Great Western Coffee Shop

An Anytime Day Return from Exeter to Paignton, valid on any operator, costs ^9.50.

The same ticket, but only valid on CrossCountry, is more expensive - ^9.90.

Can someone explain the logic of this please?

Email XC and ask them! Be interested to see their response....

I seem to remember one of the other posters (Vacman?) putting the answer on another thread somewhere, but I can't find it. Basically Crosscountry set their own fares slightly cheaper than the 'any operator' fare across the westcountry as a way to get more revenue. However, as most fares came down in January, the Crosscountry fare is now more expensive than the 'any operator' fare. As such it's not terribly good value anymore (if it ever was).

I could be wrong about this though.

Correct, there are still a few places where the XC only fare is pretty good value, for example Edinburgh to Glasgow:
SDS Any Operator: ^11.50
SDS East Coast: ^9.80
SDS XC: ^2.00

SDR Any Operator: ^18.70
SDR East Coast: ^13.70
SDR XC: ^3.00

FDS Any Operator: ^16.70
FDS East Coast: ^15.30
FDS XC: ^2.70

FDR Any Operator: ^32.30
FDR East Coast: ^24.50
FDR XC: ^5.10

In the interest of fairness there are off-peak alternatives to the any operator and EC only tickets but they're still way above the XC only fare.

The Grecian hit the nail on the head!

Those fares are remarkable! I guess they reflect a relatively low proportion of services between the two cities operated by XC, so they don't get a huge share of the revenue from ORCATS. Presumably the XC-only fares are set to give them a little more money than they would get from an "inter-available" ticket, but GBP 5.10 for a day return in first class is a superb deal!

But there's only three trains/day from Edinburgh to Glasgow. To use the fantastic-value FDR you have to catch the 07:26 from Edinburgh and come back on the 20:48!

I should've said only 3 CrossCountries.

I bet those XC only fares wil go up sharply/disappear should CrossCountry take over the East Coast paths to/from Glasgow Central.

Quite frankly, even the any operator FDR fare looks a bargain to my Great Western zone mind.

Glasgow to Edinburgh, 47 miles, First Class both ways, any train - 32.30, or 34.5p per mile
Bath to London, 111 miles, First Class both ways, any train - 229.00, or 103.1p per mile

oh ...

Bath to London, First Class both ways, any train via Salisbury - 63.90, or 28.7p per mile.
another interesting feature of the fares system!

As stated above, Grecian is exactly right - I queried this myself last week, and told that XC had introduced their own fares slightly cheaper in an effort to get all the revenue.
I was also informed that XC have a new fares supremo and all XC fares are about to be reviewed.  I am guessing they will do this after the January increase so they don't have to revise them downwards!

 

You'd hope so, but what seems to happen initially is that no-one can be bothered to alter the ownership of the ticketing flows.  There have been many stories of the owner of Any Permitted fares being long gone from the route, I suppose in the chaos of remapping franchises it has a low priority...

Paul

Hmmn, elsewhere in the forum popular opinion is that the one train a day run from Bath steals all of the ORCATS money! I shall put the lid back on that can of worms.

I never said that, honest!  :)

One train a day in one direction seems like a very half-hearted attempt attempt at an "ORCATS raid" that will net XC almost no additional money! From that I infer that there must be a better reason behind the decision somewhere, even if I still don't really understand what it is.

I worked out elsewhere that this one XC train was providing around 1% of the weekday seating capacity from Bath to Bristol. So the question is does 1% of the inter-available fares revenue (if that's how ORCATS works) cover the operating cost and provide a profit?

As I understand it they will net a slice (probably a sliver) of all interavailable tickets sold which include the Bristol - Bath route,  not just Bristol to Bath trips.  This includes the Bristol to London and South Coast flows, so probably the answer is yes it does.

In the same way East Coast tickets are valid to/from Liverpool St via Cambridge and on Great Northern services, so the operators of those services gain a slight benefit from the EC fare box. The system does attempt to model the likelihood of these routes/services being used so as to minimise abstraction from the main flow.


 

 

Rumour has it that it was the brainchild of one of XCs former directors who lived in Bath but I couldn't possibly comment!
One of the new extended Newcastle to Southampton services seems a little pointless too, the final extension of the day diverts via Laverstock so is only really a bonus to through passengers for Basingstoke, the following Piccadilly to Bournemouth service will arrive into Southampton before it!

They'll probably run it as a special, with free bacon sarnies for rare track fans doing the Laverstock curve...   ;D
 
Seriously, I suspect pax for Southampton could well stay on just for the hassle free journey, it isnt that late so any change they make will probably be onto a pretty full alternative...

Paul