Aylesbury Vale Parkway <> London Marylebone Ticket Type

[jay447]

Hello all,

A quick question about ticketing which I hope someone more in the know than me may be able to help with. I live near Aylesbury Vale Parkway, and regularly commute into Marylebone. Up until a few months ago I was able to buy via TrainSplit an AVP > London Underground Zone 1-6 paper-only ticket which was a few pounds cheaper than a standard Anytime Day Single. This option now seems to have disappeared. I assume it's something to do with the contactless roll out, but was wondering if I'm missing entering another London destination to bring up a cheaper and/or paper-only ticket option?

I can't quite compute why the prices on the Aylesbury line seem to have gone up since this, but on the Tring <> Euston line (which I also use frequently) they seem to have gone down?!

Many thanks in advance!

 

[OscarH]

Firstly, the decrease on the Tring to Euston I assume is unrelated, possibly Oval (contactless) related.

This is unlikely to be the contactless rollout. What I suspect it is is a ridiculous policy change by the TOCs (in reality pushed through by one or two with no wider thought) to change how these tickets with a single tube journey worked.

Previously retailers could simply take the normal fare to the interchange station, eg Marylebone, then add a fixed amount for the underground zones in question. This was removed and now these fares can only be offered when the TOC has explicitly priced a fare from the origin to those zones for that ticket code - ie a massive increase in what needs to be defined that basically no TOCs has bothered with doing across the board.

Ironically, a couple of TOCs that threw a strop about the old method (for no good reason I'll add), have screwed it up for the other TOCs because the defined fare method has so many more anomalies. Unfortunately there's very little oversight to prevent moronic things like this happening.

 

[jay447]

Firstly, the decrease on the Tring to Euston I assume is unrelated, possibly Oval (contactless) related.

This is unlikely to be the contactless rollout. What I suspect it is is a ridiculous policy change by the TOCs (in reality pushed through by one or two with no wider thought) to change how these tickets with a single tube journey worked.

Previously retailers could simply take the normal fare to the interchange station, eg Marylebone, then add a fixed amount for the underground zones in question. This was removed and now these fares can only be offered when the TOC has explicitly priced a fare from the origin to those zones for that ticket code - ie a massive increase in what needs to be defined that basically no TOCs has bothered with doing across the board.

Ironically, a couple of TOCs that threw a strop about the old method (for no good reason I'll add), have screwed it up for the other TOCs because the defined fare method has so many more anomalies. Unfortunately there's very little oversight to prevent moronic things like this happening.

Hello OscarH, thank you for your reply. That makes sense - albeit a shame! In that case I hope that when Oval is rolled out to the Aylesbury <> Marylebone line it will have a positive impact on prices, as it seems to have done on the LNW lines.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Hello OscarH, thank you for your reply. That makes sense - albeit a shame! In that case I hope that when Oval is rolled out to the Aylesbury <> Marylebone line it will have a positive impact on prices, as it seems to have done on the LNW lines.

I believe AVP is in the next phase of Oval, so you hopefully shouldn't be waiting *too* long.

Aside from single fare pricing (which Oval requires), there is something very odd going on with fares on the south WCML under contactless which seems to be something to do with capping and out boundary fares. It will probably be fixed at some point but it is resulting in a much lower cap than should apply at the moment - it certainly seems to affect Bletchley and Berkhamsted but I'd imagine it also affects Tring.

 

[CyrusWuff]

This is unlikely to be the contactless rollout. What I suspect it is is a ridiculous policy change by the TOCs (in reality pushed through by one or two with no wider thought) to change how these tickets with a single tube journey worked.

Previously retailers could simply take the normal fare to the interchange station, eg Marylebone, then add a fixed amount for the underground zones in question.

Looking at BRFares, that appears to be how Chiltern are pricing the tickets.

AVP - Marylebone Single is £23.40
AVP - U1256 Single is £29.20, which is an add-on of £5.80.

From Aylesbury, the fares are £21.90 and £27.70, still a £5.80 add-on.

What they haven't done is set a fare for Zones 1-5 or 1-6 based on a change at Harrow-on-the-Hill, presumably on the assumption that the vast majority of passengers heading for Zone 1 will change at Marylebone.

 

[kieron]

If you had a hypothetical Aylesbury Vale Parkway – U1256 "via Harrow-on-the-Hill" ticket, you could stay on the train until Marylebone with it because of interavailability.

There are "via Harrow-on-the-Hill", "via Northolt" and "via Chalfont & Latimer" tickets for if you're not going into zone 1, though.

 

[jay447]

Many thanks for all of your thoughts and suggestions, much appreciated!