Using multiple tickets for one journey should be banned, with passengers forced to exit the train at the split point

It just wouldn’t be enforceable in Britain. It’s profoundly UnBritish.

walkingsophie said:

There are some journeys where the fastest possible journey is not a valid route with a ticket from the origin to the destination. In those cases a split would be necessary to achieve the fastest journey.

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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.

35B said:

I'd rather simply make split ticketing an irrelevance, aside from the old relative niche case of through journeys from the edge of a season ticket's validity. But that will generate losers as well as winners, given that splitting relies in part on using the lowest cost advance fares to generate the savings.

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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.

Farnborough said:

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!

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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?

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.

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.

JohnElliott said:

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.

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Indeed; the number of people whose plans change after ticket purchase might represent a “niche group” but it’s a not inconsiderable niche.

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.

The exile said:

It is basically demand-dependent advance ticketing that has created the need /window for split fares as demand peaks and troughs are not consistent across the network.

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As others have said, that is far from true. I rarely buy Advance tickets but I regularly use split tickets.

Harpo said:

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.

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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.

The exile said:

It is basically demand-dependent advance ticketing that has created the need /window for split fares as demand peaks and troughs are not consistent across the network.

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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.

Bletchleyite said:

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.

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Yes! 13 bits of card for a return journey with 2 splits a while ago.

what a great idea!
Similarly, it should be illegal for supermarkets to sell individual ingredients for cakes. You should buy a complete cake or go without!

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.

Djgr said:

The only reason that split ticketing is a thing is because of the balkanisation of the railways thanks to privatisation.

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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).