As an example:

BRI-PAD Super Off Peak Return ^48.80 from Jan. This is the regulated fare and because of the negative RPI back in July it is dropping a whole 20p from the current ^49. The current Super Off Peak single is ^24.50 but this rises to ^28.00 as it is only the return product that is regulated.

The Off Peak single rises from ^29.50 to ^34.00 with the return sticking at ^59.00.

So a meagre 0.4% drop in the regulated return fare is more than made up for by a whacking great 14-15% increase in the single fares. We had the half price singles for just 3 months. They were a welcome introduction and I'll concede that the increases still leave the fares below the pre Sept Off Peak Single prices, but 14-15% increase is obscene. FGW can't even use the excuse that VAT is rising back to 17.5%, train tickets are zero rated.

The reason given is that it is still cheaper than it was before September.

It wasn't properly thought through I don't think, as some fares were similar or less than what people were paying to go somewhere in the Thames Valley.

I'm reliably informed that the half price single has proved to be a misjudgment and too much revenue was being abstracted. I have to say, I'm not surprised. Walking up to Paddington at 4.30 yesterday and paying ^24 to Swindon is cheap at that time of day.

We got 'positive spin' announcements from FGW before the September changes, highlighting the introduction of 'half the return price' singles. Can we expect another announcement saying 'Sorry, our Fares Dept shysters f***ed up'?

Fares are my only current bugbear with FGW, so much other has improved.

It might be - but surely evening peak restrictions are better than charging more but giving away the return fair for ^1 - which is basically what they used to do

I say this as someone who quite often does round trips.....

e.g. WOS-RDG-BHM-WOS (except the BHM-WOS part I dont usually do since I'm invariably going by car back to fetch the vehicle from WOS)

or

LUD-NWP-RDG-HFD-LUD

I end up with loads of random return portions that I think arouse suspicision when I, a daily commuter, only buys singles when between seasons just to get the use of the return portion.

What a surprise! The ONLY good thing about the September stealth rises changes has been scuppered!

So now we have HIGHER Advances, HIGHER Off Peak tickets, and HIGHER singles. All at a time when fares should be falling in the recession, and as TOCs are losing passengers.

At the same time, LM are introducing evening peak restrictions from Birmingham on the Snow Hill lines - ann easy way to KILL OFF off peak trade. Yes, the Snow Hill lines are the most overcrowded lines into B'ham during peaks, but the answer is to order MORE not FEWER 172s, and make sure ALL trains leaving B'ham from 4.30 - 6.30 (and arriving 8.00 - 9.00)are the full 6 coaches.

My single fare from London to Swindon has gone up by ^14.50.  I was paying ^20 booking in advance, now it will be ^34.50.  I think this is outrageous.  I don't have the luxury of being able to travel when I like.  Compared to French, Spanish and Portuguese train fares FGW charges way too much - I think ^20 is just about reasonable for a short journey such as London to Swindon, anything more is simply greed.  II wonder what bonuses FGW bosses are getting this year?  I have never had a bonus in my job, and feel that I am completely at the mercy of greedy companies like FGW.

I was at first dismayed when I saw your post up there soupowl, particularly as I have to travel from Swindon to London on Wednesday 20th January.

A quick scout round the East Coast (http://www.eastcoast.co.uk/) website though offered a ^10.50 ticket on the 06:58 train, which gets me there in good time and I have to say is hardly an "outrageous" price, at least to my mind.

Of course, travelling from Swindon you also have the choice of changing at Reading onto the SW Trains route into Waterloo, thereby avoiding paying any more unnecessary money into the pockets of the fat cats at "greedy" FGW.

The 06:58 Swindon arr. reading 07:28 and costs ^4.00

07:42 SWT to Waterloo arrives 09:06 and costs ^13.60

Total: a whopping ^17.60. But only ^4.00 of it goes to FGW, so you can rest easy.

For WOS-RDG-BHM-WOS, I suspect that a return from Bromsgrove to Reading might be a cheaper solution, with a single from Bromsgrove to Worcester to complete the loop (if necessary).

Why isn't a Ludlow - Reading ticket valid via either Newport or Worcester (or B'ham and Shrewsbury for that matter)?

Because of the cost - going via evesham is a fraction of the cost of going via Newport.  The fare does not exist via brum or shrews (you'd have to be mad to go that way anyway!).

the scenarios in which this occurs in either direction occur when I have to picked up at the home end of the commute - to save dragging him indoors to worcester at either 530 in the morning or in the middle of his gym training times.

Abstracted from where precisely.  I think they mean lost.  When they made the single half the price of the return there was no longer any incentive to buy a return even if you were going to come back.  People were just buying singles and occasionally not paying at all when the ticket office was closed etc. 

My words, not theirs.

I meant abstracted from higher fares in the main. As has been discussed, then new system gave a lot more flexibility to travel out at peak , back off-peak and save money. You'll still be saving money, but not quite as much as before.

 I've not looked at the fares with regard to the routes Newton Abbot/Exeter to London.
 Fortunately my travel times are fairly flexible, however I may well consider South West Trains.
 With the hourly service to Waterloo, but the journey times are longer, it is a viable choice.
 I wonder if this would impact on FGW if SWT are cheaper ?

It could be a lot worse, single fares are still FAR cheaper than in most parts of the country when compared to the return fare.

How is paying ^34 to travel out of London to Swindon during the peak hours outrageous??? It saves sitting in Traffic jams, paying ^10 congestion charge, spending money on fuel up the M4 etc etc etc

No it hasn't. Granted the single fares will be somewhat more than now, but they will remain significantly cheaper that before the change and will likely still offer plenty of opportunities for mixing and matching anytime/OP/SOP/advance tickets to save money.


soupowl, sorry, you are wrong. Firstly, GBP34.50 for a journey of that length right in the middle of the evening peak seems eminently reasonable to me (GBP 20.00 sound like an absolute bargain). Secondly, you are NOT comparing like with like -  you are comparing a more expensive, "higher tier" Advance purchase fare with what you are currently buying. As various posters have already pointed out here and in the duplicate thread you started about exactly the same issue, there are still plenty of advance purchase fares available at a similar or even lower level to what you pay now, so I really don't think you have a valid argument.

Yet again, somebody raises the old chestnut of how all European railway systems are supposedly cheaper than the UK's. Firstly, that's not really correct. In fact the UK on average has the cheapest intercity rail fares (cheaper-end Advance tickets, exactly what you have been using for your journey) in Europe. You have been getting a very good deal at GBP 20.00 right in the middle of the evening peak for that journey. That aside, it's also true to say that Britain has the most expensive intercity fares in Europe, when you consider Anytime tickets, but they are not what you are using. It's a strange function of the current fares structure that our lowest fares are the cheapest in Europe and our most expensive are the dearest.

Finally, there is the issue of the massive government subsidies that European railways receive - many of the fares paid on those systems are simply not commercial without huge subsidy. The fares you pay on Britain's railways today are largely the result of government policy rather than "greed" on the part of the train operators, and non-specific frothing about how it's outrageous that you can't travel for a pittance on a fairly long journey right in the middle of rush hour does no-one any favours. To quote C P Scott, "Comment is free, but facts are sacred".

Chippenham to London fares - December '09 and January '10 - a complete example

Fare Type	December '09	January '10	change
Super off peak single	22.50	26.00	+16%
Off peak single	27.00	31.00	+15%
Standard single	64.00	66.50	+4%
Super off peak return	45.00	44.80	-0.4%
Off peak return	54.00	54.00	unchanged
Standard return	128.00	133.00	+4%

For a typical use I would make - one direction peak, the other direction off peak, that's an increase from 91 pounds to 97.50, which is an increase of over 7%.   I am rarely sure enough of y timings to use advanced fares.  Let's remember that 2 x off peak singles used to be the most scandalous ripoff (and THANK YOU to FGW for correcting that last September - you don't know how many times I had to explain it to irate overseas customers).  But this rise, at a time when regulated fares are goiong down, takes the icing off the cake.

I WOULD happily add 5 pounds to each of the current fares if there was a connection off alternate trains that they're valid on to Melksham ... and I and many others would use the line - and the London connection -  much more than it's used at present with such a service level, which is that suggested ashaving an excellent BCR in the GWRUS.

Well I have to say that I'm disappointed in FGW for these single fare hikes. After praising them back in September for doing the right thing and making saver singles half the price of a saver return they go and put them up not by 50p or a ^1 but by around ^4.

Okay so they made a mistake by introducing cheaper single tickets that were for a walk up ticket actually good value but to take it out on those who use them by putting them up by around 15% is a bit unfair when they could have done it in stages throughout the year when fares always seem to go up in Jan/May/September. But as has been said they are not regulated fares so FGW can do what they jolly well like with them and they have. Not good PR but why should they care.

You seem to forget that these fares are still much lower than in January 2009?

Not at all DM. I see what FGW did in September as putting something that was inheritantly wrong in the fares system right but now they are a back peddling and I wonder how long it will be before they are raised so much that there won't be much difference between a saver single/return that most will just end up buying the return ticket and we are back to where it was before.

Hope I'm wrong and we will find out come next May and September if FGW put them up again even further.

A couple of comments.....

Have you ever driven from London to Swindon?.....you wouldn't get there on 20 quids worth of fuel.....!

Re Melksham - FGW state that an increase in the level of service to that station isn't commercially viable - they have approached Wiltshire County Council for assistance but they just aren't interested, unlike Devon, Cornwall, Bristol, etc etc.

The local voters will know what they need to do.....

That's a simplification (and to be a sound bite, it has to be) which is misleading and rather out of date - things have moved on since I first got involved ... it was SRA, Wessex Trains, railtrack and Wiltshire County Council with the First group in the wings, about to be awarded the next franchise but without their own experience of running the regional and local services in the South West.   You'll find that with time and people moving on, with rail travel having grown much more than was assumed in the figures under which the franchise was awarded, with major growth plans along the TransWilts corridor, that the case has changed rather, and with it the people involved and their views.

Can you let me know - by PM or email if you can't publish it here - "who [at FGW] told you THAT" and - importantly - when.  Thanks

Bit of a sweeping statement....

At approx ^5 a gallon at the moment for unleaded you only need a vehicle capable of averaging 20mpg to do the 80 miles from central London to Swindon for ^20.

20mpg is not beyong the realms of the average car.....

Plus the congestion charge, and the traffic congestion....your engine will burn a lot more than 80 miles of fuel...

You car must have quite poor fuel economy then.  London to Swindon is about 80 miles.  If you can get 30 mpg then you'd use about 2.7 gallons of fuel.  Petrol is currently around ^5 per gallon, so London to Swindon would cost you about ^13.50.


The congestion charge only applies to Central London.  Many people doing the journey don't actually live in Central London and so wouldn't have to pay.  The car also allows you to do the journey any time you want at a reasonable price without having to book in advance, this is something the TOCs do not seem very keen on.

See above....congestion charge plus traffic congestion means you'd burn at lot more than 80 miles of fuel.

See above also, many people doing the journey wouldn't have to pay the congestion charge.

The journey discusdsed upthread is a peak journey. Like-for-like, journeys to / from Paddington at that time, congestion charge applies.

You'd only end up paying if you actually left Marylebone Road/Park Lane and went onto the local roads around the station itself.  If you were going to drive to Swindon you'd stay on the main roads.

I'm still off the opinion that ^20 worth is more than enough fuel to get you to Swindon. You made no mention of the congestion charge in your original statement, so why should I factor that in? As equally no mention is made of TfL fares in addition to the train ticket prices quoted upthread.

Take the UK's most popular car, the Ford Focus. Even the thirtiest model in the range has a combined urban/extra urban mpg of 28, with the average being around 39mpg.

Of course if we factor in all the ancillary costs - insurance, vehicle excise duty, congestion charge (when it applies), wear and tear, depreciation etc, then we may get close to paying more than ^20 for one trip from London to Swindon.

Which to be fair, if you're running your own car, would be a fairer comparison, wouldn't it?

Not completely as you certainly wouldn't get a ^20 fare to Swindon without booking in advance.

That's a fair point!

Which brings us neatly back on topic....you can until January! Super Off Peak single PAD-SWI currently ^20.... :D

That wouldn't be valid at the time the person that started this topic wanted to travel though.