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Author Topic: Petition for mileage based fares  (Read 4498 times)
Trowres
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« Reply #15 on: November 24, 2024, 12:52:45 »

The current confused system of "market-based" fares arrived in the 1970's when BR (British Rail(ways)) started to try to fill off-peak capacity. Prior to that (and also subsequently for many years) the main offer on tickets was a normal or full fare ticket, or a cheap day return. I would hazard a guess that the single fare was around half the full return fare (please correct me if this was not so). BR did in fact taper longer distance fares to make them realistic (or affordable!). How this was done may be lost in the mists of time. Now all these fares had historic origins but very likely had some basis in being distance based.
...

Split ticketing is really nothing new either. I imagine many may remember having to purchase a series of cheap day returns at each of the relevant ticket offices. This was in order to make an extended day trip more affordable since cheap day returns were generally only available for up to 50 miles and for specific routes only.       

Prior to the introduction of "Savers", and at least as late as 1982, the general offering seemed to be Standard Single / Return, Monthly Return, Weekend Return and Day Return, in decreasing order of price per mile.

The day return didn't have a distance cap, either. Certainly, Newport-Newcastle was available in Feb 1982 (£27).

I have a leaflet for an early form of Groupsave, back in 1977. The quoted fare from Newport to Newcastle (available Saturdays only)  was £6.84  Shocked


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grahame
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« Reply #16 on: November 24, 2024, 14:01:01 »

One of the fascinating things we have available these days which we did not have when the fares were set is computing power to allow much more complex dynamic calculation - for the calculations to be more complex but the algorithms simple.

Let's start with routing for walk-up tickets:
1. The shortest route is always allowed. And It is the basis for fare calculation.
2. Direct (through) services are always allowed
3. When you walk up the train combination that will get you there earliest is always allowed.

If it does not add more than 10% to the distance, this route too is treated as the shortest route
If you are following a route according to 1, break of journey is allowed, otherwise not.

Pricing. For an anytime single ticket

1. Each station to station leg has a price based on the distance between stations - in other  word "x pence per mile".  However, there may be a quality of service and infrastructure factor applied to that, somewhere (bar exceptional circumstances) between 0.8 and 1.2. A "for instance" might be that the Pilning to Severn Tunnel Junction factor is 1.2 and looking at the other end of the scale, some northern legs already mentioned (Hammerton to Cattal) might come in at 0.8.

2. Add a fixed fee - call in "station use" if you like - of "y pence"

3. Add up the grand total and it's a base fare of "z".

4. Actual fare charged is the full base fare up to amount "a", then discounted by 20% up to amount "b" and discounted by 40% in excess of that.  Sort od inverse way that taxation works.

You ARE allowed to chose your own "via"stations in which case it's price that way

For a return ticket - work out the distance in just the same way - except it's double.  So when you come to step 4, a return ticket will be cheaper than 2 singles because of the discount levels.   Return ticket validity based on distance - valid for out and back journeys completed within 50 hours.

First Class, plus 40%

Off Peak - valid for travel except at any time 07:30 to 09:00 and journeys starting between 16:30 to 19:00 on Monday to Friday - minus 20%. 

Season tickets - based on a fare cap of 7.5 single journeys per week; Rangers and rovers based on a fare cap within the areas covered. 

All I need to do now is to define the factors and write a script to work out your fare.





« Last Edit: November 24, 2024, 14:43:36 by grahame » Logged

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« Reply #17 on: November 24, 2024, 16:45:27 »

All I need to do now is to define the factors and write a script to work out your fare.

And demonstrate to the DfT» (Department for Transport - about) that they won't lose a shed load of income as a result.

And fend off the press when they find the fares that will go up significantly as a result.

And...  Wink
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« Reply #18 on: November 24, 2024, 18:47:31 »

All I need to do now is to define the factors and write a script to work out your fare.

And demonstrate to the DfT» (Department for Transport - about) that they won't lose a shed load of income as a result.

And fend off the press when they find the fares that will go up significantly as a result.

And...  Wink

Yes - lots of "and"s.   

I have put a calculator at https://www.greatwesternrailway.info/fairfare.html and you can experiment from there. Please forgive the poor formatting so far.
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« Reply #19 on: November 25, 2024, 07:05:44 »

I have put a calculator at https://www.greatwesternrailway.info/fairfare.html and you can experiment from there. Please forgive the poor formatting so far.

Formatting somewhat improved.  But putting figures in based on a milage solution shows up the real problems of an inversion of the usual purchasing rules in the current system.

"The more you buy, the lower cost it is per unit" is a pretty standard thing when you go into the supermarket - compare the costs of a large, medium and small jar of coffee / bag of potatoes / box of cereal. And yet on train fares we currently have an inversion of this - the short journey is often cheaper per mile than the long one, even on the same tracks, leading to the perverse practice of split ticketing.



My default fare test for a 100 mile journey such as Melksham to London gives me:
Quote
Projected anytime fare £59.90 single and £115.80 return
Projected off peak fare £35.94 single and £69.48 return
Which HMG will object to because a normal anytime return is £215.20 and a superoffpeak is £68.10

But if I change only the 100 miles to 25 miles - example Melksham to Swindon - it gives me
Quote
Projected anytime fare £17.00 single and £31.40 return
Projected off peak fare £10.20 single and £18.84 return
Which the passenger will object too because a normal anytime return is £12.50 and off peak is £9.20

This is without any of that bias at all that I have talked about station-to-station but even if that were pushed to the extreme for Swindon - Didcot it would not fix this inversion issue. Changing the fixed price for going a train to a negative value could help and would make very local journeys (Westbury to Dilton Marsh?) free of charge or in theory end up with the railway paying you (and that would be the end of fare evasion on local West Wilts services  Wink )
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« Reply #20 on: November 25, 2024, 09:13:12 »

Can I suggest that we freeze the fares of standard class tickets over a certain threshold (pence per mile) for a while to reduce the disparity to some extent. 
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« Reply #21 on: November 25, 2024, 13:06:36 »

How would you classify a journey from PNZ to PAD» (Paddington (London) - next trains) ?.....

Using the journey distance + journey speed 'algorithm' I suggested, with the addition of items mentioned by Graham - particularly the level of computing power now available to deal with complex calculations - the rail network would be divided into individual station-to-station sections each of which would be 'allocated' to a service as appropriate. On this basis a trip from PNZ to PAD would almost certainly be aggregated from a significantly lower £/mile (ppm) cost from PNZ>PLY» (Plymouth - next trains) than PLY>EXD» (Exeter St Davids - next trains), EXD>RDG(resolve) and RDG>PAD; the actual journey speed values per station stop to station stop for 1A73 (0503 from PNZ) are:
PNZ>RED          0.84
RED>TRU          1.00
TRU>SAU          0.90
SAU>BOD         0.82
BOD>LSK          0.83
LSK>STS          0.97
STS>PLY           0.38 (!)
PLY>NTA» (Newton Abbott - next trains)           0.91
NTA>EXD         1.06
EXD>TAU» (Taunton - next trains)         1.27
TAU>RDG        1.29
RDG>PAD        1.48

which largely confirms my initial supposition.
Other considerations might be the type of traction used for the E2E journey.
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