Yield Management - evidence it works

[jamiearmley]

Depends on the route, and depends on the ORCATS allocation. If (as an example) Northern get 100% of the revenue from the advance ticket but only 50% of the revenue from the season ticket, then it's in Northern's interests to encourage people on to the advances. They can make the Advance 49% cheaper than the season ticket and still make more money from it.

Absolutely agree with this argument - and it is what takes place on the ground, absolutely.

However, subsidy for the railway is viewed by the treasury as a whole. If one train operating company decides to bring in 51% less money to " the railway" , then that is 51% less money to the railway.

Whether or not it makes the figures for that individual train operating company look healthier should really be neither here nor there.

Cuts, service reductions, line closures, delaying of capital investment, etc etc will always be driven by the total subsidy " the railway" requires.

As such, we could do with a little bit more of a big picture approach, rather than this parochial and ultimately self-defeating stance the industry currently takes.

 

[anothertyke]

Absolutely agree with this argument - and it is what takes place on the ground, absolutely.

However, subsidy for the railway is viewed by the treasury as a whole. If one train operating company decides to bring in 51% less money to " the railway" , then that is 51% less money to the railway.

Whether or not it makes the figures for that individual train operating company look healthier should really be neither here nor there.

Cuts, service reductions, line closures, delaying of capital investment, etc etc will always be driven by the total subsidy " the railway" requires.

As such, we could do with a little bit more of a big picture approach, rather than this parochial and ultimately self-defeating stance the industry currently takes.

And GBR will have failed if it does not achieve that. At least with Hendy as Minister there is an enhanced chance of starting out with the right design. Whether we end up with a rerun of dfT versus SRA who knows, but hopefully the system will have learned from that bruising experience.

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

And GBR will have failed if it does not achieve that. At least with Hendy as Minister there is an enhanced chance of starting out with the right design. Whether we end up with a rerun of dfT versus SRA who knows, but hopefully the system will have learned from that bruising experience.

A significant number of civil servants that work for DfT currently are anticipating being transferred to the GBR vehicle (whatever name it's called) or simply moving to a different non-transport department.

This is fairly novel, as ultimately there shouldn't be anyone (well, almost) at the DfT to interfere or have contrary plans, with GBR reporting straight into the SoS.

Biggest issue will be Treasury, but you'd imagine the proper funding of GBR will be a priority.

I suspect the issues will be disagreements between different sectors of GBR (e.g. Regional versus InterCity etc).

 

[Egg Centric]

If you think the laws of supply and demand don't apply to rail tickets (or perhaps don't apply to anything) then a lot of economists would be very interested.

And it's not impossible. They're not a law of nature. There are even certain very unusual circumstances where they don't hold.

I'm gong to stick with economic orthodoxy for now though, when the argument is just a "suspicion"

 

[Haywain]

The belief in dynamic pricing and yield management may originally have been arrived at for sound reasons and it may, for all I know, be entirely justified, but I get the feeling we have now reached the stage where the Treasury, DfT and TOCs would want to push on with it irrespective of what the evidence was telling them.

So, what is the evidence telling them?

 

[jamiearmley]

So, what is the evidence telling them?

Better folk than me should answer that.

However:

There are lies, damn lies .. and statistics...

 

[yorksrob]

So, what is the evidence telling them?

Keep prices more expensive for the posho/yuppie lot presumably.

 

[redreni]

So, what is the evidence telling them?

I've no idea. I thought I'd bent over backwards to make that clear. Maybe if they looked with genuine curiosity at the best evidence they could get, they would still arrive at the conclusion that yield management works. I'm just not convinced that's what they're doing and I don't know (nor is it my job to know, nor do I have much more than a passing interest) whether they would come to a different conclusion if they did.

 

[anothertyke]

There is a vast amount of evidence that market segmentation works if you can do it. The willingness to pay characteristics of rail travellers vary by journey purpose and journey length. The available segmentation methods are advance purchase, peak/off peak, personal characteristics (railcards), journey frequency. Yield mgt is just a mgt speak way of expressing that. The issue is not whether it works but whether as practised it works in the interests of individual tocs rather than in the interest of the railway as a whole ; also whether the level of complexity is acceptable and fair.

 

[modernrail]

It is very interesting. There are clearly some very strongly held but opposing views around this. The one thing I can’t see is whether there has been a proper study done of what lessons be learned from what has been done and what the best options might be for an industry wide approach going forward.

It seems bizarre to me that we have loads of TOCs following loads of different approaches, some which may be designed to play games against each other, just at the moment when all the TOCs have been moved to contracts in which they do not take revenue risk. This to me feels like evidence that the industry is not making rationale decisions for the overall good of the railway, and is instead fixated on an unsupported orthodoxy that may have been developing per TOC for a while.

Does it matter? I personally think it really does. I am never going to complain about cheap advances available up to the last minute on Northern, but is Treasury when it looks at revenue in the round and then decides it’s down for northern so investment can’t be justified? I am always going to complain about being priced off a service. If you want to use yield management like that, then the next step has to be you are on your own mate. No subsidy. No support for pay deals with unions. Full market rate to use the tracks, including sucking up all infrastructure improvement costs. Let’s see how long anybody in that railway is in a job with that model.

 

[AlterEgo]

If you want to use yield management like that, then the next step has to be you are on your own mate. No subsidy. No support for pay deals with unions. Full market rate to use the tracks, including sucking up all infrastructure improvement costs. Let’s see how long anybody in that railway is in a job with that model.

This is just a personal rant about being priced off trains. None of what you say is going to happen and it’s pure sour grapes at this point. You’ve not proposed any sort of coherent argument which looks beyond your own personal viewpoint and there really is no discussion to be had, is there?

 

[modernrail]

This is just a personal rant about being priced off trains. None of what you say is going to happen and it’s pure sour grapes at this point. You’ve not proposed any sort of coherent argument which looks beyond your own personal viewpoint and there really is no discussion to be had, is there?

No it isn’t. It is a very carefully considered position based upon a lifelong commitment to using trains as a primary method of transport. It is also considering the views of the many friends I have who for environmental reasons, or because of air pollution affecting them or their children, or because they wish to follow the request to ‘use public transport’ to beat congestion, or because they feel it is generally a good thing to do. It is also considering the views of the many on here who clearly dislike the shift to yield management tactics.

Yield management is a choice. I fundamentally disagree with yield management that seeks to price people off trains. If that is happening - I don’t think I should be paying the people who have made that decision and of their subsidised salary. They have massively missed the point of the subsidy.

I am really interested to understand from proponents of yield management what carefully considered reflection and research has been undertaken on the subject. Some may argue such reflection and research is not required. I could not disagree more. We spend billions of tax payers money on subsiding railways and paying those who work on the railways. That subsidy needs to be justified. The only justification I can see for that subsidy is that the railways constitute a social utility that performs a range of social good. That argument requires reasonable access to the underlying service at a reasonable price and on a predictable basis. Not russian roulette which is the version of yield management we are moving towards. The minute that is removed, to me, you have removed the justification for a single penny in subsidy.

Yield management might be okay up to a cap. However, I am nervous about it being used on local, already fairly low cost services. I would have thought the priority on Northern is evening out the odd cross-PTE border pricing. I am also nervous about generally overly low cost advance fares. Fine if it is a service you would genuinely struggle to fill otherwise. However, if a potentially busy service, don’t sell of half the capacity months in advance at a very low price. That stops the social utility of train travel as a method of day to day transport. Releasing the cap, LNER style, does not need to be the way to manage demand. The rich man still board for an exorbitant price. It is a terrible message to be sending to the next generation of potential train users. The potential price range for a train seat between say London and Newcastle must be the largest in the world? Why is that a good thing. Why doesn’t anybody else that runs railways think it is?

Annoyingly, there is no transparency in methodology. I think that is appalling. An industry that receives billions in subsidy does not believe it needs to tell taxpayers how it is going about carving up the seats on that train in terms of ticket prices to ensure social utility. I find that incredibly arrogant. Even worse, there is all out misdirection from LNER saying it is simplification.

I personally believe the point of not being able to justify the subsidy has been reached with the Scottish sleeper. You can just about make an argument it is just about okay if you price in a hotel. However that argument falls apart when you consider people don’t always stay in a hotel. People stay with family, with friends, they camp, they couchsurf, stay in hostels etc. What social purpose is the Scottish sleeper subsidy actually serving now? Pricing on the Riviera feels just about okay most of the time.

So no, it isn’t a rant. I just wish we had some properly considered research and some candour and transparency from the industry within which to have the debate within a more productive context. There is clearly a point of balance and I am not saying it is easy to find it, but there needs to be transparency in that journey.

 

[yorksrob]

It is very interesting. There are clearly some very strongly held but opposing views around this. The one thing I can’t see is whether there has been a proper study done of what lessons be learned from what has been done and what the best options might be for an industry wide approach going forward.

It seems bizarre to me that we have loads of TOCs following loads of different approaches, some which may be designed to play games against each other, just at the moment when all the TOCs have been moved to contracts in which they do not take revenue risk. This to me feels like evidence that the industry is not making rationale decisions for the overall good of the railway, and is instead fixated on an unsupported orthodoxy that may have been developing per TOC for a while.

Does it matter? I personally think it really does. I am never going to complain about cheap advances available up to the last minute on Northern, but is Treasury when it looks at revenue in the round and then decides it’s down for northern so investment can’t be justified? I am always going to complain about being priced off a service. If you want to use yield management like that, then the next step has to be you are on your own mate. No subsidy. No support for pay deals with unions. Full market rate to use the tracks, including sucking up all infrastructure improvement costs. Let’s see how long anybody in that railway is in a job with that model.

Indeed. The railway is subsidised (quite rightly) so that people can get from a to b and go about their business. It's not subsidised to that they can cart around fresh air waiting for some muppet to pay £300 for a ticket.

 

[43066]

The only justification I can see for that subsidy is that the railways constitute a social utility that performs a range of social good. That argument requires reasonable access to the underlying service at a reasonable price and on a predictable basis.

Another justification is that the railway contributes to economic growth by carrying people (and goods to a lesser extent). As such, even those who don’t use it at all still benefit from the subsidy. Thus it doesn’t need to be run as a cheap service which is open to everyone and indeed, given scarcity of capacity, it never could be. As a taxpayer I’m perfectly happy with that situation.

Point of order: we also subsidise our railway rather less than similar countries!

 

[yorksrob]

Point of order: we also subsidise our railway rather less than similar countries!

Ooh, they won't want you to point that out. The party line is that rail subsidy is "unafordable".

 

[skyhigh]

Ooh, they won't want you to point that out. The party line is that rail subsidy is "unafordable".

Who is "they"?

 

[AlterEgo]

No it isn’t. It is a very carefully considered position based upon a lifelong commitment to using trains as a primary method of transport. It is also considering the views of the many friends I have who for environmental reasons, or because of air pollution affecting them or their children, or because they wish to follow the request to ‘use public transport’ to beat congestion, or because they feel it is generally a good thing to do. It is also considering the views of the many on here who clearly dislike the shift to yield management tactics.

Sure, but what, actually is your objection to it? Yield management ensures some tickets are much cheaper and incentivises people to travel at different times. If we didn't have it, you would only be able to manage demand with mandatory reservation, which I expect you would equally dislike for the reasons you give above.

Yield management is a choice. I fundamentally disagree with yield management that seeks to price people off trains. If that is happening - I don’t think I should be paying the people who have made that decision and of their subsidised salary. They have massively missed the point of the subsidy.

Then don't buy the tickets. That is, after all, part of what yield management is about - making some journeys more expensive and less desirable so capacity is free for others (who perhaps have more economically pressing reasons to travel).

I am really interested to understand from proponents of yield management what carefully considered reflection and research has been undertaken on the subject. Some may argue such reflection and research is not required. I could not disagree more. We spend billions of tax payers money on subsiding railways and paying those who work on the railways. That subsidy needs to be justified. The only justification I can see for that subsidy is that the railways constitute a social utility that performs a range of social good. That argument requires reasonable access to the underlying service at a reasonable price and on a predictable basis. Not russian roulette which is the version of yield management we are moving towards. The minute that is removed, to me, you have removed the justification for a single penny in subsidy.

Sorry, but your hypothesis here is that yield management "doesn't work". In what respect? It has been used for over 20 years on long distance intercity services, and while sometimes companies get the formula wrong, the market is supposed to act as a corrective to that. As you are challenging the status quo, it is up to you to suggest how and why it doesn't work, beyond "I do not want to pay that price". It would be up to you, for example, to show that fewer people are using the train, which you aren't going to be very successful in doing as passenger numbers are very healthy across the board.

Yield management might be okay up to a cap

Let me guess, the cap is okay up to the price you feel personally is too expensive.

. However, I am nervous about it being used on local, already fairly low cost services. I would have thought the priority on Northern is evening out the odd cross-PTE border pricing.

Short distance Advances are problematic because of the consequences of getting it wrong for the passenger for such a low stakes journey.

I am also nervous about generally overly low cost advance fares. Fine if it is a service you would genuinely struggle to fill otherwise. However, if a potentially busy service, don’t sell of half the capacity months in advance at a very low price.

Oh so tickets should be more expensive then? Pricing other people off is okay?

That stops the social utility of train travel as a method of day to day transport.

No it doesn't. You still have turn up and go - and if you're arguing those tickets are too expensive I might be inclined to agree with you.

Releasing the cap, LNER style, does not need to be the way to manage demand. The rich man still board for an exorbitant price.

So the seats are being filled - it is no doubt more expensive but you will have to work hard to explain why it is bad that the seat is sold for the price it will attract else you do not have an argument.

It is a terrible message to be sending to the next generation of potential train users. The potential price range for a train seat between say London and Newcastle must be the largest in the world?

No, it is not. Amtrak would like a word, for one.

Why is that a good thing. Why doesn’t anybody else that runs railways think it is?

There are lots of railways that do not have a "cap" on fares, even state-run ones.

Annoyingly, there is no transparency in methodology. I think that is appalling.

They aren't going to release the yield management algorithm, it is commercially sensitive stuff.

I personally believe the point of not being able to justify the subsidy has been reached with the Scottish sleeper. You can just about make an argument it is just about okay if you price in a hotel. However that argument falls apart when you consider people don’t always stay in a hotel. People stay with family, with friends, they camp, they couchsurf, stay in hostels etc. What social purpose is the Scottish sleeper subsidy actually serving now?

The Sleeper is full, nearly all of the time. You bang on about subsidy but actually, how much more subsidy would it require if everyone could get a £99 bargain berth? (Incidentally £99 Bargain Berths were yield management writ large!)

I paid £210 for a berth from Fort William next month. It is a lot of money (!!) but the ticket will be put on expenses to a company I will be doing work for. I need to get to Glencoe by a Tuesday morning, and the sleeper is sold out from London - so a day train it is, for me (it is selling out even at this price!) - I was only able to get a berth on the return leg on Wednesday night. And I *need* that journey to exist and be available else I cannot make this contract. It's a significantly large contract for two days work for work the company finds pressing and valuable and for which I would like to be paid.

I don't like the price so much, but I am glad that there was a berth available.

So no, it isn’t a rant. I just wish we had some properly considered research and some candour and transparency from the industry within which to have the debate within a more productive context. There is clearly a point of balance and I am not saying it is easy to find it, but there needs to be transparency in that journey.

There is no debate to be had - yield management is here to stay. You are not going to get flat fares everywhere on a capacity constrained railway whose first purpose is to link people with places they need to be. Its second purpose is to link people with places they want to be.

Having this discussion on an enthusiast forum is always going to be difficult because most of us value discretionary journeys and would really like things to be cheaper, but it would be missing the point. The railways are there to serve the country, and if they are full, there is very little room to argue that the people who want to travel should get priority over people who need to travel.

 

[modernrail]

Sure, but what, actually is your objection to it? Yield management ensures some tickets are much cheaper and incentivises people to travel at different times. If we didn't have it, you would only be able to manage demand with mandatory reservation, which I expect you would equally dislike for the reasons you give above.

Then don't buy the tickets. That is, after all, part of what yield management is about - making some journeys more expensive and less desirable so capacity is free for others (who perhaps have more economically pressing reasons to travel).


Sorry, but your hypothesis here is that yield management "doesn't work". In what respect? It has been used for over 20 years on long distance intercity services, and while sometimes companies get the formula wrong, the market is supposed to act as a corrective to that. As you are challenging the status quo, it is up to you to suggest how and why it doesn't work, beyond "I do not want to pay that price". It would be up to you, for example, to show that fewer people are using the train, which you aren't going to be very successful in doing as passenger numbers are very healthy across the board.



Let me guess, the cap is okay up to the price you feel personally is too expensive.


Short distance Advances are problematic because of the consequences of getting it wrong for the passenger for such a low stakes journey.


Oh so tickets should be more expensive then? Pricing other people off is okay?


No it doesn't. You still have turn up and go - and if you're arguing those tickets are too expensive I might be inclined to agree with you.


So the seats are being filled - it is no doubt more expensive but you will have to work hard to explain why it is bad that the seat is sold for the price it will attract else you do not have an argument.


No, it is not. Amtrak would like a word, for one.

There are lots of railways that do not have a "cap" on fares, even state-run ones.


They aren't going to release the yield management algorithm, it is commercially sensitive stuff.


The Sleeper is full, nearly all of the time. You bang on about subsidy but actually, how much more subsidy would it require if everyone could get a £99 bargain berth? (Incidentally £99 Bargain Berths were yield management writ large!)

I paid £210 for a berth from Fort William next month. It is a lot of money (!!) but the ticket will be put on expenses to a company I will be doing work for. I need to get to Glencoe by a Tuesday morning, and the sleeper is sold out from London - so a day train it is, for me (it is selling out even at this price!) - I was only able to get a berth on the return leg on Wednesday night. And I *need* that journey to exist and be available else I cannot make this contract. It's a significantly large contract for two days work for work the company finds pressing and valuable and for which I would like to be paid.

I don't like the price so much, but I am glad that there was a berth available.


There is no debate to be had - yield management is here to stay. You are not going to get flat fares everywhere on a capacity constrained railway whose first purpose is to link people with places they need to be. Its second purpose is to link people with places they want to be.

Having this discussion on an enthusiast forum is always going to be difficult because most of us value discretionary journeys and would really like things to be cheaper, but it would be missing the point. The railways are there to serve the country, and if they are full, there is very little room to argue that the people who want to travel should get priority over people who need to travel.

There is no debate to be had?? There is. There is always debate to be had when you are talking about the use of large amounts of public funds.

I have also not said there should not be any yield management, although it does at some point become just an overly complicated name for selling off otherwise empty seats cheaper than you would normally charge. I assume that has been happening in one form or another since railways were a thing.

What the right level of the highest fare should be is of course a matter for debate. One benchmark is what the equivalent journey by car or air would cost. On that measure - I think off-peak fares are just about right on some routes and over the top on others. The anytime fare just seems impossible for anybody of ‘normal’ means. Let’s say average income as a perfectly reasonable benchmark. You are restricting the utility of those services to those not of normal means or to those who are having the fare paid for them. Quite a few of those passengers will be on tickets paid for by the public sector, which opens another can of worms.

It seems odd, in utility terms, on a subsidised railway, to have some fares on a peak train available at a low fare on advances and then a massive leap to anytime fares. Why not price everything more towards the middle.

There is also the question of whether a subsidised railway should have a yield management system that leans the better priced utility towards leisure travellers booking months in advance, to everyday users whose plans are less fixed, to business users etc.

These are all perfectly reasonable areas of debate.

Why should the yield management algorithms be commercially confidential? The underpinning code might be but I cannot see any justification for programming in terms of the railway’s use of them being so. This is a publicly owned and funded railway. There is literally zero competition on many routes and where there is the competition is usually with another TOC that is publicly owned and run on a management contract.

The only possible justification is on routes with open access operators, but as the complaint of the effectively nationalised operators on those routes is that their trains are too full so they need to ‘yield manage’ people off, they should hardly be complaining if the other provider picks them up by offering lower fares.

 

[skyhigh]

There is literally zero competition on many routes

What about coaches (and in some cases, air travel)?

 

[Doctor Fegg]

There is a difference between selling surplus inventory cheaply, and deliberate obfuscation/complexity designed to maximise profit from the ill-informed or time-poor.

The former takes place in all walks of life - walk down any high street and count the vape shops on short leases. You'd have to be pretty purist to say that the railway, alone, should refrain from this.

The latter is the sort of sharp practice that you might expect from airlines (and you wouldn't be disappointed!). But a Government-subsidised social railway shouldn't be indulging in this. Providing the best fares through an obscurely branded commercial partner like Seatfrog is a textbook example, but not the only one.

 

[modernrail]

What about coaches (and in some cases, air travel)?

This is where we get to the cake and eat it question isn’t it.

We are told on one hand yield management with a removed or ridiculously high cap (as per LNER) is essential because the trains are too full - so demand needs to be suppressed. If that is true - then there is no problem with any competition picking up passengers. They are doing LNER etc’s yield managements job for it. The railway should send a thank you note to the airline and the coach company for getting it out of a fix.

But then we get the counter argument whenever transparency is called for. Yield management is required because you need to fill the trains. And the best way to do that is not to give passengers any certainty on what they might pay, so they end up having to check multiple modalities in real time from the moment they think about booking to the moment they book.

What all of that leaves you with is a mess, that makes travelling by any form of transport other than your own car difficult for multiple reasons.

 

[AlterEgo]

There is no debate to be had?? There is. There is always debate to be had when you are talking about the use of large amounts of public funds.

I have also not said there should not be any yield management, although it does at some point become just an overly complicated name for selling off otherwise empty seats cheaper than you would normally charge. I assume that has been happening in one form or another since railways were a thing.

Not in a widespread way, no - for a very long time the fare was the fare, take it or leave it.

What the right level of the highest fare should be is of course a matter for debate. One benchmark is what the equivalent journey by car or air would cost.

London to Fort William would cost me £200 by air and bus on those dates, so all you’re doing is justifying the sleeper fares you dislike. If you factor in a hotel so I don’t travel all day, make it closer to £275-300.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Jul 2024 ==

This is where we get to the cake and eat it question isn’t it.

We are told on one hand yield management with a removed or ridiculously high cap (as per LNER) is essential because the trains are too full - so demand needs to be suppressed.

Nope, it’s not about suppressing demand, it’s about getting the value from the assets. I really can’t be bothered to go over all this again having done so repeatedly in the LNER thread.

 

[modernrail]

Not in a widespread way, no - for a very long time the fare was the fare, take it or leave it.


London to Fort William would cost me £200 by air and bus on those dates, so all you’re doing is justifying the sleeper fares you dislike. If you factor in a hotel so I don’t travel all day, make it closer to £275-300.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Jul 2024 ==


Nope, it’s not about suppressing demand, it’s about getting the value from the assets. I really can’t be bothered to go over all this again having done so repeatedly in the LNER thread.

I think we all get the arguments of hard core yield management fans. However, like anything, it is a theory until backed up by hardcore analysis of the direct and indirect impacts. Like anything, people are perfectly entitled to say, I hear you but you have not convinced me that in this case your version of life is correct.

An important distinction with air travel, particularly budget airlines, is that much of that travel is discretionary or paid for by employers. It is also not subsidised other than on particular routes with social utility. Railways provide much more of a day to day utility - or should if they wish to justify subsidy.

This sort of understanding is critical for a publicly funded asset. It is why legislation must always be subject to impact assessment. That impact assessment is far wider than narrow economic analysis. A publicly funded railway just does not get to shut down debate on this stuff.

At some point some of those who think this is a debate to be had only be a few individuals within the railway will finally understand - it isn’t. If you want to behave like that, go work for a budget airline. Whilst those who work for the railway remain in fact or de facto public servants - interacting with an making decisions that impact upon the application of billions of pounds of public subsidy, this is a debate that will continue to be had and so it should be. The message to those who think the public should not be involved in or are too stupid to be involved in discussion about the railway is really simple. It ain’t your railway - it is ours.

 

[AlterEgo]

I think we all get the arguments of hard core yield management fans. However, like anything, it is a theory until backed up by hardcore analysis of the direct and indirect impacts. Like anything, people are perfectly entitled to say, I hear you but you have not convinced me that in this case your version of life is correct.

I'm not arguing for a version of life, I'm saying you have no thesis or hypothesis and are demanding that people defend the status quo without providing a coherent thesis of an alternative.

An important distinction with air travel, particularly budget airlines, is that much of that travel is discretionary or paid for by employers.

Citation needed here, and in any case, explain why that is relevant to the point being made. Are not many long distance competitor rail journeys also the same?

It is also not subsidised other than on particular routes with social utility. Railways provide much more of a day to day utility - or should if they wish to justify subsidy.

Here, you walk back the idea that London to Fort William fares should be in some way comparable to the airlines after one post, after one real world example! It's £200 for a reason; it is what people will pay and it is the realised value of that journey. Why is the railway subsidising my trip to a certain level to make an essential journey entirely by train (instead of by bus and by air) not a good thing here?

You cannot in one breath make a big deal about the railways requiring so much subsidy and at the same time say fares should be lower to increase that subsidy, without explaining why this is in the national interest. What benefits would there be to this? Do we live in a world where railways can actually justify even more subsidy? Is that a political possibility? Is the "social good" more important than connecting people who need to do business, and who have necessary journeys to make but who would otherwise fly or drive? If the railways were empty you would have a point. But they are not. They are, still, connecting people and making good use of capacity with bums on seats.

This sort of understanding is critical for a publicly funded asset. It is why legislation must always be subject to impact assessment. That impact assessment is far wider than narrow economic analysis. A publicly funded railway just does not get to shut down debate on this stuff.

Go on then - what sort of impact assessment? What impacts are you thinking the railway is shutting down discussion of? And what legislation do you think is in play here?

Whilst those who work for the railway remain in fact or de facto public servants - interacting with an making decisions that impact upon the application of billions of pounds of public subsidy, this is a debate that will continue to be had and so it should be. The message to those who think the public should not be involved in or are too stupid to be involved in discussion about the railway is really simple. It ain’t your railway - it is ours.

"It's our railway" is such a platitude. The railways are de facto nationalised and will be fully nationalised by the end of the decade. You are tilting against windmills here. And you still haven't made an argument, other than starting the thread demanding evidence that yield management "works" and you still have not provided any sort of argument for people to take apart or criticise. It's really just concern trolling like "we need more studies", "I need more evidence", "unsupported orthodoxy" (you think the rapacious train companies don't know how much money they make and whether yield management is worth the effort or not??), buttressed with mild invective directed at people who work on or for the railways.

I like bashing trains on a whim as much as anyone else, and I would like the hobby to be cheaper and easier. But I'm a realist and wouldn't dress up my frustrations at being priced off trains as a wider political concern without forming a much better argument about it.

I'm sorry you feel some people think "the public are stupid" to be involved in discussion but I - a member of the fare paying public - have calmly and politely dissected your posts and if that has made you feel this way then I can say that is a you problem.

 

[modernrail]

I'm not arguing for a version of life, I'm saying you have no thesis or hypothesis and are demanding that people defend the status quo without providing a coherent thesis of an alternative.


Citation needed here, and in any case, explain why that is relevant to the point being made. Are not many long distance competitor rail journeys also the same?


Here, you walk back the idea that London to Fort William fares should be in some way comparable to the airlines after one post, after one real world example! It's £200 for a reason; it is what people will pay and it is the realised value of that journey. Why is the railway subsidising my trip to a certain level to make an essential journey entirely by train (instead of by bus and by air) not a good thing here?

You cannot in one breath make a big deal about the railways requiring so much subsidy and at the same time say fares should be lower to increase that subsidy, without explaining why this is in the national interest. What benefits would there be to this? Do we live in a world where railways can actually justify even more subsidy? Is that a political possibility? Is the "social good" more important than connecting people who need to do business, and who have necessary journeys to make but who would otherwise fly or drive? If the railways were empty you would have a point. But they are not. They are, still, connecting people and making good use of capacity with bums on seats.


Go on then - what sort of impact assessment? What impacts are you thinking the railway is shutting down discussion of? And what legislation do you think is in play here?


"It's our railway" is such a platitude. The railways are de facto nationalised and will be fully nationalised by the end of the decade. You are tilting against windmills here. And you still haven't made an argument, other than starting the thread demanding evidence that yield management "works" and you still have not provided any sort of argument for people to take apart or criticise. It's really just concern trolling like "we need more studies", "I need more evidence", "unsupported orthodoxy" (you think the rapacious train companies don't know how much money they make and whether yield management is worth the effort or not??), buttressed with mild invective directed at people who work on or for the railways.

I like bashing trains on a whim as much as anyone else, and I would like the hobby to be cheaper and easier. But I'm a realist and wouldn't dress up my frustrations at being priced off trains as a wider political concern without forming a much better argument about it.

I'm sorry you feel some people think "the public are stupid" to be involved in discussion but I - a member of the fare paying public - have calmly and politely dissected your posts and if that has made you feel this way then I can say that is a you problem.

I have no problem with your dissecting of my arguments. I am however unsure what you are actually arguing for, which makes it a bit tricky to understand whether that dissecting has been successful or not.

I started this thread because I feel, strongly, that we have entered a new wave of attack on reasonably priced, reasonably predictable fares. I do not think we should be doing that without looking at both the incremental mission creep of yield management and, as we enter a major new phase for the railway, that the underlying principles should be discussed and settled (transparently and in the public eye), within the context of a huge public subsidy and therefore a need to maximise the public utility of the asset (and not just the revenue).

I was hoping the thread might yield a few pointers to a report or two analysing all of this. If they don’t exist I think it is high time they were commissioned. The sorts of things they might look at include:
- What forms of yield management have been used to date and why
-Which forms are available going forward
- What impact has yield management has on public perceptions, experiences and the accessibility of fares
- what has the impact been on overall revenue generation
- what has the impact been on seat utilisation, broken down into operation type, time of day.
- arguments for and against continued use of yield management vs simple fixed fares
- recommendations for future fare setting
Etc

 

[yorksrob]

Who is "they"?

The Establishment.

 

[anothertyke]

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5c07d2cde5274a6a842bdfdb/Passengerrailtransport.pdf

This might be a useful document, also the papers referred to by Preston and Robins and by Wardman.

This subject does cross over into explaining the causes of traffic growth in the UK which has been the subject of several previous threads on this site.

 

[sheff1]

I would have to disagree, and strongly so.

What the short distance Advance has done is both cheapen, and increase the complexity of, the product.

From the point of view of someone who deals with it day in and day out, my personal opinion is that the system of short distance advances only benefits those who provide and manage the system which deploys these tickets, and that the money spent employing the system and employing those who look after the system would be better spent elsewhere.

Short distance advances benefit me by reducing my travel costs. I can't believe I am the only person who so benefits.

Northern's Advances have one purpose and one purpose alone - to take revenue away from TPE.

Is that is true, how is it possible for me to use them on a wide range of routes on which TPE operates no trains at all

 

[Killingworth]

Here on the South Pennine route TPE may be getting away with 3 car trains (rather than the 6 car they were mostly running pre-Covid) because Northern's 3 car slow stopping service is undercutting them severely on price. Leisure users in particular like that.

EMR are left in the middle - see prices now for tomorrow morning. How this is impacting on all 3 TOCs total passenger numbers on the route and total railway revenue would be interesting to know.

 

[yorksrob]

Here on the South Pennine route TPE may be getting away with 3 car trains (rather than the 6 car they were mostly running pre-Covid) because Northern's 3 car slow stopping service is undercutting them severely on price. Leisure users in particular like that.

EMR are left in the middle - see prices now for tomorrow morning. How this is impacting on all 3 TOCs total passenger numbers on the route and total railway revenue would be interesting to know.


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As much as DfT, the Treasury and the industry try to obfuscate, fares are a key determinant of rail use - the trans-pennine route is a key example. Keep walk-on fares extortionate on a short/medium distance route and people will flock to a budget alternative.

Further north, it's shocking that an off-peak return between Leeds and Manchester (any route) is over £27.

The way to do away with short distance advances is to have reasonable fares in the first place.