Reform of ticketing – not just a moan, but some suggestions for change to ponder

[whole diary]

[Bmblbzzz]

There are complaints on this forum that ticket machines don't sell the cheapest applicable ticket and that sometimes even ticket offices and gateline staff make mistakes. What chance a cafe, newsagent or postmaster selling you the right ticket?

[grahame]

There are complaints on this forum that ticket machines don't sell the cheapest applicable ticket and that sometimes even ticket offices and gateline staff make mistakes. What chance a cafe, newsagent or postmaster selling you the right ticket?

With a properly simplified system and appropriate point-of-sale software .... it should be possible.  But that's a huge change from an over-complex fare structure, machines that can't cope with it, and explanations of why it can't be fixed seeming to take priority over actually fixing it.

[grahame]

Melksham cafe could sell tickets, but won't be open for the first (few) trains of the day, so back to relying on the guard.

Well - it could have done with the initial draft timetable with a first train at 08:02.    Very relieved that an 06:36 to Southampton appeared late last week, and just this morning an 07:21 to Worcester (phew!)

[froome]

2 – The form of the ticket – why hard copies should be retained, and how the form of tickets should be developed.

As I have posted before, there is an important point of principle here. If we move to more electronic ticketing, hard copies should always be available. If not, the implication is that everyone will need a smartphone to use a train or a home computer. This is wrong. A mobile phone is a device enabling the user to speak to others by phone, communicate by email, text or other social media, and browse the internet. There is no reason anyone should have to have one (and subscribe to a data supply) simply to travel by train, any more than (for example) they should be required to buy an electric kettle, microwave oven or TV set to do so. Those who do not want one, or cannot afford one or would rather spend their meagre resources on feeding, clothing and housing their families should no more be deprived of the ability to travel by train, than they should be deprived of the ability to see their GP, shop at Tescos or buy fish and chips.

Completely agree on this. If hard copy tickets aren't available, I would find it very difficult to use trains (I do have a smart phone but am not competent in using it for buying a ticket or relying on it to give me access to the ticket at the right time). I don't actually understand why removal of hard copy tickets would help the rail industry anyway - it just seems to me a way of removing a large number of potential passengers who are not as tech savvy as the rest of the population.

[ChrisB]

CHEAP DAY RETURNS - However, what happens when there is both a monthly return (old 'saver' & 'supersaver' fares, for example) AND CDRs^▸ (Off Peak Day Return [ticket type] (formerly 'Cheap Day'))? My understanding is that there'll only be ONE single fare for any particular time of day, probably half the return at current times of day) So goodbye the CDR. that'll hurt in certain areas.

CDRs were also *designed* to be a few pence/pound or so more expensive than a single to encourage those to go shopping etc. There's a good reason for them in local journeys.

RAILCARD MINIMUM FARES - what happens going forward? Is the minimum fare going to be halved for single purchases? There can be times currently where a return can be cheaper with this type of railcard than a single, if the single is lower than the minimum fare (say £12) but the return is currently more (say £18) - so the return w/Railcard is the same price as the single (both £12), but applicable to each ticket going forward, no discount allowed as both singles would be £12 and under the minimum fare.

DELAY REPAY - At the moment, you can get a full refund on your *return* ticket if your train is very very late (I think over 2 hours?). Under the new regime, this won't be possible as both journeys will be treated separately. Maybe this is one way they'll be making up the loss on making single tickets half price of the current return, where the return is currently just more than the single.

Adding to these features looking as though they are being altered for the worse....
ONE DAY TRAVELCARDS - are issued as an add-on to return fares as a TfL^» (Transport for London - about) 'rover' around zones 1-6.

If only singles are henceforth available, will they be able to add a travelcard to a single to London Terminals? Does this require permission from TfL & the Mayor? (Likely, I'd say: will they give it? debateable at best, I'd say). So will you need to buy two singles (as a return) in order to get a third coupon as a 1-day Travelcard?

If they are playing around with the travelcard & they do continue, can we please have a Zone 1& 2 version as well as an all-zone version (to zone 8/9) please! I often need to go out to Amersham & Chesham & the add-on to those places is a pain in the *rse, frankly.

[Clan Line]

 (Surely I must be mis-remembering that the day-return fare was only two or three pounds?)

Possibly not........in 1966/7 I could get, on production of my RN ID card, a "port to port" return ticket from Plymouth to Portsmouth for (if I,too, remember correctly) the princely sum of 2 guineas .

[Noggin]

Fully agree that tickets could be purchased in local outlets.
But.
No advice or guidance on routings, time of travel (or when not to) won't be known.
All the local knowledge of station ticket offices will be lost.
So potential for conflict with ticket checks, and barrier exits.
Melksham cafe could sell tickets, but won't be open for the first (few) trains of the day, so back to relying on the guard.

Italian bars (or more accurately, tobacco concessions) seems to do quite well at selling bus and train tickets. Turned up to a beautifully rebuilt rural station in Sicily only to find that not a ticket machine in sight and I had to leg it to the bar across the road!

[Marlburian]

...
Back in the later 1960s, after the town's station and branch line had closed, I was able to buy advance tickets for journeys from Honiton to London (and no doubt many other places) from a small shop in Sidmouth.

I can't recall why I did this, rather than buying tickets at Honiton on the day. I don't think that it was because this was cheaper, perhaps a matter of eliciting from the kindly and patient shop-owner what the train times were. (Surely I must be mis-remembering that the day-return fare was only two or three pounds?)

Just checked out the last sentence: £3 in 1968 is worth £58 today (though different inflation calculators give different amounts). Were I to do the same journey tomorrow, I could buy an advance day return for £71.50 to travel on the 0712 from Honiton (though I could get two singles for £64.50). Travelling on the 0752 would cost me £37.10 for an advance ticket.

[eightonedee]

Getting back to the main theme (although I enjoyed the pictures of Mrs Robert's signs and Marlburian's anecdotes - that's one of the joys of this forum!), i though I would assemble an alphabet soup of some of the quotes in this and Chris B's threads that together indicate why I think something more radical is required than "abolishing" return tickets (or is this return fares?).

Return tickets are set to be scrapped as Rishi Sunak gives the green light to long-awaited sweeping reforms of Britain’s railways.

The rollout of "single-leg pricing" will be unveiled

At the time, LNER^» (London North Eastern Railway - about) said: “Rail tickets can be confusing. We want to make choosing and buying rail tickets simpler and more transparent. We hope this new structure is more straightforward: there are no more return tickets – one journey requires just one ticket.”

Return train tickets: What scrapping fares will mean for prices and how the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) compares to other countries

Return train tickets will be scrapped in a Government shakeup to the UK’s rail system expected to be announced by Transport Secretary Mark Harper on Tuesday.

Under the reforms likely to be unveiled, the price of two singles will be adjusted to come to the same as the current return fare.

LNER said the change also benefits passengers who wish to make a round-trip as these customers do not need to decide in advance the precise date and time that they wish to travel, which allows for changes to their plans.

What kind of ticket will I have to buy?
There are currently a host of options for rail passengers – a source of confusion and frustration to many travellers. Under the new system it is expected there will be three types of tickets to choose from:

– Anytime singles, which can be used on any route and are typically the most expensive option as a result

– Off-peak singles, whereby customers pay cheaper prices for travelling on trains that are less busy than the most popular services. Passengers usually have to travel during specific times and on certain days of the week on these tickets.

– Advance singles, which are for specific trains, and are cheaper than off-peak tickets and anytime singles as travellers have no flexibility to change their plans.

The practice, known as dynamic pricing, is widely used in the airline industry, with fares progressively increasing as more seats sell. Airlines have come under fire for massively inflating prices on school holiday dates and for major events, particularly overseas sporting finals.

He will also announce plans to roll out pay-as-you-go ticketing across the South East, which will enable travellers to pay for journeys by tapping in and out with contactless cards or phones - similar to London's Oyster^▸ (Smartcard system used by passengers on Transport for London services) system.

It’s wonderful that they want to scrap returns and offer only singles instead. However will I still be able to buy two singles at the start of my journey to make up the return I would have otherwise bought? Will there be an option to buy two singles to make up a return as easily and quickly as buying a return now? The last thing we need is to have everyone have to go through buying two individual singles because that will clog up the ticket machines at Paddington and elsewhere.

I very often arrive at the station to start my return journey with very little time to spare. I do not want to have to buy a ticket for the return journey after the outward one. I certainly don’t want to have it on a device or pick it up from a machine at the station.

Quote from: Bmblbzzz on Today at 12:32:43 am
It doesn't actually make sense. How can a single be half the price of a return, as opposed to just a pound or ten pence less, if "operators are unable to significantly reduce prices"? How can a single be half the price of a return, if a return has no fixed price, as is consequent on demand-based pricing? And how can "anyone feel confident they're getting the best value for money" when they're unable to know the price in advance?

Operators *currently* are unable to reduce prices; once these reforms are in, the single in a lot of cases will be reduced in price.

Returns will be no more, so it would be (one of?) the three types of single - likely the Advance, I'd say - that will fluctaute (as it does now, so no real change actually)

I suspect & hope that the other two types of singles (off-peak & Anytime) won't be demand-based priced, but fixed.

No mention of fixing the peak times across the country to be the same everywhere (or no peak at certain stations where flows permit), which I feel was a missed opportunity.

So - confusion reigns!

We have only three types of tickets to make it simpler, but then "dynamic pricing" will be tried as will "pay as you go", so you will not know what a journey costs if you want to plan in advance and budget for your journey before buying your ticket and buy on the day of travel.

It is unclear, even to members of this forum which largely consists of experienced rail passengers whether the ticket/all the tickets for both legs of your journey will be available to be bought at the same time.

We will be left with parts of the country where you tap in and tap out, and only find out (presumably) later what it has actually costed you, and others where you do not, and therefore potential confusion if you travel across the boundary between the two (as I imagine that most travelling into London from outside Greater London will).

In the meantime, many casual travellers will have a take home message from the click-bait headlines and press releases that they can't buy a ticket or tickets for both outward and return legs of their journeys, and that the cheap day return (which I think is now culturally embedded in our national pysche as what you get if you travel out of peak times, even if it is in rail-speak "two advance singles") will be abolished, so they will think that the days of cheap days out by train avoiding rush hour are over.

Don't they understand that for most people "a return ticket" can mean either a single one that covers both journeys, the outward and return portion of a ticket or the outward and return advance singles?

Well done everyone - departmental issuers of press releases, newspaper journalists, editors and headline writers - you have just done more to discourage rail travel than anyone (apart possibly certain union leaders?). Is this a cunning plan to reduce overcrowding?

And as to the suggestion that as a person still possessing two legs I will have to pay double rail fares....

This is what prompted my wider ranging suggestions at the beginning of this thread.

[ChrisB]

One word - 'trial' - explains that the final decisions haven't yet been made and everyone is trying to jump the 'gun'.

Patience is a virtue, and likely to be the way forward? I'm sure everything will be set out & explained well before anything changes.

Pay-as-you-go will only extend out from London I understand, as three TOcs identified only run in that area - Chiltern being one. C2C & LNWR^▸ (London North Western Railway) being the others.

[Marlburian]

A friend travelled from Paddington to Reading at 0845 this morning and reported that (all?) the ticket machines were out of action and that she had to queue to buy a ticket from a human.

[Clan Line]

Today's Telegraph:

[GBM]

Nooooooooooo