Poor value season ticket

[FenMan]

The popular commutes from my local station, Blackwater, are to Reading or Guildford. However the pricing of season tickets doesn't make much sense to me:-

Blackwater - Guildford
Anytime Day Return: £8.40
Weekly season: £30.40
Annual season: £1,216

So far so good. However ...

Blackwater - Reading
Anytime Day Return: £8.00
Weekly season: £37.50
Annual season: £1,500

A Reading-bound commuter needs to travel 5 days a week to save £2.50 on a weekly season, or 200 days a year to save the princely sum of £100 on an annual. Not exactly an incentive to commit £1,500 up front.

Is this one of the worst value seasons on the network for a popular commuter flow?

 

[greatkingrat]

It could be worse! Surrey seems to be a magnet for extremely poor value season tickets.

Godalming - Hook, SDR £8.30, 7DS £86.70 (x10.4)
Witley - North Camp, SDR £6.50, 7DS £56.40 (x8.7)
Haslemere - Camberley, SDR £10.30, 7DS £88.10 (x8.5)
Woking - Hook, SDR £8.20, 7DS £66.70 (x8.1)

At the other end of the scale

Breich - Coatbridge Central, SDR 24.60, 7DS 17.70 (x0.7)
Eastbourne - Epsom (not London), SDR 52.10, 7DS 61.90 (x1.2)
Margate - Dorking (not London), SDR 73.60, 7DS 87.50 (x1.2)

 

[0B00]

Looks like the Breich fare should be £107.70 rather than £17.70 - a typo by the powers that be somewhere !?

 

[John @ home]

Breich - Coatbridge Central, SDR 24.60, 7DS 17.70

Looks like the Breich fare should be £107.70 rather than £17.70

I don't think £107.70 for a weekly season is realistic. As the crow flies, Breich - Coatbridge is less than 15 miles, with 13 miles of the road journey by motorway.

I would be inclined to think the £24.60 SDR is the error. By comparison, Edinburgh - Glasgow is £21.80 SDR for 46 miles.

 

[soil]

I don't think £107.70 for a weekly season is realistic. As the crow flies, Breich - Coatbridge is less than 15 miles, with 13 miles of the road journey by motorway.

I would be inclined to think the £24.60 SDR is the error. By comparison, Edinburgh - Glasgow is £21.80 SDR for 46 miles.

No, I think £107.70 is correct.

http://www.brfares.com/#expert?orig=BRC&dest=CBC

As you can see, the route:

Q553
KINGSKNOWE
SLATEFORD
ADDIEWELL
EDINBURGH PARK
CURRIEHILL
FAULDHOUSE
SOUTH GYLE
HAYMARKET
KIRKNEWTON
WEST CALDER
EDINBURGH.
WESTERHAILES
BREICH
LIVINGSTON SOUTH

to
Q570
SHIELDMUIR
WISHAW
COATBRIDGE CTL

has the standard fares:

7DS £107.70
SDR £24.60
CDR £16.60
SDS £14.80

This is overridden by the more specific

Breich - Coatbridge Central

7DS £17.70
SDR £24.60
CDR £16.60
SDS £14.80

The fares are identical, excepting the 7DS, which very clearly has the 0 missing.

I'm not clear why Coatbridge Central is grouped with Shieldmuir and Wishaw anyway, as the latter two are adjacent stations and the former is not.

I would put it down to poorly maintained data, and look at Motherwell, clearly the major station in the area, for a guide to appropriate fares.

Edinburgh - Motherwell is its own flow:

and is

7DS £103.10
SDR £25.10
CDR £16.80
SDS £15.20

Breich - Motherwell is again its own flow

and is

7DS £45.60
SDR £11.30
SDS £6

Other nearby stations, such as Edinburgh - Airbles, Edinburgh - Whifflet, and Slateford - Holytown, and others, are all priced roughly according to distance and with the 7DS approx. 4x the price of the SDR, so it seems to me that the Q553 to Q570 cluster as a whole is an aberrational, since with the exception of Breich - Coatbridge, all the other route combinations within the cluster are overridden, but at the same price.

The shortest route is Fauldhouse to Wishaw, around 15 miles by rail, less as the crow flies - the ticket costs more than double that of adjacent stations.