Advance ticket rights on 2nd June

[jha4ceb]

I have an advance ticket from East Croydon to Norwich on Friday 2nd June. I intend to travel, but part of my journey isn't running due to the strike, so I wanted to ask for advice on my rights to travel via an alternative route for that part.

The ticket is a Greater Anglia & Connections advance. My itinerary is routed via Cambridge:

• East Croydon to Cambridge (Thameslink)
• Cambridge to Norwich (GA)

The Cambridge to Norwich part of the journey is still running as scheduled, but Thameslink aren't running anything through the core on Friday 2nd June. So I need to get to Cambridge another way in order to connect with the second leg.

I assume I still have a right to travel on this ticket even if I can't take the exact same route/operator for the first portion of the journey? My main goal is to find the route most likely to avoid hassle and accusations of travelling with an invalid ticket. The obvious replacements are:

• Great Northern from King's Cross to Cambridge
• GA from Liverpool Street to Cambridge

Given that it's a Greater Anglia ticket, I assume I might get less hassle travelling on the GA route from Liverpool Street to Cambridge?

Also - are the relevant rights for this situation written down anywhere? Greater Anglia's strikes page is not helpful in this regard and doesn't suggest that I have any options at all if I want to travel on the 2nd.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[Wallsendmag]

I'd say you're best going from Liverpool St with that ticket, I'm surprised that you were given the CBG route to start with.

 

[paul1609]

Id get the Thameslink train to London Bridge, walk to Liverpool St its just over a mile (about 25 mins) then enquire there, they may well send you via the mainline direct to Norwich, if not the service via Cambridge isn't too bad. Ive used it a couple of times recently to get to Peterborough on football away days when the ECML was closed.

 

[mangyiscute]

On the thameslink website, it states "On 2 June you may also use any ticket on our other services (Southern, Thameslink, Great Northern) to travel to the destination on your ticket, but please note that train services are expected to be extremely busy, and we do expect disruption."
Therefore, I would say that you can take any Kings Cross to Cambridge train on the 2nd to connect with your scheduled Greater Anglia train since they are all operated by Thameslink or Great Northern, and I reckon Greater Anglia would be fine with you taking one of their cambridge services too.
If it was me, I would message the greater anglia team on twitter and ask if i could use the direct norwich train, as I think theres a decent chance they'll allow it.

Just remember that you have a right to complete your journey especially via the originally planned route.

 

[Watershed]

I have an advance ticket from East Croydon to Norwich on Friday 2nd June. I intend to travel, but part of my journey isn't running due to the strike, so I wanted to ask for advice on my rights to travel via an alternative route for that part.

The ticket is a Greater Anglia & Connections advance. My itinerary is routed via Cambridge:

• East Croydon to Cambridge (Thameslink)
• Cambridge to Norwich (GA)

The Cambridge to Norwich part of the journey is still running as scheduled, but Thameslink aren't running anything through the core on Friday 2nd June. So I need to get to Cambridge another way in order to connect with the second leg.

I assume I still have a right to travel on this ticket even if I can't take the exact same route/operator for the first portion of the journey? My main goal is to find the route most likely to avoid hassle and accusations of travelling with an invalid ticket. The obvious replacements are:

• Great Northern from King's Cross to Cambridge
• GA from Liverpool Street to Cambridge

Given that it's a Greater Anglia ticket, I assume I might get less hassle travelling on the GA route from Liverpool Street to Cambridge?

Also - are the relevant rights for this situation written down anywhere? Greater Anglia's strikes page is not helpful in this regard and doesn't suggest that I have any options at all if I want to travel on the 2nd.

Many thanks in advance.

Your rights aren't clearly explained because the rail industry would prefer you to labour under the misapprehension that you have no choice but to either abandon the journey and accept a refund, or to travel on a non-strike day. The industry conveniently omits to mention the fact that you have the right to travel on the booked date, including through alternative routes, operators or modes of transport if need be.

For Greater Anglia in particular, they aren't as heavily affected on the 2nd, because this is 'only' an RMT strike day and many of their services don't rely on RMT staff (such as guards or platform staff) to run. So I suppose it's slightly more reasonable that they don't mention alternatives, because most journeys are still possible to make on the 2nd.

By contrast, even though Thameslink are in a similar situation in principle (all their trains are DOO and only need dispatchers at a handful of stations), they don't have the planning resource to implement a different timetable to the one they've run on previous RMT strike days, where the fact that Network Rail signallers were on strike meant they couldn't run through the Thameslink core.

Coming back to your situation, one option would be to take Thameslink to London Bridge, then the Underground to Kings Cross St Pancras and Great Northern to Cambridge. I don't think you should have any issues doing any of this - your ticket is routed "& Connections" so it doesn't actually have an operator restriction. In any event, your booked train is cancelled so you're entitled to get the next available service under the Advance ticket conditions. In fact, that being the case it would be much quicker to get a train direct to Norwich from Liverpool Street.

 

[jha4ceb]

Thanks everyone, much appreciated. That all gives me some peace of mind.

I'm surprised that you were given the CBG route to start with.

On some days GA only seem to offer advance tickets via Cambridge on the East Croydon to Norwich flow (even when advances are still available from LST to NRW). On a normal day it's not too much of a time penalty, though it does often involve a transfer of only a few minutes at Cambridge. It avoids travelling across central London, which is nice, but it does mean you have to spend 1h 40m on a 700.

"On 2 June you may also use any ticket on our other services (Southern, Thameslink, Great Northern) to travel to the destination on your ticket, but please note that train services are expected to be extremely busy, and we do expect disruption."

That's useful; I hadn't read that quite closely enough and thought they might just be referring to e.g. Thameslink only tickets on the BML. But it says "any ticket" so that's good.

 

[allotments]

Your rights aren't clearly explained because the rail industry would prefer you to labour under the misapprehension that you have no choice but to either abandon the journey and accept a refund, or to travel on a non-strike day. The industry conveniently omits to mention the fact that you have the right to travel on the booked date, including through alternative routes, operators or modes of transport if need be.

That neatly summarises my perception！

I decided to persist with my original travel plan from Crewe to Euston today. Originally an Advance London Northwestern Railway (LNR) ticket on the strike cancelled 18:13 departure.

I had to travel 90 minutes earlier than usual from Llandudno Junction so that I could catch one of the last 2 southbound Avanti departures from Crewe. Arriving into Crewe at 16:17 the fastest itinerary with LNR arrived Euston 23 hours later.

I contacted LNR via Twitter setting out my request for rerouting as per Passenger's Rights and Obligations 2017 legislation, due to the expected delay. I asked to be rerouted onto an Avanti service to Euston departing Crewe 16:32. No response from LNR.

I found a relevant quote from National Rail web page about the current strike and sent it to LNR, answering my own question! "Where disruption prevents you from completing the journey for which your Ticket is valid and is being used, any train company will, where it reasonably can, provide you with alternative means of travel to your destination, or if necessary, provide overnight accommodation for you."

LNR responded last night that ticket acceptance was in place with Avanti and Chiltern. I hadn't found that advertised elsewhere, which leads me back to the quote from @Watershed above. Seems the railway don't want passengers to know.

 

[Watershed]

I found a relevant quote from National Rail web page about the current strike and sent it to LNR, answering my own question! "Where disruption prevents you from completing the journey for which your Ticket is valid and is being used, any train company will, where it reasonably can, provide you with alternative means of travel to your destination, or if necessary, provide overnight accommodation for you."

That's actually part of the NRCoT (condition 28.2), and it's useful because it means that other TOCs aren't allowed to charge you for accepting you on their train, in cases where you would otherwise be stranded.

This is unlike your PRO rights, which in practice will likely require you to pay out of pocket for a new ticket/alternative modes of transport before trying to claim this back.

Seems the railway don't want passengers to know.

That seems to be the industry's position, yes. It's dismal that after so many strikes, the industry still doesn't have an automatic strike policy that it can refer customers to, and that there isn't clearly-publicised ticket acceptance across all operators and routes.

It's bad enough having strike action, but the industry is handling the customer impact of strikes in just about the worst way possible.