Low-hanging fruit for fare reform

[HSTEd]

Northern like PFing/prosecuting people who get on at the wrong station with Advances to save about 50p.

But away from this sort of penny pinching, the only significant one I know about is the WCML restrictions split. South of and including Preston (including Blackpool, Liverpool and Manchester) Off Peak restrictions are significantly tighter than north of it including Lancaster. As such, break of journey restrictions exist on the outward part of tickets between Euston/MKC and Lancaster and points north, but not points south, so this can be enforced. If restrictions were somehow standardised as noted above, this sort of issue wouldn't exist, and it doesn't exist on the ECML where there isn't a split like that, with all ECML walk up fares I know of permitting break of journey. Aside from this case it's rare to hear of Break of Journey being enforced on walk up fares.

I do tend to come down on the side that it would make sense to follow XC in standardising Off Peaks to just "boarding a train 0930 or later", but you'd have to increase some of them to recognise that nobody would ever then buy Anytime Returns and balance it with Advances. It does create its own anomalies (in some cases a split becomes worthwhile) but the anomalies caused by a simple rule like that are much smaller than those with more complex rules, and it IS simple.

Unfortunately the routeing data system is a bit of a mess.
Unless someone knows of a tool that returns all possible routes between two stations, determining if any major holes in a distance system would exist would prove quite difficult.

To my mind, it seems unlikely that a distance based system would have any wierd break of journey loopholes, because it would require a valid route to be vastly longer than the shortest one.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Unfortunately the routeing data system is a bit of a mess.
Unless someone knows of a tool that returns all possible routes between two stations, determining if any major holes in a distance system would exist would prove quite difficult.

Generally you can probably identify them post-go-live by way of "big data" when you start seeing loads of people starting their peak time journey at Manchester Piccadilly having bought a ticket from Lancaster because it's cheaper (for example). You can then look at how to plug them.

If an exploit exists but nobody is actually using it or it only loses a small sum, it doesn't really matter very much.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I have some sympathy with this position.
I think you'd have to do a proper study of distance fares as a concept, given current routing arrangements, and determine how many (if any) actually problematic break of journey loopholes appear.

I can't think of many journeys where a permitted routing is vastly longer than the shortest possible routing, so I can't imagine any loophole will be that lucrative.

If tickets were mostly replaced by touch-in/touch out on contactless, then this kind of loophole wouldn't really exist anyway, because the system would always charge you based on where you actually started and ended your journey, even if the fare to somewhere further on the line was actually cheaper.

The only two issues then become
1. Are there any places where you'd want to charge more for one realistic route compared to another one (comparable to, avoiding Zone 1 in London)? Off the top of my head, I can't think of anywhere else where this applies and where it would be crucial to keep the differential fare. If there are no places like this in practice, then this one is not a real issue.
2. What do you do with someone who touches in but not out (or vice versa)? That's a tougher problem. You probably want to charge some high-ish maximum fare, refundable if the person contacts a helpline to say what their journey actually was. But you probably couldn't set the max fare higher than £30-ish, which opens the door to people actually making very long journeys that cost more than that deliberately forgetting to touch out.

 

[HSTEd]

If tickets were mostly replaced by touch-in/touch out on contactless, then this kind of loophole wouldn't really exist anyway, because the system would always charge you based on where you actually started and ended your journey, even if the fare to somewhere further on the line was actually cheaper.

Well yes, but contactless is unlikely to replace tickets for long, very expensive journeys.
After all, a fail to tap out penalty will form a ceiling on the fare that can be charged on the system.

The only two issues then become
1. Are there any places where you'd want to charge more for one realistic route compared to another one (comparable to, avoiding Zone 1 in London)? Off the top of my head, I can't think of anywhere else where this applies and where it would be crucial to keep the differential fare. If there are no places like this in practice, then this one is not a real issue.
2. What do you do with someone who touches in but not out (or vice versa)? That's a tougher problem. You probably want to charge some high-ish maximum fare, refundable if the person contacts a helpline to say what their journey actually was. But you probably couldn't set the max fare higher than £30-ish, which opens the door to people actually making very long journeys that cost more than that deliberately forgetting to touch out.

Well in that case, I suppose you could (at the cost of some additional complexity), force the LOndon fare to be more, possibly with a flat percentage surcharge?
In order to avoid the London fare you'd have to get your ticket validated at a suitable intermediate routing point.
Although I'm not really convinced its worth it.

£30 single fare isn't even a very long journey fare.
The failure to tap out fee probably has to be at least £100, so I question how workable it is.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Well yes, but contactless is unlikely to replace tickets for long, very expensive journeys.
After all, a fail to tap out penalty will form a ceiling on the fare that can be charged on the system.

I would tend to see the opposite happening. We already have Project Oval rolling out contactless to much of the London commuter area, and I believe similar things are happening in Manchester (?) - though I don't know the details. It's confusing to passengers when contactless applies to some stations but not others, and the convenience of contactless is bound to lead to political pressure to push it out a bit more beyond wherever the existing boundaries are, and then a bit more and then a bit more... (Indeed, Project Oval is arguably a response to political pressure arising from people around London seeing how convenient contactless is within London). I would say it's only a matter of time before the pressure of convenience and the demands for simpler ways of paying fares makes it unstoppable that contactless expands to cover the entire country. Which means the Government/GBR WILL have to figure out a solution to non-touch-outs, and to the issues I mention below.

£30 single fare isn't even a very long journey fare.
The failure to tap out fee probably has to be at least £100, so I question how workable it is.

The problem is, there comes a point at which charging a very high amount could cause financial problems for the person travelling, or even cause the bank to decline the payment because of insufficient funds. I'm sure there are loads of people for whom suddenly losing £100 from their account could mean they have no money to buy food for the next week. That's a serious issue if you're charging £100 to people who forget to touch out when travelling from - say - Basingstoke to Hook, or from Lancaster to Morecambe! But on the other hand, even £100 may be less than lots of possible long distance fares, so it's hardly a maximum.

TfL hasn't had this issue up to now because no possible contactless journey carries a fare anything like that amount. I'm not sure how Project Oval is going to cope with it when fully rolled out?

 

[Kite159]

I can't help but think the proliferation of Advances on TOCs like Northern and TfW is about getting people to buy in advance rather than at the station and thus reducing booking office staffing and TVM provision costs

And to catch people out if they are not aware they purchased a fixed train only advance when they dare board that train 10 minutes early etc.

 

[stevieinselby]

Well yes, but contactless is unlikely to replace tickets for long, very expensive journeys.
After all, a fail to tap out penalty will form a ceiling on the fare that can be charged on the system.

That's begging the question though.

Are you saying "in order to have a maximum penalty fare that isn't going to cause people's bank cards to explode, tap on tap off will only be allowed for journeys up to a certain radius"? If so, how do you enforce that? What then happens if someone does tap on and then make a long journey that's outside that range?

It works for TfL because there's a defined geographical area that it applies to, and so it's easy to say that if you're travelling from within the contactless payment zone to Swanley, Shepperton, Shoeburyness or St Albans then you can use it, and if you're travelling to Brighton, Bicester, Braintree or Basingstoke then you can't. But under the model of "you can use contactless for journeys up to 80 miles", that isn't so clear – each of those stations would allow contactless travel from some stations – you would need to have a custom validity map for each and every station showing what the zone of contactless coverage would be.

If the only reason for arbitrarily capping the distance at which passengers could/should use contactless is to keep the penalty fare for not tapping out at a manageable level then that's very much the tail wagging the dog ... and it still doesn't explain how you would levy an appropriate penalty on someone travelling outside the zone who (a) does, and (b) doesn't tap out. For example, let's say you're a conductor doing a ticket check on a train between Bristol and Bath. A passenger gives you their credit card, which your reader recognises as having tapped on in Blackpool, which is well outside the validity zone. Have they committed a ticketless travel offence? Do you sell them a ticket from Blackpool to Bath and cancel their tap on, do you sell them the ticket for their full journey and leave them to take the penalty fare hit on their tap-on that hasn't been completed, or some other option?

 

[JonathanH]

At the risk of tautology, the purpose of off-peak railcards would, self-evidently, be to get more people on trains at less popular times.

There are different levels of 'less popular'. There are many times when off-peak trains are completely packed, reducing the fare take from passengers travelling at those times would be a bizarre strategy. Saturday mornings for day trips, journeys towards and from 'events', the weekday evening peak, Friday and Sunday evening for long distance travel are all times when it wouldn't make sense to reduce fares.

That doesn't leave you with much times at which further travel is to be encouraged, and it can be done with appropriate pricing of PAYG or Advance tickets.

I wonder if people would accept universal availability of railcards, at the cost of the introduction of a much higher degree of demand-led pricing to pay for it. As we have seen from the LNER trial, the introduction of various forms of demand-led pricing could also be considered 'low hanging fruit for fare reform' from the railway's perspective.

 

[HSTEd]

That's begging the question though.

Are you saying "in order to have a maximum penalty fare that isn't going to cause people's bank cards to explode, tap on tap off will only be allowed for journeys up to a certain radius"? If so, how do you enforce that? What then happens if someone does tap on and then make a long journey that's outside that range?

It works for TfL because there's a defined geographical area that it applies to, and so it's easy to say that if you're travelling from within the contactless payment zone to Swanley, Shepperton, Shoeburyness or St Albans then you can use it, and if you're travelling to Brighton, Bicester, Braintree or Basingstoke then you can't. But under the model of "you can use contactless for journeys up to 80 miles", that isn't so clear – each of those stations would allow contactless travel from some stations – you would need to have a custom validity map for each and every station showing what the zone of contactless coverage would be.

As you note, a radius isn't going to work for the reasons you've outlined - it would be enormously complex.

I think that it would have to be restricted to given network segments. For example, Merseyside, Greater Manchester or such.
These segments would have to be sized such that the tap out penalty can be kept reasonable.

If the only reason for arbitrarily capping the distance at which passengers could/should use contactless is to keep the penalty fare for not tapping out at a manageable level then that's very much the tail wagging the dog

It is a fundamental problem with tap-in tap-out though.
Unless it can be overcome, national contactless is clearly unworkable.

... and it still doesn't explain how you would levy an appropriate penalty on someone travelling outside the zone who (a) does, and (b) doesn't tap out. For example, let's say you're a conductor doing a ticket check on a train between Bristol and Bath. A passenger gives you their credit card, which your reader recognises as having tapped on in Blackpool, which is well outside the validity zone. Have they committed a ticketless travel offence? Do you sell them a ticket from Blackpool to Bath and cancel their tap on, do you sell them the ticket for their full journey and leave them to take the penalty fare hit on their tap-on that hasn't been completed, or some other option?

I'd suggest that you'd consider them to have travelled without a ticket from the edge of the contactless zone in which they tapped in in and proceed accordingly.

The failure to tap out would be treated separately.

The only way I can reconcile the desire for contactless with fares approaching the existing levels would be to force all interchange passengers at stations with gatelines to pass through a gateline.
But this would require major reconstruction of stations, short of forcing people to leave the station and reenter, which is not going to enamour people with the railway.

I guess you could provide guards with machines that could tap people out and in again when they check tickets on trains.

Tap-in-Tap-out only works because the person provides a guarantee that they will pay for their fare, if necessary through the penalty. This penalty has to be large enough to actually be a penalty.

 

[Mark J]

What a stupid policy. You're telling me I can't go for a smoke or for a sandwich between trains? And if I come up on the A side of New St you'd send me back down rather than over to the other gateline?

Break of journey restrictions belong in the bin. When you are legitimately changing trains at a station you should be permitted to leave it if you want. You can at airports (and I've done it). Reduce the number of anomalies that necessitate such restrictions and there is no need for them.

I agree.

When I went to North Devon a couple of months ago, I was allowed through the barriers at Exeter St Davids on an Advance Ticket. There was around a 40 minute wait between connecting trains.

Technically, I would not of been allowed through.

However, what am I expected to do for 40 minutes, whilst waiting for my next connection.

From my experience, if you politely explain such a situation to gate line staff, they will let you through - despite the no break of journey restriction on advance tickets.

 

[Indigo Soup]

But I think the simplest answer is to simply charge for the shortest route.

Noting my preference for a congestion-based element - however that's determined - to the fare function, I'd argue it ought to be charged at the cheapest route. In a system where the fare is strictly proportional to the distance travelled, the two are of course equivalent.

Well in that case, I suppose you could (at the cost of some additional complexity), force the LOndon fare to be more, possibly with a flat percentage surcharge?

That's the congestion-based element. If you wind up in a situation where it's still desirable to go through London, and that's causing problems, then the solution is to improve the non-London routes. Heresy, I know.

The problem is, there comes a point at which charging a very high amount could cause financial problems for the person travelling, or even cause the bank to decline the payment because of insufficient funds.

It's a fundamental weakness of tap-in-tap-out type systems that you don't actually know what the operator is going to decide to charge you until after you've travelled. Which is fine if the maximum amount it could possibly be is small. But even people with fairly respectable reserves of available cash may not wish to keep it in an account where the railway can help itself.

Whatever the advantages of such a system, buying your ticket before you travel means that you clearly understand how much you're paying.

 

[quantinghome]

Talking of routeing, another easy win would be to move back to "any reasonable route" rather than "any permitted route". The latter was brought in at privatisation when it became necessary to define permitted routes so revenue could be split between franchises in a prescriptive way. Moving back to a nationalised operator means this is no longer necessary.

 

[yorksrob]

I wonder if people would accept universal availability of railcards, at the cost of the introduction of a much higher degree of demand-led pricing to pay for it. As we have seen from the LNER trial, the introduction of various forms of demand-led pricing could also be considered 'low hanging fruit for fare reform' from the railway's perspective.

So the only way I would obtain the sort of fares that should be available to me already, would be to accept huge restrictions and inconvenience around when I travel ?

No, I don't think so.

It seems to be a symptom of a railway system run for its own convenience.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 May 2025 ==

Talking of routeing, another easy win would be to move back to "any reasonable route" rather than "any permitted route". The latter was brought in at privatisation when it became necessary to define permitted routes so revenue could be split between franchises in a prescriptive way. Moving back to a nationalised operator means this is no longer necessary.

Yes, agree with this completely.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Talking of routeing, another easy win would be to move back to "any reasonable route" rather than "any permitted route". The latter was brought in at privatisation when it became necessary to define permitted routes so revenue could be split between franchises in a prescriptive way. Moving back to a nationalised operator means this is no longer necessary.

I think it probably is necessary. The issue is that, "any reasonable route" required human judgement as to what counted as 'reasonable'. That worked back in the days when a human being (either yourself or a ticket seller) worked out your journey by checking paper timetables, but it won't cut it when a piece of computer software is planning your route: The computer software needs fixed, hard-coded, rules to determine whether or not it can offer a particular route, and what ticket to recommend for that route.

Of course, that's not to say we couldn't possibly simplify the rules about what counts as a 'permitted route'.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Of course, that's not to say we couldn't possibly simplify the rules about what counts as a 'permitted route'.

Or even better work out a system that isn't prescriptive and just prices whatever route the passenger wishes to take. "You can't go that way so ner, even though it's faster/the trains are nicer/you want to meet a friend" is just typical anti-customer railway stuff.

One of the best things to come out of split ticketing sites is that this no longer applies; you can choose whatever route you want and the split ticket engine will price it for you. But it'd be better if the fare system was designed to actually enable this.

Should Kings X-Finsbury Park via Cambridge be allowed for the same fare as direct? No, clearly not. Should somebody be told "you can't do that" if they request it? Also no; they should be given an appropriate price for it. It's the railway's job to provide transport, not to second-guess why a customer might want to do something a bit unusual if they request it. Even worse than that slightly silly example care of a certain Clive Feather, there are journeys for which there is no fare on a Sunday (e.g. Ormskirk to Preston which used to be accepted via Liverpool but no longer is) - that's just ridiculous - how stupid does "Preston? Nah, you can't go there on a Sunday!" sound?

I decided I wanted to go from MKC to Newcastle via Liverpool a while back. Not quickest, not shortest, not Permitted (that I know of), but a more relaxing way of doing it than subjecting myself to the crowds at the hellhole that is Manchester Victoria, putting up with XC or remortgaging my house to use LNER. So I put it into Trainsplit and it priced it for me, and the price was reasonable. It didn't tell me "not permitted, so ner", it recognised that I wanted something as a customer and offered me a price for it that I was OK with paying.

(An advantage of single fare pricing is that the need for this sort of stuff is reduced anyway - no need to get a ticket where both legs work for you, just book singles the way you want).

 

[HSTEd]

That's the congestion-based element. If you wind up in a situation where it's still desirable to go through London, and that's causing problems, then the solution is to improve the non-London routes. Heresy, I know.

Extraordinarily expensive heresy!

But fundamentally I have little problem with people being encouraged to travel through London.
If people want to collapse themselves into the bulk network flows, that's good for the railway in the long run.

 

[quantinghome]

I think it probably is necessary. The issue is that, "any reasonable route" required human judgement as to what counted as 'reasonable'. That worked back in the days when a human being (either yourself or a ticket seller) worked out your journey by checking paper timetables, but it won't cut it when a piece of computer software is planning your route: The computer software needs fixed, hard-coded, rules to determine whether or not it can offer a particular route, and what ticket to recommend for that route.

Of course, that's not to say we couldn't possibly simplify the rules about what counts as a 'permitted route'.

I'm not sure I follow. There would still be rules linking particular routes with ticket prices, as there were in BR days, e.g. Leeds to Glasgow via Appleby would be priced differently to "any reasonable route". And of course none of this applies to advance tickets which fix the route by dint of the ticket only being valid on for a particular train. Surely route finding computers are programmed to find the quickest way between two stations? Or is that a hopelessly naive view?

What a return to "any reasonable route" avoids is the incredibly arcane procedure that the railway apparently expects passengers to undertake to find out whether certain journey options are "permitted" if they are looking to undertake a more flexible journey. As an example, a few weeks ago I was travelling from London to Leeds but had meetings in Cambridge and Derby. It turned out that it was permitted to break my journey at those stations (of course no computer would have suggested that route for the overall journey). But instead of having to peer into the labyrinth of the routeing guide I should have been able to just do it.

 

[Bletchleyite]

What a return to "any reasonable route" avoids is the incredibly arcane procedure that the railway apparently expects passengers to undertake to find out whether certain journey options are "permitted" if they are looking to undertake a more flexible journey. As an example, a few weeks ago I was travelling from London to Leeds but had meetings in Cambridge and Derby. It turned out that it was permitted to break my journey at those stations (of course no computer would have suggested that route for the overall journey). But instead of having to peer into the labyrinth of the routeing guide I should have been able to just do it.

You don't have to peer into the labyrinth of anything. Just put that journey into any of the journey planners and see if your fare comes up for it.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Or even better work out a system that isn't prescriptive and just prices whatever route the passenger wishes to take. "You can't go that way so ner, even though it's faster/the trains are nicer/you want to meet a friend" is just typical anti-customer railway stuff.

One of the best things to come out of split ticketing sites is that this no longer applies; you can choose whatever route you want and the split ticket engine will price it for you. But it'd be better if the fare system was designed to actually enable this.

I think that is potentially one of the big advantages of a mileage-based fares system. It would enable this because there is no need for anyone to calculate in advance what the fares between any two stations are. To take your example, you want at ticket from MKC to Newcastle via Liverpool? It gets priced up automatically on the fly. Add the miles from MKC to Liverpool to the miles from Liverpool to Newcastle to get the total mileage, and then calculate how much a ticket for that many miles should cost. There is never any possibility of a ticket between any two places not being available because you can always calculate how much a ticket for that mileage should cost. It doesn't even require the cost to be directly proportional to the distance: Any mathematical formula will work just as well (for example the power-law formula I suggested some way up-thread, which causes cost-per-mile to go down for longer journeys).

 

[A S Leib]

Talking of routeing, another easy win would be to move back to "any reasonable route" rather than "any permitted route". The latter was brought in at privatisation when it became necessary to define permitted routes so revenue could be split between franchises in a prescriptive way. Moving back to a nationalised operator means this is no longer necessary.

There's probably hundreds of examples, but to take one, it feels strange that Leeds to Carlisle isn't valid via Newcastle as a single ticket, even at a higher price than via Skipton / Preston. Direct services take ~2:40, changing at Lancaster or Preston ~3:00 and changing at Newcastle effectively the sane time as the latter, but National Rail can't find a valid fare via Newcastle (with permitted routes being GY, MN+MG or NP+GP). It's even stranger when I think it means going through Manchester is a permitted route, so not being able to use intercity services or TPE and CrossCountry services having too little capacity shouldn't be a reason not to allow travel via Newcastle.

---

Should mileage rates in very rural areas continue to be substantially cheaper than elsewhere due to the role they play in reaching essential services in some cases, such as an off-peak day return for the 80 miles from Penzance to Plymouth being £14.70 whilst the off-peak day return from Southampton to Waterloo is £43.90 (via Three Bridges; £60.60 for an any permitted off-peak return. Sorting out the differences between off-peak returns and off-peak day returns should also be done)?

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think that is potentially one of the big advantages of a mileage-based fares system. It would enable this because there is no need for anyone to calculate in advance what the fares between any two stations are. To take your example, you want at ticket from MKC to Newcastle via Liverpool? It gets priced up automatically on the fly. Add the miles from MKC to Liverpool to the miles from Liverpool to Newcastle to get the total mileage, and then calculate how much a ticket for that many miles should cost. There is never any possibility of a ticket between any two places not being available because you can always calculate how much a ticket for that mileage should cost. It doesn't even require the cost to be directly proportional to the distance: Any mathematical formula will work just as well (for example the power-law formula I suggested some way up-thread, which causes cost-per-mile to go down for longer journeys).

I could see value in something like this:

1. Anytime fares based on a mileage based system with some adjustment (using "tariff miles" as Europe uses "tariff kilometres", so some rural lines might be priced down and the ECML might be priced up, say) using rather than a straight "per mile" value a curve, with increasingly longer journeys being cheaper than shorter ones and probably an absolute maximum Anytime Single of around £200 at current prices (by way of that curve tailing off at that cost). This would probably require the WCML Anytimes to reduce a bit but would keep London-Edinburgh about the same. These would be specifically routed in the manner German ones are, but a more expensive one would always be valid via a cheaper route.

2. Off Peak fares invalid for being on a train between 0430 and 0929 across the network* and being calculated as a specific discount, maybe a third or thereabouts. This would be higher than a lot are now but the validity is much greater, and they could be combined with Advances to keep the cost down given that most people know their outward train time even if they don't know their return.

3. Advance fares priced on a market basis but on a "per vehicle journey" basis, so no through fares to exist. The approach to these to change as was once proposed so you don't need to split them, i.e. each piece of the journey is priced based on the quota for that piece.

4. Break of Journey always permitted (as this system would have very few anomalies).

5. All fares priced as singles, though you could do Day Out Returns for Anytime+Off Peak (no need for Anytime for the way back, almost nobody would do a day return and want to both go out and back before 0930!) and Off Peak Day Out Returns for two Off Peaks.

6. No admin fee for changes, just the fare difference if the ticket is an Advance, thus if you want to change your return day on a walk up fare this is free of charge, but it avoids the ticket re-use fraud that is why the railway doesn't like period returns.

* Maybe except Sleepers, but to be honest given the specialist nature of these having them as an entirely dedicated fare set may be better, and single-fare pricing avoids this being an issue.

Booking engines would cobble the journey together out of those and issue against a single itinerary and possibly as a single coupon (though split coupons are for e-tickets sometimes actually easier!). Like with many of the planners that sell European tickets one could tweak with the options for different legs of the journey, such as taking a First Class Advance for the long distance bit but flexible singles for local parts of the journey - I often split to do this but it could be part of the core offering.

It's not perfect and some people would pay more (and some less) if we wanted to do it on a revenue neutral basis (as we'd have to - revenue negative won't** be accepted by the Treasury) - but it seems a fair hybrid and allows market based pricing as well as reasonably affordable walk up options.

** Or maybe it might. With the anomalies in it resulting in oddly low fares if one makes a combined rail and Tube journey, Project Oval can't not be massively revenue negative at the moment and I remain amazed those anomalies remain unfixed.

 

[Trainbike46]

I could see value in something like this:

1. Anytime fares based on a mileage based system with some adjustment (using "tariff miles" as Europe uses "tariff kilometres", so some rural lines might be priced down and the ECML might be priced up, say) using rather than a straight "per mile" value a curve, with increasingly longer journeys being cheaper than shorter ones and probably an absolute maximum Anytime Single of around £200 at current prices (by way of that curve tailing off at that cost).

2. Off Peak fares invalid for being on a train between 0430 and 0929 across the network* and being calculated as a specific discount, maybe a third or thereabouts. This would be higher than a lot are now but the validity is much greater, and they could be combined with Advances to keep the cost down given that most people know their outward train time even if they don't know their return.

3. Advance fares priced on a market basis but on a "per vehicle journey" basis, so no through fares to exist. The approach to these to change as was once proposed so you don't need to split them, i.e. each piece of the journey is priced based on the quota for that piece.

4. Break of Journey always permitted (as this system would have very few anomalies).

5. All fares priced as singles, though you could do Day Out Returns for Anytime+Off Peak (no need for Anytime for the way back) and Off Peak Day Out Returns for two Off Peaks.

6. No admin fee for changes, just the fare difference if the ticket is an Advance, thus if you want to change your return day on a walk up fare this is free of charge, but it avoids the ticket re-use fraud that is why the railway doesn't like period returns.

* Maybe except Sleepers, but to be honest given the specialist nature of these having them as an entirely dedicated fare set may be better, and single-fare pricing avoids this being an issue.

Booking engines would cobble the journey together out of those and issue against a single itinerary and possibly as a single coupon (though split coupons are for e-tickets sometimes actually easier!). Like with many of the planners that sell European tickets one could tweak with the options for different legs of the journey, such as taking a First Class Advance for the long distance bit but flexible singles for local parts of the journey - I often split to do this but it could be part of the core offering.

It's not perfect and some people would pay more (and some less) - but it seems a fair hybrid and allows market based pricing as well as reasonably affordable walk up options.

While this is definitely beyond low-hanging fruit, It sounds like a very reasonable suggestion.

Ideally, there should be a way of eliminating nonsense advances (e.g., very short distance ones, and ones that offer 10p discount of the relevant flexible fare)

 

[HSTEd]

It should be possible to provide an online tool that would tell you if a given route was permitted or not.

 

[A S Leib]

. Off Peak fares invalid for being on a train between 0430 and 0929 across the network*

Should there be some exceptions for cases like the Heart of Wales line, where there's an arrival at Shrewsbury at 09:03 but then not until 13:12?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Should there be some exceptions for cases like the Heart of Wales line, where there's an arrival at Shrewsbury at 09:03 but then not until 13:12?

Rather than having lists of exceptions which make a simple (if imperfect) system complex, the fix for routes like that would probably just be to put Advances in unlimited numbers on the affected trains priced the same as the Off Peak. When the service is infrequent having to specify which train you're going to use isn't exactly a serious penalty, because you are going to know which it is, and if the quota is near-unlimited (just key in 9999 or something) then everyone who wants one can buy one.

Alternatively you could reduce the tariff kilometres for that line a bit to make the Anytime more affordable.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 May 2025 ==

Ideally, there should be a way of eliminating nonsense advances (e.g., very short distance ones, and ones that offer 10p discount of the relevant flexible fare)

One could add a rule that if a given fare wasn't, for example, either 20% or £5 (whichever is higher) cheaper than the Anytime or Off Peak then it simply isn't offered. Thus some very short journeys would only have Anytimes, and medium distance ones only Anytime and Off Peak, and longer ones the full set.

The key is that instead of a big load of random fares in (the electronic version of) a massive book it's based on rules that can easily be dealt with by a computer and are equally easy to read by humans. "0930 or later" is not a hard rule to understand, and XC provides evidence that you can apply that on a long distance operation too - you use Advances to deal with the edge cases where it becomes an issue.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 May 2025 ==

It should be possible to provide an online tool that would tell you if a given route was permitted or not.

Any journey planner will do that. Put your journey in with the via points and see if the fare you have purchased comes up or not.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 May 2025 ==

While this is definitely beyond low-hanging fruit, It sounds like a very reasonable suggestion.

True, I guess this is an idea for wholesale fare reform rather than little tweaks! But to be honest the system is so broken a first-principles reboot would be no bad thing.

 

[crablab]

Put your journey in with the via points and see if the fare you have purchased comes up or not.

This isn't obvious to people and isn't a very customer friendly way of doing it. It's also a bit of a fudge - it relies on there not being another fare of the same price valid via that route.

Far better, in the days of eTicketing, to simply allow people to modify their booked journey online (issuing an excess as required) or scan an eTicket at a TVM to modify it there and then.

I could see value in something like this:

How would excesses work? As they do today?

If I wanted to upgrade to 1st class on some or part of my journey? Or from Off-Peak to Anytime?
Or if I need to change my route to accommodate a change in plans?

None of those are particularly 'out there' requirements.

One of the issues with Advances & mandatory reservations is the presumption that everyone knows exactly which service & route they want to travel on X weeks in advance.

 

[HSTEd]

The problem with having tariff kilometres that differ strongly from reality is that it increases the chance that you will create loopholes and anomalies.

I'd rather the values stay as close as possible tor reality.


In any case I suggest an example system:

• All fares will consist of single journeys.
• Anytime Fare - £2+50p/mile
• Off-peak fare - £2+25p/mile
• No ticket other than an anytime to be offered at a price below £5.
• No itinerary containing an advance segment to be offered at more than 80% of the price of the equivalent valid walk up itinerary.

Actual numerical values merely placeholders

 

[Trainbike46]

The problem with having tariff kilometres that differ strongly from reality is that it increases the chance that you will create loopholes and anomalies.

I'd rather the values stay as close as possible tor reality.

Tariff kilometres rarely differ strongly from reality, so that should be doable.

In any case I suggest an example system:

• All fares will consist of single journeys.
• Anytime Fare - £2+50p/mile
• Off-peak fare - £2+25p/mile
• No ticket other than an anytime to be offered at a price below £5.
• No itinerary containing an advance segment to be offered at more than 80% of the price of the equivalent valid walk up itinerary.

Actual numerical values merely placeholders

The one thing I would change is that I would NOT prevent the sale of cheap off-peak tickets; There is no reason to not offer them for short journeys, and they are a common element of pricing on systems like the London underground, which mostly have short journeys and relatively low fares.

 

[Bletchleyite]

How would excesses work? As they do today?

With everything as singles the easiest way is just to let you trade in what you bought against what you want, provided what you're trading for covers the journey you have already made.

If I wanted to upgrade to 1st class on some or part of my journey? Or from Off-Peak to Anytime?

With First Class increasingly being a self-upgrade or leisure product, flat fare or zonal upgrades seem to be the way forward on that, though I see no reason you shouldn't be able to trade in Standard against 1st.

Indeed one interesting option would be making First Class ONLY an upgrade product, i.e. the base fare set is entirely Standard class, and you can take an upgrade of that kind either on purchase or later as you wish, with or without a reserved seat.

Or if I need to change my route to accommodate a change in plans?

None of those are particularly 'out there' requirements.

Changing route after a journey has started is a VERY "out there" requirement. Almost no non-enthusiast passengers ever do that outside of disruption. However I can see no reason for it not to be allowed on payment of the difference for a ticket routed via what you've already done and what you intend to do.

One of the issues with Advances & mandatory reservations is the presumption that everyone knows exactly which service & route they want to travel on X weeks in advance.

I am not proposing a system that exclusively has Advances nor am I proposing mandatory reservations! What I'm proposing is not massively dissimilar from what XC is doing now, but with fares calculated rather than set in a big (virtual) book and single fare pricing.

 

[HSTEd]

Tariff kilometres rarely differ strongly from reality, so that should be doable.

The one thing I would change is that I would prevent the sale of cheap off-peak tickets; There is no reason to not offer them for short journeys, and they are a common element of pricing on systems like the London underground.

Well that's why I suggested a minimum for non anytime tickets of £5.

The difference in price doesn't seem worth the potential for confusion at such low values.