Will following the advice given in this thread let the OP make their journey without any hassle from railway staff?
In my experience, given the lack of onboard checks on WMR and XC Turbostar services, the likelihood of it even coming up is slim. If the OP did have their ticket checked en-route and in the unlikely event of this resulting in the ticket being queried, I would suggest that reference to the easement would render it a fairly straightforward conversation.
If the OP wants an itinerary then splitting at Northfield, at a slightly higher cost, will achieve that.
The OP created this thread to ask what their options are, and various members have queried whether travelling via Birmingham and Worcestershire Parkway is permitted. The answer is clearly that it is. So in that sense I think we have helped answer their questions in an entirely practical sense.
A route via New Street and Parkway doesn't involve passing through any gatelines and even once the barriers are installed at the two Worcester stations, there will be no difficulty using a ticket to Worcester to exit or enter. I agree that if a gateline were required, or the OP intended to break their journey in Birmingham for example, it would be much more of a salient issue.
That it seems to me is the point.
People on this forum have said time and time again that to travel without an itinerary for a journey enabled by easements - (one will be generated by the splits I have found but none for one fare) leaves you exposed. Even with an itinerary allowed by an easement. as the Hinchley Wood Walking Sophie thread shows, you can be faced at the gateline with complete disbelief. The OP asked the operator directly and frontline staff before coming here and got no reliable answer.
I happen to agree broadly that it could at least be argued as a permitted route but would I advise anybody to try their luck with the £7.20 Longbridge Worcester single via University and Parkway without an itinerary? No I don't think I would - in the real world.
If the retail systems can't handle the industry data as has been mentioned above then neither of them is fit for purpose.
(For example if you need this Easememt "700036 Customers travelling from Warblington, Emsworth, Southbourne, Nutbourne, Bosham, Fishbourne and Chichester to Pulborough and beyond, may travel via Ford" apparently to pass some fares checks one does wonder just what garbage is grinding away in the background.)
I'd be interested if you can quote the post(s) you are referring to here. I don't think anyone disagrees that travelling in accordance with an itinerary is ideal on a potentially contentious route, but equally a lack of an itinerary doesn't mean a route can't be valid or shouldn't be attempted.
The difficulty getting an itinerary for this journey arises from discrepancies between the published rules or data, and the rules/data journey planners are required to use. I don't think that the industry data feeds etc. are fundamentally unfit for purpose.
I agree the system is incredibly complex and inaccessible to the average person, and goes wrong far more often than it should. But the root cause of the above discrepancies is the lack of quality control and testing to verify that easements work as intended, and in the way the customer facing description says.
The easement text should simply be automatically generated from the electronic data, much in the way that the eNRG browser decodes the data into a human readable format. That way any anomalies would be picked up more quickly.
The 'garbage' data you refer to is often a case of historical fares anomalies being exposed by modern systems, for example where BR accidentally (or otherwise) priced a shorter journey at a higher price than a longer journey. It can also arise where differing fare types are available for different journeys, making the 'fares check' (used to identify valid Routeing Points) difficult to accurately conduct.
Interestingly, the WMR ticket site will produce a valid Longbridge to Worcester itinerary via New Street and Worcestershire Parkway for this Sunday evening (18:53 from Longbridge) using the £7.30 single fare. However the Cross-country element of the journey today is a rail replacement bus, so presumably some alternative ticket validation has run in the background.
This will be because replacement buses do not have any mileage or distance associated with them in journey planners, so the journey overall is deemed to be shorter than (or within 3 miles of) the shortest route and thus automatically permitted.
