Should there be a standard fare based on mileage

[takno]

No, I am supporting RT4038's speculation that it would be better to have no advance fares at all, on any trains, just attractively priced flexible singles with mileage-based pricing, plus a transparent supplement for travel including a peak segment (if peaks come back after the plague).

The dynamic pricing that the absurdly subsidised airlines use to slightly overfill every flight is totally opaque to the traveller. (But all that is a subject for another thread, or not.)
Cross country's similar practice resulted, before the plague, in all their annoyingly short trains being over-filled by (a) miserable passengers who got a cheap(ish) advance, but suffered agonies wondering whether they would miss their booked train and find themselves having to buy a walk-up single for £192, and now can't find anywhere to put their suitcases; (b) miserable passengers who bought an expensive flexible ticket; (c) miserable passengers who have 4 separate tickets for 4 segments of their journey, but are supposed to sit in a different carriage for each leg; (d) happy passengers using a first class ticket costing £342 which someone else is paying for. This was Not Good.

This makes no sense at all. Very few passengers were "suffering agonies" over missing their train - they were just turning up 10 minutes earlier to avoid the risk. Given that most of the now-CrossCountry journeys I was making under BR involved getting the last train of the day from Leeds to Birmingham (which was, preposterously, at 17.15), I had plenty of concerns about getting on the train, all of which were compounded by worrying about whether there would be a 20 minute queue at the ticket office. If I could have bought tickets online at the time I would have been more than happy buying advances.

The notion of building train fares based on mileages that aren't mileages for "transparency" is already quite bizarre. The idea that anybody's life would be improved by removing advances is even worse.

 

[yorkie]

Er, no. To set a fare, you look up the engineers' miles between the origin and the destination by the shortest route.

York to Sheffield is 46 miles; what next?

and you set a peak supplement for whatever the relevant peak time(s) are.

How do I calculate this for the York to Sheffield example; can you elaborate?

You save the thousands of person-hours devoted to tweaking, understanding, (and failing to understand) the routeing guide...

...the new rules would be... what exactly?

and setting, typically, dozens of advance fares for every flow.

Does anyone complain at Ryanair for having lots of different fares?

(Incidentally, you make a modest charge for seat reservations, and facilitate choosing your seat on-line.)

Would the addition of surcharges make things simpler?

Probably, yes. Is there a social, or historical railway, reason for reckoning Poppleton to York as zero mileage?

It's not zero mileage but it's part of clustering. You want every single origin/destination pairing to have its own fare, not using clustering, which would bloat the size of the fares database massively.

I notice that (some?) Kings Cross - Poppleton fares seem to be (slightly) more than Kings Cross - York.

That might happen if London to York is LNER only and the Poppleton addition could be LNER & Connections.

I don't know whether York to Leeds via Harrogate is reasonable (although I remember that it is stunningly beautiful in parts).

It is permitted.

It used to be cheaper to go via Harrogate until about 2 years ago when "via Harrogate" was renamed "Northern Only", to allow the use of all 3 Northern trains in most hours at the cheaper fare.

Doesn't it always take much longer than via Micklefield?

It does.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 May 2021 ==

Their dozens of differently priced advances for every flow are utterly opaque to me.

Ironically Ryanair, who has a multitude of advances for every flow, produce posters stating this concept is "simple" and many others agree.

That's the problem with "simple"; some people think having a varying Advance price which is fixed is "simple" because the concept (only valid on the booked train) is simple. Others think that this is not simple and instead having Off Peak and Anytime only is "simple". Some people argue any concept of "off peak" is not simple.

Some people think that fares should include "super off peak", "off peak" and "any time" to avoid a cliff-edge situation and make fares fairer but some argue that is "too complex".

I am yet to fully understand the system you are proposing but maybe if you can answer some of the questions above, I can understand it a bit better. You gave a price of £10 for a York to Sheffield single but I am none the wiser as to how to calculate the intermediate points, and differentiate peak vs off peak etc.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 May 2021 ==

No, I am supporting RT4038's speculation that it would be better to have no advance fares at all, on any trains, just attractively priced flexible singles with mileage-based pricing, plus a transparent supplement for travel including a peak segment

Grand central tried the supplement model instead of Advances. It did not last long at all! Does anyone else even remember that?

 

[JonathanH]

No, I am supporting RT4038's speculation that it would be better to have no advance fares at all, on any trains, just attractively priced flexible singles with mileage-based pricing, plus a transparent supplement for travel including a peak segment (if peaks come back after the plague).

Are you indicating that you have never benefitted from an advance fare being available on a train you wished to travel on?

The idea that all off-peak trains can be priced at one fare and the demand can be sensibly spread over all those trains within the confines of platform length and available rolling stock is a fantasy.

Could an advance fare be described as a realistic discount to the flexibly priced fare for giving up flexibility where the opposite of your peak supplement is charged (deducted) according to demand?

Like it or not, demand and capacity do have to both be managed.

 

[Nicholas43]

York to Sheffield is 46 miles; what next?

The SDR is £23.60, the CDR is £19.90, and the CDS is £19.80. If I ask northern's website for single ticket prices, it offers me a surprising £5.50 advance on the 0915, or £13.20 on cross country's 0844, or £5.50 on the 1715, or £19.80 on lots of other services. It doesn't offer me any fares via Harrogate. Trainsplit will sell me (unsplit) advances via Harrogate all day for £5.50, or selected split advances via Doncaster. I don't find that a transparent customer-friendly paradise.
If I was pilot-testing a New Simple Single for the North East, I would ask the boffins at ORCATS to crank up their PDP11 (or whatever) and tell me: if I abolish advances and returns, what one price for the New Simple Single York to Sheffield or Sheffield to York will, probably, give or take, be revenue neutral? I'm guessing that they would reply: £10. That gives me a first guess of 22p/mile. I'd ask the same question for several other flows. For the sake of, ahem, argument, I'll hope for the best, that somewhere around 22p/mile will do, all over, for my pilot in the North East. On the evidence of Northern's current fares, a peak supplement on the York Sheffield flow would be a needless complication. I don't know about the need for a peak supplement on other flows, and would ask the ORCATS boffins for more data. The NSS York <> Sheffield would be valid by any reasonable route, including Harrogate.

[Poppleton - York] is not zero mileage but it's part of clustering. You want every single origin/destination pairing to have its own fare, not using clustering, which would bloat the size of the fares database massively.

That [a slight difference in the fares] might happen if London to York is LNER only and the Poppleton addition could be LNER & Connections.

Actually, a (silly?) £1 difference happens with the SVR Poppleton (or York) to London Terminals. And don't the current 42 different advance fares York to Sheffield bloat the database, a bit?

Are you indicating that you have never benefitted from an advance fare being available on a train you wished to travel on?

No. I have benefited from advance fares, always tainted by the anxiety that if I miss my booked train, I suffer a disproportionate loss.

The idea that all off-peak trains can be priced at one fare and the demand can be sensibly spread over all those trains within the confines of platform length and available rolling stock is a fantasy.

It's what happens, still, all along the North Cotswold Line. I guess that, Chipping Norton way, they're all too busy texting ministers to waste time understanding advance fares.
Edit: As tspaul26 points out below, the rest of this post is muddled. Sorry!
And, currently, the advance offering Oxford-Paddington is, ahem, mad. I've just tested it for 2 June. GWR is offering £16.60 advances on pretty well every departure. It doesn't make the slightest difference to them whether I travel at 11 or 11:30. They would get more revenue, and less stressed passengers, if they offered a New Simple Single at £16. And I don't believe that their yield management is so subtle that they really need 70-odd advance fares for this one flow.

 

[Cantab26]

And, currently, the advance offering Oxford-Paddington is, ahem, mad. I've just tested it for 2 June. GWR is offering £16.60 advances on pretty well every departure. It doesn't make the slightest difference to them whether I travel at 11 or 11:30. They would get more revenue, and less stressed passengers, if they offered a New Simple Single at £16.

Forgive me for being stupid, but how does a reduction from £16.60 to £16 increase revenue?

Especially since an Off Peak Day Single costs £28.80.

 

[david1212]

No, I am supporting RT4038's speculation that it would be better to have no advance fares at all, on any trains, just attractively priced flexible singles with mileage-based pricing, plus a transparent supplement for travel including a peak segment (if peaks come back after the plague).
...

Transparent pricing is what I would like to see. The open any train price per mile could have three rates
the base rate
a higher rate for high speed e.g. domestic HS1 and 125mph sections of GWML and WCML
a lower rate slow routes for e.g. Cumbrian Coast.

There can still be an operator specific lower rate per mile for slower services in more basic trains e.g. London Northwestern Railway on the WCML. The open access operators can still run setting own fares.

Are you indicating that you have never benefitted from an advance fare being available on a train you wished to travel on?

No. I simply want to buy my ticket(s) for the day from a ticket office just before the first train. I want neither the commitment to a specific train nor the hassle of buying online in advance.

Like it or not, demand and capacity do have to both be managed.

Indeed. There can still be quotas of discounted train specific advances without actual seat reservations to tempt passengers onto trains that run well below capacity.

 

[XAM2175]

I simply want to buy my ticket(s) for the day from a ticket office just before the first train. I want neither the commitment to a specific train nor the hassle of buying online in advance.

Is that what other people want?

 

[Nicholas43]

Forgive me for being stupid, but how does a reduction from £16.60 to £16 increase revenue?

Especially since an Off Peak Day Single costs £28.80.

As I've edited my post to admit, I was muddled: sorry! I should have said something like: The current fares regime is mean, on many flows, to people who actually need a single. This week GWR is (inadvertently?) offering a workaround for Oxford>Paddington, for people who can book ahead: identically priced advances on many trains. Given the overhead of administering an advance and reserving a seat, I speculate that, if fares were simplified as this thread is discussing, GWR would make a similar margin on a flexible single priced around £16.

 

[Journeyman]

Is that what other people want?

Not necessarily. Advance tickets are very popular.

 

[millemille]

Interesting discussion on a matter I'd never really given much thought.

Would a standardised cost per mile work if there were also a series of published adjustments?

For example, to account for regional differences in the cost of living and salaries how about an adjustment that considers the national average for salary and/or cost of living and then applies a regional adjustment reflecting the delta between the regional average salary and the national? So if you live in an area where the average salary is say 10% below national average the pence per mile is adjusted down by 10% (in crude terms) and vice versa for a regions where average salaries are higher?

Adjustments could be made for TpH, again comparing a national average against local and adjusting accordingly. More trains per hour than the national average, your pence per mile increases and vice versa?

Average speed could be another. The slower the service, compared to the national average, the less you pay per mile, and the faster the more you pay?

How far in advance you book/purchase could be another, although I suspect there would be a non-linear relationship between when the ticket was bought and the adjustment that was made?

 

[JRT]

Italy? On the local trains I think it's mileage-based as slightly-different routes have different fares. You have to specify a train when buying a ticket at the ATM.
However the ‘Inter-City’ and limited-stop trains are more expensive.

 

[takno]

Italy? On the local trains I think it's mileage-based as slightly-different routes have different fares. You have to specify a train when buying a ticket at the ATM.
However the ‘Inter-City’ and limited-stop trains are more expensive.

Italy do indeed have it, complete with the requisite bizarreness of having to pay more for a slower intercity train because it happens to go a longer route. It also has many of the complications and inflexibility of an advance purchase ticket but at walk-up prices.

Poland used to charge per mile as well until they bought a better computer and could do something a bit more advanced and sensible.

 

[Nicholas43]

Italy? ...

Ah, yes, that must be why I'm on the (losing, minority?) side of the discussion! For a while we lived half way along a beautiful branch line in Italy. I just loved being able to keep a little stock of card tickets, bought at the village tobacconist, valid for any journey up to 10 / 20/ 50 km (can't remember what the precise range was). And the enticing regional timetable book, of course, gave the distances of every station on every line. It helped my rose-tinted view that the cost per km was tiny, compared to England.

 

[yorkie]

The SDR is £23.60, the CDR is £19.90, and the CDS is £19.80. If I ask northern's website for single ticket prices, it offers me a surprising £5.50 advance on the 0915, or £13.20 on cross country's 0844, or £5.50 on the 1715, or £19.80 on lots of other services. It doesn't offer me any fares via Harrogate.

You won't be offered vares via Harrogate for York to Leeds, let alone York to Sheffield, on almost any website unless you specify via Harrogate as it's a lot slower.

Trainsplit will sell me (unsplit) advances via Harrogate all day for £5.50, or selected split advances via Doncaster.

If York to Sheffield is done entirely on Northern (regardless of route taken) cheap Advance fares of £5.50 can indeed be available.

I don't find that a transparent customer-friendly paradise.

But you are not explaining exactly how your transparent customer friendly paradise would look like and how I can calculate all the fares under your proposed pricing model.

If I was pilot-testing a New Simple Single for the North East, I would ask the boffins at ORCATS to crank up their PDP11 (or whatever) and tell me: if I abolish advances and returns, what one price for the New Simple Single York to Sheffield or Sheffield to York will, probably, give or take, be revenue neutral?

That's difficult to say because you will be putting people off travelling at quieter times (when we want to encourage more travel) while encouraging travel at busy times (when we don't) and human behaviour is difficult to predict.

I'm guessing that they would reply: £10. That gives me a first guess of 22p/mile. I'd ask the same question for several other flows. For the sake of, ahem, argument, I'll hope for the best, that somewhere around 22p/mile will do, all over, for my pilot in the North East. On the evidence of Northern's current fares, a peak supplement on the York Sheffield flow would be a needless complication. I don't know about the need for a peak supplement on other flows, and would ask the ORCATS boffins for more data. The NSS York <> Sheffield would be valid by any reasonable route, including Harrogate.

Ok so you are proposing a price of 22p/mile, so York to Moorthorpe would be £6.20 and valid via Harrogate/Wakefield, or via Garforth/Wakefield or via Sherburn, right?

Actually, a (silly?) £1 difference happens with the SVR Poppleton (or York) to London Terminals.

Not sure what you are saying here. There is a £1 difference between what?

And don't the current 42 different advance fares York to Sheffield bloat the database, a bit?

Not as much as having fares between every individual station to every individual station. A lot of the Advance fares between York & Sheffield are superfluous and are no longer used; there is also duplication between fares available in advance and on the day (which is just down to XC's methodology); only one Advance fare woudl actually be shown to the customer for each train (which is exactly the same principle as booking on Ryanair which is deemed "simple" by most customers) but none of the issues relating to Advance fares should be conflated with the policy for walk-up fares in my opinion. They are entirely separate concepts.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Nicholas43 said:
Actually, a (silly?) £1 difference happens with the SVR Poppleton (or York) to London Terminals.

Not sure what you are saying here. There is a £1 difference between what?

Believe @Nicholas43 is pointing out that a Poppleton -> London Terminals SVR at £197-20 is priced at £1-00 more than a York -> London Terminals SVR at £196-20.

Can't see a problem with that 'de minimis' price differential given the slightly further travel distance if travelling from Poppleton to London via York, as most passengers undoubtedly will.

 

[Nicholas43]

Ok so you are proposing a price of 22p/mile, so York to Moorthorpe would be £6.20 and valid via Harrogate/Wakefield, or via Garforth/Wakefield or via Sherburn, right?

Yes. I surmise that you think this could undermine consistent pricing for York > Leeds. That caused me look at current pricing York > Leeds. I think it's an evil outrage.
If you can commit to a time, you can get a cheap ticket, pretty well any time of day. I don't believe the prices are fine-tuned to move demand to lightly loaded trains. Advances exist because one operator gets all the profit margin from them.
If you want a flexible ticket, there are an utterly bewildering variety, including something called an Anytime Short Distance.
For this flow, York>Leeds, the railway has totally lost sight of its objective: offer a better option than the car. If I live in York and decide to visit my granny in Leeds, I want to turn up at York and be offered a transparent choice, for one fair price, between the quick ride via Micklefield, or a pretty ride via Harrogate if I decide I've got time for it. When I'm at granny's, I don't want to be fretting: Will I miss my booked train if I have another slice of parkin?

Believe @Nicholas43 is pointing out that a Poppleton -> London Terminals SVR at £197-20 is priced at £1-00 more than a York -> London Terminals SVR at £196-20.

Yes; thank you.

 

[DJ_K666]

To take your "litre of fuel" comparison, even if petrol costs the same everywhere (it doesn't), the fuel cost of driving a hundred miles can vary significantly between efficient motorways and the stop/start nature of other roads. How many miles the fifty quid's worth of fuel you stick into your vehicle will deliver depends on a lot of different factors.

I can see the appeal of a simple mile-based fare model, but there are a lot of problems that I've never seen a solution to:

1. PTE subsidies. At the moment, PTEs (and other public sector bodies) subsidise fares within their local area for the benefit of the people making local journeys there. So a journey wholly within a PTE (e.g. Manchester Airport to Bolton) can be a lot cheaper per mile than an equivalent distance journey outside a PTE area. The only way round that would be to either remove the PTE subsidies or throw huge sums of money at fares nationwide to bring them down to PTE levels, both of which appear non-starters

2. The messy nature of the network. If you introduced a "mileage based" fare on tram systems like Sheffield/ Manchester/ Nottingham then you could have a simple calculation of distances involved. But how do you do that on railways when there can be many ways of getting between two places? There are four routes from Sheffield to Leeds (via Westgate, via Rotherham and Westgate, via Kirkgate, via Kirkgate and Castleford), so would there be a different price for each one? That'd confuse passengers who find that their (currently interchangeable) ticket was no longer valid via the longer route. Plus, there are a lot of places where the rail distance is very different from the "crow flies" distance but are subsidised to remain competitive (e.g. the "York to Whitby" example mentioned above). If passengers from the south had to pay the true mileage-based fare to get to Whitby then you're going to lose a lot of custom.

3. The idea of paying a surplus to travel on a 125mph train seems very wrong. At the moment, the staffing costs of a 125mph train with hundreds of people on board are pretty similar to the staffing costs of a lightly loaded two coach Sprinter. If anything, the passengers on the Sprinter should be paying more per mile, since their fares have to go further to cover the train costs

4. Different lines have different types of market. Imposing a simple "solution" sounds good on paper but are you wanting one simple rule on peak fares? Because some commuter routes struggled to cope (pre-Covid) despite the eye watering fares whilst some rural routes are more leisure based. Some services warrant a First Class section (with 2+2 seats), some services warrant First Class with 2+1 seats, complimentary at seat food/drinks etc, many services don't warrant any kind of First Class. Some routes have different price elasticities, some don't warrant any kind of advance fares, some have large numbers of empty seats to fill at some times of the day/week so an incentive to offer bargain tickets. Some lines have more competition from other modes of transport (whether parallel motorways or regular coach services), so rail fares are more competitive.

5. Any attempt to "simplify" things is going to have huge repercussions. Whilst it might make more sense to some, you know that there will be some people who now face paying double for their tickets and that's going to bring a lot of hostile media. I remember over twenty years ago when the relatively new Midland Mainline franchise tried to tidy up some anomalies inherited from British Rail, and that meant increasing the First Class fare from Sheffield to (I think) Market Harborough by 26%. Now, I don't know anyone who'd used that ticket, I doubt there was much First Class demand between the two, but our local paper whipped up a lot of negativity about how "Commuters Face 26% Rise In Rail Fares" (even though ninety nine point nine nine whatever percent of Sheffield passengers would never have bought such a ticket). People cut their cloth based on what they have. You might consider commuting to another city worthwhile if the two thousand pounds a year season ticket is seen against a five thousand year increase in wages. But then the fare rises to the point where it's more than the net increase in income and you're going to be angry. No Government is going to want to face those kind of upset people, which is why things get fudged and ignored and pushed into the long grass. It'll never change.

A lot of threads on here recently seem fairly well meaning in terms of "If I were starting from scratch, this is how I'd do things" (like the regular ideas that we copy the Germans and segregate local passengers from longer distance passengers) but it'd be far too messy/ complicated to try to bring about these changes on the living breathing railway.

On the Brighton line, tickets are wallet-immolatingly expensive at times. That is one line where first class is a waste of time as you're barely on the train 45 minutes and you don't get any free tea or coffee either. Even then that would be a seriously expensive tea. Made with water that's kept hot. Mmmmmm (puke)

There used to be a weekend 'Cinderella' ticket where you could go to London and return the following morning provided you got back by midday, This was fine with me as I would have been clubbing to 7am (couldn't do that now) and wanted to get home to bed asap. The ticket cost £8
I wouldn't tolerate that now, if they want people to leave their cars at home like they say they do I am not seeing anything on the ground, just ticket prices needing a mortgage to go to the next stop and that is just wrong.

I actually priced up a journey to Oxford from Rugby To go next weekend it was £17 return if I went from Coventry and, get this, if I went from Rugby (One stop further)

£45

Forty five pounds.

F
o
r
t
y

f
i
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e

So that would be triple the cost*, for a journey where it would be cheaper to buy the ticket from Cov and then just buy a standard day return for £6 from Rugby to there. Kind of says it all really. This is why I am still opposed to privatisation, as it was meant to avoid rubbish like that and yet here we are.

*I round everything to the nearest fiver to aid mental arithmetic

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Jun 2021 ==

Is that what other people want?

Like I said, we so need an RMWeb style 'Agree' or 'Like' button on this forum

@yorkie???

 

[yorkie]

Yes. I surmise that you think this could undermine consistent pricing for York > Leeds. That caused me look at current pricing York > Leeds. I think it's an evil outrage.
If you can commit to a time, you can get a cheap ticket, pretty well any time of day. I don't believe the prices are fine-tuned to move demand to lightly loaded trains. Advances exist because one operator gets all the profit margin from them.
If you want a flexible ticket, there are an utterly bewildering variety, including something called an Anytime Short Distance.
For this flow, York>Leeds, the railway has totally lost sight of its objective: offer a better option than the car. If I live in York and decide to visit my granny in Leeds, I want to turn up at York and be offered a transparent choice, for one fair price, between the quick ride via Micklefield, or a pretty ride via Harrogate if I decide I've got time for it. When I'm at granny's, I don't want to be fretting: Will I miss my booked train if I have another slice of parkin?

You have stated that York to Moorthorpe would be £6.20, but would be valid by all reasonable routes, but York to Outwood would cost more than that (£6.80).

So, your proposed pricing model would still result in anomalies.

Meanwhile, York to Whitby jumps to £18.95 each way, which is rather unaffordable in my opinion. A return on the bus is £17.50 and the bus is quicker than the train, with high quality facilities. A £20 premium to take the train (based on a return journey) is not acceptable.

I don't think that the 22p/mile proposal makes sense.

 

[HSTEd]

I had a thought about this.

How about you have a fare calculated by mileage (with multipliers for the mileage of certain high or low demand routes).

You calculate two routes between stations, the shortest and second shortest, using the established principles of the routing guide.

You offer two fares for each - one fare by the shortest route, valid only on the shortest route - and one which is calculated on the basis of the second shortest route, and is valid by all reasonable routes.

 

[yorkie]

I had a thought about this.

How about you have a fare calculated by mileage (with multipliers for the mileage of certain high or low demand routes).

You calculate two routes between stations, the shortest and second shortest, using the established principles of the routing guide.

You offer two fares for each - one fare by the shortest route, valid only on the shortest route - and one which is calculated on the basis of the second shortest route, and is valid by all reasonable routes.

What's the shortest route for York to Sheffield and what's the second shortest?

What would the price per mile for these be?

 

[Dai Corner]

A couple of questions for those advocating fares based on service quality and social factors.

Should the non-stop 35 minute-ish journey from Taunton-Bristol be the same fare as that taking about twice as long with nine stops? Should it matter whether the train is a Voyager, a Turbo, a 2+8 HST or a 2+4 HST?

Should somebody staying in their second home or a luxury hotel in deprived Cornwall pay the same fare between Truro and Falmouth as the waiter on minimum wage who serves their dinner and is out of work for six months of the year?

 

[Nicholas43]

You have stated that York to Moorthorpe would be £6.20, but would be valid by all reasonable routes, but York to Outwood would cost more than that (£6.80).

This assumes (I suppose) that York>Leeds will be priced at 22p/mile. But, as I pointed out in post #76 above, current pricing York>Leeds is a customer-hating nightmare. If any readers doubt that, then I suggest that they ask the LNER website for a ticket York to Leeds a few days hence. LNER will show them an incomprehensible morass of Gotcha advance fares, and some breathe-more-easily flexible fares, without explaining, until you progress to buying, that some are via Harrogate. As I said upthread, for this flow, the railway has utterly lost sight of its objective: be more attractive than the car.
If (which I accept won't happen) rational mileage-based (NB: not mileage-fixed) pricing arrived, I would expect York>Leeds to be priced at less than 22p a mile, to arrive at a price a bit more than the price an unusually persistent and well-informed passenger now typically pays for an advance. And yes, York to Outwood would be priced at more than York to Leeds, because it's further. And yes, York to Moorthorpe would be priced via Sherburn; but because the railway only offers a sparse service that way, via Leeds would be accepted as a reasonable route. Maybe, in practice, the fares York to Outwood, Wakefield, Fitzwilliam, and Moorthorpe would be the same.

Meanwhile, York to Whitby jumps to £18.95 each way, which is rather unaffordable in my opinion. A return on the bus is £17.50 and the bus is quicker than the train, with high quality facilities.

But I suggested in post #48 above that

When the railway is a Great Way Round (eg York to Whitby), set the train miles compassionately: every station Middlesbrough to Whitby the same train miles to York.

Meanwhile, the current SDS York-Whitby is £40.50; the current CDS (in practice not available until 1240) is £19.40. (Incidentally, I agree that the railway can't compete with the bus for this flow. But it should be compassionate to travellers who, for some reason, cannot use the bus.)
There are several comments upthread that travellers like advances. No they don't. They like cheap fares. They don't like "Miss your booked train (for example because you have a puncture on your cycle ride to the station), and Gotcha Kerching!"