Passenger Revenue if everyone would split their ticket

[ys123]

If everyone would buy the cheapest possible ticket for their journey by splitting their ticket if a split was cheaper, approximately how much would the yearly Passenger Revenue be compared to the £9.3BN it currently is?

 

[Dom395]

If everyone would buy the cheapest possible ticket for their journey by splitting their ticket if a split was cheaper, approximately how much would the yearly Passenger Revenue be compared to the £9.3BN it currently is?

I should think it would stay around the same as if people starting splitting their tickets the TOCs would just increase their ticket prices to make up for the losses.

 

[gimmea50anyday]

Or eliminate the split ticket combo by altering the restrictions...

 

[D365]

I don't think that all passengers would be interested in going through the rigmarole of splitting their tickets. E.g. I'll almost always stick to return tickets for two-way journeys as it's just easy. I'm not going to save much more than a couple of pounds.

 

[Great_Western]

Dont train operators get a bigger percentage of the ticket money if it is bought in advance rather than at the station? If so, it would probably level itself out because your more likely to book in advance if you are splitting your tickets

 

[AlterEgo]

Dont train operators get a bigger percentage of the ticket money if it is bought in advance rather than at the station? If so, it would probably level itself out because your more likely to book in advance if you are splitting your tickets

No, it is only the ticket type Advance which the TOC keeps all the revenue for (and even then, "and connections" tickets still come with revenue sharing).

Buying an Off Peak in advance of travel is quite different.

 

[HH]

I should think it would stay around the same as if people starting splitting their tickets the TOCs would just increase their ticket prices to make up for the losses.

As most fares are regulated that is only really possible on AP.

 

[HH]

Or eliminate the split ticket combo by altering the restrictions...

They can't on most tickets (see above).

 

[HH]

I don't think that all passengers would be interested in going through the rigmarole of splitting their tickets. E.g. I'll almost always stick to return tickets for two-way journeys as it's just easy. I'm not going to save much more than a couple of pounds.

Try looking at London-Manchester...

 

[ys123]

Or eliminate the split ticket combo by altering the restrictions...

Please explain briefly how it would work as I can think of a lot of journeys where it will be unable to alter the restrictions.

 

[ys123]

Dont train operators get a bigger percentage of the ticket money if it is bought in advance rather than at the station? If so, it would probably level itself out because your more likely to book in advance if you are splitting your tickets

Why? In fact I would think the opposite is true. If you're booking a London to a Edinburgh advance and it costs £30 you might not split as it probably won't save more than a few quid whereas when you buy it on the day for £100 the chances are if there is a split it'll be saving more than a few quid. I understand that by an advance ticket there are many more possibilities of splitting, whereas an on the day ticket has much less options of splitting but seeing as an on the day ticket will generally have a bigger split saving I would say one is more likely to split an on the day ticket.

 

[anti-pacer]

A friend of mine and his good lady were travelling today from Truro back to Derby. They got a lift down but needed to get the train back. For such a long journey (in their eyes) they wanted First Class.

With their Two Together Railcard the only option was an Anytime ticket at a whopping £452 (IIRC). With my help I got this down to £198 by splitting tickets at Exeter, Bristol, and Birmingham.

It's ridiculous that TOC's can get away with charging extortionate prices for a journey that with a bit of thinking and flexibility can be done for less than half the cost.

Some people may not want to faff about with splitting tickets and the extra time it takes, especially online, but are you seriously telling me you wouldn't do this, if it saved you £254 as I have saved my friends?

 

[Great_Western]

Why? In fact I would think the opposite is true. If you're booking a London to a Edinburgh advance and it costs £30 you might not split as it probably won't save more than a few quid whereas when you buy it on the day for £100 the chances are if there is a split it'll be saving more than a few quid. I understand that by an advance ticket there are many more possibilities of splitting, whereas an on the day ticket has much less options of splitting but seeing as an on the day ticket will generally have a bigger split saving I would say one is more likely to split an on the day ticket.

I'd say generaly the types who book in advance, or simply just online before the go to the station are the types that are more likely to go out of their way to get a good price, whereas those who buy when they get to the station want the ease of just turning up, buying a simple ticket and going. Additionaly, the cheepest advances you see are very limited in flexibilty whereas by splitting in advance you have the option of being as flexible as you want for the lowest cost

 

[Paul Duck]

A friend of mine and his good lady were travelling today from Truro back to Derby. They got a lift down but needed to get the train back. For such a long journey (in their eyes) they wanted First Class.

With their Two Together Railcard the only option was an Anytime ticket at a whopping £452 (IIRC). With my help I got this down to £198 by splitting tickets at Exeter, Bristol, and Birmingham.

It's ridiculous that TOC's can get away with charging extortionate prices for a journey that with a bit of thinking and flexibility can be done for less than half the cost.

Some people may not want to faff about with splitting tickets and the extra time it takes, especially online, but are you seriously telling me you wouldn't do this, if it saved you £254 as I have saved my friends?

It is amazing what can be saved. We ask customers if there ok to just give us 5 mins to try and save them money when they do an advance booking and they are amazed at some of the savings. seems to be mainly cross country where the big savings can be found. Not sure it will ever be fully erraticated it will take a lot of work.

 

[anti-pacer]

I'd say generaly the types who book in advance, or simply just online before the go to the station are the types that are more likely to go out of their way to get a good price, whereas those who buy when they get to the station want the ease of just turning up, buying a simple ticket and going. Additionaly, the cheepest advances you see are very limited in flexibilty whereas by splitting in advance you have the option of being as flexible as you want for the lowest cost

However if the majority of the travelling public knew what they could potentially save, in some cases as much as the example I gave in my last post, and possibly more, maybe they'd be more inclined to follow suit.

I appreciate not all travel arrangements could allow for this, such as last minute travel, but advance travellers should be made aware of what a bit of flexibility could save them.

 

[anti-pacer]

It is amazing what can be saved. We ask customers if there ok to just give us 5 mins to try and save them money when they do an advance booking and they are amazed at some of the savings. seems to be mainly cross country where the big savings can be found. Not sure it will ever be fully erraticated it will take a lot of work.

It's nice Paul that you do that and I wish others would follow.

 

[Great_Western]

However if the majority of the travelling public knew what they could potentially save, in some cases as much as the example I gave in my last post, and possibly more, maybe they'd be more inclined to follow suit.

I appreciate not all travel arrangements could allow for this, such as last minute travel, but advance travellers should be made aware of what a bit of flexibility could save them.

Oh I completely agree. If I'm staying with family in Shoeburyness and dont mind the extra time, I can do it from Newport for £15 quid if I go via Sailsbury on SWT using the early morning direct run from Bristol TM and split at Bath, if I book early enough

 

[ys123]

Back to the original question, seeing as there are alot of fares that the TOC'S won't be able to change the price or restirictions, if the £9.3BN would go down by 3% due to splitting what would the TOC'S do as they earn just 3% of the 9.3BN?

 

[HH]

Back to the original question, seeing as there are alot of fares that the TOC'S won't be able to change the price or restirictions, if the £9.3BN would go down by 3% due to splitting what would the TOC'S do as they earn just 3% of the 9.3BN?

Let's try to get this into perspective. One TOC that probably has a lot to fear from this is Cross Country. If the network got hit by 3% as a whole, then the XC "slice" would be a lot bigger. However, they also have control over more prices than most TOCs, so they could do something about it, but still it would be a problem.

Perhaps one of our ticket gurus could say which TOCs would be heavily affected and couldn't do much about it. Meanwhile, I guess that Northern could be badly affected, due to the sheer size of their network, the fact that they have little control over pricing and they are heavily subsidised, i.e. they can't do much to increase revenue by other means.

They would no doubt bleat to DfT, who would have to decide whether to:
* Allow Change procedure and vary their grant; or
* Do something finally about ticket pricing anomalies; or
* Do nothing and see if they hand the keys back.

 

[thedbdiboy]

Let's try to get this into perspective. One TOC that probably has a lot to fear from this is Cross Country. If the network got hit by 3% as a whole, then the XC "slice" would be a lot bigger. However, they also have control over more prices than most TOCs, so they could do something about it, but still it would be a problem.

Perhaps one of our ticket gurus could say which TOCs would be heavily affected and couldn't do much about it. Meanwhile, I guess that Northern could be badly affected, due to the sheer size of their network, the fact that they have little control over pricing and they are heavily subsidised, i.e. they can't do much to increase revenue by other means.

They would no doubt bleat to DfT, who would have to decide whether to:
* Allow Change procedure and vary their grant; or
* Do something finally about ticket pricing anomalies; or
* Do nothing and see if they hand the keys back.

This is an issue that does need sorting and which there are finally moves to begin to address - but please don't be so naive as to think that it is all about the mean old TOC 'bleating' to the DfT. Despite all the pious pronouncements from the DfT, their policy under NuLabour, the Coalition and still now is to extract the maximum possible bid premium from franchises and so for many years they have been happy to encourage an anomalous fare structure as long as it extracts more revenue. The growth in internet booking tools and transparency of the fares structure due to open data is finally forcing the issue to be confronted, but the DfT is going to try and do it's best to minimize the reduction in the value of the franchise because otherwise either taxpayers or fare payers have to fund the loss.

 

[Bald Rick]

Given that something like 80% of GB national rail revenue is to/from/within London, where splitting tickets rarely has an impact, I can't see it would have much effect.

 

[NorthernSpirit]

A friend of mine and his good lady were travelling today from Truro back to Derby. They got a lift down but needed to get the train back. For such a long journey (in their eyes) they wanted First Class.

With their Two Together Railcard the only option was an Anytime ticket at a whopping £452 (IIRC). With my help I got this down to £198 by splitting tickets at Exeter, Bristol, and Birmingham.

It's ridiculous that TOC's can get away with charging extortionate prices for a journey that with a bit of thinking and flexibility can be done for less than half the cost.

Some people may not want to faff about with splitting tickets and the extra time it takes, especially online, but are you seriously telling me you wouldn't do this, if it saved you £254 as I have saved my friends?

If I had to do similar, I'd also split the tickets even if it just meant that I was saving £1.90, its £1.90 that can go towards something to eat.

As with any long distance stuff that I do, I've worked out that its cheaper to purchase a seven day all line rail rover and do it in a week than it was to do the journeys spread throughout the year and that is without a railcard.

 

[Lincoln]

In fairness unless the industry moved away from 'market based' to 'kilometric' pricing then there will always be discrepancies where splitting tickets will save money - some bigger than others.

There would still be issues surrounding 'kilometric' based prices too as many journeys can be via different routes of varying length.

Anything else is just tinkering around the edges. Plus at the moment, where one split is etadicated another could be created.

 

[HH]

This is an issue that does need sorting and which there are finally moves to begin to address - but please don't be so naive as to think that it is all about the mean old TOC 'bleating' to the DfT. Despite all the pious pronouncements from the DfT, their policy under NuLabour, the Coalition and still now is to extract the maximum possible bid premium from franchises and so for many years they have been happy to encourage an anomalous fare structure as long as it extracts more revenue. The growth in internet booking tools and transparency of the fares structure due to open data is finally forcing the issue to be confronted, but the DfT is going to try and do it's best to minimize the reduction in the value of the franchise because otherwise either taxpayers or fare payers have to fund the loss.

I've said several times that this was down to the DfT - and the SRA before them. I have personally had experience of their reluctance to embrace any new fares initiatives.

P.S. Looks like your handle could do with a Quality check.

 

[HH]

Given that something like 80% of GB national rail revenue is to/from/within London, where splitting tickets rarely has an impact, I can't see it would have much effect.

As I intimated earlier, fares to/from London are not exempt from split ticketing issues. Season Tickets are generally outside however - if you look you will find they tend to have smaller multipliers the further you get from London, which address the issue.

One 'split ticket', which many have not yet cottoned onto, is point-to-point plus Oyster - usually cheaper than a Travelcard if all you're doing is commuting.

 

[Clansman]

If everyone split their ticket, all of the cheaper ones would sell at a far increased rate than what they do now, resulting in the cheaper tickets becoming a rarity due to how quickly they are snapped up. So in the end, the only available tickets are your typical standard rate ones, which will only increase the overall cost of splitting a full point to point journey.

Basically, the ticket vendors win anyway.

 

[HH]

If everyone split their ticket, all of the cheaper ones would sell at a far increased rate than what they do now, resulting in the cheaper tickets becoming a rarity due to how quickly they are snapped up. So in the end, the only available tickets are your typical standard rate tickets, which will only increase the overall cost of splitting a full point to point journey.

This could only be possible with AP fares.

 

[Gareth Marston]

We don't have a TVM at Newtown so people who buy online and opt for TOD come in and we see what they buy. Only around half are AP tickets people buy Anytime and Off Peak online and are convinced they have saved money even when they pay booking and credit card fees (everything's cheaper on the internet syndrome). We've even seen people buy an Anytime Return to Shrewsbury @ £8.40 online and spend their lunchtime driving in from an industrial estate to collect it the day before travelling!

Splits are rarely seen and in extreme cases we see horror stories of folk who buy Anytime when travelling at off peak times or go via the most expensive route when there a choice. (Evolvi Corporate customers are always most conned). Not knowing about railcards is another thing we see- the internet doesn't tell you.

Conclusion -letting the general public loose on the internet to buy rail tickets is a good way of increasing revenue!

 

[meridian2]

It is amazing what can be saved. We ask customers if there ok to just give us 5 mins to try and save them money when they do an advance booking and they are amazed at some of the savings. seems to be mainly cross country where the big savings can be found. Not sure it will ever be fully erraticated it will take a lot of work.

Do you speak as a ticket seller when you say "we"? If I go to my local station and ask for the cheapest way of getting to Newcastle next Thursday and returning before midnight the same day, are they compelled to give me split tickets?

 

[Darandio]

Do you speak as a ticket seller when you say "we"?

He is.

If I go to my local station and ask for the cheapest way of getting to Newcastle next Thursday and returning before midnight the same day, are they compelled to give me split tickets?

Nope.