Fantasy- My idea for a new ticketing system

[higthomas]

So, we all love coming up with our different ideas for how to redesign a ticketing system, which is simple, obvious, more like oyster, but would actually work. Now I'm sure my idea has many a flaw, but here it is:

We all obviously would love some kind of way to use contactless/smartcards, but they have many problems to overcome on a national scale. So it is based around people actually paying for the actual train they use.
Therefore, in a similar way to what I recently saw on Amsterdam's trams, one would touch in actually on the train.

All train journeys would be categorized in terms of a letter system. These would correspond to what type of train it is and thus how expensive they would be. For instance an 8:30 arrival on an intercity service into Euston for example would be a class A service, and that would be the most expensive type of service. Conversely a train late on a Tuesday morning from Carlisle to Barrow would be a class F and much less expensive.
Some trains might change class during a journey, for instance a Paddington-West country peak departure might change from a class A to a lower class at Exeter such that local journeys later at night are less expensive. The class of a train would be very well published.

When one boards a train, one would touch in on the train, and then touch out on the train when leaving (or shortly before arrival at a station). I think one might make it also possible to touch out at stations, but with a small penalty (maybe 50p) to discourage people changing trains forgetting etc.

Within the touching I would simply do it on a per mile basis, such that a class A journey would be 20p per mile whereas a class F journey would be 5p per mile lets say. (With first class 1.5* that for all journeys) There would be variations on capping. (Those prices per mile are to indicate how the system works, not actual numbers)

The system is actually quite simple I think once people get used to it, and if we made it easy to see what class trains are and how much a journey would cost it can be quite successful. The only problem is as ever toughing out. The maximum fare would I guess be to wherever the train is going, although obviously this would be harsh on people going let's say Aberdeen-Stonehouse on the Aberdeen-Penzance train, but I'm sure some people here could come up with a slightly better system.

The way I see it this has all the advantages of going back to the per mile system everyone wants, because we would actually know how many miles you had gone.
We could still have barriers in stations, but they would really be when people got off trains, and so that they essentially let anyone through who's got off a train there in the last ten minutes.

So what do people think? What's good, what terrible things have I overlooked?

 

[greatkingrat]

Just from a practical point of view, imagine how long the dwell times would be at somewhere like Clapham Junction in the peak if everyone boarding / alighting had to touch in or out.

 

[Merseysider]

Birkenhead Central to Liverpool for about 30p? I like the sound of that. Not sure Merseytravel will though - bye bye 6tph service!

Carlisle to Barrow for £4? Bargain! Oh wait, the line is no longer sustainable.

Manchester to London peak services for £40? Bargain! I'm sure it'll even out some of the overcrowding in the evening, but why would any company now want to operate the franchise given the hefty premiums to pay?

What happens to Sleeper fares? Are advances retained? Will rover/ranger tickets now be reduced in price too?

What is the minimum amount you'll need in credit to be able to touch in successfully? £100? That's what an Inverness to London journey would cost. Or is it all back-office and charged later? I'm sure you can see the fraud/revenue loss implications there.

I'm sure the vast swathes of local bus services put out of business will go down well too

 

[higthomas]

Just from a practical point of view, imagine how long the dwell times would be at somewhere like Clapham Junction in the peak if everyone boarding / alighting had to touch in or out.

The idea would be that, especially on the sort of train which comes through Clapham Junction at peak hours there would be many many places to touch in and out within a carriage, such that everyone could get on and off, and then touch in or out on a nearby pole or seat corner once they have boarded the train.

 

[higthomas]

Birkenhead Central to Liverpool for about 30p? I like the sound of that. Not sure Merseytravel will though - bye bye 6tph service!

Carlisle to Barrow for £4? Bargain! Oh wait, the line is no longer sustainable.

Manchester to London peak services for £40? Bargain! I'm sure it'll even out some of the overcrowding in the evening, but why would any company now want to operate the franchise given the hefty premiums to pay?

What happens to Sleeper fares? Are advances retained? Will rover/ranger tickets now be reduced in price too?

What is the minimum amount you'll need in credit to be able to touch in successfully? £100? That's what an Inverness to London journey would cost. Or is it all back-office and charged later? I'm sure you can see the fraud/revenue loss implications there.

I'm sure the vast swathes of local bus services put out of business will go down well too

The actual fares I would charge are not those, I just plucked numbers out of thin air. I would have intended this to be revenue neutral, with fares at roughly the level they currently are (except with no return discount).

I think advances could still be a thing, because you're touching into a particular train, you just prepay for that train.

With regards the sleeper, I would have said that seat reservations should be a basically separate business, so that I can reserve a seat in advance, but normally don't actually pay for the train at the time, that's still done on train. But for the sleeper, that could be an unusual one whereby reserving your "seat" actually costs a fair bit of money, because your seat is actually a berth supplement, with you still needing to touch in on the train as elsewhere.

I would be it all back office, because that is what TFL are moving to and seems the most sensible way, otherwise cards will go out of date/fill up as the system inevitably grows/succumbs to the will of politicians as is happening to Oyster.

 

[U-Bahnfreund]

What would you do to prevent people from not touching in or from waiting for the conductor, then touching in, and touching out when he/she's gone without leaving the train?

 

[Adlington]

And what about occasional train users (say one/two return trips per annum), for whom another rarely used card will be a nuisance (and yet another object likely to be misplaced ) ?

 

[higthomas]

What would you do to prevent people from not touching in or from waiting for the conductor, then touching in, and touching out when he/she's gone without leaving the train?

I would set up the card readers such that one can only touch in or out on them for 30 seconds either side of doors being open (clearly indicated as such) so that unless the guard is doing his rounds just before the next stop someone can't do that. Also, to get through the barrier at the station they got on at (if there is one) they will have to have used their card, and the guard would be able to see that and question them on it.

And what about occasional train users (say one/two return trips per annum), for whom another rarely used card will be a nuisance (and yet another object likely to be misplaced ) ?

Unfortunately, I would as TFL do, say, tough. They would need to be easily available at every station, for a very small fee. Also, most people will soon have contactless bank cards; my intention is that people would use them on the whole.

 

[Adlington]

Unfortunately, I would as TFL do, say, tough.

TfL does not say "tough", one can still buy paper tickets for occasional journeys.

 

[AlterEgo]

TfL does not say "tough", one can still buy paper tickets for occasional journeys.

Yes, outrageously priced in most instances.

 

[higthomas]

TfL does not say "tough", one can still buy paper tickets for occasional journeys.

They do for buses though. And their paper tickets are very expensive.
Now, I could still have paper tickets in my system (or single use smartcards) but think that once you're moving to a smartcard system, such things are an unnecessary extra complication above simply buying a smartcard (or using a contactless bank card)

I guess they would have to be available, but I would do as they do in the Netherlands and charge extra for such things, and they would also have to be for very tightly restricted (e.g. London-Edinburgh via Peterbrough, York, Berwick only on class B and below trains as an example)

 

[hairyhandedfool]

With some modifications it might not be impossible to work.

As an example, instead of just having readers on the trains for fares and on stations with penalties, use the station ones to prep the card on entry and end the journey on exit, that way there will be a 'record' of where the journey starts and ends. Perhaps there's a penalty system if you don't 'prep' the card or end the journey. Maybe after you have 'prep'ed the card, it doesn't matter where in the journey the card is 'touched in' on the train, the system can work it out. I'm sure there are many ways to make it work if the money and will is there to do it, and as far as I can see those are the main two problems.

As far as new fares system ideas go I think this has potential to be one of the better ones, but still needs some tweaking here and there.

 

[najaB]

I would set up the card readers such that one can only touch in or out on them for 30 seconds either side of doors being open (clearly indicated as such) so that unless the guard is doing his rounds just before the next stop someone can't do that.

It can take longer than that to find your seat on many trains. And what if they're so full that you can't get to a reader? Lots of readers means lots of things to break.

 

[thedbdiboy]

The way I see it this has all the advantages of going back to the per mile system everyone wants, because we would actually know how many miles you had gone.

Per mile may be what you want, but you'd quickly close half the system down as (for example) air travel decimated the London-Scotland rail market whilst London-Brighton revenues collapsed. Wales would cost more than East Anglia because lines have to wiggle round mountains rather than go along flat fields. Market based pricing has it's challenges but per-mile is I'm afraid a stone age way to charge.

 

[yorkie]

What about a business user whose company wants to buy a single from York to Sheffield, valid any train outward and any train return, pre-purchased from the company's business account and billed at the end of the month. They don't care if the train goes via Leeds or Doncaster. They don't have a company contactless card. What would they pay?

Per mile may be what you want, but you'd quickly close half the system down as (for example) air travel decimated the London-Scotland rail market whilst London-Brighton revenues collapsed. Wales would cost more than East Anglia because lines have to wiggle round mountains rather than go along flat fields. Market based pricing has it's challenges but per-mile is I'm afraid a stone age way to charge.

I completely agree!

 

[telstarbox]

Distance based pricing ignores the fact that rail is part of the overall transport market (covering all modes from walking to air).

 

[Bertie the bus]

I can’t see a single thing in that proposal that would benefit passengers.

A student at Huddersfield University wants to go home to Catford for the weekend on a Friday evening. To understand the fare they have to work out the mileage (no idea how you expect them to do this) from Huddersfield – Leeds, check the category of service it is and then multiply the p/mile by the number of miles. Repeat for Leeds – Kings Cross and St Pancras Thameslink – Catford and add them all together. How they would even know the p/mile for a TOC miles away from home is a bit of a mystery.

Simple? You must be joking.

 

[najaB]

A student at Huddersfield University wants to go home to Catford for the weekend...

Working out the price is the least of the problems with the proposal.

 

[hairyhandedfool]

I can’t see a single thing in that proposal that would benefit passengers....

Any change to the fares structure will have the same outcome, profits to the TOCs and passengers out of pocket, if you leave things as they are people get ripped off really easily (apparently), so it's a no-win situation for the passenger I'm afraid.

....A student at Huddersfield University wants to go home to Catford for the weekend on a Friday evening. To understand the fare they have to work out the mileage (no idea how you expect them to do this) from Huddersfield – Leeds, check the category of service it is and then multiply the p/mile by the number of miles. Repeat for Leeds – Kings Cross and St Pancras Thameslink – Catford and add them all together. How they would even know the p/mile for a TOC miles away from home is a bit of a mystery.

Simple? You must be joking.

What does a student do now to work out the fare?

 

[boxy321]

Just from a practical point of view, imagine how long the dwell times would be at somewhere like Clapham Junction in the peak if everyone boarding / alighting had to touch in or out.

Or New St, or Moor St or even Solihull at 8AM. In fact, any half busy station in the country.

Use of the 'Swift' card on buses in the West Midlands is evidence of how this slows everything down, with a latency of several seconds per 'touch'.

Imagine the anger of everybody behind them when someone uses an iffy ticket to get off a train and it refuses them. Again, evidence of this already there at ticket barriers where 400 people are trying to get through at once the poor sod has to move over to see the gate master.

 

[higthomas]

It can take longer than that to find your seat on many trains. And what if they're so full that you can't get to a reader? Lots of readers means lots of things to break.

But you wouldn't necessarily find your seat first. And yes, lots of readers does mean lots of things to break, but it also means lots of redundancy if one does break.

Per mile may be what you want, but you'd quickly close half the system down as (for example) air travel decimated the London-Scotland rail market whilst London-Brighton revenues collapsed. Wales would cost more than East Anglia because lines have to wiggle round mountains rather than go along flat fields. Market based pricing has it's challenges but per-mile is I'm afraid a stone age way to charge.

That is what the idea of the different classes of train was trying to address. And yes, if a train has to wiggle round lots of mountains, then it costs the railway more, so it will cost the farepayer more. Unfortunately if you live in mountainous areas transport costs are more than if you live in flat ones.

And perhaps, dare I say it, rail is therefore not the best way of getting people from London to Edinburgh? If planes weren't hideously polluting I sadly think that they are probably a better method of getting there. I don't support a system which essentially charges people from Yorkshire prices which are much higher (for how far their going and thus very roughly how much it costs the railway to transport them) so that we can subside people going to Scotland.

What about a business user whose company wants to buy a single from York to Sheffield, valid any train outward and any train return, pre-purchased from the company's business account and billed at the end of the month. They don't care if the train goes via Leeds or Doncaster. They don't have a company contactless card. What would they pay?

They buy a company smartcard and give it to their businessman. I'm sure we could come up with ways of having company smartcard accounts, and even ways of said businessman picking up a smartcard at the station linked to the company account.

Distance based pricing ignores the fact that rail is part of the overall transport market (covering all modes from walking to air).

How so?

A student at Huddersfield University wants to go home to Catford for the weekend on a Friday evening. To understand the fare they have to work out the mileage (no idea how you expect them to do this) from Huddersfield – Leeds, check the category of service it is and then multiply the p/mile by the number of miles. Repeat for Leeds – Kings Cross and St Pancras Thameslink – Catford and add them all together. How they would even know the p/mile for a TOC miles away from home is a bit of a mystery.

Simple? You must be joking.

Well to move to this system would obviously require a wholesale shift in how we convey pricing information to the end user. I'm not expecting anyone to go rooting around the national rail timetable table 42 to find mileage, and then get their calculators out.

Or New St, or Moor St or even Solihull at 8AM. In fact, any half busy station in the country.

Use of the 'Swift' card on buses in the West Midlands is evidence of how this slows everything down, with a latency of several seconds per 'touch'.

Imagine the anger of everybody behind them when someone uses an iffy ticket to get off a train and it refuses them. Again, evidence of this already there at ticket barriers where 400 people are trying to get through at once the poor sod has to move over to see the gate master.

Now, yes this is a big issue. I'm pretty sure we can develop technology to speed up how long that touch takes. The itso card I have for a bus company yes, does take ages to read, but my contactless debit card takes a lot less. I'm convinced it's a problem with the itso system. This would have to be a back end system, where very little information is exchanged with the card, speeding it up.

Yes, that is always a problem with such things, but as you say it already happens at busy gatelines. I think that is an unfortunate issue with basically checking tickets at speed, which I don't see going away unless we go to only checking paper tickets on trains.

I think it would be minimized by the fact that at most busy stations which already have gatelines, you'd have had to use your card there beforehand, which hopefully would have flagged up any issues.


There is clearly a lot of disagreement about my idea (as one would expect!) I think any major change to British ticketing will have winners and losers, and complications along they way. This certainly isn't perfect, but thank you for your suggestions.

I do though think that we should do something to drastically change our ticketing systems, because they are currently stupidly complicated. Whilst they work well for some (usually the likes of us who know what we're doing), for others they are a nightmare.

I think that smartcards or phones or the like are the future, but how to change things such that they can be used well is not a question I've had an answer to. But we do need to accept some will lose out in such an overhaul. We need to stop such things just being a way to increase fares for everyone, but I fear that they way our railway is organised currently precludes anyone taking responsibility for changing anything (see south east flexible ticketing for a lesson in uselessness and placing the responsibility in completely the wrong place)

 

[cuccir]

Like Hairyhandedfool, I see the merits to what you're trying to do here. Fundamentally, you've reinvented much of our current system for the smartcard era, which is not a bad thing necessarily. The 'A-B-C-D' trains etc seems very close to a variant on Anytime, Off-Peak, Super Off-Peak, but slightly 'Smarter'.

Imagining that the technology could be implemented (which as noted would have its challenges), I think three objections remain.

First, the question of calculating fares. As you acknowledge, this would have to change but I'm not sure how this system could convey prices clearly and transparently to individuals. It strikes me that the only way it would work would be to input a journey and have a price given back to you: but how this has been calculated and if this is a fair calculation would be unclear, without people raking through masses of data.

Second, how to deal with busy services. We have a system that allows people to cram into busy commuter services. Employers, employees, schools, universities and so forth need this to continue to work - if what you're doing slows this down or gets in the way, then it wouldn't be acceptable.

Third, the flaws of national mileage based pricing in accounting for the differential geography of the UK:

. And yes, if a train has to wiggle round lots of mountains, then it costs the railway more, so it will cost the farepayer more. Unfortunately if you live in mountainous areas transport costs are more than if you live in flat ones. And perhaps, dare I say it, rail is therefore not the best way of getting people from London to Edinburgh? If planes weren't hideously polluting I sadly think that they are probably a better method of getting there. I don't support a system which essentially charges people from Yorkshire prices which are much higher (for how far their going and thus very roughly how much it costs the railway to transport them) so that we can subside people going to Scotland.

OK - but what you're making here is essentially a political argument: each rail service has to be self-sufficient commercially and operated as such, rather than as a public good. I and many others would disagree: by having a transport network with some level of state support or governance, we can manage demand to try and stop congestion in any one method, to reduce pollution/climate impacts, and to maintain sustainable communities. As you say, flying (and driving) are more impactful on the environment than rail, so it isn't much of a response to say that they would be better if they weren't.

To take the example raised here: if you nonchalantly increase the cost of public transport in rural areas, you impact on who can live there. As you infer, some people who live in rural areas would be unable to afford to continue to do so.That shapes the services that can be provided there, the road network there, the farming, energy and mining industries that may operate there. All of these have impacts for people outside of the immediate community, such that if we want a well-maintained countryside which provides energy, water, food, animal habitats and recreation to the entire country, we may need to do things like manage our transport infrastructure to help communities there be sustainable.

 

[higthomas]

First, the question of calculating fares. As you acknowledge, this would have to change but I'm not sure how this system could convey prices clearly and transparently to individuals. It strikes me that the only way it would work would be to input a journey and have a price given back to you: but how this has been calculated and if this is a fair calculation would be unclear, without people raking through masses of data.

So, I agree that this is somewhat of a problem. I'd have thought, that it would primarily show for instance for a Guildford-Bristol journey: You're taking class D trains from Guildford-Reading at X pence per mile for Y miles totaling XY pence, and then going from reading to Bristol on a class B train at Z pence per mile for P miles totaling ZP pence giving an overall total of XY + PZ. Now this would again have to be done much nicer than what I've done there, but I think it could be done.

Second, how to deal with busy services. We have a system that allows people to cram into busy commuter services. Employers, employees, schools, universities and so forth need this to continue to work - if what you're doing slows this down or gets in the way, then it wouldn't be acceptable.

I agree, I think mine could work, but I'm not sure. If not, then yes it can't work.

Third, the flaws of national mileage based pricing in accounting for the differential geography of the UK:


OK - but what you're making here is essentially a political argument: each rail service has to be self-sufficient commercially and operated as such, rather than as a public good. I and many others would disagree: by having a transport network with some level of state support or governance, we can manage demand to try and stop congestion in any one method, to reduce pollution/climate impacts, and to maintain sustainable communities. As you say, flying (and driving) are more impactful on the environment than rail, so it isn't much of a response to say that they would be better if they weren't.

To take the example raised here: if you nonchalantly increase the cost of public transport in rural areas, you impact on who can live there. As you infer, some people who live in rural areas would be unable to afford to continue to do so.That shapes the services that can be provided there, the road network there, the farming, energy and mining industries that may operate there. All of these have impacts for people outside of the immediate community, such that if we want a well-maintained countryside which provides energy, water, food, animal habitats and recreation to the entire country, we may need to do things like manage our transport infrastructure to help communities there be sustainable.

I agree with your assessment. What I would intend to happen is that such trains which run in rural areas would be class Fs or Es or something. I would hope these would have a suitably cheap rate that it wouldn't totally outprice people. I think that increasing train usage across the board is a good thing. I think we should subsidise train usage, especially the least economic services, e.g. those in rural areas. My point is that I think two people travelling on the same train for the same distance should pay the same for it. Currently for instance if I buy a ticket from London to Edinburgh it doesn't cost double what it costs to York even though you'll be going roughly double the distance on the same train. Now, I'd probably have such trains switch from one class to another at York, but I think that a London to York ticket plus a York to Edinburgh ticket should always cost the same as a London to Edinburgh ticket. That is the kind of thing I'm trying to do.

Basically I don't want to increase tickets across the board, I'm trying to make it what I see as fairer, although I'm not sure how well it works. The idea of a, b, c, d, etc. Is to combine anytime off peak etc with cheaper prices further from London and so on.