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Tbh my problem with this is that the impartial ticketing rules were (as I understand it) introduced on the basis of fairness between ToCs. Their continued existence is based on post hoc arguments around possible customer confusion that is maybe slightly more likely than online but realistically is not a fundmentally different problem. In fact in person ticketing has more opportunities to ensure the customer understands the nuance. If the customer doesn't listen then I think they are fairly likely to have been caught out by the same problem after buying on trainline (and it seems likely they'd switch to doing that over buying at a ticket office once a friend showed them the cheaper online tickets).
It might help if you studied the concerns and safeguards on ticketing that were put in place at privitisation.
People were very concerned that through tickets would no longer be available and that train companies would seek to only sell their own tickets from their own stations. This would mean that anyone wishing to make a journey involving more than one train company would be forced to purchase separate train tickets when they changed from one train service to another, potentially making the journey more expensive.
Safeguards were put in place to protect through ticketing and make sure that ticket offices operated on an impartial basis. Those safeguards are still with us today.
All of this was in the pre-internet era. The internet has changed things and split ticketing has become more mainstream thanks to better availability of data and computer programming to calculate splits.
Should splits be automatically offered by ticket offices? I don't think they should be for the reasons I (and others) have stated above.
When you buy online you get an itinerary which will be sent to you by email and you agree to the terms and conditions. In reality very few will bother to read them but they are there. That doesn't really happen at ticket offices
We get "but Trainline said..." all the time. Somewhere deep down Trainline did tell them the conditions (though I don't recall the app actually explaining peak restrictions or linking to NRE, just stating "peak restrictions apply") but there is no check that the passenger understood the small print. Common one was selecting "Open Return", assuming that meant "return anytime" or "return within one month" and selecting the cheapest option listed on the next menu, not noticing the "return same day" note. I did have one passenger absolutely insist that I offer her the same price Trainline did, despite the fact that she was returning the next day and the split offered included a Day Return. I did my best to point out that it would expire overnight but she wouldn't take "no" for an answer. Luckily the "saving" was almost identical to the price of the single ticket she would need to buy to fill in the void the next day. There's no helping some people.
On my old work phone, I used to have Trainline's app installed specifically for the purpose of showing them when exactly they were told the restrictions.
I still maintain that the fares system is broken where buying a handfull of tickets all running consecutively to undertake a complete journey gives a cheaper fare than a simple point to point ticket with the same restrictions on use etc.
Do you have experience of buying train tickets in France, Spain, Italy etc? For journeys involving multiple connections between local and long distance services, you may find splitting manually. You may even have to book some sections on separate websites (I think not in France but in Spain/Italy you do, in some cases).
In places such as Ireland, split ticketing is considered to be such a threat to the railways finances that it is banned by the terms & conditions. That certainly isn't a practice we should be emulating.
Switzerland does things better than us and all the aforementioned places, and yet splitting can still be cheaper in some cases.
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In my experience, many ticket office staff act in a manner that hastens their own demise, in a variety of methods, e.g. refusing valid sales, overcharging etc. I have had poor experiences at ticket offices for as long as I can remember using the railway.
Fortunately these days I am nearly always able to avoid visiting them, but there really should be a move to make all products available online, as it's not acceptable that obtaining products such as excess fares is a lottery, where you have to 'shop around'.
I agree with @ChilliSauce that the current system is broken. My own view is that for starters all tickets should be issued by 'GBR' with no reference to a train operator. If you want to encourage the use of certain routes or services use the advance fare differential.
As I stated in another thread I also see it as a barrier to getting people out of their cars and on to the railways.
The only way to address the issues is a complete overhaul. In these days where everything is held electronically generating a fare from every station to every other station is no longer a hand exercise. You would then have anytime, off peak and advance fares for every possible journey, including route variations, you would keep things like 'Not via London', and the 'fares engine' generates these fares based on a fare for each journey segment. Overall this overhaul should be revenue neutral. There will be winners and losers, but the fare charged for each bit of a journey should be based on a pence per mile for that route. The actual pence per mile may be different for a high quality Inter City route from that charged on a metro or branch line service.
As an example of what is wrong with the current system on a journey from my home station, Bempton, to Hull, under 40 miles on one train and operator, there are about 12 different ticket combinations shown. Yes the Norther app highlights the cheapest options, but that is just for a very simple journey.
So to answer the OP question in terms of the Railways as a whole I see it as a curse, it highlights the problems with the current system, but at a personal level I use split tickets because they save me money, but I shouldn't need to.
What would the pence per mile be for a journey like Milton Keynes to London? Would it be set at the inter-city rate or a lower rate?
If a premium rate was charged then no-one is going to use the ‘commuter trains’ (that at certain times are as fast and also run non-stop). If the lower rate is charged then the fast trains will become overcrowded and it will create a significant fares anomaly.
How would the pence per mile charged for Bletchley to London or Wolverton to London be calculated? Would this open up further fares anomalies?
There is no obvious, easy way to get rid of splits. Just banning them outright (e.g. saying you have to get off the train, exit the station and end your journey at the end of each ticket's validity, otherwise your ticket isn't valid) would be a terribly retrograde step to take, especially as a measure taken in isolation, without also restructuring and significantly reducing fares overall.
Particularly as (in my view) the only reason that the introduction of blanket not-before-9:30 restrictions on a large number of long distance flows was acceptable is because of the ablity to split tickets.
You shouldn't have to pay for an Anytime ticket for all of a 5 hour journey that happens to start just before 9:30.
Particularly when the travel before 9:30 is a on connecting leg to a long distance train leaving after 9:30 so you would be on exactly the same train as people who could use an off-peak ticket.
I agree with @ChilliSauce that the current system is broken. My own view is that for starters all tickets should be issued by 'GBR' with no reference to a train operator. If you want to encourage the use of certain routes or services use the advance fare differential.
I'm not sure that York to Leeds passengers would see the demise of walk up Northern Only tickets as a positive step. People don't generally want to be tied to a specific train for short journeys
I accept opinions differ, but i don't think the majority view is that more Advance fares are a good thing and that the cheapest walk up fares on many popular journeys should be abolished.
Do more people now go by car from York to Leeds as Northern fares are seen as a barrier, or likewise are Crewe/Stafford/Trent Valley to MKC/London journeys having West Midlands Trains fares a barrier on the West Coast Route?
On the contrary, I would suggest the existence of such cheaper fares has stimulated growth
The only way to address the issues is a complete overhaul. In these days where everything is held electronically generating a fare from every station to every other station is no longer a hand exercise. You would then have anytime, off peak and advance fares for every possible journey, including route variations, you would keep things like 'Not via London', and the 'fares engine' generates these fares based on a fare for each journey segment. Overall this overhaul should be revenue neutral. There will be winners and losers, but the fare charged for each bit of a journey should be based on a pence per mile for that route. The actual pence per mile may be different for a high quality Inter City route from that charged on a metro or branch line service.
Please post your overhaul proposal in the Speculative Discussion, where I will enquire as to what the calculations for certain journeys would be.
It's easy to say an overhaul should take place, but no individual or organisation has yet come up with a workable suggestion that would be politically acceptable that actually ticks all these boxes.
As an example of what is wrong with the current system on a journey from my home station, Bempton, to Hull, under 40 miles on one train and operator, there are about 12 different ticket combinations shown. Yes the Norther app highlights the cheapest options, but that is just for a very simple journey.
So to answer the OP question in terms of the Railways as a whole I see it as a curse, it highlights the problems with the current system, but at a personal level I use split tickets because they save me money, but I shouldn't need to.
If it didn't save you money, that would be because the shorter distance fares would generally have been abolished, leaving the higher priced fares.
If you think a mileage based system would solve this, you'd need to post a full methodology in the appropriate forum section, so that it could be analysed, but so far all such proposals have been found to have major flaws.
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Particularly as (in my view) the only reason that the introduction of blanket not-before-9:30 restrictions on a large number of long distance flows was acceptable is because of the ablity to split tickets.
You shouldn't have to pay for an Anytime ticket for all of a 5 hour journey that happens to start just before 9:30.
Particularly when the travel before 9:30 is a on connecting leg to a long distance train leaving after 9:30 so you would be on exactly the same train as people who could use an off-peak ticket.
I'm not sure that York to Leeds passengers would see the demise of walk up Northern Only tickets as a positive step. People don't generally want to be tied to a specific train for short journeys
I accept opinions differ, but i don't think the majority view is that more Advance fares are a good thing and that the cheapest walk up fares on many popular journeys should be abolished.
Some may say Advance fares are such a barrier.
Do more people now go by car from York to Leeds as Northern fares are seen as a barrier, or likewise are Crewe/Stafford/Trent Valley to MKC/London journeys having West Midlands Trains fares a barrier on the West Coast Route?
On the contrary, I would suggest the existence of such cheaper fares has stimulated growth
Please post your overhaul proposal in the Speculative Discussion, where I will enquire as to what the calculations for certain journeys would be.
It's easy to say an overhaul should take place, but no individual or organisation has yet come up with a workable suggestion that would be politically acceptable that actually ticks all these boxes.
Can you provide a link to a journey search and a screenshot demonstrating this?
Which if the 12 fares would you retain/abolish or what would your new system offer in comparison to the existing fares?
If it didn't save you money, that would be because the shorter distance fares would generally have been abolished, leaving the higher priced fares.
If you think a mileage based system would solve this, you'd need to post a full methodology in the appropriate forum section, so that it could be analysed, but so far all such proposals have been found to have major flaws.
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Exactly; the people who advocate both "simple" restrictions and "abolishing split tickets" completely ignore this issue
My point is that the inherent need for split ticketing around the boundary of peak/off-peak could be resolved by moving everything to the current super-off peak, then adding surcharges for behaviour you want to penalise
My point is that the inherent need for split ticketing around the boundary of peak/off-peak could be resolved by moving everything to the current super-off peak, then adding surcharges for behaviour you want to penalise
I disagree with the approach. It may nit be much more than semantics, but I’d set the baseline and then discount the behaviour you want to encourage. People respond better to carrots than sticks.
Meanwhile, the issues with split ticketing go much deeper than that particular can of worms.
I disagree with the approach. It may nit be much more than semantics, but I’d set the baseline and then discount the behaviour you want to encourage. People respond better to carrots than sticks.
Meanwhile, the issues with split ticketing go much deeper than that particular can of worms.
London to Edingburgh £2000. Discounted 20% if you go after 9am, discounted 10% more if you stand instead of sitting, discounted £100 plus 50% if you buy the ticket rather than jumping the barriers and being caught, comes with bonus clubcard points and 3 air light-years
Anyway, I'll behave myself with the hypotheticals until I come up with a specific enough idea for the hypothetical section
I thought there were once some easements on the 0930 limit for travel from minor stations to a main station from which the 0930 limit applied, but checking some off peak and day return fares from Sea Mills (SML) to Cheltenham, Birmingham & Sheffield (SHF) I could not find any. So you buy the all day single from SML to Bristol Temple Meads, which does seem to be an extra cost. SML-SHF & BRI-SHF cost the same, which is probably an improvement on the past, when SML-distant places seemed to be about £20 more than BRI-distant places.
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In places such as Ireland, split ticketing is considered to be such a threat to the railways finances that it is banned by the terms & conditions. That certainly isn't a practice we should be emulating.
...
As someone else has suggested, now that all tickets are scanned it is presumably possible to make a subsequent supplementary charge or prosecute for fare evasion if any ticket is not tapped in and out at its end points. This is the kind of sleight of hand that could appeal to the government, who can claim that fares are unchanged whilst forcing travel costs up, rather in the way they recently claimed that rail fare rises were being constrained, whilst omitting to mention that this only meant regulated fares, which they intend to abolish, as in the LNER trial. As in the LNER trial, where abolishing cheaper fares makes things simpler they could claim that requiring tapping in and out for every ticket makes things simpler.
As someone else has suggested, now that all tickets are scanned it is presumably possible to make a subsequent supplementary charge or prosecute for fare evasion if any ticket is not tapped in and out at its end points.
I thought there were once some easements on the 0930 limit for travel from minor stations to a main station from which the 0930 limit applied...t requiring tapping in and out for every ticket makes things simpler.
It's not just about "minor stations"; the cheapest return from Darlington to Penzance on the only direct train is £545.10, as it requires an 'Anytime', even if you return at an "off peak" time.
It used to be valid on an Off Peak Return, but XC decided to "simplify" the off peak fares restrictions, in a move ostensibly to pander to those who claimed that it was "confusing" having easements for longer journeys, but in reality probably just an attempt to gain more revenue, while also pricing people off because such trains are crowded.
I think XC view such fares as a success, as they segment the market; some people pay the premium, some people "split" and some people drive; this overall reduces overcrowding and maximises yield management.
It's not practicable to both eliminate splitting and also have "simple" rules for when "peak" fares apply; it may be possible to come close to eliminate splitting at the cost of various other problems and adding all sorts of complexities, but even that seems unlikely to me.
Agreeing to terms and conditions is irrelevant, you are bound by the NRCoT regardless of how you purchase your ticket. I appreciate that having a written confirmation of the limitations of the tickets you were sold is better in the event of a dispute than relying on accounts of the exchange at the ticket office. This is fundamentally a problem with any in person contract though.
Tbh my problem with this is that the impartial ticketing rules were (as I understand it) introduced on the basis of fairness between ToCs. Their continued existence is based on post hoc arguments around possible customer confusion that is maybe slightly more likely than online but realistically is not a fundmentally different problem. In fact in person ticketing has more opportunities to ensure the customer understands the nuance. If the customer doesn't listen then I think they are fairly likely to have been caught out by the same problem after buying on trainline (and it seems likely they'd switch to doing that over buying at a ticket office once a friend showed them the cheaper online tickets).
Neither does Trainline. Or at least there's no way for Trainline to confirm understanding.
I've had no issues in the past, either telling them "make sure that your train back calls at X, the ones to Y all will but not all of the ones to Z do, if it's the 17:50 train you'll definitely be fine." or "as you're travelling back today, it's much cheaper if I issue seperate tickets, one to Manchester and then another to Leeds. You must pass through Manchester on your way back but that won't be an issue because it's the only sensible route anyway".
Which brings up another example. Customer says "can I have a day return to X please?". Now there are no day returns for that journey, only period ones. Now a circumstance where offering a split is officially permitted is when no through ticket exists. If the passenger has specifically asked for a day return, one could conceivably argue that the through ticket they want doesn't exist and offer them a split of day returns if it's cheaper than a period one.
In a situation where a small misunderstanding can lead to a penalty fare or prosecution, I don't think it's right for TOCs to get involved with offering split ticketing. It's such a minefield and a very poor UX (maybe there's scope for bundling splits into a single Advance?)
With online retailing where the restrictions are available for customers to look at without a queue forming behind them, it is more understandable.
As someone else has suggested, now that all tickets are scanned it is presumably possible to make a subsequent supplementary charge or prosecute for fare evasion if any ticket is not tapped in and out at its end points.
I buy most of my fares from TVMs, ticket offices, or TOD, so I'm carrying a CCST for maybe 90% of my journeys. They're definitely not scanned. Half the operators don't even bother marking them.
LNER don't offer splits any more. They did for a while, but only on journeys which involved LNER splits, so they could at that point bundle them into a single ticket.
LNER don't offer splits any more. They did for a while, but only on journeys which involved LNER splits, so they could at that point bundle them into a single ticket.
The way it worked was to work out what discount the split was from the original and issue the original with a percentage discount reflecting that, if I recall.
It "oddly" went away when the fare increase trial started as it "undermined" that (i.e. meant they couldn't price gouge).
If the split was at a change point, though, I'd rather have the split - easier with gatelines and break of journey not barred there.
Do the online retailers (I'm primarily referring to Trainline/TrainPal/Trip.com) clearly explain the restrictions and clarify that the passenger understands them?
Do the online retailers (I'm primarily referring to Trainline/TrainPal/Trip.com) clearly explain the restrictions and clarify that the passenger understands them?
They do. But it's a small note which is easily overlooked. I've had passengers ask for a specific split before and (because there were other plausible routes) I did hammer in "when you come back, you must go via X, do not go via Y".
Which they expressly tell you you don't have to do, if it is an Anytime or (Super) Off-Peak ticket. In the former case, the name of the ticket itself is pretty much telling you you have flexibility.
I'm also fairly sure Trainline won't sell a split if you select the open return option. You have to buy against an itinerary both ways even if you ignore it.
I'm also fairly sure Trainline won't sell a split if you select the open return option. You have to buy against an itinerary both ways even if you ignore it.
Not entirely relevant, but I have been quite surprised today by a request to passengers who use split tickets to provide *all* tickets they are using for the current journey, and not only the one relevant to the segment they were on. Is this a new practice?
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