Annual All-Lines Pass: could it ever work?

[berneyarms]

€340 a month seems quite steep. I can't imagine a ticket at that sort of price being popular here.

I think something pitched a bit higher than Germany's €49 could be transformative, rather than niche.

While it is a niche product, you’re missing the bit at the bottom.

Anyone buying the ticket would be doing it through the Taxsaver scheme - the cost would be reduced by 52%.

The effective cost would be €164 a month for anyone paying the higher tax rate.

 

[yorksrob]

While it is a niche product, you’re missing the bit at the bottom.

Anyone buying the ticket would be doing it through the Taxsaver scheme - the cost would be reduced by 52%.

The effective cost would be €164 a month for anyone paying the higher tax rate.

Thanks for the explanation. That would make it less niche certainly !

 

[AlastairFraser]

It could be handy for some regular business travellers I suppose.

At that price you'd want it to include NIR as well.

Tbh the Enterprise isn't much more from the border, and I think Belfast is the only city a business traveller would regularly access by train.

 

[Egg Centric]

Thought experiment: What happens if we put up the basic rate by 3% and make railways free at the point of use?

 

[AlastairFraser]

Thought experiment: What happens if we put up the basic rate by 3% and make railways free at the point of use?

Overcrowding, massive overcrowding. And I'm not sure 3 percent would cover the investment needs to deal with that overcrowding, even with all the savings from getting rid of ticket offices RPIs and the commercial aspects of guards etc..

 

[JonathanH]

Thought experiment: What happens if we put up the basic rate by 3% and make railways free at the point of use?

Wouldn't it be better to put up the basic rate of tax by 3%, spend it on infrastructure, and still charge people to use the railway? What is the fascination with not charging for the railway in proportion to demand?

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

Thought experiment: What happens if we put up the basic rate by 3% and make railways free at the point of use?

This would be extremely dangerous.

You need to be able to predict and control demand - pricing control is one of the few effective ways this can be achieved. There needs to be incentives or penalties for customers to travel at times of the day where/when sufficient capacity exists. This means everything from making sure there are sufficient staff at stations to suitable timetables and rolling stock.

Your idea would only work if customers were required to obtain a free, mandatory reservation for a specific service and it was enforced rigourously to stop it all becoming a free for all. Once the train was sold out, no further reservations could be made.

Our railways barely manage to deliver the capacity needed now, let alone with substantial numbers of new/additional passengers. The cost to facilitate this would far exceed any additional tax receipts.

 

[HSTEd]

This would be extremely dangerous.

You need to be able to predict and control demand - pricing control is one of the few effective ways this can be achieved. There needs to be incentives or penalties for customers to travel at times of the day where/when sufficient capacity exists. This means everything from making sure there are sufficient staff at stations to suitable timetables and rolling stock.

In such a scenario, crowding would control passenger numbers.
If people can't travel at the peak time because they physically can't get onto the train then they will either stop using the railway (thus reducing the crowding) or move their journey to another part of the day (again reducing the crowding).

In essence, the railway would become the Northern Line.

 

[duffield]

In such a scenario, crowding would control passenger numbers.
...

That's a terrible way to do it, and not even very effective from what I've seen. Some Cross Country services have suffered from chronic overcrowding for years, with delightful consequences like being on a service for hours with toilet access impossible. And despite these conditions, you still get people queuing up to cram on and some being turned away to wait an hour for the next service. So why do all these people just keep on trying to travel on these services? Who knows, various reasons, but the fact is that they do, and they are *not* rearranging their travel to quieter times in sufficient numbers to reduce the overcrowding from chronic to tolerable.

 

[HSTEd]

That's a terrible way to do it, and not even very effective from what I've seen. Some Cross Country services have suffered from chronic overcrowding for years, with delightful consequences like being on a service for hours with toilet access impossible. And despite these conditions, you still get people queuing up to cram on and some being turned away to wait an hour for the next service. So why do all these people just keep on trying to travel on these services? Who knows, various reasons, but the fact is that they do, and they are *not* rearranging their travel to quieter times in sufficient numbers to reduce the overcrowding from chronic to tolerable.

The fact that people continue to tolerate the overcrowding would indicate that it is tolerable, at least to substantial numbers of people.
That is apparently a level of overcrowding that people are willing to put up with to get to their destination.

 

[miklcct]

That is apparently a level of overcrowding that people are willing to put up with to get to their destination.

That should be the exception, not the norm. The only situations when such crowding is acceptable is in peak hours, or when there is a large event.

Otherwise it becomes a safety issue when exceptional demands appear.

 

[A S Leib]

I'd guess that free fare works for Luxembourg because there's sufficient capacity for its size? After Luxembourg City, the next largest place is Esch-sur-Alzette, which has 4 tph to Luxembourg City for most of the day for a population below 40,000.

 

[HSTEd]

That should be the exception, not the norm. The only situations when such crowding is acceptable is in peak hours, or when there is a large event.

Otherwise it becomes a safety issue when exceptional demands appear.

Well unfortunately, packing passengers onto trains is likely the only way that a low-cost-to-use railway can be made affordable given the industry's current cost base.
Of course, rolling stock designed for this new environment would be able to haul vast numbers of passengers without major safety issues, but it would look little like existing stock.

 

[Egg Centric]

Just to be clear I'm not advocating it. But my thinking was along the lines of essentially a railway "poll tax". Because the pass idea either has to be so expensive no one will use it, or cheap enough that it detracts considerably from railway income, or something in between which psychologically encourages people to take trains unnecessarily to get value out of their pass. Whereas free rail travel wouldn't have the latter issue for the same reason no one tries to get maximum value out of the NHS by unnecessarily sitting in A&E for hours for a checkup.

(The second thing I was thinking about was the enormous cost to the country of doing this - I just pulled 3% on basic rate out of thin air but I bet it's about right order of magnitude).

 

[HSTEd]

(The second thing I was thinking about was the enormous cost to the country of doing this - I just pulled 3% on basic rate out of thin air but I bet it's about right order of magnitude).

The current passenger farebox is about £9bn per year or something of that order.
So you'd have to work out how much each percent on income tax would raise.

Obviously a railway operated in such a manner would be a very different railway.
A lot of Japanese style standing space

 

[JonathanH]

Whereas free rail travel wouldn't have the latter issue for the same reason no one tries to get maximum value out of the NHS by unnecessarily sitting in A&E for hours for a checkup.

That analogy doesn't work. There is plenty of evidence of 'overcrowding' on NHS services, from issues with waiting lists, to needing to call early for a GP appointment, to queues at A&E.

Extracting maximum value is difficult with the NHS, as the scope for voluntary use is somewhat limited.

With the type of ticket under discussion, people could easily seek to make a long journey every weekend, or make journeys which are currently more expensive to buy than the cost of this ticket. If people aren't extracting more value from it than they current pay, what is the point of it?

 

[43096]

That analogy doesn't work. There is plenty of evidence of 'overcrowding' on NHS services, from issues with waiting lists, to needing to call early for a GP appointment, to queues at A&E.

Extracting maximum value is difficult with the NHS, as the scope for voluntary use is somewhat limited.

With the type of ticket under discussion, people could easily seek to make a long journey every weekend, or make journeys which are currently more expensive to buy than the cost of this ticket. If people aren't extracting more value from it than they current pay, what is the point of it?

And this is the issue which Germany is grappling with at the moment with the €49 Deutschland Ticket. Interesting piece in the new Today's Railways EU about it: essentially they're grappling wiht the problem of decreased revenue, higher subsidies, increased infrastructure costs and federal budget restrictions. And usage is still not back to pre-Covid levels: journeys were around 8% lower last year than 2019.

 

[yorksrob]

That analogy doesn't work. There is plenty of evidence of 'overcrowding' on NHS services, from issues with waiting lists, to needing to call early for a GP appointment, to queues at A&E.

Extracting maximum value is difficult with the NHS, as the scope for voluntary use is somewhat limited.

With the type of ticket under discussion, people could easily seek to make a long journey every weekend, or make journeys which are currently more expensive to buy than the cost of this ticket. If people aren't extracting more value from it than they current pay, what is the point of it?

I feel we're conflating too different scenarios.

There's a world of difference between a railway system that's "free at the point of delivery" and one with a flat fare climate ticket.

 

[HSTEd]

I feel we're conflating too different scenarios.

There's a world of difference between a railway system that's "free at the point of delivery" and one with a flat fare climate ticket.

If the climate ticket costs a few tens of pounds a month, as it does on the continent, it will approach the "free at the point of delivery" railway in terms of demand.

 

[smsm1]

One of the advantages of a ticket on the cheaper end of the scale is that you don't worry about not using it much for a month or two if needed. It becomes more like an optional tax. Someone in Germany that I spoke with who has the ticket hasn't used it much for a few months and then other months used it more. They just kept the subscription going to simplify things.

If we can get enough people to do similar it'll average out nicely and produce more revenue.

I've of the reasons I'd like a ticket that includes local bus and train travel is the complexities if the current ticketing system especially when traveling to a nearby area.

I've looked at getting to some nearby places. The bus journey involves 3 bus operators all with different ticketing, some operators have no idea if the ticket costs, and no cross operator ticketing available and if it is some edge case means there isn't an available fare or key connection is missing (yes looking at you One Ticket - which doesn't work so well with journeys avoiding Edinburgh).

A national tap on and tap off with cross operator capping could work well.

 

[yorksrob]

If the climate ticket costs a few tens of pounds a month, as it does on the continent, it will approach the "free at the point of delivery" railway in terms of demand.

I don't think anything at around the £75 - £100 mark would be anywhere near "free at the point of delivery" in terms of demand. This would still be a significant outlay for most people.

 

[The Ham]

The current passenger farebox is about £9bn per year or something of that order.
So you'd have to work out how much each percent on income tax would raise.

Obviously a railway operated in such a manner would be a very different railway.
A lot of Japanese style standing space

UK government brings in about £302bn from income tax:

Income tax - Office for Budget Responsibility

Taxes on different forms of personal income provide the biggest source of revenue for government. In 2025-26 we estimate that income tax will raise £329 billion. That represents 26.7 per cent of all receipts and is equivalent to around £11,450 per household and 10.8 per cent of national income...

obr.uk

Assuming that's all at 20% then each 1% is £15bn, so a 3% increase would allow the railways to run for free and have £15bn a year for investment and still have some spare to spend on other things (like the NHS).

I had been toying with the idea of a new 5% levy, however to soften the impact NI is reduced by 2%, and it only starts being paid at double the tax free allowance (so £25,140), however unlike NI it has no upper limit and nor does it stop being paid at retirement.

That would be much harder to calculate the tax income.

 

[JamesT]

UK government brings in about £302bn from income tax:

Income tax - Office for Budget Responsibility

Taxes on different forms of personal income provide the biggest source of revenue for government. In 2025-26 we estimate that income tax will raise £329 billion. That represents 26.7 per cent of all receipts and is equivalent to around £11,450 per household and 10.8 per cent of national income...

obr.uk

Assuming that's all at 20% then each 1% is £15bn, so a 3% increase would allow the railways to run for free and have £15bn a year for investment and still have some spare to spend on other things (like the NHS).

I had been toying with the idea of a new 5% levy, however to soften the impact NI is reduced by 2%, and it only starts being paid at double the tax free allowance (so £25,140), however unlike NI it has no upper limit and nor does it stop being paid at retirement.

That would be much harder to calculate the tax income.

I think that's some slightly naive calculations.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5801/cmselect/cmtreasy/664/66408.htm is from a presentation to Parliament about tax and includes:

90.HMRC provides an illustrative guide to the direct impact of tax changes on revenues, which shows that:

a 1p increase in the basic rate of income tax would raise £5.5bn in 2022/23 (0.2% of GDP), and a 1p increase in the higher rate would raise £1.3bn in 2022/23 (0.1% of GDP);
A 10% cut in the income tax personal allowance would raise £8.8bn in 2022/23 (0.4% of GDP);
A 1% increase in Class 1 national insurance contributions would raise £4.3bn in 2022/23 (0.2% of GDP); and
A 1p increase in the rate of VAT would raise £6.7bn in 2022–3 (0.3% of GDP).

You have to take into account that people will change their behaviour in relation to taxation, so it won't be a simple arithmetic increase. Dropping the 50p tax rate down to 45p was estimated to have only cost £360m over 5 years as people no longer structured their affairs to avoid it.

 

[JonathanH]

I don't think anything at around the £75 - £100 mark would be anywhere near "free at the point of delivery" in terms of demand. This would still be a significant outlay for most people.

At that price, it would still be too inexpensive for what it offers. £100 a month is broadly what bus companies charge for local town area monthly season tickets. Trying to justify that low a charge for some form of unlimited access to the railway just doesn't make sense.

Can you set out a monthly 'use case' for what level of travel you think a typical user who paid their £75 would then make.

 

[yorksrob]

At that price, it would still be too inexpensive for what it offers. £100 a month is broadly what bus companies charge for local town area monthly season tickets. Trying to justify that low a charge for some form of unlimited access to the railway just doesn't make sense.

Can you set out a monthly 'use case' for what level of travel you think a typical user who paid their £75 would then make.

£75 - £100 a month is clearly massively overpriced for local bus transport - particularly in the context of the £2 fare scheme.

A lower than that level access charge clearly makes sense in many countries, so should do here.

It makes sense because it makes a transformational improvement to peoples ability to go about their daily lives by public transport. That is what is needed, not another niche product for rich businessmen.

 

[A S Leib]

Portugal's planning on introducing a national pass, including on intercity trains, for €20 per month (link).

PORTUGAL’s prime minister has announced the introduction of a new €20 monthly rail pass. Mr Luís Montenegro says the new Green Rail Pass will give access “to all urban, regional, inter-regional trains and the inter-city network” at a reduced price and will be valid on all services operated by Portuguese Trains (CP), except premium Alfa Pendular trains.

The Portuguese ticket will cost less than half the price of similar European national passes, including Germany’s popular Deutschlandticket. Unlike the German version, which is valid on local and regional trains only, the Portuguese pass will also be valid for inter-city journeys. It will not be valid on other public transport, such as metros and light rail.

 

[smsm1]

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-increases-deutschlandticket-price-to-58/a-70300975

The "Deutschlandticket" monthly travel pass allows passengers unlimited trips on local and regional trains, trams and buses. Starting in 2025, the ticket will be €9 more expensive.

The Deutschland ticket is being increased to €58 per month, so the rumours of the price increase are true.

 

[yorksrob]

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-increases-deutschlandticket-price-to-58/a-70300975

The Deutschland ticket is being increased to €58 per month, so the rumours of the price increase are true.

Still a very reasonable price.

 

[fishwomp]

€340 a month seems quite steep. I can't imagine a ticket at that sort of price being popular here.

I think something pitched a bit higher than Germany's €49 could be transformative, rather than niche.

(On the Irish rail ticket) £285 a month? Or after the tax break, about £140. I'd buy that if it were in the UK! Unlimited even in the peak??

There are a lot of Oxford to London commuters (£614 a month) who would snap that up!

Irish rail coverage, speed and frequency isn't comparable to mainland UK travel options and reach though!

I'd happily pay more for a better discounted and more available Railcard (expanding when and who), I would then not think twice about driving.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It's London commuter season ticket fares that are the big issue with this sort of ticket, to be honest - you can't do one at a reasonable price without significantly discounting a load of London commutes. (And creating some silly ones - I don't doubt there would be a load of daily Manchester-London commuters at that price, for instance).