Why is CrossCountry so overpriced?

[Grumpy]

Especially with day returns. If you’re travelling from Leeds to Birmingham, only a return within a month ticket is available, but should you spilt your ticket at Sheffield and Derby then the option of buying a day return becomes available, representing a significant price saving.

To be fair, that was exactly the same advice in the 1960's with BR. Then you could get day returns between the individual legs, but had to pay full fare otherwise.
Now of course you can arrange the splits by using the internet-easy. In the 1960's you had to race over the footbridge buy tickets for the next leg and scurry back to the train hoping that your trainspotting mates had managed to delay the train departure by such means as randomly opening doors and preventing right away.

 

[Envoy]

Am I correct in thinking that when we purchase split tickets that the money is not going to Cross Country but to another operator even though we are on XC trains? If that is the case, then surely Cross Country are shooting themselves in the foot by having such expensive fares for the through tickets and the government are picking up the bill with subsidies?

 

[jfollows]

Am I correct in thinking that when we purchase split tickets that the money is not going to Cross Country but to another operator even though we are on XC trains? If that is the case, then surely Cross Country are shooting themselves in the foot by having such expensive fares for the through tickets and the government are picking up the bill with subsidies?

If the split tickets are advance tickets then the money goes to the operator of each service. If they are open tickets then the money is allocated to each of the operators providing service on that route. The issue can be that even open tickets priced by XC are high, anyway. I use split tickets Wilmslow-Stafford-Birmingham because the legs are not priced by XC, but they will get some money, just not all of it. Wilmslow-Birmingham is priced by XC. If you split but use advance tickets on XC trains they get the money, it’s just that you’ve worked out a way of paying less.

 

[Watershed]

Am I correct in thinking that when we purchase split tickets that the money is not going to Cross Country but to another operator even though we are on XC trains? If that is the case, then surely Cross Country are shooting themselves in the foot by having such expensive fares for the through tickets and the government are picking up the bill with subsidies?

Sort of. The revenue from each ticket is divided up using ORCATS, a BR-era piece of software that allocates revenue based on the trains (or more specifically, 'journey opportunities') that passengers are deemed likely to have taken.

In the case of a walk-up ticket the allocation is mostly based on the number of services run by each operator, although seating capacity does also play a role and there is also a weighting for different times of day (so services run at extremes of the day will earn an operator less revenue than those run during the peaks). Overtaken journeys are usually ignored or given very little revenue, unless they involve fewer changes (e.g. a slow direct train vs a fast journey with changes).

In most cases XC will still get a lot of the revenue from split tickets, as by definition their trains will run on the journeys/routes that you are buying the splits for. But on the whole, I would expect them to get quite a bit less revenue.

To illustrate the principle, consider a long-distance journey like Birmingham-Leeds - it's likely that XC will get the lion's share of the revenue of through tickets as the vast majority of journey opportunities will just involve a direct XC service. There'll be a few other operators getting a small piece of the revenue from occasional non-overtaken journeys that involve a change (e.g. when there are gaps in the XC service) but this will be the exception to the rule.

By contrast, if you split at Derby and Sheffield, XC will be getting most (if not all) of the revenue for Birmingham-Derby tickets. But they'll probably only get a third of the revenue for Derby-Sheffield tickets - since EMR run 2tph with trains that have 5-10 coaches, whereas XC only run 1tph with 4-5 coach Voyagers for most of the day. For Sheffield-Leeds the calculation will similarly result in XC getting only perhaps 50% of the revenue as, whilst their services are fast, they only run 1tph whilst Northern run 4tph (albeit 3tph are overtaken). TPE and LNER will probably also get a bit of the revenue from occasional non-overtaken journeys via Doncaster.

So overall if you split at Derby and Sheffield, XC will go from getting nearly 100% of the revenue on a through ticket, to an aggregate of perhaps 50-70% of the revenue on your splits, and on a lower overall fare too. They lose out on a lot of revenue, so it's not hard to see why they maintain high through fares - those in the know will split regardless, but those who don't know about splits or simply aren't as price-sensitive will keep on paying the high through fares. It's a very crude (and arguably unintentional) form of market-based pricing, if you will.

 

[dk1]

The 170 services are equally extortionate too - a Cambridge to Peterborough return is often more than a return to London (via ECML!)

I was amazed at how cheap the advance tickets between Peterborough and Cambridge/Stansted Airport actually were.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Because when the Arriva franchise was let they MASSIVELY overbid, expecting people to be using it for long, profitable journeys. As it turned out, the trains were (and still are) mostly full of people doing short to medium distance journeys like Leeds to Sheffield, so the only way they could attempt to claw money back is by massively inflating the fares on flows that they price, hence why split ticketing is so effective on XC.

"Cross Country" under BR was losing a lot of money - a reflection of lots of engines and some HST's etc - come privatisation the franchise was let to Virgin which radically changed the service pattern and clearly invested in the new fleet etc , but required a fairly considerable subsidy. (costs clearly increased with new trains and of course track access charges which were not so obvious under BR charging regimes - but there would obviously have been allocations against their operations)

So come along re-franchising , and Arriva sought to seriously reduce subsidy , which I think they did ......

 

[Wolfie]

So if aging rolling stock is the cause of the high costs why don't they just get more fuel-efficient class 800s?

Availablity and cost of said rolling stock.

 

[Trainman40083]

What could XC do to stop this vicious circle of overcrowding and overpricing?

Be allowed to have bigger trains by the DfT would be a start.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 2 Aug 2024 ==

Availablity and cost of said rolling stock.

So if aging rolling stock is the cause of the high costs why don't they just get more fuel-efficient class 800s?

I am sure they are to consider bimodes, because they were looking to appoint someone to look at that. One bigger train, instead of two smaller trains, might save on staff costs.

 

[ld0595]

Back when I was in uni in 2013, I'd take the late evening XC service to Dundee from Inverkeithing and it would cost me about £4 with a Railcard as a last minute advance ticket. Couldn't really complain! I'm probably a fringe case though.

 

[12LDA28C]

What could XC do to stop this vicious circle of overcrowding and overpricing?

I'm not sure I would call that a 'vicious circle'. In a vicious circle A leads to B which leads back to A again. As others have said, trains are frequently overcrowded yet you assert the fares are too expensive, so are you advocating cheaper fares, which will clearly lead to even worse overcrowding? What exactly would you like to see happen? Cheaper fares and fewer passengers? I'd be interested to learn how you think that can be achieved.

 

[Energy]

"Cross Country" under BR was losing a lot of money - a reflection of lots of engines and some HST's etc - come privatisation the franchise was let to Virgin which radically changed the service pattern and clearly invested in the new fleet etc , but required a fairly considerable subsidy. (costs clearly increased with new trains and of course track access charges which were not so obvious under BR charging regimes - but there would obviously have been allocations against their operations)

So come along re-franchising , and Arriva sought to seriously reduce subsidy , which I think they did ......

IIRC Virgin wanted to extend the class 220s to 6 cars, which would bring them roughly equivalent to a 2x4 car set. Another good solution would have been ordering enough extra Pendolinos that XC could have kept most of them.

So if aging rolling stock is the cause of the high costs why don't they just get more fuel-efficient class 800s?

Most of the XC routes have a lot of diesel running.

The class 800s can run on diesel all day but the reliability isn't great, they were originally designed for the requirements of LNER (and GWR pre-electrification cancellation) which is majority electric running and only some diesel.

The voyagers have their problems but are very reliable trains and perform very well considering the large distance they cover.

 

[Mainline421]

They're not overpriced, they're oversubscribed

 

[py_megapixel]

They're not overpriced, they're oversubscribed

Are you suggesting that it's the fault of the passengers for wanting to get from Birmingham to (e.g.) Leeds, rather than the fault of the train company and/or the government for providing trains which are far too small to accommodate these passengers?

 

[LLivery]

They're not overpriced, they're oversubscribed

They're overpriced and we shouldn't be paying a private company to run a loss making service.


They're managing demand (badly) with inflated fares, with the decision to buy Voyagers in the early 00s biting in the backside.

What's worse, is that CrossCountry is currently planned to be the last operator to be nationalised, and even then I'd be surprised to see much change this side of 2030.

If we were like Italy or France, we'd just run the operation as cheaply as possible with a loco up front and a long rake trailing.

 

[Irascible]

The only thing that will get us out of that is political pressure - so do write to your MP about it, but be sure to lay the blame firmly at the hands of the government (who have been in complete control for the last 4 years, and were highly influential before that).

Wait 20 years & the trains will fall apart :P I mean, there are worse alternatives too - the routes could be chopped up & the bits given to local operators ( eg, GWR is told to run Plymouth-Birmingham ) & those operators not provided with any more stock. That'd cook the books nicely.

Maybe write to your MP after the budget rather than now, I suspect anything that smells of "invest" is going to go nowhere for a bit unless it's literally waiting on a signature.

 

[M!T]

I guess they're not overpriced if the trains are overcrowded despite the prices being a rip-off.

XC's prices between Leeds and the West Country really are abhorrent though. When my brother and I took my mum to Cornwall for her 80th birthday in June last year it cost almost £500 for the three of us, despite us booking as far in adance as possible and getting a senior railcard for my mum and a two together railcard for myself and my brother. I did some number crunching and worked out that petrol would have to be £10 per litre for the journey to have cost as much in my car.

It's not like you get a particularly pleasant experience for your money either. You never seem to get much speed up on most of the journey, Voyagers are very noisy - the relentless droning from the underbody motors give you a headache after a few hours, they feel cramped and claustrophobic and are appallingly designed inside, such that you're as likely to be sat next to a pillar as a window. XC's efforts at seat reservation were dismal too - the three of us were sat in completely separate places for both our outward and return journeys. The only saving grace on our outward journey is that we changed at Plymouth onto a GWR "Castle" HST which was heaven by comparison - smooth, near silent and almost empty despite, according to my research, return fares between Plymouth and St Erth being as little as £11!

If it were up to me a credible replacement for the HST would be developed - something with proper locomotives and free-rolling carriages - but it's not up to me and those in charge appear to be in a race to the bottom as far as passenger experience is concerned.

 

[geoffk]

To be fair, that was exactly the same advice in the 1960's with BR. Then you could get day returns between the individual legs, but had to pay full fare otherwise.
Now of course you can arrange the splits by using the internet-easy. In the 1960's you had to race over the footbridge buy tickets for the next leg and scurry back to the train hoping that your trainspotting mates had managed to delay the train departure by such means as randomly opening doors and preventing right away.

Indeed. I did Bristol - York and back in day in 1964 like that. I was able to reboard the same train at Birmingham but not at Derby or Sheffield, where i had to wit for the next. I think my interview was late afternoon! I was told that the more recent removal of XC stops at Bromsgrove was done mainly to stop split-ticketing for journeys like Cheltenham - Birmingham, forcing you to pay the XC fare. XC also sets the fare from Ashchurch to Worcester although they don't run that way.

 

[frodshamfella]

I.went interailing earlier this year. Started in St.Malo and ended in Seville. All of it was avoiding capital.cities, so I think you would call it cross country. It was such a pleasant experience and a world away from travelling between regional UK cities using XC .

 

[D6975]

Indeed. I did Bristol - York and back in day in 1964 like that. I was able to reboard the same train at Birmingham but not at Derby or Sheffield, where i had to wit for the next. I think my interview was late afternoon! I was told that the more recent removal of XC stops at Bromsgrove was done mainly to stop split-ticketing for journeys like Cheltenham - Birmingham, forcing you to pay the XC fare. XC also sets the fare from Ashchurch to Worcester although they don't run that way.

I'm surprised that you had to this. Back in the early 1980s you could buy day returns for long distance journeys, I regularly did trips like Bristol - Edinburgh and Bristol - Glasgow on a one day return ticket. Somewhere in the late 80s IIRC day returns for journeys over about 50 miles were withdrawn and multi tickets became required. I did many journeys that started with Bristol - Cheltenham - Birmingham day returns.

 

[TUC]

The money goes to the Treasury. Given the small trains and operating cost, probably very little money is being made at all.

How much should it cost to travel with CrossCountry?

However much it costs to be commercially attractive.

 

[jfollows]

I'm surprised that you had to this. Back in the early 1980s you could buy day returns for long distance journeys, I regularly did trips like Bristol - Edinburgh and Bristol - Glasgow on a one day return ticket. Somewhere in the late 80s IIRC day returns for journeys over about 50 miles were withdrawn and multi tickets became required. I did many journeys that started with Bristol - Cheltenham - Birmingham day returns.

I did Macclesfield-Weymouth day return in the late 1970s, as far as I was aware then day returns were pretty much universally available. As you say, subsequently they were withdrawn for longer journeys, so Wilmslow-Tutbury & Hatton plus Tutbury & Hatton-Derby day returns were required in place of the abolished Wilmslow-Derby day return.
I agree with you!

 

[Envoy]

Sort of. The revenue from each ticket is divided up using ORCATS, a BR-era piece of software that allocates revenue based on the trains (or more specifically, 'journey opportunities') that passengers are deemed likely to have taken.

In the case of a walk-up ticket the allocation is mostly based on the number of services run by each operator, although seating capacity does also play a role and there is also a weighting for different times of day (so services run at extremes of the day will earn an operator less revenue than those run during the peaks). Overtaken journeys are usually ignored or given very little revenue, unless they involve fewer changes (e.g. a slow direct train vs a fast journey with changes).

In most cases XC will still get a lot of the revenue from split tickets, as by definition their trains will run on the journeys/routes that you are buying the splits for. But on the whole, I would expect them to get quite a bit less revenue.

To illustrate the principle, consider a long-distance journey like Birmingham-Leeds - it's likely that XC will get the lion's share of the revenue of through tickets as the vast majority of journey opportunities will just involve a direct XC service. There'll be a few other operators getting a small piece of the revenue from occasional non-overtaken journeys that involve a change (e.g. when there are gaps in the XC service) but this will be the exception to the rule.

By contrast, if you split at Derby and Sheffield, XC will be getting most (if not all) of the revenue for Birmingham-Derby tickets. But they'll probably only get a third of the revenue for Derby-Sheffield tickets - since EMR run 2tph with trains that have 5-10 coaches, whereas XC only run 1tph with 4-5 coach Voyagers for most of the day. For Sheffield-Leeds the calculation will similarly result in XC getting only perhaps 50% of the revenue as, whilst their services are fast, they only run 1tph whilst Northern run 4tph (albeit 3tph are overtaken). TPE and LNER will probably also get a bit of the revenue from occasional non-overtaken journeys via Doncaster.

So overall if you split at Derby and Sheffield, XC will go from getting nearly 100% of the revenue on a through ticket, to an aggregate of perhaps 50-70% of the revenue on your splits, and on a lower overall fare too. They lose out on a lot of revenue, so it's not hard to see why they maintain high through fares - those in the know will split regardless, but those who don't know about splits or simply aren't as price-sensitive will keep on paying the high through fares. It's a very crude (and arguably unintentional) form of market-based pricing, if you will.

Many thanks Watershed for taking the time to give this response. Presumably if everyone were doing splits XC would get reduced revenue and they would have to reduce the non split prices. They are charging high prices to get revenue from those who don’t know about splits whilst suppressing demand due to lack of capacity.

It was Virgin who ordered the Voyager fleet - presumably with the permission of the Government at the time. These trains have narrow bodies in order that they could tilt on the bends and increase the speeds. However, it was only the so called Super-Voyagers that had the tilt mechanism and actually used it on the West Coast Mainline. So surely a ridiculous decision to order narrow bodied trains that were never going to tilt on the other long distance routes?

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Many thanks Watershed for taking the time to give this response. Presumably if everyone were doing splits XC would get reduced revenue and they would have to reduce the non split prices. They are charging high prices to get revenue from those who don’t know about splits whilst suppressing demand due to lack of capacity.

It was Virgin who ordered the Voyager fleet - presumably with the permission of the Government at the time. These trains have narrow bodies in order that they could tilt on the bends and increase the speeds. However, it was only the so called Super-Voyagers that had the tilt mechanism and actually used it on the West Coast Mainline. So surely a ridiculous decision to order narrow bodied trains that were never going to tilt on the other long distance routes?

The original plan was for a mixed XC fleet of Voyagers and loco hauled sets , - but was changed to a whole 22x fleet. (the details should be in back copies - somewhere - in Modern Railways.

 

[TheGuy77]

Does the CrossCountry franchise end in 2027 or 2031?

 

[driverd]

I find it quite surprising that XC are losing money - given the consistently high loadings and high prices of tickets, are there any additional debts on the books that other operators don't face?

In particular, and I appreciate this is a relatively niche comparison, but Grand Central seem to be able to make voyagers (2 of them, atleast), make sense. Their loadings are, atleast on the surface, very similar, along with vehicle milage (circa 600 miles per unit, per day, with 1 diagram on 2 London trips and the other on 1). Further, anecdotally, I'd suggest the average GC fare £/mile is substantially lower.

What's making such a big difference here?

 

[Tester]

Talking of long distance day returns, in 1974 I did a day return from London to Glasgow.

I worked for BR then so used a free ticket, but went with a paying friend.

The definition of a day was very generous, allowing overnight travel both ways.

 

[Snow1964]

"Cross Country" under BR was losing a lot of money - a reflection of lots of engines and some HST's etc - come privatisation the franchise was let to Virgin which radically changed the service pattern and clearly invested in the new fleet etc , but required a fairly considerable subsidy.

So come along re-franchising , and Arriva sought to seriously reduce subsidy , which I think they did ......

It sort of depends on how far back you go, prior to 1980 cross country generally operated with hand me down rolling stock, mk1s and non air conditioned mk2s, hauled by 47s (46 peaks on NE-SW) and assortment of 31s, 37s etc on some fringe services. So capital cost (depreciation not leasing) was very low.

The early 1980s saw limited HSTs introduced replacing services operated by the peak 46s, but most others remained unchanged until the mk4s took over East Coast in mid-late 1980s and there was a big cascade of stock. Cross country got newer (but used) trains.

Wasn't until after franchising that things changes, the original plan was more frequent but shorter trains, but only way to transition was in one go as couldn't run mix of infrequent long trains and frequent short trains, so temporary short formation 4car voyagers were introduced.

We all know they were supposed to be extended to 6car (which is why outer cars are labelled A and F), but instead a low density inefficient and too low capacity stayed in its short term form. Then decision was made to price people off rather than order the allowed for intermediate vehicles. La Brugeois et Nivelles (by then known as BN, but taken over by Bombardier) subsequently shut production line so extra vehicles couldn't be added, and of course as time went on becomes uneconomic anyway if their withdrawal is same date as rest of fleet.

So with trains 22-24 years old, out of their original 35 year projected life, cross country voyagers are historical capacity mess that means pricing people off has been only option.

Regarding the 170s from memory some are bit older at between 22 and 26 years old. Which means whole XC fleet is generally older than 40 years ago (but then got cheap fares reflecting the hand me down standards)

 

[nw1]

The money goes to the Treasury. Given the small trains and operating cost, probably very little money is being made at all.

How much should it cost to travel with CrossCountry?

I remember a child weekend return from a Surrey station (not far from Guildford) to Stafford via Not London (i.e. XC) was exactly £10.00 in the summer of 1983.

Double it to get adult fare and apply inflation since then, and do the maths to account for the longer distance involved when travelling from Birmingham to Edinburgh, and I guess that gives you an idea of what it perhaps "ought" to be, if we assume 80s pricing was reasonable.

At a guess I'd say it would end up as something perhaps around £120 for a multi-day off-peak return. Purely guesswork though, haven't done the maths!

 

[Snow1964]

I remember a child weekend return from a Surrey station in to Stafford via Not London (i.e. XC) was exactly £10.00 in the summer of 1983. (I didn't pay for it myself, being still under 16, but I distinctly remember the round figure for the price!)

Double it to get adult fare and apply inflation since then, and do the maths to account for the longer distance involved when travelling from Birmingham to Edinburgh, and I guess that gives you an idea of what it perhaps "ought" to be. (Not sure what that is, though!)

Per Bank of England inflation calculator

£10 in 1983 is now £33
so £20 adult fare now £66

 

[TheGuy77]

I remember a child weekend return from a Surrey station in to Stafford via Not London (i.e. XC) was exactly £10.00 in the summer of 1983. (I didn't pay for it myself, being still under 16, but I distinctly remember the round figure for the price!)

Double it to get adult fare and apply inflation since then, and do the maths to account for the longer distance involved when travelling from Birmingham to Edinburgh, and I guess that gives you an idea of what it perhaps "ought" to be, if we assume 80s pricing was reasonable. (Not sure what that is, though!)

£20 adjusted for inflation today is around £66.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Aug 2024 ==

I remember a child weekend return from a Surrey station (not far from Guildford) to Stafford via Not London (i.e. XC) was exactly £10.00 in the summer of 1983.

Double it to get adult fare and apply inflation since then, and do the maths to account for the longer distance involved when travelling from Birmingham to Edinburgh, and I guess that gives you an idea of what it perhaps "ought" to be, if we assume 80s pricing was reasonable.

At a guess I'd say it would end up as something perhaps around £120 for a multi-day off-peak return. Purely guesswork though, haven't done the maths!

I've been searching Trainline for how much that ticket would cost today. I did Basingstoke to Stafford for 1 adult (I had to do it roughly since XC don't go to Surrey anymore), return within 1 week of August both at around 1200 and it costs £77 with SplitSave (or £154.89 without). So you can save quite a lot if you use SplitSave.