On difficulties obtaining the fares that are in the system

[whole diary]

[grahame]

From an answer to my Facebook post on the current consultation - quoting here just a small part of what was written for clarity and in "critical review" to stay within copyright bounds.

At present, with all online booking portals for rail-based travel in Great Britain, and with many Ticket Vending Machines, one has to chose a specific timed train (or two specific timed trains, if purchasing an iteration of a Return) even if they want to purchase a turn-up-and-go fare. Turn-up-and-go fares are, by their very nature, not fares which are specific to a specific-timed train; picking a specific train is non-relevant.

and

There are three detrimental and negative issues with a sub-national player taking on operational control of a part of the network belonging to National Rail. These detrimental and negative issues are not fundamentally unavoidable, but they are highly probable, and do need to be secured against pre-emptively:
(i).
job losses;
(ii).
the loss of ticket-office provision;
(iii).
restricted ability for one to avail oneself of the full array of fares.

[grahame]

In addressing the issues, I have followed up ....

...  thank you for your two long and well thought out (and duplicated around ;-) ) thoughts.  Please share them into the consultation portal as well, as the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) almost certainly won't register inputs that are just here on Facebook which is, however, a good place to reach a wider concerned audience.

May I try to paraphrase some things you are picking up:

1. the current absurdity of having to select outbound and return trains when buying "open" tickets - i.e. ones that are valid on multiple / many trains.  Things like when I buy a return from Melksham to London from the six return fares you list, I have to select a train to come back on - even if I don't know and am intentionally buying a ticket for flexibility as my plans are indefinite.

2. the difficulty of buying certain tickets at all or of getting advice / help at all in working out what you need and doing so, especially if you are challenged and need help.

I (and probably you, judging by your eloquent description of the problem) are perfectly used to working the current system, but others (a) overpay, (b) are inconvenienced and (c) are put off making rail journeys all together - this is serious stuff that effects the viability of the railway. And the solution is not - IMHO^▸ (in my humble opinion) - for the railway industry not to make it even more of a straightjacket on flexible fares to increase income and reduce flexibility, but rather to be obviously flexible and increase information and ridership.

Is the solution, though, to remove the hurdles to accessing these fares or to switch to a nationwide lower individual journey fare and much simpler system to build up passenger numbers by encouraging use?   Just yesterday I was at lunch with three bright senior ladies who are all bus users but resist the challenge of train travel because of the hurdle of sorting out ticketing at sensible prices; with the Brendas, Lisas and Annes on the trains - for sure the "take" per passenger or per mile would be lowered but this is mass transit and the cost of infrastructure and staff for a 9 car train should be very similar to that for a 5 car train, even if the train itself costs - well - 9/5 times as much (which it would not - just 2 driving cabs, and twice the passenger accommodation even if the train is not quite as long)
 

[ChrisB]

A simplified mileage-based fares system where there is only single fares, peak & off-peak standardised at one change-over time (0930?). railcards by e-means or postal application will render ticket offices almost redundant, but no job loses as stations should be manned first to last train where ticket offices currently are.

[Hafren]

This having to pick a specific train has turned into quite a bugbear recently...

A lot of people now buy on apps, and because they're given an itinerary they assume they have an 'advance' ticket and can't travel on a different train. I ask to see their ticket and it turns out to be an Off-Peak Return or whatever. It does say 'suggested' or whatever somewhere on the itinerary but still.

I suppose if it didn't happen they might use the off-peak ticket on a peak train without realising!

Also it's very hard to buy the right fare, or even know about it, when there are options. If the starting point were choosing the ticket, rather than choosing the journey, this would be alleviated. People would save money in some cases as they would see cheaper options that the planners don't offer because the algorithm doesn't pick out t hat journey. And people might even come to understand the fare structure better because the grids currently shown by the planners make it feel like the whole system is built around per-journey quota-controlled fares.

Examples:

Brighton Main Line: typically 3 routings - Any Permitted (great for Gatwitck Express, which is often lightly loaded - a useful gem at times!), Not Gatwick Express, Thameslink Only. Thameslink only is cheapest. But at certain times it's hard to pick out from a planner if the Victoria journeys are picked out by the algorithm, especially if it's a day when engineering work messes with the outcomes.

London: Do I want London Terminals, London Thameslink (Brighton Main Line example again), London U1, or Travelcard? I recently did a split journey where the best options involved splitting at London - i.e. one of the legs was booked to/from London U1 or London Thameslink. But there's a certain art to finding London U1 journeys. Why not just offer the options when entering London? For London Thameslink I tried entering Farringdon, but on that day it decided going to Victoria then Underground was quickest, and it was hard to force the Thameslink option! Someone who doesn't know the system well and isn't inclined to play around just woudln't get there.

Wales - London (and Southern Region destinations, actually): Via Salisbury is often cheaper. (For some destinations there's no route Salisbury fare so splitting is needed.) It's a very good way to save money, and sometimes avoid the same scale of peak fares, for those who don't have the flexibility to buy an Advance fare. But because it's slower, the planners don't find the journeys via Salisbury unless the user is in the know. If someone just asked for a flexible London ticket, the system would offer the fare.

I recently assisted someone with a journey plan between South London and the Midlands. The cheapest fare was route Nottingham but at certain parts of the day it wouldn't offer them this fare because going via Derby gave better options. They wouldn't have known to tell it to offer journeys via Nottingham.

Back when QJump was around and had its own engine (I think later it was absorbed into TheTrainLine) there was a button to list all fares. Very useful feature!

I've never been quite convinced that mileage-based fares are the answer, as rural routes and major arteries have such different fares now, which also potentially ties in with local economic needs, not to mention that there are so many mileage permutations for some A-B journeys, which could create a lot of anomalies, or require different more complex 'via' routings.

Dealing with the peak fare issue would do a lot to simplify journeys. I'm not convinced we need evening peak fares any more. Retaining morning peak restrictions would serve a purpose by by crudely differentiating between commuter travel (to maintain/maximise income) and leisure travel (lower off-peak fares to attract non-captive customers). Evening peak fares make planning long-distance journeys overly complex, and also could cause worries if late running causes the last off-peak train to be missed, or if unsure of return travel time - do I buy the off-peak and hope I make it in time, or buy the peak fare just in case, and then make it at the off-peak time after all? But even with just mornming peak fares we really don't need so many restriction codes. It might require more than one code but not hte number we have now! It might make sense to have before 09:30 for some flows, and arriving London after 10am for some flows, and some flows with peak ending before 09:30 if there are longer gaps in service, but doesn't need hundreds of restriction codes. And for railcards... either do away with the peak restriction, or just say it isn't valid for a discount on the peak fare! (That might cause problems where the peak ticket is the only fare, on routes with no peak/off-peak distinction...)

If there were just a morning peak, and just a handful of restriction codes, and if booking systems were based on purchasing the ticket rather than the journey, the system would immediately be much, much simpler, and easy to plan around!

For a recent journey that required crossing London in the evening peak, it took what felt like hours looking at all the split options - even on that one axis there were different restriction codes for the different combinations! And the trains weren't exactly overloaded. Perhaps without peak fares they would be though... but that's probably no different from the crowding on the first & last off-peak trains!

[plymothian]

This having to pick a specific train has turned into quite a bugbear recently...

A lot of people now buy on apps, and because they're given an itinerary they assume they have an 'advance' ticket and can't travel on a different train. I ask to see their ticket and it turns out to be an Off-Peak Return or whatever. It does say 'suggested' or whatever somewhere on the itinerary but still.

I suppose if it didn't happen they might use the off-peak ticket on a peak train without realising

Your last sentence is certainly very true too. 
Very often people don't know or, more importantly, understand what they are buying, and are assuming they have a flexible ticket, when actually they have an advance or (in the case of trainline) a [very limiting] split.