Well I took my little jaunt along the North Cotswold line on Thursday last, and the discussion on this thread on the routeing options, especially what routes were or were not permitted when a ticket says “any permitted” got me thinking. I looked at it in the light of two things, firstly the sub headline to the Fares Fair section which is this “Discussion of tickets, options and pricing - a minefield that it's hard for the customer to understand.” And secondly in the light of this quote from the thread:
Fixing it will need to be included within the fares revision that GBR▸ will be undertaking - but I suspct it'll be the travelling public to lose out on multiple routings. They'll call it 'simplification'
In the ”old days” as long as a passenger was travelling in broadly the right direction toward their destination with an “any permitted” ticket, that would have been OK. This thread has highlighted that there can be routes between A and B which may be reasonably direct and likely to be already known by some members of the public, that are “not OK” (in this case the via Reading or via Kemble options for a
CPM» MIM ticket).
With the increasing use of things like electronic tickets on phones that are machine readable, some of these routes could be subject to challenge by on train ticket checking staff. I can see a can of worms opening here if the railways aren’t careful. AAs we have seen on this thread, for example, CPM MIM is not permitted via Kemble but CPM EVE is permitted. If more of this “catches on” with further routeing restrictions then more people are going to be challenged. This will not be good for business and an absolute disaster for
PR▸ .
When I had my little difference of opinion with HEX a couple of years ago over validity of off peak tickets on their trains before 0930, the
RDG‡ finally found in my favour by pointing out to HEX that a ticket was only invalid if it specifically said so in the restriction code. If the restriction that they wanted to impose was not included in the list of restrictions, then it was their interpretation of the rules that were invalid, not the ticket. Perhaps we need the same sort of thing displayed on the ticket itself for routeing purposes.
I would propose that if a route that the average person in the street would reasonably think is a permitted route, it should be a permitted route unless the ticket actually says otherwise. We already have it in simplified form such as “not via Reading” “not via Bath Spa or “Virgin trains only” as once upon a time appeared on some Stoke to Manchester tickets
It appears that we need to have one or the other, otherwise we end uyp in this situation:
TTI – “your ticket isn’t valid over this route Sir”
Passenger – Well it doesn’t say so on the ticket. Where does it say it’s not valid?”
TTI – “in the routeing guide"
Passenger – “so how can I check the routeing guide before I start my journey?
TTI – you can’t Sir. It’s too complicated for mere mortalls...”
I can see that going down well in the media. Not...
Click on the map to explore geographics
