Could a Monthly Subscription ticket work in the UK?

[DJ_K666]

Deutschlandticket

New for 2023 this €49 monthly subscription ticket gives nationwide access to the German railway network. Austria also has one. It seems like a good way to travel around cheaply there.

My question is could it work here? At a time when we're being encouraged to leave the car at home and (rightly or wrongly) planning to close ticket offices nationwide there must surely be some kind of sweetener. The proliferation of mobile devices, smartphones, iPhone, tablets etc mean an app would work or even an ITSO smartcard with it loaded on.

I'd certainly find it very useful.
Any thoughts?

 

[zwk500]

From a customer point of view? I see no reason it wouldn't. However the fractured state of the industry with the lack of leadership coming from a central 'guiding mind' at the moment I'd be surprised if the institutional problems like revenue allocation could be overcome, as it's simply not a political priority to make train travel cheaper.

 

[Iskra]

Due to inconsistencies in current pricing, I think you’d struggle to find an amount that is the right amount to charge, that makes it worthwhile for all involved without causing chaos on certain flows.

 

[DJ_K666]

Due to inconsistencies in current pricing, I think you’d struggle to find an amount that is the right amount to charge, that makes it worthwhile for all involved without causing chaos on certain flows.

The railways are chaos at the moment anyway tbh. One more bit probably won't hurt...

Seriously, however, It'd certainly make for an interesting discussion.

 

[Peter0124]

Suppose they could make the All Line Rover cheaper!

 

[Doctor Fegg]

Given that DfT managed to foul up the low-hanging fruit of a flexi season ticket, I suspect a monthly subscription would cause their heads to explode.

 

[DJ_K666]

Suppose they could make the All Line Rover cheaper!

Monthly and by subscription?

 

[Iskra]

The railways are chaos at the moment anyway tbh. One more bit probably won't hurt...

Seriously, however, It'd certainly make for an interesting discussion.

What price would you propose?

 

[zwk500]

Monthly and by subscription?

Tbh if all you really want is a renewable All line rover then I don't see any reason why it couldn't happen.

 

[Starmill]

You'd have to charge about £40k per year to do it on a revenue-neutral basis, so introducing the policy would be a total waste of everyone's time. Barely any sales would be made.

What the German and Austrian examples are really about is an increase in subsidy rather than just a convenient method of payment.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Sep 2023 ==

Tbh if all you really want is a renewable All line rover then I don't see any reason why it couldn't happen.

A version with time restrictions like this would probably end up costing about £15k per year, or £10k with a relevant railcard. Still not gonna make any sales.

 

[zwk500]

You'd have to charge about £40k per year to do it on a revenue-neutral basis, so introducing the policy would be a total waste of everyone's time. Barely any sales would be made.

A version with time restrictions like this would probably end up costing about £15k per year, or £10k with a relevant railcard. Still not gonna make any sales.

People buy the ALR at it's current price (£866 for 14 days) so just making that more available/renewable isn't the maddest of mad ideas. However I refer back to my 2nd point in my first post on this thread.

 

[Bletchleyite]

A further challenge to doing this in the UK is that we have no real segregation between "intercity services" and "regional services" other than in a small number of situations. The German scheme is valid only on regional services.

It might be more feasible to do something valid on buses only, basically allowing people to buy an ENCTS card for say 20-40 quid a month. But then that would harm rail.

I do think the City Regions (PTEs as was) should do reasonably priced off peak season tickets, though. Merseytravel used to but I think it's long gone.

 

[Starmill]

People buy the ALR at it's current price (£866 for 14 days) so just making that more available/renewable isn't the maddest of mad ideas. However I refer back to my 2nd point in my first post on this thread.

The number of ALR sales currently is insignificant though.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Sep 2023 ==

A further challenge to doing this in the UK is that we have no real segregation between "intercity services" and "regional services" other than in a small number of situations. The German scheme is valid only on regional services.

It might be more feasible to do something valid on buses only, basically allowing people to buy an ENCTS card for say 20-40 quid a month. But then that would harm rail.

I do think the City Regions (PTEs as was) should do reasonably priced off peak season tickets, though. Merseytravel used to but I think it's long gone.

I can't imagine Transdev Blazefield, Trentbarton or Go North East being willing to reduce prices to as little as £20 a month for unlimited travel except before 0930 on working days. For comparison, Transdev currently charge £150 for their unlimited 31 day product.

You'd end up with a list of exclusions so long it would make everything worse rather than better. Or a doubling of English bus subsidy funding (yes please).

 

[Bletchleyite]

You'd end up with a list of exclusions so long it would make everything worse rather than better. Or a doubling of English bus subsidy funding (yes please).

As with the German product and the £2 scheme I was suggesting that it would be subsidised. These super-low monthly schemes aren't viable on a commercial basis anywhere.

 

[Starmill]

As with the German product and the £2 scheme I was suggesting that it would be subsidised. These super-low monthly schemes aren't viable on a commercial basis anywhere.

If the kind of cash we're talking here is available it's difficult to see what the advantage of making it subscription-only actually is though? Sure, offer a direct debit payment option for convenience, but also allow capped singles £2 and all day travel for £3 in order to maximise uptake.

 

[fishwomp]

You'd have to charge about £40k per year to do it on a revenue-neutral basis, so introducing the policy would be a total waste of everyone's time. Barely any sales would be made.
[..]

No. No-one in the UK spends £40k on standard class rail travel a year so there is no revenue lost. That's £110 a day, every day including Christmas (no trains). If the ticket were £20k, although the number of sales would be low, the lost revenue would still be zero as hardly anyone - or perhaps no-one - spends that - a Manchester - London season is £18k for the year.

What would work is something that got more people on trains by pre-payment bringing bigger discount. You could call it a railcard. I'm too young for senior and too senior for young persons - but I would happily pay £250-£500 per year to get 50% off travel off-peak. That would cause me to make rail journeys where I currently use the car. Cross country would need to fix their overcrowding though.. DB Bahn Card had/has similar kinds of pay more get more discount options.

 

[Starmill]

No. No-one in the UK spends £40k on standard class rail travel a year so there is no revenue lost. That's £110 a day, every day including Christmas (no trains). If the ticket were £20k, although the number of sales would be low, the lost revenue would still be zero as hardly anyone - or perhaps no-one - spends that - a Manchester - London season is £18k for the year.

What would work is something that got more people on trains by pre-payment bringing bigger discount. You could call it a railcard. I'm too young for senior and too senior for young persons - but I would happily pay £250-£500 per year to get 50% off travel off-peak. That would cause me to make rail journeys where I currently use the car. Cross country would need to fix their overcrowding though.. DB Bahn Card had/has similar kinds of pay more get more discount options.

It's only the equivalent of 109 Anytime Returns between Manchester and London, or just three per working week. Before the pandemic there were business customers who made in the region of that many trips per year, on services where the SOR was all that was available; of course a season ticket would have been cheaper but that option wouldn't have been put forward by the company's travel provider. And of course they no longer exist now anyway.

 

[miklcct]

In contrast I'd like to see annual season tickets provide free (rather than 1/3 off only) travel for a larger geographical area on weekends - similar to the Chiltern annual ticket offering.

A good starting point will be making all annual season Travelcards all-zones during weekends (for example, a 2-3 Travelcard can be used across zones 1-9 during weekends), to encourage people buying them.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

As with the German product and the £2 scheme I was suggesting that it would be subsidised. These super-low monthly schemes aren't viable on a commercial basis anywhere.

The Deutschlandticket allegedly costs the German government £3 billion a year, in increased payments to DB and the Länder governments which operate regional services, to cover lost revenue.
The deal is for 3 years, after which a new settlement will be needed if the scheme is to continue (as it will).
That is for a state which already has attractive schemes for integrated regional and local travel, although premium long-distance services have always been separated - tickets like the Länder and national day tickets (on regional transport only).

The Austrian version is essentially €1/2/3 per day for local/regional/national travel, on an annual ticket (ie €1085 per annum for the national ticket).
The Spanish version gives cheap travel on a selected commuter route, but no wider network benefits.

Our system, from BR days, doesn't segregate local and premium services, going for time restrictions instead.
Franchising has introduced operator-specific fares and denigrates "rover and ranger"-type tickets (and the conditions of those tickets are expertly drawn to reduce their attraction to commuters).
It's not beyond the bounds of possibility for a GBR setup of large Regions to offer something like the Deutschlandticket, but the present regulatory system is heavily wedded to route-specific peak, off-peak and season tickets.
Scotland, Wales and the PTE's won't be keen to lose their autonomy on fares and ticketing.
And the Treasury won't be at all keen to find yet more billions in rail subsidy.

I think GB rail still has to sort out a sustainable structure from the current shambles, including the basic fares structure, before embarking on yet another ticketing revolution.

 

[The exile]

Tbh - there is little need for a ticket with countrywide availability (however much some of us “niche interest” people might like it.) What would make more of a difference is more widespread multi-operator season tickets - ideally on an auto-renewing subscription basis - covering large-ish travel to work areas round all of the larger cities (more than the old pte areas) and other “obvious” geographical areas (Cornwall + Plymouth, for example). They need to subsidised to the extent that people just accept them as something to have without carefully calculating each month whether it’s worth it.
Also - easy “add ons” to allow outboundary travel and automatic extension in compensation for any day where fewer than 90% (to pluck a random figure out of the air) of originally / normally scheduled trains run (to account for strikes /weather etc)

 

[fandroid]

Everyone seems to have missed the point that the German 49 Euro ticket is only available for local and regional services, not Intercity. The fact that it's national is not an expectation that users will all gad about all over Germany but a genuine attempt to be a SIMPLE ticket, universally understood, for local everyday travel, and used in Nordrhein Westfalen in exactly the same way as it is in Bayern. That's something our politicians and railway executives exspend a lot of hot air on but, in reality, ignore the concept by regularly adding more and more initiatives that have the effect of making GB ticketing ever more and more complex.

 

[AlbertBeale]

Everyone seems to have missed the point that the German 49 Euro ticket is only available for local and regional services, not Intercity. The fact that it's national is not an expectation that users will all gad about all over Germany but a genuine attempt to be a SIMPLE ticket, universally understood, for local everyday travel, and used in Nordrhein Westfalen in exactly the same way as it is in Bayern. That's something our politicians and railway executives exspend a lot of hot air on but, in reality, ignore the concept by regularly adding more and more initiatives that have the effect of making GB ticketing ever more and more complex.

Since the German system includes buses, trams, etc, as well as non-IC trains, I presume accounting for the subsidy and getting the money to the right place is only possible because local/regional buses etc are run in a co-ordinated/franchised way. With random mixtures of private companies running buses in some part of Britain, it seems hard to envisage a German-style system here, even apart from the lack of definition of regional/IC rail services. If we had buses services back as a public service under public control then something might be possible here, though the rail definition problem might mean that it would have to be a regional rather than national system.

 

[Harpers Tate]

You'd have to charge about £40k per year to do it on a revenue-neutral basis,

Depends on how you evaluate it. I seriously doubt any individual ever spends £40k pa on rail fares. To be truly "revenue neutral" you would price it at a level to equate to the {daily/weekly/etc) revenue lost, on average, whilst accounting for some growth in usage. Which, I suspect, is way, way below £40k.

 

[A S Leib]

A further challenge to doing this in the UK is that we have no real segregation between "intercity services" and "regional services" other than in a small number of situations. The German scheme is valid only on regional services

And presumably any ticket limiting use to regional / local services would have to have a few exceptions for the sake of e.g. Didcot - Swindon - Bath / Gloucester or Penrith and Lockerbie where there aren't many or any non-intercity services (I'm not sure if there's any cases with the D-ticket where that situation applies).

 

[Bletchleyite]

And presumably any ticket limiting use to regional / local services would have to have a few exceptions for the sake of e.g. Didcot - Swindon - Bath / Gloucester or Penrith and Lockerbie where there aren't many or any non-intercity services (I'm not sure if there's any cases with the D-ticket where that situation applies).

Germany tends to do it the other way by making ICs RE for part of their run where they fulfil a regional purpose.

So you might see something like the Paddington to Penzance services being IC123 east of Plymouth but RE2123 west of it, either instead or as well.

Until DB and Thalys fell out they used to have an unreserved coach and be numbered either Dnnn or REnnn within Germany for domestic travel.

 

[fandroid]

Germany tends to do it the other way by making ICs RE for part of their run where they fulfil a regional purpose.

So you might see something like the Paddington to Penzance services being IC123 east of Plymouth but RE2123 west of it, either instead or as well.

Until DB and Thalys fell out they used to have an unreserved coach and be numbered either Dnnn or REnnn within Germany for domestic travel.

But as we don't have train numbers or route numbers we don't have any simple mechanism for identification. We would probably have to have regional monthly tickets based on recognised regions, like NSE, Wales, Scotland. TfN could catch up when it was ready.

 

[zwk500]

But as we don't have train numbers or route numbers we don't have any simple mechanism for identification. We would probably have to have regional monthly tickets based on recognised regions, like NSE, Wales, Scotland. TfN could catch up when it was ready.

We do have things like RSIDs and Service groups that could be very quickly adapted for the purpose of Service stratification.

 

[30907]

Maybe the UK starting point should be along PTE lines - area season tickets (ideally multimedia but that's a pipe-dream ATM) covering the travel-to-work area of the medium-sized cities.
These might well overlap: so Truro/Falmouth might cover all Cornwall, Plymouth would be from Truro or St Austell to Newton A or Exeter, Exeter/Torbay would cover Plymouth to Axminster and Taunton and branches. (These are simple examples, deliberately - and you would cope with the inevitable edge cases by offering add-ons.)

Combine that with a (pricey) national railcard with a morning peak restriction and you cover a lot of discretionary travel as well as encouraging modal shift locally.

 

[Starmill]

Depends on how you evaluate it. I seriously doubt any individual ever spends £40k pa on rail fares. To be truly "revenue neutral" you would price it at a level to equate to the {daily/weekly/etc) revenue lost, on average, whilst accounting for some growth in usage. Which, I suspect, is way, way below £40k.

The issue is if it were truly unlimited it would encourage uptake on services which are already at capacity, for example Edinburgh to London on Sunday lunchtime or London to Manchester Thursday teatime. There's simply no way to expand capacity on these services until HS2 services begin, so every extra journey at those times just loses money.

By definition most people want to travel when everyone else also wants to travel. Generally that's not when there's already lots of unsold capacity sitting about doing nothing.

 

[LickeyIncliner]

You'd have to charge about £40k per year to do it on a revenue-neutral basis, so introducing the policy would be a total waste of everyone's time. Barely any sales would be made.

What the German and Austrian examples are really about is an increase in subsidy rather than just a convenient method of payment.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Sep 2023 ==


A version with time restrictions like this would probably end up costing about £15k per year, or £10k with a relevant railcard. Still not gonna make any sales.

Just to understand the figures : how do you arrive at the £40k and £15k per year figures, please? (Sorry if that's explained somewhere else and I've missed it)