Christmas ticketing restrictions.

[whole diary]

[plymothian]

Important to remember, anyone travelling this Christmas, that TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) often lift their ticket restrictions over the festive period.

GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)
All restrictions lifted Fri 23 Dec - Mon 02 Jan inclusive, except Advance tickets.
Weekend First available Sat 24 Dec - 02 Jan inclusive.

Crosscountry
Peak restrictions lifted Sat 24 Dec - Mon 2 Jan inclusive.
Weekend First available throughout this period.

Chiltern
All restrictions lifted Sun 25 Dec - Sun 1 Jan inclusive.

Railcards can be used all day, however minimum fares still apply for 16-25 & HMF railcards.

NOTE:  TVMs^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) will still sell you peak restricted tickets during this time.

[ChrisB]

Hence my request to TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) to at least put notices up on/by their TVMs^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) to alert customers that restrictions are lifted and to use ticket offices before 10am.

[Tim]

NOTE:  TVMs^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) will still sell you peak restricted tickets during this time.

This really is inexcusable.   Putting stickers on machines is not the answer.  The answer is having ticket machines and a fares system that is fit for purpose

[ChrisB]

Sorry, I don't agree.

In a perfect world, yes. But the £millions required to re-programme the TVMs^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) and update them before & after - no chance. They'd simply revert to not lifting the restrictions. Many shops don't reprice their goods in a weekend sale =- simply put a bright tag on those items with a xx% off.

[ellendune]

If I was writing a spec for the software I would require some sort of software switch so that it did not cost £millions to reprogramme.

[bobm]

I can see part of the argument for GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) and other TOCS allowing off peak tickets all day on Friday - but then they warn the trains will be busy.

Would it not be better to have normal restrictions on the Friday to control demand, or allow the cheaper tickets on the 22nd as well to spread the load?

[Tim]

If I was writing a spec for the software I would require some sort of software switch so that it did not cost £millions to reprogramme.

quite.  Surely it is not beyond the wit of man to have software that costs less to reprogram a restriction and have it sent down the wire to every single TVM^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) in a second than the cost of sending out thousands of stickers to hundreds of stations.

[ChrisB]

Each ticket office can print their own....

You have to accept that the technology in these things is ancient. Upgrades are needed, but would cost £millions more to renew. Are you willing to pay for these through your taxes?

[chrisr_75]

Each ticket office can print their own....

You have to accept that the technology in these things is ancient. Upgrades are needed, but would cost £millions more to renew. Are you willing to pay for these through your taxes?

I suspect the cost has probably been more than covered already by the number of people who have been duped by this ancient tech into paying more than they need to. The cynic in me wonders why the industry is so reluctant to update...hmmmm. DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) could just force the issue if they had any balls/teeth.

[old original]

I don't think it should take too much to do as the program controlling the machines already knows when the Saturdays and Sundays are, when it's off peak all day. You never know we could be pleasently surprised come Friday morning, but I'm not holding my breath!

I do know that the ticket machines in the ticket offices are showing the off peak fares on all trains on friday

[Tim]

Each ticket office can print their own....

You have to accept that the technology in these things is ancient. Upgrades are needed, but would cost £millions more to renew. Are you willing to pay for these through your taxes?

Well the ticket vending machines are relatively new (the ones in Bath have been through 3 generations in the last 15 years) and have allowed the ToCs to make massive savings in terms of staff cuts. 

Its not a question of money it is a question of competence.  If ToC management were forced to get their act together they would, but at the moment we have a set up that makes it easier for them to think up excuses than to treat the customer fairly and a lame Government/regulator who nods along.  Now if we had a proper regulator who started throwing a few multimillion pound fines around I am sure you would find that the impossible suddenly becomes possible and affordable.  It is simply a question of incentives.  At the moment the Tocs are incentivised to miss sell expensive tickets so they do.   

[Richard Fairhurst]

You have to accept that the technology in these things is ancient. Upgrades are needed, but would cost £millions more to renew. Are you willing to pay for these through your taxes?

It absolutely isn't ancient. The ticket machine at Charlbury, which isn't a particularly new one, is newer than the server I have running behind me right now - which runs the latest stable version of Ubuntu very happily indeed. It's a procurement failure, not a technology issue.

(And given that the server in question performs massive routing tasks, it's not that far-flung a comparison!)

[ellendune]

Its not a question of money it is a question of competence.  If ToC management were forced to get their act together they would, but at the moment we have a set up that makes it easier for them to think up excuses than to treat the customer fairly and a lame Government/regulator who nods along.  Now if we had a proper regulator who started throwing a few multimillion pound fines around I am sure you would find that the impossible suddenly becomes possible and affordable.  It is simply a question of incentives.  At the moment the Tocs are incentivised to miss sell expensive tickets so they do.   

That's very true.  The pollution fines for water companies used to be typically around £25k and it had little effect.  Now they start at around £250k and last week one company was fined £2million. And now preventing pollution is a priority. 

Of course the difficulty is that DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) want companies to maximise their fare income because that allows them to get higher premiums (or make lower payments) for franchises. So DfT are not interested in fair fares. 

[ChrisB]

You have to accept that the technology in these things is ancient. Upgrades are needed, but would cost £millions more to renew. Are you willing to pay for these through your taxes?

It absolutely isn't ancient. The ticket machine at Charlbury, which isn't a particularly new one, is newer than the server I have running behind me right now

I think you'll find the system it runs is very ancient - still using Windows XP or very best W7.....coz the programs it is running won't run on anything more modern.

[Tim]

Of course the difficulty is that DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) want companies to maximise their fare income because that allows them to get higher premiums (or make lower payments) for franchises. So DfT are not interested in fair fares. 

Yes, I fear that DfT has allowed itself to view everything as part of a money-go-round.  So if they force change X on the ToC, it will cost the ToC £Y and their premium payment will be reduced by £Y.  The water companies were the same.  "if you force us to do X we will need to raise our water bills by £Y" they said.  But once X was forced upon them, they discovered that water bills only needed to rise by £Y-Z where Z is the efficiency saving that they are incentivised to find when it is their money rather than just a cost that gets passed straight down the line.

Force the ticket machines to be reprogrammed and you would soon find that the cost fell from ChrisB's "£millions" and that they find someone who can remember how to use Windows XP and will do the job for a few grand Christmas bonus.