How to cut the cost of your rail tickets: Guardian video article

[whole diary]

[John R]

Going back to the Lisbon comparison, a quick search for tomorrow returning Sunday brings a price of ^230.  I'd also question whether a fare of ^34 covers marginal costs once APD^▸ (Air Passenger Duty) (^13) is deducted, together with whatever landing and other airport charges are imposed. Though maybe the expectation of margin on an overpriced tiny box of Pringles and a cup of coffee will tip the balance.

Weekend travel is a particular issue regarding advance tickets. I was waiting for tickets to Scotland on the 23rd May to become available, as advance fares during the week from Crewe (long story) to Glasgow are very reasonable. But sadly once the times were loaded up a couple of weeks ago the prospect of a bus from Lancaster to Preston appeared less attractive.

 

[swrural]

Surely whether an advance fare is profitable or otherwise is up to the company advertising it?  I don't follow the reasoning in the previous post at all.

That said, I discover that the discussion has been furthered on UK^▸ (United Kingdom) Rail Forums and I will not add anything at this stage as many points have been made there.  The poster HowardH there caught my sympathy as you can imagine.

Here's the link.

http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?p=1422348#post1422348

I wonder how much business is being lost to airlines and as pondered by posters, and whether the likes of Eurostar give a monkey's.  I see the DB^» (Deutsche Bahn - German State Railway - about) Bahn (tautology?) web site advertises a great through service from StP which does not exist!  I can't wait for them to muscle in on the ES monopoly.

Here is the link to DB.  Their booking pages, which I sampled, are a joy to use (if one could actually book any trains from England       ).   The DB web site does most  of the right things I am pleading for.

   

[rogerpatenall]

I agree that rail tt's are more complex than an airline schedule - but, having some knowledge of both, I would say 'only just'. Full service airlines (as opposed to point to point 'low cost' carriers) have to consider complex working hour rosters for up to a couple of dozen staff for each service  and which rosters may cover periods of up three weeks. Additionally, all staff have to be kept up to date on each airframe type that they may encounter. Additionally, major airlines will work on the basis that there needs to be a period of 'rest' ( a day or two) after each long haul rotation. It is accepted by the airlines that such rest must count as part of working time and not encroach into a period of leave  - ie staff cannot commence leave immediately on return.
Different problems, but still complex. I am not sure whether there is a period of grace in mileage that a trainset can run at the end of a maintenance cycle? But as they say in the airline world - "the wings are due to fall off tomorrow". . .

[John R]

Surely whether an advance fare is profitable or otherwise is up to the company advertising it?  I don't follow the reasoning in the previous post at all.

Point I was trying to make is that if you comparing the cost of any item with a similar item, then the validity of the comparison is diminished if that item is being sold as a loss leader. Another example might be to compare alcohol sold as a loss leader by supermarkets with an independent off license, and claim that because the off license is more expensive then its prices are unreasonable.

And as I also pointed out, Easy Jet has very expensive fares too when it suits them. I know this all too well, having booked a family of four to Turkey in the summer holidays and getting no change out of ^1,500. But it charges them because the market will bear them.  So its rather simplistic to compare an expensive rail fare with a cheap air fare.

[swrural]

With respect, (sigh)  I wasn't.  I was comparing advance airline bookings (possible 9 months in advance or more) with rail advance bookings (*not* possible, say, nine months in advance).

There is no logical reason for preventing an advance booking on a standard route, which the TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) know 'fine well', as my Scots friends have it, will not alter.  Even if they did, since pax have booked online, it is the simplest task to send out 'choice' emails to them if circumstances changed.

What happens now within the three months itself?  If pax have booked an advance ticket and the TOC (albeit at NR^» (Network Rail - home page)'s behest) change a train schedule, are we saying that the pax will not be allowed to get on the substitute service?  Will they not be emailed and told?  If not, why not?

I think I will pursue this, if mods allow, because I am just after the conclusion to a logical argument that may just get around the NR and TOCs' inertia.

If wrong, will always cede, of course.

[grahame]

Advanced fares are not regulated, and it's up to the TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) how many, how far in advance, and with what conditions they offer them.  They're even allowed to offer them at a higher price than a walkup fare for the same journey. So 3 months - allowed. 12 months would be allowed.   As would a 2 weeks to 1 week ONLY window!

What's good customer service, encouraging people to come back, should help shape the policy, but they're not actually going to loose all that much business by being rather tight with what they offer, and at certain times of day they're in a seller's market where they can generate more passenger traffic than they can handle.

The refranchise has been aborted ... but what was to stop one of the bidders (including the existing operator) coming in with a simplified fare structure that offered no advanced tickets, no groupsaves ... on the grounds that (a) the system has become too complex and (b) the trains are full anyway, with slower passenger number growth allowing the service to carry on longer without extra stock?  Could actually have bee quite attractive to the Treasury 

[trainer]

(b) the trains are full anyway, with slower passenger number growth allowing the service to carry on longer without extra stock?  Could actually have bee quite attractive to the Treasury 

Wasn't this the 'last gasp' position of British Rail on fares?  Keep them high to prevent too many people travelling as there were no new trains to absorb any increase. Ah, the good old days   .

[Southern Stag]

There is no logical reason for preventing an advance booking on a standard route, which the TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) know 'fine well', as my Scots friends have it, will not alter.  Even if they did, since pax have booked online, it is the simplest task to send out 'choice' emails to them if circumstances changed.

What happens now within the three months itself?  If pax have booked an advance ticket and the TOC (albeit at NR^» (Network Rail - home page)'s behest) change a train schedule, are we saying that the pax will not be allowed to get on the substitute service?  Will they not be emailed and told?  If not, why not?

It simply isn't possible to tell the timetable that far in advance though, the standard timetable may not change but engineering works may well have a significant impact on the journey. What happens if you book a ticket 9 months in advance to travel from the South West to Heathrow, on the first service in order to arrive in good time for your flight. But if there is engineering work then scheduled on the route and the journey time is extended by two hours you may not make your flight, and there'd be no earlier service you could catch either. If that happened you can guarantee people would start, quite fairly, moaning about TOCs advertising services and taking bookings which they can not fulfil. Even worse, you could have booked your ticket at the station and the TOC would have no way of contacting you.

Currently it is very rare for times to change within the 3 month window, it is usually only as the result of some serious disruption. Passengers will be allowed on an alternative service if the original cannot be provided, but not they would not be contacted. They would not have any means to do so for anybody booking at the station, and quite possibly even online. I'm not even sure you could get a list of passengers booked on a service, and email addresses are unlikely to have been associated with particular trains in systems, in a way that would enable the easy emailing of passengers. The exception is the sleeper service where you have to provide a contact phone number, where it is made clear the specific purpose of providing the contact number is to allow for contact in the case of alterations. You can see this situation is far from ideal, and if you allowed bookings further in advance it would just happen more often.

[John R]

I guess the point is that the TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) can sell all the advance tickets they need within a three month window, as the majority of train travellers only plan that far in advance. So there is no business need for them to sell further out, and considerable issues if they do so. I would also wonder whether the majority would welcome a system where all the bargain fares had been snapped up a year in advance.

Now as swrural had pointed out, for people looking to secure cheaper train fares in connection with air travel arrangements (where I would expect there is a higher proportion of travellers who book more than three months in advance), this does inconvenience them, in that they can't guarantee securing them at the time they book the flight. I'm not sure this is a large enough subset of customers to warrant rebuilding the whole system.

My own personal view is that I'm not keen on advance tickets for flight arrangements, as the lack of guarantee of a prompt arrival back gives a considerable uncertainty as to what time to book the ticket for, and the risk of a loss of the tickets. It's not so bad on FGW^▸ (First Great Western) where single fares are more reasonably priced, but elsewhere single fares are roughly the same as an off peak return, so buying two advances does run a risk of ending up paying more than a flexible return. I've just given that advice to a family member travelling from Cheshire to Gatwick - two advances (six weeks before travelling ) were about ^30 (with snr railcard), but the off peak return of around ^50 was  purchased, as that was also the single fare back in the event of any delay.

[swrural]

Thanks John R.  My point about booking a holiday abroad is that people sit down in late Autumn with the brochures (actually mostly online nowadays) and say 'where shall we go then?'.  They will be thinking normally about any time between May and September, next year, depending on nay children and their ages.

We are not talking about a small number so engaged.  It's half the population and many of those could be planning more than one trip.  Richly pensioned baby boomers like my household planned several last December, starting in May and the last in October 2013.  So we would have needed an advance ticket some 10 months out.

When you go online, if you are predisposed to booking only package tours, then the method of reaching the airport will be normally left to you.  This is one area where TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) could do more to 'get a foot in the door' so to speak.

Taking also the individualist traveller (it was them I had in mind initially), again it is the airline web site that will first be accessed.  There I would expect a 'middle of transaction' routine (like the hotel offer, car hire, etc, already are) to pop up with an advance offer for train travel from the postcode already submitted as part of the booking process.

I won't go any further than this, but the reason, advanced to me for the three month restriction, that NR^» (Network Rail - home page) could not guarantee the service any further out is demonstrably fatuous.  They can't even guarantee a service three hours out, let alone three months.  This is a nonsense and with the lack of interface mentioned above, is thus missing out on a big chunk of business.

As explained, it must be that when most services are rammed already and no money for new and more trains, a non-commercial attitude will prevail.  That doesn't make it right though.  To that extent, I would go along with Beardy and his bid for more enterprise.

[John R]

Don't disagree with many of your comments and I like the idea of a pop up box leading you to a site to book the rail travel. It also surprises me that FGW^▸ (First Great Western) do not promote the very good value Gatwick Flyaway ticket (assuming it still exists), which for a family of four is excellent value.

I'm interested how you get around the problem of booking an advance ticket for the return? As I see it you either have to allow a very liberal margin, which means that you may end up sitting around waiting for your booked service (which would be rather tedious after possibly a long journey), or alternatively run the risk of needing to buy a new ticket, which would probably end up costing more than a flexible fare. I'd probably rather pay a bit more at outset than face either of those scenarios, but that's a personal opinion.
   

[grahame]

I'm interested how you get around the problem of booking an advance ticket for the return? As I see it you either have to allow a very liberal margin, which means that you may end up sitting around waiting for your booked service ...

You are required to be a psychic, John, and know how early or late your flight will be 

In all seriousness, the fair rule for advanced tickets should be that you present yourself at your initial point of public transport departure at least "X" minutes before the scheduled departure time, that you allow at least minimum connection / transfer times at each point, and that if any one of those fails then the train operator of your "booked only" service will honour your reservation.  That means buses, trams, airline flights arriving at a UK^▸ (United Kingdom) airport and ferries are covered - perhaps with 15 minutes bus-to-train or tram-to-train, 45 minutes ferry-to-train and 60 minutes aircraft-to-train being the metric.

I can see such a change gaining rather that loosing the railways custom, and certainly cutting down on bad experiences if (for example) the First bus that connects with the First train gets held up due to an accident on the A350.  Once you've had a bad experience, it can put you off for year.

[John R]

Fine in theory, but policing such a system would be impossible, which would mean that in practice you could turn up and claim the bus that was taking you to the station was late, so you're entitled to travel on a later train. Who could possibly check, so the whole concept of "booked train only" would completely fall apart. 

I tend to subscribe to the view that people have a choice. They can buy a flexible ticket, or, they can buy a cheaper ticket that has restrictions attached to it. If they choose the latter than they should understand the consequences if they don't fulfil their side of the contract. After all, (and bearing in mind the comparison earlier in the thread) if you miss your Easyjet flight, you won't (as far as I know) be put on the next flight without some additional payment being required, even assuming there is another flight the same day.

As an example, last September I was at the Paralympics, and as my son wasn't well, we left early. On arrival at Paddington I checked that my Games advance ticket wouldn't be valid on an earlier train than booked (there was flexibility over later trains, which was very reasonable and sensible given the nature of the event), and when told it wasn't I bought another for us. No complaint about how unfair it was. I knew the rules and paid up.
 

[grahame]

Fine in theory, but policing such a system would be impossible, which would mean that in practice you could turn up and claim the bus that was taking you to the station was late, so you're entitled to travel on a later train. Who could possibly check, so the whole concept of "booked train only" would completely fall apart.

a) I love it ... another case of penalising the honest because of the scope potentially offered to the dishonest. How depressing

b) Many (most ?) buses are operated by the same companies that run the trains, and many (most ?) have trackers on board.  It's not beyond bounds to provide live tracking ... or a history trail for the last couple of hours. I would agree, though, if you suggested that it might be hard to get this implemented in the current seller's market.   But that's a story for another thread ...

I tend to subscribe to the view that people have a choice. They can buy a flexible ticket, or, they can buy a cheaper ticket that has restrictions attached to it. If they choose the latter than they should understand the consequences if they don't fulfil their side of the contract. After all, (and bearing in mind the comparison earlier in the thread) if you miss your Easyjet flight, you won't (as far as I know) be put on the next flight without some additional payment being required, even assuming there is another flight the same day.

Totally agree ... but where it's another arm of the same company that's prevented them fulfilling their side of the contract ...

[swrural]

That is of no interest to the customer whatsoever (see my 'last post on this subject on the other thread).