A Simpler Railcard System

[Manutd1999]

It's fair to say the current system of railcards is a bit of a mess and IMO a lot of the subsidies offered are hard to justify. Why should a group or a family get a discount when a single person doesn't? Why should somebody living the South-East get a network railcard but not someone living in Yorkshire?

GBR offers the chance to reset the system and I would propose a massive simplification: Let's scrap all existing railcards and replace them with one, national, railcard.

• Holders would receive a ~30% discount, similar to a lot of the current deals.
• Valid on all services, including peak fares.
• Anyone would be able to buy the railcard but the price would be varied for different groups. For example, under 25s/30s and over 60s would pay ~£30 per year (i.e. the same as now), whereas other age groups would pay significantly more (price to be debated, perhaps £100-200?).
• Everyone needs their own card. No family/couple deals apply.

As a second (more radical) step, could season tickets then be abolished? If commuters can buy the railcard and use it on peak fares, it could effectively replace the saving you get from a season ticket. A quick example suggests this isn't as crazy as it sounds....

• Guildford-London is £4500/year or £31 per day (Anytime Return)
• Under my proposal, you would pay £20.50 per day, plus the cost of the railcard.
• So it were priced at £200, then anyone making less than ~200 trips per year (4 days per week) would save money. Anyone doing more would face a slight increase. That seems like a reasonable balance to me.

The caveat to all of this is that there is no spare money available to subsidise fares.... Do we think it's possible for such a scheme to break-even overall, after allowing for increased demand and admin savings?

 

[Bletchleyite]

I would replace Family and Two Together with extended GroupSave which would replace all group discounts and include the Family Railcard style child discounts for a group of 2 or more people travelling together.

I would then have one Railcard which is available at multiple price points for different demographics for lone travellers, including a quite expensive (circa £20 per month direct debit) version for middle aged adults but also the low cost versions for young people and older people etc.

The discounts and terms would be the same across all of them, allowing a single Railcard option on TVMs, apps etc.

The 16-17 Saver I'd just replace by extending child fares to the 18th birthday. It's more trouble than it is worth.

Not sure I'd get rid of monthly or longer seasons, but it might make sense to replace Flexi Seasons and weeklies by just allowing Railcard discount at all times of day including the peak.

 

[JonathanH]

Why should a group or a family get a discount when a single person doesn't?

The railway still takes more money from the group or family than it does from a single person.

As a second (more radical) step, could season tickets then be abolished?

Some people actually need to travel every day, typically the key workers who can't pick and choose about their travel days and times. It seems appropriate to favour them over travellers who pick and choose their travel days.

Why should a group or a family get a discount when a single person doesn't?

Family groups include passengers who aren't earning an income.

Why should somebody living the South-East get a network railcard but not someone living in Yorkshire?

Indeed, it is somewhat strange that the railway gives away its most popular product, travel to London from the South East, at such a discount. As you say the subsidy to people in the South East is somewhat hard to justify. Railcards are too blunt an instrument. The discounts need to be seasonal, when the railway has seats to fill, at times of the year when people would not otherwise travel, not at the most popular times.

 

[Lewisham2221]

Probably an unpopular opinion, but I'd also reduce the discount to something more like 25%.

33% is a pretty hefty discount, especially with heavy usage, for a relatively tiny fee.

 

[30907]

A small point, which seems to get overlooked:
100% of travellers aged 30-60 were previously eligible for discounts and nearly all of them will live long enough to claim discounts again at 60+

The only question is: are the 2Tog and F&F cards commercially beneficial to the railway, or are they a device to disadvantage singles?
F&F as a 40-year-old BR product was certainly introduced for commercial reasons - does it still work?
The motive for 2Tog I am less sure about, but ISTR there was media/political pressure involved.

 

[SynthD]

What would you do for carers, who travel as a guest on a single disabled railcard?

Do you expect this to bring in more or less money than the current system? Are there limits on how high the 26-59 railcard price could go before it’s pointless? Season tickets are priced for the distance travelled, but this appears to be a fixed price for a discount, which isn’t ideal.

 

[Manutd1999]

I would then have one Railcard which is available at multiple price points for different demographics for lone travellers, including a quite expensive (circa £20 per month direct debit) version for middle aged adults but also the low cost versions for young people and older people etc.

The discounts and terms would be the same across all of them, allowing a single Railcard option on TVMs, apps etc.

We are thinking along similar lines - 1x railcard with different price points.

What would you do for carers, who travel as a guest on a single disabled railcard?

Do you expect this to bring in more or less money than the current system? Are there limits on how high the 26-59 railcard price could go before it’s pointless? Season tickets are priced for the distance travelled, but this appears to be a fixed price for a discount, which isn’t ideal.

I'm sure an exemption could be arranged for carers.

I think the system would have to at least break-even. I like to think that it is possible but without all the data it's hard to assess in detail.

The only question is: are the 2Tog and F&F cards commercially beneficial to the railway, or are they a device to disadvantage singles?
F&F as a 40-year-old BR product was certainly introduced for commercial reasons - does it still work?

I'm not sure about this - are these cards really stimulating extra demand, or just giving a discount to people who would have travelled anyway? Airlines are the masters of dynamic pricing / yield management and you don't see them offering group tickets....

 

[JonathanH]

Airlines are the masters of dynamic pricing / yield management and you don't see them offering group tickets....

Airlines have a finite set capacity and are used for long distance travel. It is noticeable that where group tickets are available on the railway it tends to be on shorter distance operators, not the long distance ones.

https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/tickets-railcards-offers/promotions/group-save/

Participating train companies websites

c2c
Chiltern Railways
Elizabeth line
Gatwick Express
Great Northern
Great Western Railway
Greater Anglia
London Northwestern Railway
London Overground
South Western Railway
Southeastern
Southern
Stansted Express
Thameslink
West Midlands Railway

East Midlands Railway also does groupsave but it isn't valid at London St Pancras.
https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/ticket-types/tickets/gr3/

They’re valid for travel after 09:30 on weekdays or anytime at weekends and bank holidays

They’re not valid for journeys starting or finishing at London St Pancras

As I pointed out above, a sensible marketing strategy is to focus offers where the railway wants to fill capacity, not cannibalise its most valuable revenue streams.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm not sure about this - are these cards really stimulating extra demand, or just giving a discount to people who would have travelled anyway? Airlines are the masters of dynamic pricing / yield management and you don't see them offering group tickets....

Trains mostly compete with cars, which don't have a significant per person cost. Planes mostly don't.

 

[Dr Day]

I'm not sure about this - are these cards really stimulating extra demand, or just giving a discount to people who would have travelled anyway?

As far as I am aware, the TOCs/RDG are under no obligations regarding certain railcards (eg two together) therefore if they weren't generating net extra revenue, you might expect the rail industry would have withdrawn them by now. Although in fairness with lots of other distractions, and change in revenue risk, this probably hasn't been high up on anyone's agenda in the TOC/RDG world.

 

[I'm here now]

You could cut fares by 50% and freeze them for a decade to enhance the competitiveness and inclusivity of rail. Call it a cost of living crisis measure, and remove all railcards.

 

[JonathanH]

You could cut fares by 50% and freeze them for a decade to enhance the competitiveness and inclusivity of rail. Call it a cost of living crisis measure, and remove all railcards.

You could, but I don't think the cost to the exchequer would be palatable and people would still think the railway is expensive.

How would you justify holders of railcards only getting a 25% cut in their fares and other users getting a 50% cut in fares? Doesn't sound like you are targeting the cut in fares at the right people.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

It's fair to say the current system of railcards is a bit of a mess and IMO a lot of the subsidies offered are hard to justify. Why should a group or a family get a discount when a single person doesn't? Why should somebody living the South-East get a network railcard but not someone living in Yorkshire?

GBR offers the chance to reset the system and I would propose a massive simplification: Let's scrap all existing railcards and replace them with one, national, railcard.

• Holders would receive a ~30% discount, similar to a lot of the current deals.
• Valid on all services, including peak fares.
• Anyone would be able to buy the railcard but the price would be varied for different groups. For example, under 25s/30s and over 60s would pay ~£30 per year (i.e. the same as now), whereas other age groups would pay significantly more (price to be debated, perhaps £100-200?).
• Everyone needs their own card. No family/couple deals apply.

As a second (more radical) step, could season tickets then be abolished? If commuters can buy the railcard and use it on peak fares, it could effectively replace the saving you get from a season ticket. A quick example suggests this isn't as crazy as it sounds....

• Guildford-London is £4500/year or £31 per day (Anytime Return)
• Under my proposal, you would pay £20.50 per day, plus the cost of the railcard.
• So it were priced at £200, then anyone making less than ~200 trips per year (4 days per week) would save money. Anyone doing more would face a slight increase. That seems like a reasonable balance to me.

The caveat to all of this is that there is no spare money available to subsidise fares.... Do we think it's possible for such a scheme to break-even overall, after allowing for increased demand and admin savings?

I know the discussion has moved on, but as a more modest proposal:
- standardise T&Cs across all railcards: most obviously so that everything has the same restrictions for travel in the morning peak
- then have specific exemptions where needed for the point of the railcard: again, the obvious one is that the Disabled Railcard is allowed in the morning peak and that should remain

 

[signed]

A flat Half-Fare railcard for something like £100 or £150 for adults, would be the fairest. That travelcard would include every train in the country, peak or not. The Swiss system is very good in that. The new Half-Fare+ system is also very interesting

You deposit a set amount of money, and in exchange you get a non-refundable amount of bonus.

If you travel less than your deposit, you get the difference back, but if you travelled more than your deposit you have like 200CHF of free travel for 800CHF deposited.

 

[778]

I would replace Family and Two Together with extended GroupSave which would replace all group discounts and include the Family Railcard style child discounts for a group of 2 or more people travelling together.

I would then have one Railcard which is available at multiple price points for different demographics for lone travellers, including a quite expensive (circa £20 per month direct debit) version for middle aged adults but also the low cost versions for young people and older people etc.

The discounts and terms would be the same across all of them, allowing a single Railcard option on TVMs, apps etc.

The 16-17 Saver I'd just replace by extending child fares to the 18th birthday. It's more trouble than it is worth.

Not sure I'd get rid of monthly or longer seasons, but it might make sense to replace Flexi Seasons and weeklies by just allowing Railcard discount at all times of day including the peak.

If you have to pay £20 per month for a railcard nobody would buy one.

 

[Bletchleyite]

If you have to pay £20 per month for a railcard nobody would buy one.

I absolutely would. And it'd mean I'd use rail more.

It's the sort of price range DB's cards are in for adults.

 

[1D54]

Photos on all railcards because fraudulent use by lending them to friends who don't qualify must be astronomical.

 

[signed]

Photos on all railcards because fraudulent use by lending them to friends who don't qualify must be astronomical.

Is it really such an issue? DB BahnCard have no photos, SNCF Carte Avantage has no photos unless you want it dematerialized with your ticket...

 

[778]

I absolutely would. And it'd mean I'd use rail more.

It's the sort of price range DB's cards are in for adults.

£20 a month works out as £240 a year. I pay £30 a year for my railcard and it gives me 33% off train fares in the South East. A railcard that costs £240 would need to give me a much bigger discount than 33% for me to consider buying it.

 

[1D54]

Is it really such an issue? DB BahnCard have no photos, SNCF Carte Avantage has no photos unless you want it dematerialized with your ticket...

All fraudulent travel is a big issue.

There is a reason why travel in the likes of Germany and Switzerland is not hampered by ticket barrier checks.

 

[Manutd1999]

If you have to pay £20 per month for a railcard nobody would buy one.

I think a lot of people would. Maybe closer to £10/month than 20 would be a better balance, but you don't have to use the train that much to see the benefit from it. And if it was combined with scrapping weekly and flexi season tickets the demand would be considerable.

 

[HSTEd]

I could make back the cost of a £30 railcard in a single round trip to visit my parents if I was eligible.

It certainly needs to be far more expensive to be reasonable, in my view. When was the last time the price changed?

As it stands a rather large proportion of the total population is able to obtain a railcard (At least for journeys near where they live), so I'm not sure its really fare on the ~20-25 million other people who have to pay for this

 

[1D54]

It's got to be six years since the last increase and in the case of the now £30 railcard there was an increase of just £2.

 

[HSTEd]

I used waybackmachine, although the website from 2001 doesn't really work very well on modern machines!
It appears the young person railcard was £18 in 2001, compared to £30 today.

So in real terms it has actually got cheaper (BoE estimates £32ish today), whilst railfares have risen quite a bit faster than inflation in that time.

 

[Magdalia]

Economically railcards perform 2 different functions and it helps to disentangle them.

It's fair to say the current system of railcards is a bit of a mess and IMO a lot of the subsidies offered are hard to justify.

The first of these is to subsidise rail travel for particular groups of users regarded as being in need of help with travel costs. The seniors and disabled railcards are good examples. The young persons railcard started like this as the student railcard, which could only be obtained through a student union affiliated to the National Union of Students, and was essentially for travel between home and university or polytechnic. I remember the summer after my graduation as dominated by lots of rail trips before my student railcard expired at the end of September.

The golden rule of subsidies is that they are a lot easier to give than to take away. There was a good non-railway example on the radio this morning, with a big pub chain pleading for a continuation of their business rates subsidy. The row about the pensioners' winter fuel allowance is a good example of what can happen when a subsidy is withdrawn.

a sensible marketing strategy is to focus offers where the railway wants to fill capacity, not cannibalise its most valuable revenue streams.

The second is as a marketing strategy to fill spare capacity. For long distance travel this has now been overtaken by more sophisticated methods with advance fares and dynamic pricing, but it still has an important function for turn up and go travel. The best example of this is the Network South East railcard which, when introduced, was purely a marketing strategy to encourage off peak and particularly weekend travel. It survives because it still performs its original function very well. The reason there is no equivalent in the north is that the problem there is overcrowding not spare capacity. It is also worth pointing out that other marketing strategies are available: in this part of the world the one day Anglia Ranger ticket has a long and illustrious history for encouraging off peak and particularly weekend travel.

It certainly needs to be far more expensive to be reasonable, in my view. When was the last time the price changed?

The cost of the railcard is about the cost of administering it. Now that most applications are done online costs of administration have probably fallen not risen. There are price inducements only for online applications that demonstrate this.

I know the discussion has moved on, but as a more modest proposal:
- standardise T&Cs across all railcards: most obviously so that everything has the same restrictions for travel in the morning peak
- then have specific exemptions where needed for the point of the railcard: again, the obvious one is that the Disabled Railcard is allowed in the morning peak and that should remain

I agree with this. In particular the official time of the end of the morning peak should be standardised across all railcards.