How would you draw the boundaries for a nationwide fare zonal system?

[PTR 444]

One thing that comes up quite a bit on these forums is the idea of replacing the existing fragmented fare structure with a nationwide zonal system. It’s a good idea but should be designed so that zones further out from major cities are split into clusters to avoid making long distance cross-city journeys artificially cheap. I think the most logical starting point would be to expand the existing London fare zone system to cover the entire NSE region, so with the SWML for example:

• London Waterloo - Surbiton remain in zones 1-6 as now
• Esher - Weybridge is in zone 7
• Byfleet & New Haw - Woking is in zone 8
• Brookwood - Fleet is in zone 9
• Winchfield - Basingstoke is in zone 10
• Micheldever is in zone 11
• Winchester - Eastleigh is in zone 12
• Eastleigh - Totton is in zone 13
• Ashurst - Brockenhurst is in zone 14
• Sway - Hinton Admiral is in zone 15
• Christchurch - Hamworthy is in zone 16
• Holton Heath - Moreton is in zone 17
• Dorchester South - Weymouth is in zone 18

The system should be designed so that zone 1-6 fares stay the same as now, but from zone 7 onwards a standard price is charged for each zone passed through. This could be set at £2.80 or something, so for instance a journey from Poole to Southampton Central would cost £11.20, while to get to Woking would cost £25.20.

As I mentioned above, the zonal rings should be broken into clusters the further from London they get. I would say this should also start from zone 7 onwards, and would be designed so that lines orbiting London, such as the North Downs are charged reasonably in proportion to radial journeys. These clusters could be numbered zones 7A, 7B, 7C and so on, but then it would be confusing if the number doesn’t stay consistent throughout the journey (for example if Reading is in zone 10 but Farnborough is in zone 9, then goes back to zone 10 for Gatwick). Maybe it’s best just to do away with numbers and give the zones names instead.

 

[JonathanH]

If you go round London and look at the fares charged you will see that it doesn't fit a zonal pattern - the most extreme example being the fares charged from Shoeburyness and from Reading.

There is no reason to extend a zonal structure outside London and, indeed, even in London, zones 2 to 6 should be split into East, North, West and South quadrants. (You recognise this to an extent.)

The existing arrangements have fare clusters which work in a zonal sense, but to bring structure to fares in the manner suggested leads to significant increases for some users. How are the fares from Southampton to Brighton and Southampton to Ashford going to be made rational in a zonal structure? Is it a bad thing that the fares via Barnham are the same for these two journeys?

What is the benefit of this proposal relative to pricing fares on the existing approach? How do Zones help? What do you do about historic imbalances in the fares charged on different routes to reflect the circumstances of their market?

Why just centric around London - it would be better to have another zonal structure around Birmingham, Leeds, Cardiff etc that already exist and to take that further, Southampton / Portsmouth, Brighton, Exeter, Bristol that form a 'travel to work' area in which regional PAYG could be established.

 

[Minstral25]

It doesn't fit a zonal pattern but could it and should it. The existing unfair structures need fixing and zonal structures correctly implemented encourage usage because passengers don't have a bewildering array of fares to work out, but just a turn up and tap fare. For commuter and local routes this works best and has been proven by usage in London. It doesn't work on inter-city type services.

London's circular zones works well in London but wouldn't across the South East but putting them into regional/area blocks that link across the whole region would work (not so much quadrants but area groupings). This might mean that the SWML has a block for Woking area then another at Guildford and so on - the fare being set based on number of blocks you travel through. If you travel from Woking to Guildford you pass two blocks and pay the two blocks fare.

The problem is what to set the block fares at. This is because the fares by distance vary so much. Resolving that though would take away unfairness in current structure.

 

[PTR 444]

It can be done by adjusting each zone size accordingly. For example, the railcard fare from Southampton to Brighton is £11.45, but you could bring it down to £11.20* if it passed through four zones. I would have these arranged as follows:

• Southampton Zone (Southampton Central - Swanwick)
• Portsmouth Zone (Fareham - Southbourne)
• Barnham Zone (Southbourne - Angmering)
• Worthing & Brighton Zone (Goring-by-Sea - Brighton)

*The cost would be around £16.80 for non-railcard holders.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm not sure there is really any benefit of doing this in terms of standardising fares. Contactless doesn't need zones to work, it can work fine with point to point, indeed in some ways it works better with a route-agnostic point to point approach.

In a way it sort of already exists, in that smaller stations (e.g. Bletchley) have some of their own fares set for shorter journeys, but if they aren't set they take fares from Milton Keynes Central, and no doubt there are some multi-level ones. What I would look to do is "flatten" that a bit and have more "X stations" type fares to give flexibility. So for instance if the fare from Bletchley to Birmingham is the same as Wolverton to Birmingham (as indeed it is), that ticket should be from "Milton Keynes Stns" and be usable to/from any. In larger cities there may be benefit to expanding this in terms of what it covers.

I'm not however sure that pricing by zones crossed is the right way to do long-distance fares (though it is a very good way of doing urban fares).

 

[PeterC]

I don't see much value in zones unless you either have a very dense network as in London, or have multi operator/ mode tickets

 

[Alex365Dash]

For example, the railcard fare from Southampton to Brighton is £11.45, but you could bring it down to £11.20* if it passed through four zones.

Except that Southampton to Ashford International via Barnham & Eastbourne is also £11.45 with a railcard - how much would it be to travel from Southampton Zone to Ashford Zone?

Let’s add the following zones to your list, and modify the Worthing and Brighton zone to better match the area:
- Worthing, Brighton & Hove Zone (Goring-by-Sea - Falmer)
- Lewes Zone (Cooksbridge - Glynde)
- Eastbourne Zone (Berwick - Normans Bay, incl. Hampden Park and Eastbourne)
- Bexhill Zone (Cooden Beach - Bexhill)
- Hastings Zone (West St Leonards - Doleham)
- Rye Zone (Winchelsea - Rye)
- Appledore & Hamstreet Zone* (Appledore - Ham Street)
- Ashford Zone (Ashford International)

Of course, trying to use the current fares as a base price for the zonal system you propose is difficult due to fares not really being based off distance. I’d also agree with Bletchleyite’s earlier statement that zonal pricing might not be the best idea for longer-distance fares.

*Okay, with how rural and spaced out the stations get round here, this one was a bit more difficult.

 

[MattRat]

Zones don't stop the price gouging, they just make it easier to spot. What passengers really want are cheaper fares, and by extension consistent fares. How to truly do that would be for a different discussion though.

 

[JonathanH]

Zones don't stop the price gouging, they just make it easier to spot.

They lock it in as well.

What passengers really want are cheaper fares,

Maybe, but someone else has to pay to make up the difference in revenue. That can only be the taxpayer and there are better uses for government money.

Some train fares are higher than people would like and reductions would be welcome but there has to be capacity on offer to allow the same revenue to be brought in if fares drop.

and by extension consistent fares

There are issues with 'consistent fares' as well - they would no doubt lead to removal of some of the better value fares on the existing structures to achieve that.

The existing arrangements already work like zones but without the visible map that exists in conurbations. Putting Weymouth in a London-centric zone structure doesn't make sense as it is meaningless. Having the same fares apply from Weymouth and Upwey to destinations many miles away makes faresetting easier but the distance and demand between Weymouth and Upwey needs to be considered when deciding its fare and there is no reason why the same fare should automatically apply between Weymouth and Upwey as between Poole and Parkstone or Ramsgate and Dumpton Park.

 

[mike57]

How would lines in rural areas be charged. Our local line has a fares structure where the further you go the cheaper it gets per mile. Based on Hull here is a table of current fares:


If you go for zonal fares you are either going to significantly increase some fares or drastically reduce others, either way you are going to have a problem. The current fares system (nationally) is complicated and needs a major overhaul but I am not sure applying zonal fares outside major conurbations is the way forward. I would support a pence per mile based on the average speed of the trains, a high speed route with decent inter city rolling stock (say 80mph+ average) would be say 50p per mile, a medium speed route 35p per mile, and a slow route 20p per mile, with 1st class at 50%+. You can still use advance tickets to fill less popular services, but perhaps turn it round and on busy routes release any unsold seats a few days before at a discount.

 

[JonathanH]

Our local line has a fares structure where the further you go the cheaper it gets per mile

As it should.

I would support a pence per mile based on the average speed of the trains, a high speed route with decent inter city rolling stock (say 80mph+ average) would be say 50p per mile, a medium speed route 35p per mile, and a slow route 20p per mile, with 1st class at 50%+.

Do you support an increase in fares between Hull and Scarborough then? The structure of fares you have indicated seems more appropriate than any pure per mile structure although Cottingham and Beverley fares look to be on the expensive side.

 

[mike57]

Do you support an increase in fares between Hull and Scarborough then? The structure of fares you have indicated seems more appropriate than any pure per mile structure although Cottingham and Beverley fares look to be on the expensive side

I think the route could support higher fares for the longest journeys (to a point). Rail is actually cheaper than the 12/13/121 EYMS buses for a lot of trips. Hull - Cottingham is actually way up there with Heathrow Express as among the most expensive anywhere, how this has come about I dont know.

With any fares overhaul there will be winners and losers, assuming you keep to idea that you need to get the same revenue from fares, but if you compare the major competition which is private car use then once you have covered the annual costs the running costs are roughly proportional to distance covered, i.e 50 miles is roughly 5 times the cost of a 10 mile journey. (Yes I know there are some variables, type of driving/roads etc but as an approximation I think its a fair analogy)

Currently fares are too complicated, with too many pitfalls and anomalies, The situation where things like split tickets which can save a lot of money exist, but just frighten people off. Really there are two ways you can go, zonal or pence/mile, in urban areas with a dense network zonal fares make sense, everywhere else you are going to be stuck with some variation on pence per mile. I also think the 'quality' of the journey should affect the pence/mile, Its reasonable to pay more for fast and comfortable v slow and cramped. Maybe a supplement to use the fastest trains, other countries price their services that way. But make it clear and transparent.

 

[BayPaul]

Currently fares are too complicated, with too many pitfalls and anomalies, The situation where things like split tickets which can save a lot of money exist, but just frighten people off. Really there are two ways you can go, zonal or pence/mile, in urban areas with a dense network zonal fares make sense, everywhere else you are going to be stuck with some variation on pence per mile. I also think the 'quality' of the journey should affect the pence/mile, Its reasonable to pay more for fast and comfortable v slow and cramped. Maybe a supplement to use the fastest trains, other countries price their services that way. But make it clear and transparent.

I would suggest a 3rd way that, IMO would work better would simply be a review of current point to point fares, and a revision of the ones that are significantly over or under priced. All of the calls for fare simplification on here seem to be stuck in the last century, where a lack of data processing capability placed a restriction on the number of fares that could be provided. With modern technology there is nothing to stop every ticket being priced individually if that is what is needed.

From a passenger point of view, how does a zonal or per mile fare system make things any simpler. If I want to go from point A to point B, the fact that it costs more or less than a journey from point C to point D is irrelevant to me. All that matters is the cost of the ticket, and whether I consider it to be good value. The nice thing about the zonal system in London is it is so simple that I can remember the costs of the tickets - £1.55 off peak for local journeys, a bit more if I want to go into zone 1, but once zones start getting more than a couple, I'm going to need to look up the fare anyway, so it may as well be priced on a point to point basis.

If I were doing a fares review, I'd put all of the millions of fares in a big table, review each against the cost of the equivalent road / bus / air journey, look at the number of pence per mile (perhaps setting a cap to remove some of the very high fares), look at quality as you suggest, look at where splitting makes journeys significantly cheaper and bring down those fares accordingly and so forth. (something tells me that the operators already do all this. What is needed is more subsidy to allow fares to be brought down)

 

[mike57]

If I were doing a fares review, I'd put all of the millions of fares in a big table, review each against the cost of the equivalent road / bus / air journey, look at the number of pence per mile (perhaps setting a cap to remove some of the very high fares), look at quality as you suggest, look at where splitting makes journeys significantly cheaper and bring down those fares accordingly and so forth. (something tells me that the operators already do all this. What is needed is more subsidy to allow fares to be brought down)

The thing I would get rid of are are TOC specific fares and variations like Super Off peak. In general for anything other than local journeys there should be 3 fares, Advance, Off Peak, and Anytime. Singles should be priced at half the return. Advance ties you to one train, if its cancelled/delayed you are entitled to get the next service towards your destination, forget ticket acceptance, its now GBR.

No breaks of journey allowed, if you want to go from A to B to C you buy two ticket, but these added together will cost the same as an A to C via B ticket. Off peak ticket has a list of excluded services, with the provision that in the event of disruption you can continue your journey. If TOCs want to run promotions they do that via Advance fares. All tickets come with a list of valid routes, do away with the confusion around 'Any Permitted'

I think the price benchmark should be the cost of a private car journey in most cases, with justifications to move away from it, either higher or lower. Railcards can still offer a discount. With current data processing capability I am sure your 'great big table' idea could work, run a series of queries on the data to find out those fares which seem out of line and sort them, some will go up some will go down.

Advance tickets also could be offered in 'flash' sales to fill long distance services 24 or less hours before travel if it looks like a train is going to be at say less than 50% capactity. You could tap into a market of 'Theres some £10 tickets to York tomorrow, lets go and meet up with XYZ'

 

[BayPaul]

The thing I would get rid of are are TOC specific fares and variations like Super Off peak. In general for anything other than local journeys there should be 3 fares, Advance, Off Peak, and Anytime. Singles should be priced at half the return. Advance ties you to one train, if its cancelled/delayed you are entitled to get the next service towards your destination, forget ticket acceptance, its now GBR.

Now its GBR I suspect they will go, but this will almost certainly push fares up. I could see the logic in having an 'Intercity' brand, and having some 'non-intercity' fares, to provide lower cost journeys for those who don't mind too much about speed.

No breaks of journey allowed, if you want to go from A to B to C you buy two ticket, but these added together will cost the same as an A to C via B ticket. Off peak ticket has a list of excluded services, with the provision that in the event of disruption you can continue your journey. If TOCs want to run promotions they do that via Advance fares. All tickets come with a list of valid routes, do away with the confusion around 'Any Permitted'

A-B + B-C = A-C fares doesn't work, because it removes the option of fares being cheaper per mile for longer services than for shorter ones.
I could see the logic in removing break of journey once (short-medium distance) fares go contactless and single fare pricing, as the system would work work much better for it

If TOCs want to run promotions they do that via Advance fares. All tickets come with a list of valid routes, do away with the confusion around 'Any Permitted'

Limiting promotions to advance fares seems pretty sensible
A list of valid routes could be very, very long and complex. Again, moving to contactless should make valid routes fairly meaningless

 

[mike57]

A list of valid routes could be very, very long and complex

Yes but as long as its available on line thats an end to disputes, its either permitted, and on the list or not. The shortest journey time route(s) for the type of ticket should always be 'permitted' and if you are going via another route then its on your head to check it. Because break of journeys are ruled out in my world, you avoid the A to B to C on an A to C ticket where B is not the obvious route but may be permitted situation.

It will I think be a long time before contactless comes to rural lines such as ours, its only in the last 3 years we have a PIS and ticket machine at the station in the village, so we will need a solution which will work for some years I suspect.

With this in mind I should be able to buy one of the 3 types of ticket to any UK station from my local small unmanned station, currently there are all sorts of strange anomolies where certain obvious (with the current system) fares are not available because no one has got around to putting them into the system (day return to York for example)

 

[Bletchleyite]

No breaks of journey allowed, if you want to go from A to B to C you buy two ticket, but these added together will cost the same as an A to C via B ticket.

Right, so you want to ban me popping out of the station for lunch between trains? Ludicrous.

Most issues of break of journey are caused by multi day break of journey. Same-day break of journey is generally not enforced, and should really be permitted on all tickets, as should starting and ending short (because it's stupid not being able to use less of something than you've paid for, and even though I get the logic of market pricing, it just makes the railway look really petty). In a system of single-fare pricing you get rid of the multi day re-use issue.

 

[JonathanH]

Right, so you want to ban me popping out of the station for lunch between trains? Ludicrous.

Most issues of break of journey are caused by multi day break of journey. Same-day break of journey is generally not enforced, and should really be permitted on all tickets, as should starting and ending short (because it's stupid not being able to use less of something than you've paid for, and even though I get the logic of market pricing, it just makes the railway look really petty). In a system of single-fare pricing you get rid of the multi day re-use issue.

While I am not in favour of the change, the move to a wider level of PAYG in the South East will mean the end of break of journey in exactly the same way it doesn't exist in London on the Oyster / Contactless system.

 

[Bletchleyite]

While I am not in favour of the change, the move to a wider level of PAYG in the South East will mean the end of break of journey in exactly the same way it doesn't exist in London on the Oyster / Contactless system.

That of course is different, because there is no issue with deciding while already underway that you want to stop off and turn one journey into two.

The issue with barring BoJ on paper/e-tickets is that you can't change your plans as you go along, which is one of the main reasons for purchasing a walk-up fare.

And barring people from leaving the station on a planned Advance connection is just ridiculous, though the only place I've heard of that happening is Clapham Junction.

 

[JonathanH]

That of course is different, because there is no issue with deciding while already underway that you want to stop off and turn one journey into two.

Yes, although you do end up paying a higher price for that privilege so you probably don't bother.

The use case with break of journey that would disappoint me personally more is the mid-range trip on an off-peak day return where you might want to go to more than one place on the line of route on the way and end up paying significantly more in a fully PAYG framework.

However, I concede that virtually no one breaks their journey in that way in practice and that over 99% of people use the railway for a point to point journey so the number of losers would be miniscule.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yes, although you do end up paying a higher price for that privilege so you probably don't bother.

Though in some cases you save money

In reality it's likely there will be some sort of "out of station interchange" type setup which would provide for break of journey, because at many major stations people need to pass a gateline to change trains, and crossing London, Manchester etc need to be dealt with. You could put a time limit on that, but then you might fall foul of infrequent services. So the easiest thing to do is "if you did A-B then B-C on the same day, and didn't do anything else in between, then charge as A-B-C unless the sum of A-B and B-C is cheaper in which case charge that", which is quite simple logic but completely avoids the issue.

The use case with break of journey that would disappoint me personally more is the mid-range trip on an off-peak day return where you might want to go to more than one place on the line of route on the way and end up paying significantly more in a fully PAYG framework.

True, though that's offset by circular journeys that don't fit one ticket being cheaper, as PAYG really needs a single-fare pricing structure. (Single-fare pricing solves a lot of things, but users of CDRs are the losers, there isn't a way to really avoid that).