7DS Marple to Stalybridge - available or not?

[Adrian S]

Should a seven day standard be available between these two stations?

BRFares says no, Avantix Traveller gives you a fare of £25.20 (help/about tells you that the fares are valid from 17May2015->05Sep2015). Avantix also gives you a child fare.

Looking at the flow and fare records from RJFAF784.FFL, we have

RF2830298300318000AS3112299902012015PGM01Y0111526
RT01115267DS00002520
RT0111526CDR00000410NF
RT0111526CDS00000400NF
RT0111526SDR00000640
RT0111526SDS00000420

Column 41 in the F-record indicates a non-standard discount. We note from RSPS5045 section 4.5.1.1. that "This file [the non-standard discounts file] contains the add-on amounts for domestic fares where non-standard discountsapply. It is not used for non-discounted adult fares, which are included in the flow file.

So I can see no reason not to sell the adult fare (since the non-standard discounts file is irrelevant). However a child fare is normally considered a discount. We look in the NS Discounts file for a match of (origin, destination, route, railcard, ticket code) and find the following record:

R2830****00318******311229992808200228082002 X NX N

The first X indicates that no DISCOUNTED adult fare is available (i.e. if we are using a railcard). The second X indicates that no child fare is available.

So in my opinion BRFares is incorrect to give no fares at all for 7DS and Avantix is wrong to give you a child fare.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

A.

 

[Paul Kelly]

Welcome to the forum!

BR Fares has had a lot of tweaks to the logic in this area over the years, some of them in response to complaints of incorrect results stemming from the inconsistent use of the non-standard discount flag in various Greater Manchester flows. The current logic is: if the non-standard discount flag is set for a flow, the non-standard discounts file is checked for every fare. If a matching record is found (including wildcard records), then it is always used. If a matching record is not found, then the behaviour depends on whether there is a discount applied to the fare - if there is, then the fare is marked invalid and hidden. If there is no discount applied, then the fare is left as valid (both adult and child) and displayed.

We note from RSPS5045 section 4.5.1.1. that "This file [the non-standard discounts file] contains the add-on amounts for domestic fares where non-standard discounts apply. It is not used for non-discounted adult fares, which are included in the flow file.

So I can see no reason not to sell the adult fare (since the non-standard discounts file is irrelevant). However a child fare is normally considered a discount. We look in the NS Discounts file for a match of (origin, destination, route, railcard, ticket code) and find the following record:

R2830****00318******311229992808200228082002 X NX N

This explanation is fairly convincing for making yet another change to the logic...

But another way of doing it might be: do not let non-standard discount records with wildcard discounts match undiscounted fares. In that case the record above wouldn't match at all and both adult and child 7DS fares would be allowed. I wonder if this is what Avantix is doing?

--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

FWIW, Southern WebTIS (http://tickets.southernrailway.com/sn/en/JourneyPlanning/SeasonMixingDeck) is showing a child season at half the price of the adult one, but the National Rail Enquiries season ticket calculator (http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/service/seasonticket/search) is showing a child season at the same price as the adult one, which suggests it knows something funny is going on but isn't being very clear about how it is handling it.

 

[Paul Kelly]

BR Fares will now avoid applying non-standard discounts to adult public fares, and shows an adult price for the Marple to Stalybridge season. There's also been a few tweaks to the way it handles cluster overrides (fares to/from a named station within a fares group no longer override fares to the group under any circumstances - useful for London Liverpool Street to Hertford East and London Victoria to Brighton, for example) and Travelcard overrides (e.g. a query from Upper Warlingham to any station in the London zones will now show the unusual first class in-boundary Travelcard available from there, rather than it only showing with a specific query to location 0035).