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Using multiple tickets for one journey should be banned, with passengers forced to exit the train at the split point
- Thread starter Farnborough
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There are some stations on the Glasgow suburban that only let you use Motherwell for trains across the border if using a through ticket. It also dramatically increases the price. Given not every train stops there, it makes far more sense to split at Central.
stevieinselby
Established Member
It depends on the journey whether advance fares are part of the plan or not.
Day return tickets are usually only available on journeys of up to around 50 miles (although can be considerably longer in former Network SouthEast territory), which means that if you are travelling over a longer distance then you are forced to buy the more expensive period return tickets and pay for the extra benefit that you can make your return journey any time within the next month even though you don't want it. In that situation, splitting your journey into shorter stages can allow you to use the cheaper day returns.
For example, a journey I make from time to time is Selby to Birmingham.
An anytime return costs £184, but splitting it into Selby - Sheffield - Derby - Birmingham brings the price down to £122 with exactly the same flexible anytime validity and can be used on the same "fast" XCountry services that skip Chesterfield and Burton.
Mgameing123
Member
So if I'm travelling from Reading to Cardiff and I own a season ticket to Bristol Parkway? Should I now have to buy a ticket from Reading to Cardiff?Moderator note: Split from
SWR cracking down on Vauxhall - Waterloo doughnuts/short fares - Also GTR
Get ready for a spate of posts! South Western Railway has launched a major enforcement operation targeting 'short faring'; specifically passengers traveling from further out who purchase cheap barcode tickets for the short Vauxhall-to-Waterloo leg simply to clear the barriers at Waterloo. SWR...www.railforums.co.uk
In this thread, people have (rightly) raised the idea of the immorality of fare-dodging, particularly "doughnuting".
But split ticketing is, IMHO, up there too...
The official system keeps adding OSIs to make journeys requiring changes to neighbouring stations count as single journeys... split ticketing makes journeys that don't even need a change into multiple journeys!
IMVHO, if you are planning a journey from A to Z you should hold a ticket from A to Z - should you buy a ticket from A to B, and B to C, and C to D etc, eventually to Z, you should be required to not only leave the train, but physically leave the station at each inter-change (ie a ticket from B to C should require you to enter at B, and leave at C).
It's gaming the system, not playing to the spirit!
An alternative proposition for the OP -
‘Split tickets should be sold as a combined single ticket’
…… and presented much like a shop’s till receipt displaying a summary of all the fares paid and their total. A single seat reservation for the whole journey would be nice too.
‘Split tickets should be sold as a combined single ticket’
…… and presented much like a shop’s till receipt displaying a summary of all the fares paid and their total. A single seat reservation for the whole journey would be nice too.
JohnElliott
Member
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- 15 Sep 2014
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Last year I was riding from Bexhill to Eastbourne and decided en route to extend my journey to Lewes, so I bought an Eastbourne-Lewes return online. I very much appreciated not having to get out at Eastbourne, go through the barriers, and get back on the same train.
Indeed; the number of people whose plans change after ticket purchase might represent a “niche group” but it’s a not inconsiderable niche.
Narrowgauge725
Member
No to the headline question but the simple answer is that the ticketing system should provide you with the cheapest fare ie the same as a split ticket.
Haywain
Veteran Member
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As others have said, that is far from true. I rarely buy Advance tickets but I regularly use split tickets.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I agree with the latter. The former not so much - one "boarding card" per vehicle journey does have advantages such as you not having to ask someone to be let through gatelines at intermediate stations if you want to pop out and your ticket technically prohibits break of journey. Most staff are reasonable about this when you're mid-Advance and aren't doing it to end short, but some aren't, and so having one per train just removes that stressor.
A big pile of tickets is a pain if you're using paper tickets. On your phone the wallet app just puts them all together so you can easily scroll through and show the right one.
Tetchytyke
Veteran Member
In my experience, split ticketing tends to be more useful (and generate larger savings) with walk-up tickets.
XC is the perfect example of why this is. For the fares they set, they have a blanket off-peak rule: tickets are only valid for travel from 0930 onwards. This is a very simple rule, easy to understand. But it applies irrespective of whether you're going two stops or whether you're going from, say, Newcastle to Plymouth. So for longer journeys even one split at the first station the train calls at after 0929 can save you a lot of money.
I used to travel on business semi-regularly from Newcastle to Birmingham when working for a charity. I used split ticketing and usually ended up with five separate day return tickets. The first time I did it I booked the tickets. When I handed my boss twenty coupons per person- ten ticket coupons and ten seat reservation coupons- they looked at me like I was insane, but it was saving the charity over £150 per person compared to the Anytime return.
I also tend to use split ticketing when I'm travelling from Manchester Airport to see family in Yorkshire. A split at Rochdale is the sweet spot: it is slightly more expensive than splitting at Smithy Bridge but everything stops at Rochdale, and not only is it cheaper than a through ticket, the Manchester Airport <-> Rochdale tickets include validity on the tram in Manchester city centre whereas the through tickets don't.
Yes! 13 bits of card for a return journey with 2 splits a while ago.
The only reason that split ticketing is a thing is because of the balkanisation of the railways thanks to privatisation.
It is barely a thing on railways in other countries.
The solution to this is not to punish travellers who have the audacity to want to travel from A to B at a resonable price but rather a root and branch reform of the fares regime taking a holistic approach.
It is barely a thing on railways in other countries.
The solution to this is not to punish travellers who have the audacity to want to travel from A to B at a resonable price but rather a root and branch reform of the fares regime taking a holistic approach.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
This isn't true. It also exists because of how Advance tickets work. If you have A-B-C-D you need the quota you're issuing in to be available for the entire journey. However someone may have purchased that level from B-C, say, and so the entire A-D journey goes up a tier. Splitting comes in at that point - you can buy A-B separately at tier 1, then B-C at tier 2, then C-D at tier 1 again, and that's cheaper than A-D at tier 2.
The only way you fix that (bar banning splitting) is to make the system calculate Advances on the basis of a split.
That's different from most walk-up fare splitting which exists for two reasons:
1. TOC specific fares (as you note)
2. Stringing (super) off peak day returns together for a journey where no off peak day return is available (I save a tenner each time I make a certain journey by doing this).
I've just booked my first split tickets for a journey between Polsloe Bridge and York in November and achieved a good saving over two advance singles. A contrast to my 1964 experience of split ticketing on a journey from Bristol to York and back (in a day) for a University interview. A day return didn't get me further than Birmingham, so I got off there and rebooked to Derby, repeating the process there and again at Sheffield. The interview must have been late afternoon! I was 17 and no 16-25 railcard then, so, despite the perception of rail fares being very high, there are more options for us now than there were 60 years ago.
HSTEd
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As I have mentioned in previous threads, I would prefer to simply bake split ticketing into the official ticketing apparatus.
That would allow many tickets that no person would ever buy to be removed from the system and start us down the track of fare simplification. It would also prevent split ticketing contaminating passenger journey data.
As split ticketing has become more mainstream, the revenue that would be lost by just making it official is increasingly lost anyway.
I don't see attempts to ban it being at all workable.
EDIT:
Without split ticketing we have to maintain a fare between every station and every other station, which is over 6 million fares before we even consider class or time of day, without creating major inconsistencies. The bureaucratic burden is enormous.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
That would allow many tickets that no person would ever buy to be removed from the system and start us down the track of fare simplification. It would also prevent split ticketing contaminating passenger journey data.
As split ticketing has become more mainstream, the revenue that would be lost by just making it official is increasingly lost anyway.
I don't see attempts to ban it being at all workable.
EDIT:
Without split ticketing we have to maintain a fare between every station and every other station, which is over 6 million fares before we even consider class or time of day, without creating major inconsistencies. The bureaucratic burden is enormous.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
I'm sure you could come up with a compact arrangement based on till roll ticket printing for displaying each element separately but also part of the coherent whole.
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MarlowDonkey
Established Member
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Removing anomalies would reduce split ticketing. For example the price of a ticket from A to C changing trains at B should really be the same as the sum of tickets from A to B and from B to C.
HSTEd
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I don't know how feasible this is without simply using split ticketing to eliminate anomalies. There are too many stations on too many routes.
Splitting all tickets by default would ensure no anomalies can reach the customer.
SargeNpton
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There should already be fares between every pair of stations on the national rail network including, where necessary, variations for travelling via different routes.
HSTEd
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Yes, and they are riddled with the kinds of inconsistencies that make split ticketing highly attractive.
Haywain
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There aren't though.
Fawkes Cat
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I was tempted to make a similar reply - for example, I don't think that there are tickets between Walton (Merseyside) and Rice Lane, or between Windsor and Eton Central and Windsor and Eton Riverside. But are there any journeys <edit> without fares </edit> that someone reasonably sensible might want to make by train, rather than by (in both the above cases, and no doubt others) walking? If there are, then there's a meaningful hole in @SargeNpton's argument, but if all the non-existing ticket pairs are for silly journeys, then while the hole is still there it's probably one that we can ignore.
I remember splitting tickets in British Rail days. It was very difficult to research in those days but was always worth checking a possible split if you had to change trains
Tetchytyke
Veteran Member
There are quite a few in and around St Albans because GTR's solution to the good value fares offered at St Albans Abbey was to simply delete fares (e.g. Watford Junction to Elstree).
Northerngirl
Member
I think the best solution would be to just make tickets cheaper.
Also I don't see how it could possibly be enforced, if I am on a train from stop 1 to stop 4, and have a 1-2 and a 2‐4, i am covered for all parts of that journey, how can you prove that i didn't get off at 2.
Maybe make it illegal to be in ownership of two train tickets at the same time maybe?
Also I don't see how it could possibly be enforced, if I am on a train from stop 1 to stop 4, and have a 1-2 and a 2‐4, i am covered for all parts of that journey, how can you prove that i didn't get off at 2.
Maybe make it illegal to be in ownership of two train tickets at the same time maybe?
How do you logically decide which origin-destinations do not have their own fares? For instance, making London - Manchester a sum of London - Birmingham and Birmingham - Manchester would make no economic sense. You'd expect London - Manchester to be substantially cheaper than the sum of 'two halves' but slightly more expensive than 'each half'.
There are other ways of making the maintenance of the fares matrix intelligent. Existing anomolies arise from:
- Inconsistent availability of day-return and period-return fares
- Inconsistent application of single leg pricing
- Inconsistent availability of super off-peak and off-peak tickets
- PTE area fares being historically suppressed
- Inconsistent peak definitions (esp. crossing a PTE boundary)
These are the things that need addressing.
The industry already uses station clusters to reduce the number of unique fares. We just need station clusters to be employed more consistently and systematically, probably formalised into a published zonal system.
The Pelican
Member
Split ticketing comes about because of the desire for the railway to operate in all four of the following markets:
1. Intercity, fairly profit focused
2. NSE, probably trying to break even, but with "breaking even" requiring making lots of money to fund loss making lines
3. Commuting to reigonal cities- I guess this is lightly subsidised
4. More remote reigonal routes, highly subsidised.
It's clear that lots of the splits are things like getting that £20 return London Midland (LNWR) Euston-Crewe 2hour desiro, or going to the edge of a city area's subsidised tickets.
So I think it will continue under a nationalised railway.
(Is anyone aware of how the German Verkhersverbund city transport reigons deal with a similar issue?)
1. Intercity, fairly profit focused
2. NSE, probably trying to break even, but with "breaking even" requiring making lots of money to fund loss making lines
3. Commuting to reigonal cities- I guess this is lightly subsidised
4. More remote reigonal routes, highly subsidised.
It's clear that lots of the splits are things like getting that £20 return London Midland (LNWR) Euston-Crewe 2hour desiro, or going to the edge of a city area's subsidised tickets.
So I think it will continue under a nationalised railway.
(Is anyone aware of how the German Verkhersverbund city transport reigons deal with a similar issue?)
Exactly. Advances aside, most of the anomalies started under BR days. People wrongly attribute it to privatisation.