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Abolish Railcards

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Bletchleyite

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I think there's room for both of those concepts. The Network Railcard is about "buy-in" and is very useful even with the minimum fare, but I'd like to do that all the time and I would pay a fair whack for it - I've mentioned £10/month as a starting point but I think I'd go higher in terms of what I'd pay, possibly as high as £15, as I'd get a lot of usage out of it (and it would definitely increase my rail use, or make me purchase more flexible tickets than otherwise).
 
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Meerkat

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The one exception I'd be tempted to make is to bin the Family and Friends and Two Together cards, and simply offer that discount to groups travelling together on the same tickets without the Railcard, and to go with it roll out GroupSave nationally. To keep it simple (though it'd be eroding the F&F card a bit) it would be a simple "for any journey where two or more people are travelling together with the tickets purchased together there is a third off all fares, adult or child".
Would that be on advances only? Otherwise you just group up with all the others turning up at the station for the same train as you!

And why do you single out single travellers between 60 and thirty as not justifying a railcard ?
Marketing - the train can make sense cost wise for single travellers, but as soon as you stick two in a car the train starts to look really pricey.
 

yorksrob

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The railway needs to find a way of generating revenue at 'super' off-peak times - many trains are already full at parts of the off-peak - e.g. Saturday mornings with people happy to pay the full off-peak price.

This is why it seeks to generate revenue by way of time-limited offers (eg the surfeit of special offers at this time of year and yield management through advance fares). Having something available at quieter times of the year encourages people to travel when the railway wants them to fill up capacity rather than waiting until it suits the traveller.

That works for some journeys, but a large part of discretionary travel is the 'turn up and go' market, something advance purchase is ill suited to facilitate. For a lot of potential passengers the car is the main competitor and that is very much turn up and go.

I agree that a railcard aimed solely at discretionary revenue protection (rather than to reach disadvantaged segments of society) should be restricted to the off-peak.

Marketing - the train can make sense cost wise for single travellers, but as soon as you stick two in a car the train starts to look really pricey.

It can make sense for single travellers, but often doesn't - particularly if you don't have the luxury of booking far in advance.
 

Bletchleyite

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Would that be on advances only? Otherwise you just group up with all the others turning up at the station for the same train as you!

Do people actually do that with GroupSave? I think that is reasonably safe due to British reserve. It actually was an issue in Germany when they did something similar as the Germans are quite happy to go around organising such things including online!
 

Meerkat

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Do people actually do that with GroupSave? I think that is reasonably safe due to British reserve. It actually was an issue in Germany when they did something similar as the Germans are quite happy to go around organising such things including online!
Good point, I had stupidly thought Groupsave was advance only.
I guess for the more honest the issue would be wanting returns at different times.
And groups of chancers aren’t aware, aren’t bright enough, think they can individually avoid or gang up, or just don’t trust each other enough for one to front the money!
 

Llanigraham

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Like it does at the moment, except that there would be less congestion on trunk roads.

Your comment was:
What about a railcard which comes with a driving ban for its duration? The offer of cheaper fares might encourage people to live without a car, subsequently increasing public transport revenue and improving the environment.
so how is someone who isn't allowed to drive going to get to the station when there is NO public transport? Or are you proposing that every remote village and hamlet is going to have a regular bus service that ties in with every train service?
Do you realise just how impossible that would be?

To continue:
And a question for you;
I regularly catch the 0630 train from a station 8 miles from home when I travel to London. There are NO buses that early in the morning, and what few buses there are during the day do not connect with any of the train times, there are also no taxi's available here. I return around 2130 after the last bus passes nearby. Therefore the only way for me to get to the station is by car; how do I do that if I'm "banned" from driving?
 
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Indigo Soup

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So how is someone who isn't allowed to drive going to get to the station when there is NO public transport? Or are you proposing that every remote village and hamlet is going to have a regular bus service that ties in with every train service?
By not buying the railcard that requires surrendering your driving licence, of course.

While it's obviously a bit extreme, it recognises the threat that cars pose to public transport: fixed costs. When you buy a car, you commit to a large fixed expenditure, and the marginal cost of an additional journey is small. All those 'true cost of motoring' things are irrelevant, because many people either need to have a car, or think they do, so most of the cost is locked in whether they drive fifty miles a year or fifty thousand.

When you travel by public transport, you pay a more-or-less proportionate share of the fixed costs in addition to the marginal cost. Since many people either need a car, or think they do, it's a question of paying the total costs of public transport, or the marginal costs of taking the car. In almost all cases, the marginal cost of driving is lower so public transport will always struggle on price alone.

The proposal from @JamesRowden cuts that logic off before it can get started, and whilst rather extreme I could see it having attraction to some people, almost entirely city-dwellers. There are lots of other advantages to driving, of course, so it wouldn't be suitable for the vast majority of people.

More practical would be a rather expensive railcard, costing a couple of thousand pounds a year, but which offered a very large discount - perhaps 75%, maybe even more - on fares. The logical conclusion of this approach is BahnCard 100, which costs the equivalent of £3,500 and gives 100% discount on fares.
 

JamesRowden

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Your comment was:

so how is someone who isn't allowed to drive going to get to the station when there is NO public transport? Or are you proposing that every remote village and hamlet is going to have a regular bus service that ties in with every train service?
Do you realise just how impossible that would be?

To continue:
And a question for you;
I regularly catch the 0630 train from a station 8 miles from home when I travel to London. There are NO buses that early in the morning, and what few buses there are during the day do not connect with any of the train times, there are also no taxi's available here. I return around 2130 after the last bus passes nearby. Therefore the only way for me to get to the station is by car; how do I do that if I'm "banned" from driving?
Don't get the Railcard of my idea, or live within the constraints that my epilepsy puts on me and decide to live somewhere which is accessible by public transport.

A decent cycle route might make 8 miles each way a doddle and good exercise.
 

Llanigraham

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Don't get the Railcard of my idea, or live within the constraints that my epilepsy puts on me and decide to live somewhere which is accessible by public transport.

A decent cycle route might make 8 miles each way a doddle and good exercise.

Which is nothing like your original proposal.
 
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