Do Northern passengers pay a two TOC premium

yorksrob · 12 Jun 2026

A S Leib said:
The main issue to me is northeastern passengers getting less value out of Northern-only tickets; if they were valid on some TPE services, even if it were just between Thornaby and York (which likely don't have sufficient capacity), it would help.

Some working-age people outside the southeast do have railcards, but I know it's for brevity's sake rather than saying "fit non-veteran working-age people travelling alone outside the boundaries of the Network and other regional railcards".

That's an interesting point between Thornaby and York.

I get that service quite often and usually pretty quiet (which makes it so annoying that they seem incapable of coming up with a reasonable weekday fare to Whitby).

In terms of the other railcards, I admit I have one of the regional railcards, but its application is highly limited, unlike the Network card !

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Tetchytyke · 12 Jun 2026

yorksrob said:
I'm not "going out of my way. The railcard discount is available to me on one route. On the other it is not. The rail industry and Government might like to gloss over this reality, but I will not as it directly affects me.

If I travel with Mrs Tyke and/or Little Tyke then the railcard discount is available to me too, which then makes your northern examples cheaper than your southern examples. On top of that, the railcard is proportionally cheaper per person and has fewer restrictions. We can play this game all day but the only way you can make a meaningful comparison is to compare apples with apples.

yorksrob said:
My above post comparing Carlisle and Newcastle services perhaps explains the situation better.

Yes, and no.

Leeds to Newcastle doesn't have a day return, although you can buy a North East Round Robin for £65.20 and use it as an off-peak day return.

Leeds to Carlisle via Appleby does have a day return but it doesn't have an off-peak return. It has an anytime short return instead, priced at £64.70, which compares with the off-peak return from Leeds to Newcastle at £79. But in exchange for your cheaper fare you're restricted to a slow rural branch line where there are only 6-7 trains per day.

The expensive bit remains York to Newcastle, as we all know. And yes, the walk-up fares charged for that journey are eye-watering, no argument from me on that. Thanks LNER.

yorksrob said:
Southern TOC's seem to make offers such as groupsave more geographically consistent and logical (and possibly some rovers).

Even this ends up being swings and roundabouts.

One thing the south east doesn't really have is rovers. Whereas the north has a very good selection of rangers and rovers.

The Leeds to Manchester off-peak day return at £28.40 may or may not be good value. But the South Pennines Day Ranger at £31.20 is, I think, pretty good value.

A S Leib · 12 Jun 2026

Tetchytyke said:
The expensive bit remains York to Newcastle, as we all know. And yes, the walk-up fares charged for that journey are eye-watering, no argument from me on that. Thanks LNER.

Of course you could point to differing levels of demand, but it's £57 for the off-peak day return from York to Newcastle or £30 for the equivalent from Preston to Carlisle (provided you don't particularly want to go via Barrow or Settle).

Tetchytyke · 12 Jun 2026

A S Leib said:
Of course you could point to differing levels of demand, but it's £57 for the off-peak day return from York to Newcastle or £30 for the equivalent from Preston to Carlisle (provided you don't particularly want to go via Barrow or Settle).

Definitely.

Comparing apples with apples, a TPE Only off-peak day return from Preston to Carlisle is £29 and the exact same ticket from York to Newcastle is £46.50. As you say, that will be demand-driven. York to Darlington has long been the perfect example of price-gouging, no arguments from me on that.

But Preston to Carlisle is also an interesting example of how taking the slow Northern train will cost you more money, not less. The cheaper tickets are all routed TPE Only or Via Penrith.

tutacre · 12 Jun 2026

Northern fares are generally too cheap. That is not to say that they should be increased, though.

Requires huge amounts of subsidy and clearly as a business, it's an absolute basket case, however full and standing it can be at peak times.

I'm pretty sure that you could increase the fares, not by huge margins, but certainly to a higher baseline than now, and you'd get far more revenue with 95% odd of the passengers still travelling. Losing that 5% or so who wouldn't pay the extra is probably a good thing, in terms of freeing up capacity for your now "more valuable" passengers.

The other issue Northern has is that they accept a huge amount of multi modal products, issued by local authorities, public transport executives etc, which are often heavily subsidised versus the actual cost of delivery, and from that small pot, Northern is sharing the little revenue with bus, ferry, tram operators too.

Of course, you then have to look at the overall economic effects to the regions, and the UK as a whole - and work out whether it's better to keep propping up Northern with huge amounts of taxpayers cash, or to raise the fares and have people pay the true market rate.

The exile · 12 Jun 2026

tutacre said:
The other issue Northern has is that they accept a huge amount of multi modal products, issued by local authorities, public transport executives etc, which are often heavily subsidised versus the actual cost of delivery,

Those multi-mode fares that are one of the key ways to get people out of their cars in places where we really need them to. Incidentally what is London’s Travelcard / Oyster but a huge multi mode scheme.

yorksrob · 12 Jun 2026

Tetchytyke said:
If I travel with Mrs Tyke and/or Little Tyke then the railcard discount is available to me too, which then makes your northern examples cheaper than your southern examples. On top of that, the railcard is proportionally cheaper per person and has fewer restrictions. We can play this game all day but the only way you can make a meaningful comparison is to compare apples with apples.

I would say that that's highly restrictive even for yourself and Mrs Tyke - you've shelled out for a railcard, yet if either of you need to travel alone, you get nothing !

I wouldn't use that in my comparison even if I had the family to be eligible for one.

Tetchytyke said:
Yes, and no.

Leeds to Newcastle doesn't have a day return, although you can buy a North East Round Robin for £65.20 and use it as an off-peak day return.

Leeds to Carlisle via Appleby does have a day return but it doesn't have an off-peak return. It has an anytime short return instead, priced at £64.70, which compares with the off-peak return from Leeds to Newcastle at £79. But in exchange for your cheaper fare you're restricted to a slow rural branch line where there are only 6-7 trains per day.

The expensive bit remains York to Newcastle, as we all know. And yes, the walk-up fares charged for that journey are eye-watering, no argument from me on that. Thanks LNER.

In my mind, Leeds to Newcastle is an easy distance for a day trip, so it ought to have a day return as well. This is the sort of thing you would expect a regional operator to have.

TPE operates in the space of that regional operator and ought to have the fares structure to match.

Tetchytyke said:
Even this ends up being swings and roundabouts.

One thing the south east doesn't really have is rovers. Whereas the north has a very good selection of rangers and rovers.

The Leeds to Manchester off-peak day return at £28.40 may or may not be good value. But the South Pennines Day Ranger at £31.20 is, I think, pretty good value.

I believe that Kent has a rover (though it's not the best value one).

I agree that the SPDR is useful. Interestingly it covers several TOC's. If the new Northern rover were TPE as well, it would solve a lot of pricing issues.

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tutacre said:
Northern fares are generally too cheap. That is not to say that they should be increased, though.

Requires huge amounts of subsidy and clearly as a business, it's an absolute basket case, however full and standing it can be at peak times.

I'm pretty sure that you could increase the fares, not by huge margins, but certainly to a higher baseline than now, and you'd get far more revenue with 95% odd of the passengers still travelling. Losing that 5% or so who wouldn't pay the extra is probably a good thing, in terms of freeing up capacity for your now "more valuable" passengers.

The other issue Northern has is that they accept a huge amount of multi modal products, issued by local authorities, public transport executives etc, which are often heavily subsidised versus the actual cost of delivery, and from that small pot, Northern is sharing the little revenue with bus, ferry, tram operators too.

Of course, you then have to look at the overall economic effects to the regions, and the UK as a whole - and work out whether it's better to keep propping up Northern with huge amounts of taxpayers cash, or to raise the fares and have people pay the true market rate.

I would dispute that Northern (as set by Northern Rail) are too cheap. This idea of subsidy being a terrible thing is peculiar to this country - most of our continental neighbours understand that to have a useful, decent passenger railway requires subsidy.

One of the problems is that a lot of fares in the North are set or part set by other operators and are thus not good value for money. I would have a single regional operator setting good value fares across the North of England and remove such powers from malign actors such as LNER.

It's also a bit of a trope that we're all travelling around on cheap fares. I've given a few examples on this thread where southern operators are providing excellent value fares and Northern ones are not

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The exile said:
Those multi-mode fares that are one of the key ways to get people out of their cars in places where we really need them to. Incidentally what is London’s Travelcard / Oyster but a huge multi mode scheme.

Indeed - one with far more money spent on it per person than anywhere else in the Kingdom.

Amaranthe · 12 Jun 2026

A S Leib said:
The main issue to me is northeastern passengers getting less value out of Northern-only tickets; if they were valid on some TPE services, even if it were just between Thornaby and York (which likely don't have sufficient capacity), it would help.

Totally Agreed. I'm in Durham and we have 3 Northern trains to Newcastle all leaving before 9am and there is 1 Northern service from Newcastle back to Durham at 22:24

That coupled with the Newcastle to York gap makes the new Northern Explorer ticket a lot less useful to myself than it otherwise could be which is a pity.

nr758123 · 12 Jun 2026

Coleridge said:
So... does it cost more to travel from Leeds to Manchester than it does from London to Brighton, or not? There seems to be a lot of selective quoting of prices going on here.

That depends who is travelling, and when they are travelling.

Tetchytyke said:
If I travel with Mrs Tyke and/or Little Tyke then the railcard discount is available to me too, which then makes your northern examples cheaper than your southern examples.

And so it also depends on who you are travelling with.

Djgr · 12 Jun 2026

yorksrob said:
The natural geographic area for that would seem to encompass Northern and TPE.

I'm not sure. It is something like 230 miles from Chester to Chathill, 130 miles Liverpool to Hull. This seems a vast area for a single operator.

Northern has always appeared to struggle to have an understanding of the specifics of particular geographical markets.

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Tetchytyke said:
Thameslink has lots of unused capacity on a weekend, Northern (and TPE) do not.

Indeed, I don't think that there is an appreciation of how rammed the trains into Liverpool are each and every Saturday from every direction. Certainly this is also true for Manchester, Leeds etc.

Benjwri · 12 Jun 2026

yorksrob said:
I'm not "going out of my way. The railcard discount is available to me on one route. On the other it is not.

Which is true, but then you're comparing the premium of not having the Network Railcard, not a 'two TOC premium'. There are plenty of places that have this issue, and I don't think anyone said it isn't an issue, but if you want to use these fares you can't attribute the issue to the set up of TOCs, the issue is the lack of a railcard, and that is a totally separate and very valid issue.

Djgr · 12 Jun 2026

Back in my RUCC days I remember being at a meeting where the Northern Rail/Spirit/SRA? guy was extolling the virtues of carving TPE out of Northern.

It is noted that nobody else in the room thought that this was a good thing to do.

Tetchytyke · 12 Jun 2026

yorksrob said:
I would dispute that Northern (as set by Northern Rail) are too cheap. This idea of subsidy being a terrible thing is peculiar to this country - most of our continental neighbours understand that to have a useful, decent passenger railway requires subsidy.

I agree with you on this.

I was in France a few weeks ago and I travelled from Basel to Strasbourg, a distance of about 85 miles. The walk-up single fare, valid on any train all day, was EUR 30, so about £25. First class was EUR 45 (£38) single. A return was double the single fare. The train was a loco-hauled TER 200 and it had air conditioning and very comfortable seats. A 8/9-carriage train operates every half an hour and the trains were all full.

York to Newcastle is also a distance of about 85 miles. A walk up single fare, valid on any train all day, is £45. A return is double the single fare. First class is £82 each way.

And people try and say that we're not charging enough?!?

It's not a TOC thing though. It's a British railways thing.

Watershed · 12 Jun 2026

tutacre said:
Northern fares are generally too cheap. That is not to say that they should be increased, though.

The idea that Northern fares - at least walk-up ones - are too cheap is faintly ridiculous.

Take for example Hebden Bridge to Manchester. That's among the more reasonable Northern-set fares but even an Off-Peak Day Return there works out at 28p/mile (a weekly season used 5 days a week is similar).

Even post-Hormuz, a typical car only costs around 15-20p/mile in fuel. Now yes, the real cost of driving is higher than just fuel, but most people only consider fuel in their calculations.

That means that even a reasonably priced Northern fare is likely to be perceived as more expensive than driving. Of course there are many TOCs with fares that tend to cost rather more than 28p/mile but that is not a justification for increasing Northern's fares to those levels.

tutacre said:
Requires huge amounts of subsidy and clearly as a business, it's an absolute basket case

Is it a basket case when it provides a viable alternative for people who can't drive? Buses are hardly going to be able to replace all the capacity that Northern provides into Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, Newcastle etc.

tutacre said:
however full and standing it can be at peak times.

That is purely a result of inadequate capacity. No Northern train is longer than 6 coaches; most are only 2 or 3 coaches. If you provided the kind of capacity that you get on most S-Bahn systems abroad then overcrowding would barely be an issue.

tutacre said:
I'm pretty sure that you could increase the fares, not by huge margins, but certainly to a higher baseline than now, and you'd get far more revenue with 95% odd of the passengers still travelling. Losing that 5% or so who wouldn't pay the extra is probably a good thing, in terms of freeing up capacity for your now "more valuable" passengers.

I'm sure Northern's revenue management teams would be interested in your elasticity of demand analysis...

Tetchytyke · 12 Jun 2026

Djgr said:
Back in my RUCC days I remember being at a meeting where the Northern Rail/Spirit/SRA? guy was extolling the virtues of carving TPE out of Northern.

I can see why they did what they did, carving the express services into one dedicated franchise and the rump into another franchise.

The service on the expresses definitely did improve once it was a dedicated franchise, at least in the east side. Northern Spirit and Arriva Trains Northern both had a habit of making some eclectic allocation decisions, my personal favourite experience being when they subbed a 158 on an express to Newcastle with 2x142. At least the ECML had continuous welded rail.

But the trouble was that the SRA really only cared about the shiny new express franchise, and the rump was conveniently forgotten about. This suited Serco right down to the ground. The ground also happened to be where Serco ran the franchise.

The north west would probably be better served if the expresses to Blackpool, Barrow, and Windermere had remained with TPE, as per the original franchise, rather than being folded back into Northern.

yorksrob · 12 Jun 2026

Djgr said:
I'm not sure. It is something like 230 miles from Chester to Chathill, 130 miles Liverpool to Hull. This seems a vast area for a single operator.

Northern has always appeared to struggle to have an understanding of the specifics of particular geographical markets.

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Indeed, I don't think that there is an appreciation of how rammed the trains into Liverpool are each and every Saturday from every direction. Certainly this is also true for Manchester, Leeds etc.

Chathill is possibly a bit of an outlier.

Out of all the operators, Northern doesn't strike me as being the one with most difficulty knowing its market. It's a local operator offering local ticketing products. What would you propose it doing differently on its routes to better serve its market ?

I travel into Leeds and Manchester - both can be pretty rammed on a Saturday, however my view has always been that Leeds - Manchester should have 8-12 carriage electric trains, as one would have on Southern region services.

A S Leib · 12 Jun 2026

Tetchytyke said:
I was in France a few weeks ago and I travelled from Basel to Strasbourg, a distance of about 85 miles. The walk-up single fare, valid on any train all day, was EUR 30, so about £25. First class was EUR 45 (£38) single. A return was double the single fare. The train was a loco-hauled TER 200 and it had air conditioning and very comfortable seats. A 8/9-carriage train operates every half an hour and the trains were all full.

On top of that, a Carte Fluo gives 50% off on trains in Grand Est and is available to anybody (I think €30 per year for ages 27+, €1 younger). That is part of French regions having patchworks of varying discount levels and subscriptions, which is something I'd less like to see.

yorksrob · 12 Jun 2026

Benjwri said:
Which is true, but then you're comparing the premium of not having the Network Railcard, not a 'two TOC premium'. There are plenty of places that have this issue, and I don't think anyone said it isn't an issue, but if you want to use these fares you can't attribute the issue to the set up of TOCs, the issue is the lack of a railcard, and that is a totally separate and very valid issue.

I think overall though, the Southern TOC's seem to have better products available more consistently over their areas, that suit local/regional discretionary travel than the North of England does. Like it or not, the Network Railcard contributes to that situation (as do things such as Groupsave, which we also don't have in the Northern area).

Much as I'd love a National railcard, an option for the North of England could conceivably be a "Network card for the North" covering regional services in the Northern area. That's less likely to happen with two operators with wildly different fares structures.

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Tetchytyke said:
I agree with you on this.

I was in France a few weeks ago and I travelled from Basel to Strasbourg, a distance of about 85 miles. The walk-up single fare, valid on any train all day, was EUR 30, so about £25. First class was EUR 45 (£38) single. A return was double the single fare. The train was a loco-hauled TER 200 and it had air conditioning and very comfortable seats. A 8/9-carriage train operates every half an hour and the trains were all full.

York to Newcastle is also a distance of about 85 miles. A walk up single fare, valid on any train all day, is £45. A return is double the single fare. First class is £82 each way.

And people try and say that we're not charging enough?!?

It's not a TOC thing though. It's a British railways thing.

So very true (as a country we seem incapable of learning from our friends and neighbours. We just have to have the blinkered "free market" overcommercialised approach for everything).

I'm still inclined to think that better fares outcomes could be better achieved with a regional operator covering the North, rather than having TPE and Northern operating in silo's.

The exile · 12 Jun 2026

yorksrob said:
So very true (as a country we seem incapable of learning from our friends and neighbours. We just have to have the blinkered "free market" overcommercialised approach for everything).

Though anyone who wants to make journey that happens not to be on a main line is probably much better served in the UK (albeit at a price) than in France or some others of our “friends and neighbours”

yorksrob · 12 Jun 2026

The exile said:
Though anyone who wants to make journey that happens not to be on a main line is probably much better served in the UK (albeit at a price) than in France or some others of our “friends and neighbours”

Oh indeed. But we could learn from Switzerland, the Netherlands etc...

Sonic1234 · 12 Jun 2026

Watershed said:
Of course there are many TOCs with fares that tend to cost rather more than 28p/mile but that is not a justification for increasing Northern's fares to those levels.

Those services will be going to London.

Any services charging that price serving regional towns will consist of kids, railcard holders and those with no other option. Or Advances, if available.

Haywain · 12 Jun 2026

yorksrob said:
Oh indeed. But we could learn from Switzerland, the Netherlands etc...

So you're saying we should learn from other European nations but only if it suits your agenda?

MikeWh · 12 Jun 2026

Bletchleyite said:
Thameslink is the slow train, EMR is the fast one.

I'm going to call you out on this. In a thread talking about fares between London and Brighton, bringing EMR into the discussion was pointless and silly.

NorthOxonian · 13 Jun 2026

yorksrob said:
Oh indeed. But we could learn from Switzerland, the Netherlands etc...

I don't think Switzerland is a particularly good example here - their approach to fares seems to largely consist of thinking of a reasonable fare and doubling it (though they do offer a Halbtax - 50% discount - at a cost roughly equivalent to £180 per year).

The quality of the network is of course very good, and I'm sure the fares are more tolerable if you're being paid a Swiss salary rather than a northern English one! But it's important I think not to take too rose tinted a view.

A S Leib · 13 Jun 2026

NorthOxonian said:
I don't think Switzerland is a particularly good example here - their approach to fares seems to largely consist of thinking of a reasonable fare and doubling it (though they do offer a Halbtax - 50% discount - at a cost roughly equivalent to £180 per year).

The quality of the network is of course very good, and I'm sure the fares are more tolerable if you're being paid a Swiss salary rather than a northern English one! But it's important I think not to take too rose tinted a view.

Switzerland clearly does better on multi-modal fare integration, if with bus fares also being much higher than in the UK.

(I don't know which one, if either, is the outlier on bus fare prices; I remember paying €16 for the hour's bus from Mürzzuschlag to Mariazell in Austria and thinking that was incredibly expensive, and I know that at least some French regions have very low fares. Either way, very little to do with Northern's fares.)

TUC · 13 Jun 2026

Bletchleyite said:
Debatable. Advances are used by Northern on routes that really aren't suitable for them. Some are broadly equivalent to the idea of Advances on London Underground.

I generally stick with my view that these are suitable for trains on which a specific seat can be reserved (or should be able to be) but not really otherwise.

Why would I or any customer want to have to pay more through no Advance fares being available? If Northern, or any TOC, wants to offer them, surely most people would welcome that.

Bletchleyite · 13 Jun 2026

MikeWh said:
I'm going to call you out on this. In a thread talking about fares between London and Brighton, bringing EMR into the discussion was pointless and silly.

Thameslink isn't the fast train on either original main branch. It's EMR to the north and GatEx (OK, also GTR, but you know what I mean) to the south. The overall point stands - Thameslink is analogous to Northern, the other operator (or brand) in each case to TPE.

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TUC said:
Why would I or any customer want to have to pay more through no Advance fares being available? If Northern, or any TOC, wants to offer them, surely most people would welcome that.

Would you approve of them existing on London Underground?

yorksrob · 13 Jun 2026

Haywain said:
So you're saying we should learn from other European nations but only if it suits your agenda?

Well, we seem able to learn from other European nations when it suits the Government's cost cutting agenda. It would make a nice change to learn from some of their passenger friendly practices.

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NorthOxonian said:
I don't think Switzerland is a particularly good example here - their approach to fares seems to largely consist of thinking of a reasonable fare and doubling it (though they do offer a Halbtax - 50% discount - at a cost roughly equivalent to £180 per year).

At least they start off with the reasonable fare and give everyone the opportunity to obtain it.

And obviously fares will be set in the context of salaries.

This useless country couldn't run a whelk stall.

Watershed · 13 Jun 2026

yorksrob said:
Well, we seem able to learn from other European nations when it suits the Government's cost cutting agenda. It would make a nice change to learn from some of their passenger friendly practices.

Indeed. It's funny how "European practices" were cited as a justification for the refund rule changes, and yet simultaneously the long-term planning seen in our European neighbours is seen as totally impossible (c.f. discussions in the Transport Select Committee about this)

TUC · 13 Jun 2026

Bletchleyite said:
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 Jun 2026 ==

Would you approve of them existing on London Underground?

I don't understand the rationale behind the question. London Underground is a high frequency (and low fare) system where any linkage of a ticket to a specific time train would be meaningles.

Do Northern passengers pay a two TOC premium

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