Fares for journeys routed via Worcester

[whole diary]

[Mark A]

Travel from Bath BTH^» (Bath Spa - next trains) /Bristol BRI^» (Bristol Temple Meads - next trains) and perhaps further afield involving 'Change at Worcester' does not sit happily with the ticketing system, especially for day returns, something that tried to bite me at this time last year.

If the route is set to 'Avoid Birmingham New Street, the national rail site goes so far for some connections as to state 'No fares available'.

Sample journey: Bath Spa to Kidderminster day return, weekdays next week. brfares.com reveals that the flow via Birmingham and also Worcester is priced by Crosscountry. For good measure, via Worcester is a higher price than via Birmingham.

https://www.brfares.com/!expert?orig=BTH&dest=KID&period=20231203

For Bristol, brfares.com does not have a 'Via Birmingham' fare but again, two options, 'via Cheltenham' and 'via Worcester' which is a bit of a struggle as has there ever been a rational way to travel to Worcester using rail without going through Cheltenham on the way? Again, both are pricey.

https://www.brfares.com/!expert?orig=BRI&dest=KID&period=20231203

Turning to split ticketing, a day return from Bath, splitting the ticket at Worcester, looks to be £28:60.
The alternative, without splitting the ticket, an off-peak saver return from Crosscountry at £81.60?

Setting aside the travel times of two and a half hours plus between various places that aren't actually far apart, it's difficult for a walk up member of the travelling public to find that it needn't actually cost £80+ for an out and back day trip to a swathe of the west midlands. Now, there are a swathe of complicated capacity issues, especially on Crosscountry, but this is a part of the railway network that's somewhat orphaned, falling through the cracks between TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company), and it will be a long time before the rail industry is resourced and able to advocate for its potential despite many of the roads, towns, cities, now suffering congestion and also (hat tip to the rivers Severn and Avon) subject to weather related disruption, was it the other day that travel west of Worcester involved a detour via the M5 and M50?

Mark

Edit - to step around software bug and correct links - grahame

[Ralph Ayres]

Perversely, a choice of two different "via" locations doesn't necessarily mean you have to avoid the other one (though it often does), depending on the complexity of the railway geography of the area.  I'm guessing (sorry, I'm not dedicated enough to do battle with the dreaded Routing Guide!) that for those journeys the "via Worcester" routes would allow you to go via Newport and Hereford so won't be priced less than the fare from Newport to the same destination.  "Via Cheltenham" clearly excludes that way so can be cheaper but you can still carry on via Worcester too as nothing says you can't.  None of this is clear to the average passenger of course, and this is an area of rail fare simplification that really needs dealing with, but with a clear commitment from the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) who will have to lead it, along with a willingness to accept the flak from the one person a year who really benefits by stopping off on the way at Newport, Cwmbran and Abergavenny and creates merry hell when the cost goes up as separate tickets are then needed.

That business of no fares when avoiding Birmingham New Street isn't perhaps that surprising given how convoluted and slow many journeys would need to be to avoid such an obvious point to pass through.  Hard to be sure without knowing the specific destination.  A Journey Planner also can't ask the obvious question "Why?" and perhaps apply a different rule to achieve the same thing such as perhaps "I'm  not worried if it takes far longer so long as I can change trains on the same platform" or even tell you it doesn't matter as the fare is the same whether you go via New Street or not!

[JayMac]

There is the option of a fare 'hack' to get from Bath/Bristol to much of the West Midlands via Birmingham, for a day trip using a Routeing Guide easement. It works out a lot cheaper than purchasing a ticket that CrossCountry price the flow of.

DM me for more info.

[Mark A]

That business of no fares when avoiding Birmingham New Street isn't perhaps that surprising given how convoluted and slow many journeys would need to be to avoid such an obvious point to pass through.  Hard to be sure without knowing the specific destination. 

I was surprised that via New Street or not, journey times to various parts of the Birmingham conurbation were coming out at 2 3/4 to 3 hours. The national rail site does route via the fastest option but for routes via Worcester it does come up with 'No fares' very readily as though via Worcester doesn't offer benefits.

The destination I was searching for was for Kidderminster, which was in turn bringing back memories of the heady days of the early 1980s when the town's station was the meanest of mean things, when Mondays to Saturdays, the DMUs^▸ (Diesel Multiple Unit) would climb, increasingly ponderously, from Stourbridge to the summit at Blackheath, & frieght in the form of aluminium ingots were a regular sight, delivered by rail to the yard where the SVR station now is, the line to Bewdley was a bit of a jungle, when there were no trains anywhere on Sundays and I think just two services a day south of Kidderminster to Worcester and perhaps Hereford. But that, as they say, was another era.

Mark

[rogerw]

If travelling to Kidderminster I would always split ticket at Worcester. Apart from being cheaper, it also avoids having to change stations in Birmingham.

[Ralph Ayres]

Looking into this in more detail it really does show how poor the National Rail website (or the data that drives it) is for its main purpose of planning journeys and telling you which ticket you need. On top of saying no fares are available, I see that it refuses even to give details of how to make those journeys if say you had an All Line Rover, despite taunting you by showing an overall journey time quicker than the alternative options.  I'd guess it's what previous versions of NRE^‡(resolve) would have shown with a warning that you needed to buy more than one ticket, which was irritating but at least sort of helpful.

Google Maps planning reveals that the times are indeed for the logical direct route via Cheltenham and Worcester, but that's not what the "via Worcester" fares are meant for.  Given that a ticket from Bath Spa all the way to Birmingham is valid via Kidderminster and would (for most ticket types) allow you to break your journey there then just not carry on, it's unhelpul in the extreme.  In the absence of a "Not via Birmingham" route it really needs to have some fuzzy logic to cater for this type of situation where you arrive at your final destination before the possible geographic validity of the ticket has run out.  I suspect it thinks the "no doubling back" rule is being broken in some way and so goes into a sulk.