Travel from Lowestoft to Stansted Airport

[adewar]

I'm going to be travelling from Lowestoft to Stansted Airport in a few weeks time during the week. Understandably, I need to be at the airport by a given time and was looking to leave on the 8.50 train via Norwich to do so. Having looked at various booking engines (including the forum one and the greater Anglia site), they all quote them 9.48 (to Norwich) as first train I can use an off-peak return. I've had a look at the restrictions on brfares (https://www.brfares.com/!faredetail?orig=LWT&dest=SSD&rte=135&tkt=SVR) and national rail enquires (https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/ticket-types/validity/cz/). Under the easements section on both pages, they seem to suggest that the off-peak return is valid on the 8:50 service from Lowestoft to Norwich.

• 08:50 Lowestoft to Norwich service, from Lowestoft and Oulton Broad North to all destinations

Have I mis-understood the easement?

Would it be easier for me to buy separate tickets for Lowestoft to Norwich and Norwich to Stansted to get slightly cheaper fares?

With thanks in advance

Alastair

 

[yorkie]

I'm going to be travelling from Lowestoft to Stansted Airport in a few weeks time during the week. Understandably, I need to be at the airport by a given time and was looking to leave on the 8.50 train via Norwich to do so. Having looked at various booking engines (including the forum one and the greater Anglia site), they all quote them 9.48 (to Norwich) as first train I can use an off-peak return. I've had a look at the restrictions on brfares (https://www.brfares.com/!faredetail?orig=LWT&dest=SSD&rte=135&tkt=SVR) and national rail enquires (https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/ticket-types/validity/cz/). Under the easements section on both pages, they seem to suggest that the off-peak return is valid on the 8:50 service from Lowestoft to Norwich.

• 08:50 Lowestoft to Norwich service, from Lowestoft and Oulton Broad North to all destinations

Have I mis-understood the easement?

You've not misread it, but booking engines do not attempt to read human-readable text and instead rely on electronic data.

There is no data to allow any of the services mentioned, meaning Greater Anglia are effectively forcing all booking sites to overcharge customers; you may want to contact GA to bring this to their attention.

You are contractually entitled to purchase the ticket (from any retailer) for a later departure and travel on the 0850 from Lowestoft.

Would it be easier for me to buy separate tickets for Lowestoft to Norwich and Norwich to Stansted to get slightly cheaper fares?

If it's cheaper to split, the forum's site will offer it; in this case it will offer a split at Somerleyton, which is perhaps unsurprising, given Somerleyton is the first valid station (as per the data) with this restriction code.

 

[HurdyGurdy]

The OP should absolutely be able to travel on the 08:50 using the Off Peak fare, with no need to purchase split tickets.

I suspect the problem here is that the easements listed under restriction code CZ relate to specific departure times from specific stations using specific services. Otherwise a generic 'not valid before 09:00' applies. Rather than code this, the electronic data simply implements the 'not before 09:00', everywhere.

With the current structure for time restrictions in the various data files which the booking engines are obliged to use, the only way of coding the easements faithfully would be to have a separate 'not before XX:XX' data record for each potential departure station from which fares with restriction code CZ are valid.

The industry* has decided that coding such time restrictions faithfully in this way is either too difficult or too expensive. The consequence is that a customer such as the OP is led to believe that they need to buy an Anytime ticket priced at £72.60 rather the Off Peak priced at £48.00.

*Fares priced by GA are absolutely not the only ones where the restrictions data used by booking engines do not faithfully represent the human-readable text. Where it does occur. more often than not it has the effect of being more restrictive than the published restriction, so the customer using a booking site or app is either overcharged or decides the fare is too expensive and doesn't travel by rail.

 

[adewar]

Firstly, many thanks to Yorkie and HurdyGurdy for their prompt and informative posts and secondly, my apologies for the delay in updating this.

For my original journey, I opted to go to my local ticket office (Lowestoft), to buy my ticket, assuming that I would receive the correct guidance and advice from there. The “best” the person in the ticket office could do was to sell me the off-peak return and single to Norwich – despite my mentioning an easement being available. As I was travelling for an personal event, at the time, I chose not to pursue it further.

However, I did pick up this up again a few weeks ago and contacted customer services at Greater Anglia, who confirmed that the easement does apply and wasn't sure why I wasn't offered the easement at the ticket office. I will be making this journey again in the next few days, armed with my off-peak ticket and the T&Cs (and the GA email) on my phone!

Alastair

 

[yorkie]

Thanks for the update.

Ticket offices frequently appear to lack knowledge of the rules regarding ticket validities.

Really, what needs to happen is for GA to amend the electronic data; the vast majority of passengers book online these days, so if the data can be fixed it will at least mean the vast majority are not overcharged for such itineraries.

Whether or not GA's ticket offices improve remains to be seen; I tend to avoid ticket offices these days, as I got fed up with being misled, mis-sold and refused the sale of valid fares. Do let us know if there is an improvement in future, but even if you get a good experience, the probability of GA offering a consistently good, accurate and appropriate experience to all customers at ticket offices is about zero.

 

[HurdyGurdy]

I'm pleased to hear GA has confirmed in writing that the off-peak ticket is valid on the 08:50 service.

As for amending the electronic data which is the cause of the problem, if this was a case of an obvious mistake or typo in the coding, I'd agree with @yorkie that what needs to happen is for GA to apply a correction. But my understanding is this isn't such a case. As far as I can see there's no record types in the restrictions data which can be used to represent an easement of the kind listed, to override the general 'not before 09:00' rule of restriction CZ.

 

[Wallsendmag]

I'm pleased to hear GA has confirmed in writing that the off-peak ticket is valid on the 08:50 service.

As for amending the electronic data which is the cause of the problem, if this was a case of an obvious mistake or typo in the coding, I'd agree with @yorkie that what needs to happen is for GA to apply a correction. But my understanding is this isn't such a case. As far as I can see there's no record types in the restrictions data which can be used to represent an easement of the kind listed, to override the general 'not before 09:00' rule of restriction CZ.

Then then need to use or create a different restriction code

 

[HurdyGurdy]

Then then need to use or create a different restriction code

Creating a new restriction code doesn't fix the problem of there being no record type which overrides a general 'not valid to depart any location (LOC) between xx:xx and yy:yy' restriction. AFAICS, the only way to implement it is with an exhaustive list of 'not valid to depart LOC between xx:xx and yy:yy' records for each and every LOC.

The length of the list is the number of locations which are flow origins for flows which have fares which have the particular restriction code. Instead of one very long such list, you could indeed slice and dice the group of flows which have fares with restriction CZ into sub-groups and create new restriction codes, each with shorter lists of location specific records, for each sub-group. That may be a more manageable way of dealing with it, but it's just the same more or less longwinded work-around for the absence of a 'departure time easement' record in the specification for restrictions.

 

[Alex365Dash]

Creating a new restriction code doesn't fix the problem of there being no record type which overrides a general 'not valid to depart any location (LOC) between xx:xx and yy:yy' restriction. AFAICS, the only way to implement it is with an exhaustive list of 'not valid to depart LOC between xx:xx and yy:yy' records for each and every LOC.

Train Easements in a restriction code can override those restrictions. These are listed per service rather than between times, but of course since the easements in the restriction text are also listed for each service, this shouldn't be a problem. A useless example of these can be found in the restriction data for code 4B, which appears on various tickets including an Off-Peak Return Ashford International - Weymouth route via Barnham. Except it's not implemented properly in that restriction code anyway, but it is an example that it can be done.

 

[HurdyGurdy]

Train Easements in a restriction code can override those restrictions.

If I've read the spec correctly such a restriction record would have the effect of permitting travel on the specified train regardless of where it was boarded.

In the CZ restriction, the easement described in text as "08:50 Lowestoft to Norwich service, from Lowestoft and Oulton Broad North to all destinations" on which the OP relies, it would be appropriate.

But in the easement which says "07:27 Lowestoft to Ipswich service - from Saxmundham (dep. 08:15) and stations south of there, to all destinations", it would be a problem, as it would allow the off-peak ticket to be used all the way from Lowestoft.

The appearance of train restriction records in 4B is interesting as the text description of the restriction doesn't refer to any specific trains let alone the 3 to which the restriction records apply. And given that nothing else in the restrictions data would seem to invalidate travel on those trains, it's difficult to see what they are there to override. They show every appearance of just being random junk, left over from some fat finger editing of records for an entirely different restriction code.