Expansion of LNER 70-min flex trial area ("Simpler Fares")

[Bletchleyite]

The other thing that may have reduced revenue is people who would previously buy Super Off Peaks switching to booking Advances well in advance, as if they can't have the flexibility they may as well keep the price down. This won't be many, though. You can't necessarily assume that everyone who previously travelled walk-up would do under this system.

 

[yorksrob]

Depends on your needs I think.

If you can always just jump in the car if you don't like the train fares, that's one thing.

If you don't have that choice, bustituting some branch lines in return for keeping a walk-up railway on the bulk of the network might seem like a better option.

But if the trial hasn't generated any additional revenue, not carrying on with it won't have any bearing on bustituting lines. If this additional revenue generated by the fares trial doesn't actually exist in the first place, how can you substitute it with supposed savings from bustituted lines (quite apart from that being even more unpalatable than the fares trial anyway).

Plus your premise is motor-centric.

Well, quite.

All I meant was the trial is probably going well by their lights even if it hasn't generated any additional revenue and patronage is down. But it is a PR problem for them if patronage is down given they said they were aiming to increase patronage. Which it would be if they'd told the truth at the outset.

I agree whether they have a PR problem or not is irrelevant to whether this is a good idea. It's a terrible idea no matter how well or badly it is presented.

I also readily admit that if they'd told the truth about their objectives, while the outcome of the trial wouldn't be as embarrassing, they would have had a different problem: almost everybody in the country apart from the Treasury, DfT and a few business travellers who don't pay their own fares would have been opposed to the trial and to it's stated objectives.

They'd have had negative headlines and severe criticism from environmentalists (and who knows, possibly a Judicial Review claim under climate legislation) if they admitted to having a policy of deliberately driving modal shift from rail to road.

It's a shame that the press (railway or otherwise) does nothing to smoke them out in this respect.

The other thing that may have reduced revenue is people who would previously buy Super Off Peaks switching to booking Advances well in advance, as if they can't have the flexibility they may as well keep the price down. This won't be many, though. You can't necessarily assume that everyone who previously travelled walk-up would do under this system.

That could well be what's happening.

 

[AdamWW]

Plus your premise is motor-centric.

I was in fact suggesting the following view (which was based on the presumption that the trial had increased revenue):

I'd accept, but still not like, the idea that this had to be done to increase revenue in preference to the Government foisting other cuts on the railway such as closures.

is, as you put it, motor-centric.

I think that someone reliant on public transport might prefer some branch lines to be replaced by bus services if the alternative is to have their ability to make long distance journeys by train priced out of their reach.

 

[Bletchleyite]

is, as you put it, motor-centric.

I think that someone reliant on public transport might prefer some branch lines to be replaced by bus services if the alternative is to have their ability to make long distance journeys by train priced out of their reach.

Possibly. But then given how bus services don't tend to stick around if not profitable, the non car owner might not prefer their local branch to be closed as it would affect them far more often than the occasional long distance trip.

But yes, the revelation that it hasn't increased revenue is to me very significant. I think LNER now favour it simply because it avoids people shouting about overcrowding. (People may be unhappy about "sold out" but don't shout about it as much, and "the railway is expensive" is the perception anyway, it getting a bit more expensive doesn't affect that perception).

 

[AdamWW]

Possibly. But then given how bus services don't tend to stick around if not profitable, the non car owner might not prefer their local branch to be closed as it would affect them far more often than the occasional long distance trip.

True indeed. But if it's not a local branch...

But yes, the revelation that it hasn't increased revenue is to me very significant. I think LNER now favour it simply because it avoids people shouting about overcrowding. (People may be unhappy about "sold out" but don't shout about it as much, and "the railway is expensive" is the perception anyway, it getting a bit more expensive doesn't affect that perception).

If that's really the case then it's truly horrible. Losing flexibility and having to pay a lot more if you can't book well in advance...and it's not even raising more money?

There has to be a better way than this.

 

[Trainbike46]

True indeed. But if it's not a local branch...

everyone would prefer any service reductions happened somewhere far waya from them, but that's not really a fair comparison is it?

If that's really the case then it's truly horrible. Losing flexibility and having to pay a lot more if you can't book well in advance...and it's not even raising more money?

If it's true it's very concerning - I never liked this second stage of removing super off-peak tickets, and in my view should be reversed

There has to be a better way than this.

certainly - my view would be longer trains for LNER - and 11-car/~285m wouldn't need more staff than a 9 or 10 car anyway, so should be cheaper per seat. LNER is getting the new CAF trains, I'd hope they went and fully maximised their length, and use them on their busiest services

 

[yorksrob]

There has to be a better way than this.

There is.

The status quo.

 

[AdamWW]

everyone would prefer any service reductions happened somewhere far waya from them, but that's not really a fair comparison is it?

Maybe not.

But abolishing the walk-up railway wouldn't be far away for anyone.

 

[BRX]

Has anyone been trying to keep track of LNER's "assurances"?

There are three listed here

During the trial the following assurances are in place:
1. There is a maximum price: the “Fully Flexible” (Anytime) ticket.
2. A large selection of cheap seats: at least 2/3 of all “Fixed” (Advance) tickets sold will be priced at 50 per cent or less than the price of the Fully Flexible (Anytime) ticket.
3. A maximum of 10 per cent of all “Fixed” (Advance) tickets will be sold at 80 per cent or more of the Fully Flexible (Anytime) price

Then there are some PDFs floating around with what they call a "fact checker" section. To confuse things, what they list here as "Assurance 3" is actually the original "Assurance 2" and "Assurance 4" is the original "Assurance 3".

From here:

https://www.lner.co.uk/globalassets/competitions/simpler-fares_lner-website-copy_enhanced_finalv2.pdf

is this:

Fact Checker
LNER wants to make travelling by train a more attractive proposition. Here are some of our latest
statistics on how Simpler Fares is offering good value for passengers:

Performance against Customer Assurances (August 2024)
• Assurance 3: 85.8% (vs. >67%) of Standard Advance fares sold were priced at less than half the
cost of the Fully Flexible (Anytime) fare
• Assurance 4: 0.2% (vs. <10%) of Standard Advance fares sold were priced at over 80% of the cost
of the Fully Flexible (Anytime) fare

Stats specific to the Simpler Fares pilot and the new Semi-Flexible fare (August 2024)
• There are 300,000 new Semi-Flexible tickets priced at less than the old Super Off-Peak fare in the
booking horizon (for travel from 30th September until 21st December)
• There are 2 MILLION Standard Advance fares available and priced lower than the Super Off-Peak
fare on trains where the Super Off-Peak fare was previously valid (for travel from 30th September until 21st
December).
• Approximately half of all 70min Flex fares sold in Standard Class cost less than the old Super Off-
Peak fare
• 8 out of 10 customers who purchased the new 70min Flex travelled on their booked trains
• 75% of all ‘Digital Flex’ changes (direct customers using LNER App/Web) are occurring within 24hrs
to departure (50% within 2hrs)
• Of those customers that undertake a walk up flex, 3 times as many customers are swapping onto
earlier trains than later trains
• The majority of customers who are swapping are doing so in the Northbound direction (likely
homeward)

And from here:

https://www.lner.co.uk/globalassets/_page-structure/simpler-fares/simpler-fares-v3.pdf

is this:

Fact Checker
LNER wants to make travelling by train a more attractive proposition. Here are some of our latest
statistics on how Simpler Fares is offering good value for passengers:

Performance against Customer Assurances (3rd June 2024)
• Assurance 3: 93.5% (vs. >67%) of Standard Advance fares sold were priced at less than half the
cost of the Fully Flexible (Anytime) fare
• Assurance 4: 0.4% (vs. <10%) of Standard Advance fares sold were priced at over 80% of the
cost of the Fully Flexible (Anytime) fare

Stats specific to the Simpler Fares pilot and the new Semi-Flexible fare (3rd June 2024)
• There are 508,900 new Semi-Flexible tickets priced at less than the old Super Off-Peak fare in
the booking horizon
• There are 3.7 MILLION Standard Advance fares available and priced lower than the Super Off-
Peak fare on trains where the Super Off-Peak fare was previously valid
• Approximately half of all 70min Flex fares sold in Standard Class cost less than the old Super Off-
Peak fare
• 8 out of 10 customers who purchased the new 70min Flex travelled on their booked trains
• 75% of all ‘Digital Flex’ changes (direct customers using LNER App/Web) are occurring within
24hrs to departure (50% within 2hrs)
• Of those customers that undertake a Flex, 3 times as many customers are swapping onto earlier
trains than later trains
• The majority of customers who are swapping are doing so in the Northbound direction
(homeward)

I am not quite sure why v2 is dated August and v3 is dated June.

 

[takno]

I am not quite sure why v2 is dated August and v3 is dated June.

You have questions, and we have answers. If you are not paying attention you may not notice that our answers are to completely different questions from the ones you asked.

They really don't seem to want to talk about how much on-the-day purchasers are paying now, and seem more reluctant than they were in the past to talk about how much passengers buying one or two days in advance are paying.

Interesting that the majority of people are moving onto an earlier train. LNER will probably interpret this as meaning that people enjoy the ability to turn up early, but it strikes me as more likely a sign that people need the flexibility to turn up more than an hour late, and are therefore booking the train after the one they want in order to get the flexibility on the right side.

 

[BRX]

Approximately half of all 70min Flex fares sold in Standard Class cost less than the old Super Off-Peak fare

These kinds of statements are quite infuriating.

It's obviously designed to lead to the impression that on average, the prices are about the same as before.

But you could have 50% of your Flex tickets priced at £1 less than the Super off Peak, and the other 50% priced at £1 less than the Anytime fare, and that statement would still be true.

 

[Bletchleyite]

These kinds of statements are quite infuriating.

It's obviously designed to lead to the impression that on average, the prices are about the same as before.

But you could have 50% of your Flex tickets priced at £1 less than the Super off Peak, and the other 50% priced at £1 less than the Anytime fare, and that statement would still be true.

It also doesn't take account of the fact that a lot of formerly off peak trains offer only the Anytime fare unless you split. I was surprised by this to be honest - I had expected them to release Advance quotas for every seat, albeit some very close to the Anytime fare. Lumo seem to manage to do this.

It feels to me to be badly managed even given the original intention. This sort of scheme really needs a much heavier level of management than the traditional structure. I wonder if they've been flogged an expensive piece of software to do it and effectively been had?

 

[MrJeeves]

I wonder if they've been flogged an expensive piece of software to do it and effectively been had?

Yes, the whole industry have. It's called RARS.

 

[yorksrob]

Has anyone been trying to keep track of LNER's "assurances"?

There are three listed here



Then there are some PDFs floating around with what they call a "fact checker" section. To confuse things, what they list here as "Assurance 3" is actually the original "Assurance 2" and "Assurance 4" is the original "Assurance 3".

From here:

https://www.lner.co.uk/globalassets/competitions/simpler-fares_lner-website-copy_enhanced_finalv2.pdf

is this:







And from here:

https://www.lner.co.uk/globalassets/_page-structure/simpler-fares/simpler-fares-v3.pdf

is this:







I am not quite sure why v2 is dated August and v3 is dated June.

I'm not sure what they think they're supposed to be "assuring" me of, other than that their products are worse and more expensive than before the trial (which I knew anyway).

 

[Wallsendmag]

Yes, the whole industry have. It's called RARS.

I think he means ROSE at least I think thats the name.

 

[AdamWW]

I think he means ROSE at least I think thats the name.

I think he means RARS: Rail availability and reservation service

 

[Kite159]

These kinds of statements are quite infuriating.

It's obviously designed to lead to the impression that on average, the prices are about the same as before.

But you could have 50% of your Flex tickets priced at £1 less than the Super off Peak, and the other 50% priced at £1 less than the Anytime fare, and that statement would still be true.

And before the changes on days when trains were expected to be busy (a bank holiday Monday when the WCML/MML was closed) they would sell advance tickets for 50p less than the old super off-peak single fare with maybe offering some cheaper tickets on the trains at the start/end of the day.

These days those fares would be a lot more money as the price cap offered by the super off-peak single has vanished.

 

[Adam Williams]

Yes, the whole industry have. It's called RARS.

Don't forget the cost of the the so-called Decision Support System (DSS).

That's Revenue Analytics/FareVantage for LNER (nicknamed "ROSE"), which automatically "optimises" the logical availability of Advances on their services in the background to squeeze out more revenue.

 

[ThisIsSurbiton]

Don't forget the cost of the the so-called Decision Support System (DSS).

That's Revenue Analytics/FareVantage for LNER

As an end user of it all, I don't see what happens on the way in to RARS, on the TOC side. I imagine that some have much better software or more people to maintain stuff like this than others. I'm surprised there hasn't been more of a push to use more of the features available within S3 itself (the product behind RARS), essentially replacing "how many seats have you got from A to B for each of these 100 ticket types at prices we already know?" with "how much will it cost to go from A to B?". Quite a change that would require a lot of TOCs to change their processes. Now, what if we didn't have so many TOCs?

 

[Adam Williams]

I'm surprised there hasn't been more of a push to use more of the features available within S3 itself (the product behind RARS), essentially replacing "how many seats have you got from A to B for each of these 100 ticket types at prices we already know?" with "how much will it cost to go from A to B?"

Oh, I think they've tried. Sqills would love to make a killing doing that sort of thing. I hope it never happens though because diversification of fares engines is a Good Thing for consumers, who pay less as a result. I can see some larger retailers who operate internationally and use the S3P APIs for those territories finding the idea appealing though, if it means one consistent set of APIs to use for most of their markets and less to maintain in Great Britain.

I can't say I've been left very impressed when I've looked at how some of the other online retail works in territories outside the UK, where Sqills deal with more of it (including fulfilment etc). There's an awful lot of room for improvement in some parts of their suite.

The real answer here, that doesn't stifle innovation or lead to further vendor lock-in, is to open up the availability data such that retailers can implement their own innovative, revenue generating solutions using it.

 

[Wallsendmag]

I think he means RARS: Rail availability and reservation service

Nope

 

[Trainbike46]

Oh, I think they've tried. Sqills would love to make a killing doing that sort of thing. I hope it never happens though because diversification of fares engines is a Good Thing for consumers, who pay less as a result. I can see some larger retailers who operate internationally and use the S3P APIs for those territories finding the idea appealing though, if it means one consistent set of APIs to use for most of their markets and less to maintain in Great Britain.

Agreed that in the UK, some third party-retailers offer real, helpful extra features, for example, the splitting engine on TrainSplit/the forum's ticket website, and the ease of selecting specific fares on MixingDeck (not third-party, but still). There's other retailers that almost appear to be a scam though.

However, at the same time, the fact that third-party ticket websites are helpful is partly driven by the fare system we have. I can't think of a single thing a third-party seller could offer for TfL tickets, compared to oyster or contactless. Of course, LNER's practices make third-party ticket websites more important.

 

[takno]

However, at the same time, the fact that third-party ticket websites are helpful is partly driven by the fare system we have. I can't think of a single thing a third-party seller could offer for TfL tickets, compared to oyster or contactless. Of course, LNER's practices make third-party ticket websites more important.

I can't think of any way LNER is improved by third party websites. In terms of the retailing process the only real problem with their website is that it respects their stupid mandatory reservations flags, and all the third party websites seem to do that as well. It's not even a route where split-ticketing regularly saves money. The actual tickets they sell are awful, but that's the same range of tickets you get via 3rd parties.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I can't think of any way LNER is improved by third party websites. In terms of the retailing process the only real problem with their website is that it respects their stupid mandatory reservations flags, and all the third party websites seem to do that as well. It's not even a route where split-ticketing regularly saves money.

The trial route absolutely is. Often massive savings, sometimes over a hundred quid.

 

[Haywain]

Agreed that in the UK, some third party-retailers offer real, helpful extra features, for example, the splitting engine on TrainSplit/the forum's ticket website, and the ease of selecting specific fares on MixingDeck (not third-party, but still). There's other retailers that almost appear to be a scam though.

However, at the same time, the fact that third-party ticket websites are helpful is partly driven by the fare system we have. I can't think of a single thing a third-party seller could offer for TfL tickets, compared to oyster or contactless. Of course, LNER's practices make third-party ticket websites more important.

Diffetent user interfaces suit different people, so variety is a good thing. It has just taken me three attempts to buy a ticket on the RST Online website because of a badly positioned button in the mobile view - which is why I would prefer to use an alternative (but in this case there isn’t one).

 

[AdamWW]

Diffetent user interfaces suit different people, so variety is a good thing. It has just taken me three attempts to buy a ticket on the RST Online website because of a badly positioned button in the mobile view - which is why I would prefer to use an alternative (but in this case there isn’t one).

Third party web sites can also offer actual customer service (see for example this forum's site) rather than a pretence of one.

 

[Haywain]

Third party web sites can also offer actual customer service (see for example this forum's site) rather than a pretence of one.

Indeed.

 

[Chester1]

But yes, the revelation that it hasn't increased revenue is to me very significant. I think LNER now favour it simply because it avoids people shouting about overcrowding. (People may be unhappy about "sold out" but don't shout about it as much, and "the railway is expensive" is the perception anyway, it getting a bit more expensive doesn't affect that perception).

The end result of shouting about overcrowding of long distance services was always likely to a move towards compulsory reservation on routes with limited options to increase capacity. LNER has effectively done that with this trial.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The end result of shouting about overcrowding of long distance services was always likely to a move towards compulsory reservation on routes with limited options to increase capacity. LNER has effectively done that with this trial.

I think Tazi mentioned that this sort of thing is a "passive" way of doing that, which the railway likes because it reduces confrontation. If you just make flexible tickets really expensive, you're not having to start fining people for boarding without reservations, because almost everyone will have one.

It doesn't excuse cranking up the on-the-day prices, though - I can as I've said before be sold on compulsory reservation (provided policies around it are reasonable*) but I have an issue with effectively malicious damage to walk-up travel. While yield management effectively requires CR, CR doesn't require yield management - plenty of railways worldwide have flat prices and CR.

* Many policies around Advances are not, because they date back to when they were bargain bucket fares, not the default fare. Such as break of journey, refundability, change fees and what happens in disruption.

 

[AdamWW]

* Many policies around Advances are not, because they date back to when they were bargain bucket fares, not the default fare. Such as break of journey, refundability, change fees and what happens in disruption.

Quite.

We seem to be sleepwalking into the world of compulsory reservations and airline style pricing that some other European countries have already moved to, but with the awful terms and conditions that made (some) sense for advances as an option for an otherwise walk-up railway.