Complexity isn't the Issue with Rail Fares...

[Hadders]

We often get told that rail fares are too complex. I came across this rather excellent blog post by Thomas Ableman, formerly of TfL and Chiltern Railways amongst others.

The Boots example is an amusing read, but very true! Personally I've often though the issue isn't complexity but one of how restrictions and information is presented.

Complexity isn’t the issue with train fares — Freewheeling

There is a consensus that rail fares are too complex. There is a lot of truth to this but it’s nuanced. It’s very important we understand this nuance otherwise we’re in danger of fixing the wrong things. The problem isn’t exactly complexity , the problems are cognitive effort, jeopardy and

www.freewheeling.info

There is a consensus that rail fares are too complex.
There is a lot of truth to this but it’s nuanced.
It’s very important we understand this nuance otherwise we’re in danger of fixing the wrong things.
The problem isn’t exactly complexity, the problems are cognitive effort, jeopardy and arbitrariness.
Let me explain by means of a visit to Boots.

Boots​

I recently bought vitamins in Boots. The packet that I wanted cost £15.99. I took two boxes off the shelves.

When I went to pay, the helpful chappie at the self-serve till told me that they were on 3 for 2. So I got another. That took the unit price (what we might call the “fare”) from £15.99 to £10.66.

However, I have an Advantage Card, so that’s another 10% off. Which means the price became £9.60.

At this point, the helpful chappie gave me a “£5 off if you spend £20 voucher” and instructed me to scan it. However, as my total order was currently £19.20, I went to buy two packets of paracetamol at 60p each, to get my order up to £20.40. With £5 off, that made the price £15.40. The price per box of vitamins was therefore £6.80.

As you can see, depending on which combination of offers I’d used, I could have paid £6.80, £9.60, £10.66 or £15.99.

But I left the shop with a very positive impression of Boots. Why?

Firstly, because it was clear to me all along why the prices were changing. 3 for 2 is intuitive. So is 10% off. So is £5 off if you spend £20. Even though I could have paid more than double what I actually paid, the prices didn’t feel arbitrary.

Secondly, I was told what to do. I didn’t have any cognitive effort to try to figure out the best price.

Even more important, I never felt any jeopardy - I did what I was told, and paid what I paid and I left without thinking any further about it. At no point did I fear penalty or prosecution.

Let me explain how it would have felt if Boots was a railway station.

At the START of the process, I’d have been faced with a touchscreen showing a range of different prices from £6.80 to £15.99. Each would have had conditions (e.g. “with Advantage Card”, “with two other of the same or similar products”, “volume rate”, etc).

I would have had to work out which of these applied to me. ‘What does “similar products” mean?’, ‘Can I use the volume rate with the Advantage Card?’. I would have feared that the machine would have sold me a ticket for a rate that wasn’t actually valid with the goods I intended to buy.

Once I had my ticket, I would have taken the vitamins I had bought off the shelf. If I’d been super smart, I’d have figured out that the best rate involved adding two paracetamol to my order but it would have seemed utterly mad - and I’d constantly be worrying that I was wrong.

All round the shop there’d be signs warning me that if I took the wrong goods for my ticket, I faced prosecution.

Once I’d taken the goods, I’d have left the shop - but there’d be inspectors outside checking that I’d got the right goods for my ticket. If not, they’d give me a penalty charge (best case) or prosecute me (worst case).

Hopefully, I’d have got it right, paid the £6.80 rate for three vitamins and two boxes of paracetamol (bonkers!! How complex!) and heaved a huge sigh of relief when the inspectors let me go.

But you can see that what a stressful experience it would have been.

You can also imagine the conversation that night in the pub “I went to boots today. Their prices are insanely complex. Turns out the best price means you have to buy two paracetamol. It’s just crazy! Someone needs to simplify their pricing structure.”

Now we get to the absolute crucial crux of this whole thing: the fare structure is identical in both experiences. The complexity is not the issue: it’s how it’s retailed.

In the first example, I had a really positive experience of Boots, with a helpful man offering me discounts. I felt good.

In the second example, I had a super-stressful experience.

As you can see, the positivity of the first experience is nothing to do with complexity and everything to do with Boots not making me figure it out for myself (cognitive effort), offering discounts that made intuitive sense (weren’t arbitrary) and not making me fear prosecution (jeopardy).

To demonstrate that these really are the problem, let’s look at two rail-based examples.

The first is my former employer, TfL.

Transport for London​

No-one complains about the complexity of TfL’s pricing structure.

Indeed, TfL’s ticketing system (Oyster + Contactless) is generally held to be a global role-model.

Yet, (and this is a really important point), under the bonnet, TfL’s fare structure is fiendishly complex.

To illustrate this, let me tell you about one of my favourite leisure journeys: from Walthamstow (where I live) to Richmond (the beautiful suburb in South West London, full of stately homes, parks and deer).

The following is the list of single fares between Walthamstow and Richmond.

Cash fares:

• By Underground and Overground: £7.00
• By Underground and National Rail: £9.90

Oyster and Contactless fares:

• By Underground, Oyster or Contactless, Peak (Monday to Friday from 0630 to 0930 and from 1600 to 1900): £4.60
• By Underground, Oyster or Contactless, Off Peak (All other times): £3.40
  Changing between London Underground and National Rail at Waterloo (or Blackfriars, Cannon Street, Charing Cross, London Bridge, Victoria or Waterloo East) or Changing between London Underground and National Rail at Battersea Power Station/Queenstown Road or Vauxhall, Peak: £7.30
• Changing between London Underground and National Rail at Waterloo (or Blackfriars, Cannon Street, Charing Cross, London Bridge, Victoria or Waterloo East) or Changing between London Underground and National Rail at Battersea Power Station/Queenstown Road or Vauxhall, Off Peak: £5.90
• Avoiding Zone 1 via Highbury & Islington or Hackney Downs/Hackney Central or Avoiding Zone 1 via Blackhorse Road and Gospel Oak, Peak: £3.00
• Avoiding Zone 1 via Highbury & Islington or Hackney Downs/Hackney Central or Avoiding Zone 1 via Blackhorse Road and Gospel Oak, Off Peak: £2.20As you can see, there are are only two cash fares but six different Oyster / Contactless fares!

If TfL these tickets were still sold the way rail tickets are sold, TfL would be constantly lambasted for this fiendish complexity. Imagine going to a ticket machine in Walthamstow Central station and having to choose one of these six fares, knowing that if you chose the wrong one for the journey you subsequently made, you’d risk a penalty fare or prosecution.

The reason why TfL’s ticketing is seen as a triumph not a tragedy is because there’s no cognitive effort required, nor jeopardy and the fares don’t feel arbitrary.

The lack of cognitive effort and jeopardy result from the same feature: Oyster and Contactless cards allow you to travel on all public transport in London, and the system chooses the fare based on the journey you’ve made.

That means that there’s no cognitive effort, as you simply touch in and touch out, and the system does the thinking for you. There’s also no jeopardy. TfL does employ inspectors but they will simply scan your card. As long as you have an Oyster card or Contactless card, you don’t have to fear being told you have the ‘wrong’ ticket.

Finally, the point about arbitrariness. This is more subjective but it’s important: very roughly, the fares make sense. Because of the lack of cognitive effort required, no-one needs to understand where all these various interchange points actually are or worry too much about when off peak starts and ends: they just see what’s gone out of their account.

What they see is that if they travel at rush hour, it costs a bit more. If they go through central London, it costs a bit more. If they go by mainline train not tube, it costs a bit more. The cheapest option is to go by Overground round the edge. The most expensive option is to do the fastest (tube and train through town), and the most expensive version of that is at peak time.

This doesn’t feel arbitrary. If you travelled the slow way via the Overground and got charged a tenner, you’d feel cross.

No-one needs understand the fares, if they make intuitive sense.

 

[sot]

Once I’d taken the goods, I’d have left the shop - but there’d be inspectors outside checking that I’d got the right goods for my ticket. If not, they’d give me a penalty charge (best case) or prosecute me (worst case).

You forgot the retrospective checking if the till system and threatening letters:

If they thought you were using too many offers at the same time

Were not registered with the advantage card yourself but were using a friend's whilst with them

Expecting you to prove your ongoing possession of an advantage account, perhaps for the last 5 years

Accusing you of defrauding Boots because you have recently had issues when using Superdrug

Need I go on...


Actually I just remembered the 'gateline' at my local Sainsbury's where I must scan my 'PRT' in order to exit!

 

[Adam Williams]

An excellent article, which I think makes some very important points that have been missed by a lot of fares reform activity to date.

Once I’d taken the goods, I’d have left the shop - but there’d be inspectors outside checking that I’d got the right goods for my ticket. If not, they’d give me a penalty charge (best case) or prosecute me (worst case).

Surely part of the fix has to start with making the whole system less punitive (particularly where mistakes are made) so that the passenger feels like it's "on their side"?

It doesn't matter how hard a retailer tries to do the right thing - to secure discounts for passengers and sell them the lowest cost tickets for their journey - if the passenger has constantly got the threat of very harsh treatment if there's any sort of mistake made. And indeed, even when the passenger doesn't make a mistake and the retailer doesn't make a mistake in constructing an itinerary that the rules say are valid for a set of tickets, travel can still be refused and the passenger left out-of-pocket because the gateline staff "didn't like the look of" the ticket and following an accredited itinerary is apparently not a defence.

 

[Starmill]

I don't agree with him about TfL to be honest. I have personally been overcharged several times using Oyster and Contactless and had to complain to get the errors corrected. I do take his wider point about the principles though.

He's correct that TfL customer service at least don't threaten prosecution.

 

[Adam Williams]

I don't agree with him about TfL to be honest. I have personally been overcharged several times using Oyster and Contactless and had to complain to get the errors corrected.

I suspect the proportion of us that actually check or care that they've been charged correctly is fairly low, which probably contributes to this belief that they're leading the way somehow here. "Out of sight, out of mind" attitude that you probably end up getting with any sort of account-based ticketing solution, I suspect. I would not personally rate TfL's customer service or how they deal with any sort of exceptions to the "happy path" (masses paying PAYG adult fares, usually via contactless).

 

[Hadders]

Surely part of the fix has to start with making the whole system less punitive (particularly where mistakes are made) so that the passenger feels like it's "on their side"?

I think there's a discussion to be had about the sort of railway the country wants. Not just about the actual physical service but about ticketing and how irregularities should be dealt with.

It seems to me that the current thinking is that fares are too complex so must be simplified. What people fail to grasp is that the simplification they crave results in huge price increases and loss of flexibility - see LNER's Simpler Fares trial - all from a nationalised operator being held up as an example of how the railway should be run.

What the industry doesn't do well is education of customers or staff. Every off-peak or super off-peak ticket has it's restriction code clearly displayed on the ticket with instructions on how to look it up. Despite this we regularly see confusion or disputes about the use of such tickets.

 

[Starmill]

I suspect the proportion of us that actually check or care that they've been charged correctly is fairly low, which probably contributes to this belief that they're leading the way somehow here. "Out of sight, out of mind" attitude that you probably end up getting with any sort of account-based ticketing solution, I suspect. I would not personally rate TfL's customer service or how they deal with any sort of exceptions to the "happy path" (masses paying PAYG adult fares, usually via contactless).

They are OK at some things (ironically they're pretty good at people who've actually broken the conditions by forgetting to touch out, especially if only a handful of times a year) and terrible at others (railcard discount being refused, say, even though the customer does have a reasonable expectation of being able to get their railcard loaded, they are poorer at handling that).

If you are in the incredibly privileged position of having a Rail Staff Leisure Card, TfL will, quite deliberately, make it as painful as possible to pay the correct fare, and then make it as difficult as possible to get any money back if you have overpaid.

 

[MikeWh]

If you are in the incredibly privileged position of having a Rail Staff Leisure Card, TfL will, quite deliberately, make it as painful as possible to pay the correct fare, and then make it as difficult as possible to get any money back if you have overpaid.

I will comment about some of the other aspects of this later, but I do have to pick up on this one. TfL, quite sensibly, want to ensure that people given priv rates really are entitled to them. If staff add the wrong discount to a card (particularly 75% off rather than 33% off) then they get in trouble. The unions don't like that, understandably. Therefore, I believe that the unions will only allow a small subset of staff who have been appropriately trained to add the priv discount. The fact that this instruction from the union adversely affects other members of the same union is something that I can't get my head round. I would certainly be lobbying hard if I worked in a position that meant I was being adversely affected.

 

[Gaelan]

What people fail to grasp is that the simplification they crave results in huge price increases and loss of flexibility - see LNER's Simpler Fares trial - all from a nationalised operator being held up as an example of how the railway should be run.

This is a political choice. Where the political will exists, as in Scotland, simplification which reduces fares is entirely possible.

 

[redreni]

Overall a very good article, but I will add my name to those unconvinced about what is said about PAYG.

There is no risk of prosecution as long as you remain within the Oyster area if you're using Oyster, or the Contactless area if you're using Contactless. If you go beyond the boundary and get checked, then you absolutely can be Penalty Fared or prosecuted. Moreover, the expansion of both areas beyond zone 6 makes it much tougher for people to be sure where the boundaries are.

The lack of cognitive effort when using PAYG also comes at a price: you're often overpaying. Not on that Walthamstow to Richmond journey, admittedly, but if you were breaking your journey in central London or making multiple journeys in a day on a Saturday or Sunday and you do this regularly, you are probably overpaying compared with getting a Network Railcard and buying a Day Travelcard for £11, as opposed to paying the Zones 1-4 cap of £12.80. And there are lots of better examples of journeys where, even for single or return journeys, it is cheaper to buy a ticket than use PAYG, especially but not only if you are using a Network Railcard.

If you are bothered about paying the going rate rather than being ripped off, the existence of PAYG greatly increases complexity, because you have to establish if it's better to use PAYG or get a ticket (or a combination of the two). And, in large part because of the introduction of PAYG, you need to take into account that off-peak day return fares for journeys wholly within London have been withdrawn, so you need to also consider starting or finishing short on an off-peak return ticket that straddles the zone 6 boundary, as it can be cheaper to pay a slightly higher distance-based fare in order to benefit from the Network Railcard discount on an off-peak fare (possibly similar to buying the extra packets of paracetamol).

Just as, if you're bothered about paying the going rate for vitamins rather than be ripped off, you probably need to check the price in more than one shop. Ideally, I would want to find somewhere that doesn't go through the ridiculous charade, described in the article, of pretending to want to charge you £16 for something that's obviously only worth a fraction of that amount. It's interesting to me that in the transaction described, the author wouldn't have been told by the member of staff how to reduce the unit price had he not been prepared to pay a unit price of £16 for some vitamin tablets, which he obviously was because he took them up to the counter. I can honestly say this is not something that would have happened to me! I don't think I agree with the notion that Boots' ridiculous pricing strategy doesn't put off customers: it certainly puts me off! I'd much rather get vitamin tablets from Aldi or Lidl, who aren't going to charge £16 a tub and who are also much less likely to have a multibuy offer. I would pay extra to have a sensible price displayed up-front on the shelf-edge ticket, rather than have to jump through hoops before we can get down to a sensible price.

I do understand it's difficult, though, as for the railway at least, the silly prices have to exist so that feckless or confused people, foreign tourists and businesses can pay them.

 

[etr221]

What the OP quoted from the original blog post is only about half of it - missing his comments on Switzerland and BR's efforts - all worth (in my view) worth reading.

I'll just quote a couple of bits:

Well, because while that simplification was a helpful tidying up exercise, it only dealt with complexity. As we’ve discussed, it didn’t resolve the key elements of cognitive effort, jeopardy and arbitrariness.
Resolving arbitrariness requires elements of fares reform. Our current fares system is a bugger’s muddle of the outcomes of legacy competition, fares regulation and the ghosts of British Rail. You can read more about that here.
But most of the solutions to cognitive effort and jeopardy aren’t about the actual prices: they’re much more about how they’re sold.

But there are two things I am saying:

1. We need to be hyper-cautious about talking about reducing complexity. Whenever you hear someone say that there are 55 million train fares, just remind them that there are 617 million Swiss fares - and that’s before you count a further billion that can be computer-generated by the revenue management system. Yet this isn’t an issue in Switzerland
2. Instead, the test for all future fares, ticketing and retail initiatives (big and small) should be to move towards the elimination of cognitive effort, jeopardy and arbitrariness. If we achieve those, complaints about complexity will vanish by themselves.

---

And his final addendum:

I published a LinkedIn post last week saying that I was writing about complexity this week. Mike Lambden, retired Head of Corporate Affairs at National Express, replied with this comment:
Complexity was always there. You probably will not remember the huge library of fares manuals that staff had. However, the public never had to worry about that as the person in the booking office sorted it all for them, It was only when it got into the public domain that it seemed complex for passengers.
In one paragraph, he said what I’ve just spent the last thousand words blathering on about. (I’d already written the post, otherwise I could have just published Mike’s comment and saved us all some time).

 

[andy33gmail]

I could have paid £6.80, £9.60, £10.66 or £15.99.

In other words, they over-charge anyone who doesn’t have the time, stubbornnesss or cognition by at least £9.19 or 135%

The following is the list of single fares between Walthamstow and Richmond.

Alternatively, anyone not on this forum one has to assume Oyster fares always cost £16.80. That’s assuming you don’t tap out with the wrong card, costing £33.60. And the only “lazy” alternative is to de-risk it with a paper ticket

 

[Krokodil]

Personally I've often though the issue isn't complexity but one of how restrictions and information is presented

I saw plenty of tickets today (both TVM issue and eTickets) with the words "valid only on Northern Trains services" printed across them. Pretty clear, you'd think but they still got on my train and either ended up getting chinged or waiting half an hour at an intermediate station for the correct service. Now, if a ticket to Manchester was a ticket to Manchester no one would even have to think about it.

In the first example, I had a really positive experience of Boots, with a helpful man offering me discounts. I felt good.

In the second example, I had a super-stressful experience.

That's just an argument for replacing TVMs with Booking Offices.

What people fail to grasp is that the simplification they crave results in huge price increases and loss of flexibility - see LNER's Simpler Fares trial

LNER's scam isn't simplification at all. It's just replacing one of three ticket types with a different one with different conditions. True simplification would be making everything Anytime, Any Permitted. Whether prices rise or fall is a political choice.

 

[styles]

We often get told that rail fares are too complex. I came across this rather excellent blog post by Thomas Ableman, formerly of TfL and Chiltern Railways amongst others.

The Boots example is an amusing read, but very true! Personally I've often though the issue isn't complexity but one of how restrictions and information is presented.

Complexity isn’t the issue with train fares — Freewheeling

There is a consensus that rail fares are too complex. There is a lot of truth to this but it’s nuanced. It’s very important we understand this nuance otherwise we’re in danger of fixing the wrong things. The problem isn’t exactly complexity , the problems are cognitive effort, jeopardy and

www.freewheeling.info

There is a consensus that rail fares are too complex.
There is a lot of truth to this but it’s nuanced.
It’s very important we understand this nuance otherwise we’re in danger of fixing the wrong things.
The problem isn’t exactly complexity, the problems are cognitive effort, jeopardy and arbitrariness.

I'd broadly agree with this, but the cognitive effort and arbitrariness are direct results of the complexity. They're not separate things - they're intertwined. We wouldn't need to remove the cognitive effort of e.g. "any route permitted" vs "only via Carlisle", if the seemingly arbitrary distinction between the two didn't exist.

Let me explain by means of a visit to Boots.

Boots​

I recently bought vitamins in Boots. The packet that I wanted cost £15.99. I took two boxes off the shelves.

When I went to pay, the helpful chappie at the self-serve till told me that they were on 3 for 2. So I got another. That took the unit price (what we might call the “fare”) from £15.99 to £10.66.

Yeah, I love being sent back to the shelves because there's hidden offers? This might be a mild inconvenience in a small Boots store, but a bit of a ballache in larger stores where the vitamins might not be near the tills.

However, I have an Advantage Card, so that’s another 10% off. Which means the price became £9.60.

A bit like having a Railcard then?

At this point, the helpful chappie gave me a “£5 off if you spend £20 voucher” and instructed me to scan it. However, as my total order was currently £19.20, I went to buy two packets of paracetamol at 60p each, to get my order up to £20.40. With £5 off, that made the price £15.40. The price per box of vitamins was therefore £6.80.

A ridiculous situation, pointing to Boots' artificially-inflated prices.

As you can see, depending on which combination of offers I’d used, I could have paid £6.80, £9.60, £10.66 or £15.99.

But I left the shop with a very positive impression of Boots. Why?

Good question. I certainly wouldn't have left with a positive impression. The whole affair sounds like a right faff. Go back to the shelves, sign up for an Advantage card, scan this random voucher. Just give me my vitamins at a decent price please.

Firstly, because it was clear to me all along why the prices were changing. 3 for 2 is intuitive. So is 10% off. So is £5 off if you spend £20. Even though I could have paid more than double what I actually paid, the prices didn’t feel arbitrary.

But it is arbitrary? Boots have had 3 for 2 on vitamins for years, possibly decades. This means their normal prices are artificially inflated. Being forced to either pay a higher unit price, or bulk buy 3 packets at a time, isn't good for the consumer is it.

Secondly, I was told what to do. I didn’t have any cognitive effort to try to figure out the best price.

But you did? It clearly wasn't intuitive else you'd have picked up 3 to begin with, rather than getting to the till and then being advised to go back to the shelves for a third packet. You had to have already signed up to an Advantage card, etc.

Even more important, I never felt any jeopardy - I did what I was told, and paid what I paid and I left without thinking any further about it. At no point did I fear penalty or prosecution.

Let me explain how it would have felt if Boots was a railway station.

At the START of the process, I’d have been faced with a touchscreen showing a range of different prices from £6.80 to £15.99. Each would have had conditions (e.g. “with Advantage Card”, “with two other of the same or similar products”, “volume rate”, etc).

As opposed to the self-service tills in Boots, where you wouldn't be told that an Advantage card would give you money off, and wouldn't have been prompted that you could get a third packet for free, or that there was a random coupon you could scan for 25% off if you paid 40p more?

I would have had to work out which of these applied to me. ‘What does “similar products” mean?’, ‘Can I use the volume rate with the Advantage Card?’. I would have feared that the machine would have sold me a ticket for a rate that wasn’t actually valid with the goods I intended to buy.

This is pretty much the argument for keeping ticket offices open. Much like a self-service till at Boots, a TVM at a railway station wouldn't inform you of all of these ridiculous quirks, but a staff member would (or could, given the right sales guidelines).

Once I had my ticket, I would have taken the vitamins I had bought off the shelf. If I’d been super smart, I’d have figured out that the best rate involved adding two paracetamol to my order but it would have seemed utterly mad - and I’d constantly be worrying that I was wrong.

It is utterly mad that Boots do this, yes.

All round the shop there’d be signs warning me that if I took the wrong goods for my ticket, I faced prosecution.

Boots stores do indeed have signs warning you that if you steal, you'll face prosecution.

Once I’d taken the goods, I’d have left the shop - but there’d be inspectors outside checking that I’d got the right goods for my ticket. If not, they’d give me a penalty charge (best case) or prosecute me (worst case).

Perhaps not at Boots, but various Lidl, Aldi, Tesco, Sainsbury's stores do indeed inspect your receipt before letting you leave. It wouldn't surprise me if Boots went this way eventually given the risk-benefit trade-off of stealing electric toothbrushes to flog on an underground market.

Hopefully, I’d have got it right, paid the £6.80 rate for three vitamins and two boxes of paracetamol (bonkers!! How complex!) and heaved a huge sigh of relief when the inspectors let me go.

But you can see that what a stressful experience it would have been.

You can also imagine the conversation that night in the pub “I went to boots today. Their prices are insanely complex. Turns out the best price means you have to buy two paracetamol. It’s just crazy! Someone needs to simplify their pricing structure.”

Now we get to the absolute crucial crux of this whole thing: the fare structure is identical in both experiences. The complexity is not the issue: it’s how it’s retailed.

But the retailing only needs fixing in this way because of the complexity. The retail staff member probably also feels like a right twit having to tell customers things like oh you can go and get a 3rd packet for free, or oh if you pick up a Mars bar you'll get £5 off your vitamins.

In the first example, I had a really positive experience of Boots, with a helpful man offering me discounts. I felt good.

I'd find it really irritating to be honest. I'm surprised the author was so happy about being sent on errands just to get a fair price on calcium.

In the second example, I had a super-stressful experience.

Super stressful seems like a bit of a stretch. Both would wind me up, but super stressful? I'm unconvinced.

As you can see, the positivity of the first experience is nothing to do with complexity and everything to do with Boots not making me figure it out for myself (cognitive effort), offering discounts that made intuitive sense (weren’t arbitrary) and not making me fear prosecution (jeopardy).

Only because you didn't use a self-service till though and spoke to a human. If the author had used a self-service till, much like a TVM, they'd have lost out because Boots prefers to have a ridiculous pricing structure.

To demonstrate that these really are the problem, let’s look at two rail-based examples.

The first is my former employer, TfL.

Transport for London​

No-one complains about the complexity of TfL’s pricing structure.

Indeed, TfL’s ticketing system (Oyster + Contactless) is generally held to be a global role-model.

Yet, (and this is a really important point), under the bonnet, TfL’s fare structure is fiendishly complex.

To illustrate this, let me tell you about one of my favourite leisure journeys: from Walthamstow (where I live) to Richmond (the beautiful suburb in South West London, full of stately homes, parks and deer).

The following is the list of single fares between Walthamstow and Richmond.

Cash fares:

• By Underground and Overground: £7.00
• By Underground and National Rail: £9.90

Oyster and Contactless fares:

• By Underground, Oyster or Contactless, Peak (Monday to Friday from 0630 to 0930 and from 1600 to 1900): £4.60
• By Underground, Oyster or Contactless, Off Peak (All other times): £3.40
  Changing between London Underground and National Rail at Waterloo (or Blackfriars, Cannon Street, Charing Cross, London Bridge, Victoria or Waterloo East) or Changing between London Underground and National Rail at Battersea Power Station/Queenstown Road or Vauxhall, Peak: £7.30
• Changing between London Underground and National Rail at Waterloo (or Blackfriars, Cannon Street, Charing Cross, London Bridge, Victoria or Waterloo East) or Changing between London Underground and National Rail at Battersea Power Station/Queenstown Road or Vauxhall, Off Peak: £5.90
• Avoiding Zone 1 via Highbury & Islington or Hackney Downs/Hackney Central or Avoiding Zone 1 via Blackhorse Road and Gospel Oak, Peak: £3.00
• Avoiding Zone 1 via Highbury & Islington or Hackney Downs/Hackney Central or Avoiding Zone 1 via Blackhorse Road and Gospel Oak, Off Peak: £2.20As you can see, there are are only two cash fares but six different Oyster / Contactless fares!

If TfL these tickets were still sold the way rail tickets are sold, TfL would be constantly lambasted for this fiendish complexity. Imagine going to a ticket machine in Walthamstow Central station and having to choose one of these six fares, knowing that if you chose the wrong one for the journey you subsequently made, you’d risk a penalty fare or prosecution.

The reason why TfL’s ticketing is seen as a triumph not a tragedy is because there’s no cognitive effort required

Only if you're happy to pay higher fares though?

nor jeopardy and the fares don’t feel arbitrary.

Erm, I think they do feel arbitrary! I suspect many fellow Londoners feel the same.

The lack of cognitive effort and jeopardy result from the same feature: Oyster and Contactless cards allow you to travel on all public transport in London, and the system chooses the fare based on the journey you’ve made.

That means that there’s no cognitive effort, as you simply touch in and touch out, and the system does the thinking for you. There’s also no jeopardy. TfL does employ inspectors but they will simply scan your card. As long as you have an Oyster card or Contactless card, you don’t have to fear being told you have the ‘wrong’ ticket.

Again, only if you're happy to pay seemingly randomly higher fares in exchange for the convenience of tapping a card. Is the goal here just to say convenience is better, even if it means paying 330% the price of the cheapest fare?

I note that the author has omitted that the cheapest fares require knowing that you need to take on pink readers when changing trains, which is probably one of the most common causes of paying higher fares than necessary on the TfL network.

Finally, the point about arbitrariness. This is more subjective but it’s important: very roughly, the fares make sense. Because of the lack of cognitive effort required, no-one needs to understand where all these various interchange points actually are or worry too much about when off peak starts and ends: they just see what’s gone out of their account.

They only make sense if you think hard about them and the sources of them. I think Martin Lewis would take issue with the cash fares being more expensive for example, if he had the bandwidth to tackle it. I suspect disadvantaged Londoners who rely on cash resent it, and being forced to go to corner shops to top up Oyster cards to avoid being screwed over.

What they see is that if they travel at rush hour, it costs a bit more. If they go through central London, it costs a bit more. If they go by mainline train not tube, it costs a bit more. The cheapest option is to go by Overground round the edge. The most expensive option is to do the fastest (tube and train through town), and the most expensive version of that is at peak time.

This doesn’t feel arbitrary. If you travelled the slow way via the Overground and got charged a tenner, you’d feel cross.

No-one needs understand the fares, if they make intuitive sense.

Well they do if they want to save money.

There's some good points in this article, but it appears to advocate convenience over cost. The main thing I've taken away from it isn't that Boots is some superior retailer because if you don't use self-service, a staff member might helpfully send you back round the shop for discounts; it's that removing the human element from retailing, both in pharmacies and on the rail network, is screwing passengers over on their fares. There's two ways out of that - more humans or some truly excellent self-service POS, or simplifying the pricing so that it doesn't need a PhD in rail ticketing to get the cheapest fare.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 29 Oct 2025 ==

I think there's a discussion to be had about the sort of railway the country wants. Not just about the actual physical service but about ticketing and how irregularities should be dealt with.

Well, quite. The proliferation of strict liability offences applied to a frankly complex system where genuine mistakes are commonplace, is not on.

It seems to me that the current thinking is that fares are too complex so must be simplified. What people fail to grasp is that the simplification they crave results in huge price increases and loss of flexibility - see LNER's Simpler Fares trial - all from a nationalised operator being held up as an example of how the railway should be run.

That's by choice though. Wanting to simplify fare structures doesn't automatically lead to LNER's "Simpler Fares", which I would argue are actually less simple than what we had before.

What the industry doesn't do well is education of customers or staff. Every off-peak or super off-peak ticket has it's restriction code clearly displayed on the ticket with instructions on how to look it up. Despite this we regularly see confusion or disputes about the use of such tickets.

I don't believe it's consumer-friendly to, after purchasing a ticket, be expected to bring up a smartphone or tablet and type in a URL to look up travel restrictions. This should be presented clearly without the customer having to go looking it up online, and I'd argue it should be presented before actually purchasing the ticket, not after. The disputes and prosecutions forum is littered with people making genuine mistakes with their tickets, not because we're not educating them, but because buying a train ticket requires "education" in the first place. It shouldn't be this complicated to begin with.

 

[davart]

I've copied this from @styles comment: "Just give me my vitamins at a decent price please." which I think sums up what is wrong with just about every retail offering today. For simplicity, I will lump in rail tickets with this.

There's nothing wrong with paying a fair price for something. There are those who 'shop on price' and of course everyone likes a 'bargain'. Regarding the Boots example, some would prefer not to faff about, pay a reasonable price and crack on with the rest of the shopping.

I was in Tesco earlier on. A chap had forgotten his Clubcard at the self service. He asked if I wanted free points so scanned mine. The staff member nearby had no other solution for him. He got the clubcard prices, I got a few extra points.

Loyalty should be rewarded but when it he gets to doing mental arithmetic to work out the price per weight to see whether that deal is actually a saving, it's a little out of order. This is how I feel about rail fares.


Make every ticket a fair price. Get rid of all Railcard, discounts, advance bookings. Work out how much money is needed to cover overheads then set a per mile price regardless of service or time of day. Of course, first class and sleepers should cost more, but a basic commuter service should be the same price countrywide. Why can't this be done? Madness really.

 

[styles]

I've copied this from @styles comment: "Just give me my vitamins at a decent price please." which I think sums up what is wrong with just about every retail offering today. For simplicity, I will lump in rail tickets with this.

There's nothing wrong with paying a fair price for something. There are those who 'shop on price' and of course everyone likes a 'bargain'. Regarding the Boots example, some would prefer not to faff about, pay a reasonable price and crack on with the rest of the shopping.

I was in Tesco earlier on. A chap had forgotten his Clubcard at the self service. He asked if I wanted free points so scanned mine. The staff member nearby had no other solution for him. He got the clubcard prices, I got a few extra points.

Loyalty should be rewarded but when it he gets to doing mental arithmetic to work out the price per weight to see whether that deal is actually a saving, it's a little out of order. This is how I feel about rail fares.


Make every ticket a fair price. Get rid of all Railcard, discounts, advance bookings. Work out how much money is needed to cover overheads then set a per mile price regardless of service or time of day. Of course, first class and sleepers should cost more, but a basic commuter service should be the same price countrywide. Why can't this be done? Madness really.

I agree with this, though I will add that simplifying fares is itself not simple. Some aspects can be, like ditching railcards and readjusting fares to maintain current revenue. But a per mile pricing regime for example falls down when we consider the Avanti vs WMR London to Crewe example - nobody would bother with WMT changing at Rugby if they could do the same journey in just shy of half the time (1h39m vs 2h58m) on Avanti with no changes.

To see two different approaches of this, contrast LNER with ScotRail.

LNER ditched Off Peak fares and introduced 70 minute 'flex' tickets. In doing so, passengers ended up worse off financially as the only fully flexible ticket is now an Anytime fare which costs a bomb, and now people need to learn what 70 minutes flex means if they want something semi-flexible. If anything, it's made things less simple.

ScotRail on the other hand have ditched Off Peak fares and adjusted their Anytime fares to the old Off Peak prices. At some point they will remove the Off Peak options from the system entirely. This delivers financial value to passengers and simplifies fares, as there's no need to concern yourself with when off peak starts or finishes.

Many ways to skin a cat. Some are better at it than others, but it's not a simple task.

 

[OneOfThe48]

I think there’s a massive preconditioned bias here which is causing the writer’s reaction.

He finds the ‘Boots’ experience of bulk buy discounts, loyalty card discounts and random vouchers a positive one because he wants it to be a positive one.

Whereas I think, ultimately, he finds the Rail experience a negative one because he expects and wants to feel negative about it, and already believes railway ticketing is ‘complex’.

You can absolutely take the ‘cognitive load’ out of railway ticketing by using a journey planner TVM or website; just tell it the train time and journey you want and it will give you the price you need to pay for them.

If you want to find some discounts, such as using Boots’s Advantage card or a Railcard, then you will need to do a bit of thinking. But if you just want simplicity, then the system will give you it.

 

[Harpers Tate]

Going back to the original Boots script and comparing this to the Railway.

1: Having done everything that is required as described, you then either intentionally or accidentally leave the Paracetamols behind. Thereby you have "defrauded" Boots by £3.80. You are "caught" without any Paracetamol and are issued a penalty of £100, reduced to £50 if paid soon. etc.

2: There is a marketing system operated both by Boots and by various third party agecies in place where the Headline price of the vitamins are massively advertised as "from £6.80 per pack" * (see terms and conditions).

3: You get to the till, and the conversation and activity is as described except that you don't immediately collect the third pack of vitamins. You pay the total £15.40 and then are required to collect the third pack before you exit. You don't do so, whether intentionally or unintentionally. You are "caught" with only two packs of vitamins and are issued a penalty of £100, reduced to £50 if paid soon. etc.

4: You get to the till, and the conversation and activity is as described except that you don't immediately collect the third pack of vitamins. You pay the total £15.40 and then are required to collect the third pack before you exit. They are out of stock; you can't get a third pack. You pick up a third pack of a different brand instead after being told you can do so by someone who purports to be a staff member (but you have no proof of this conversation). You are "caught" with only two packs of vitamins plus the third and are issued a penalty of £100, reduced to £50 if paid soon. etc.

Oh, and one of the better examples of how the Railway penalises people when they have paid MORE than they need have done is the 2-Together railcard scenario. You buy your two tickets at 1/3 off (thus paying 1/3 more than the price of one ticket) and end up having to travel alone. Not permitted.

 

[TUC]

There are so many ticketing sites these days with good fares comparison functionalities that it's hard to argue that the end results are confusing in terms of choice.

 

[styles]

There are so many ticketing sites these days with good fares comparison functionalities that it's hard to argue that the end results are confusing in terms of choice.

I think they are though.

This morning I went to buy some tickets from Edinburgh to Balloch. 3 out of 4 trains will be operated by ScotRail so I took the rational decision of heading to the ScotRail website.

By default it selected 2x off peak singles at £23.30 each.

But there is an off peak return for £27.

Why did I have to manually change the fares from the ones it selected to get the best price? And this is from the operator who is actually running the trains I'll be using no less.

Then you get split tickets. Great, Trainline and Raileasy take the legwork out here and find the splits for me. But do occasional passengers actually understand what split tickets mean? After all, there are ways in which trying to use split tickets can result in penalty fares.

Then there's time restrictions on Railcards. The terminology in the 16-25 Railcard terms I actually think is incorrectly applied across the industry. The wording is not actually clear in my view.

I'm somebody who travels by train a lot, and even I have questions about tickets. There's no chance for the occasional traveller.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think there's a discussion to be had about the sort of railway the country wants. Not just about the actual physical service but about ticketing and how irregularities should be dealt with.

It seems to me that the current thinking is that fares are too complex so must be simplified. What people fail to grasp is that the simplification they crave results in huge price increases and loss of flexibility - see LNER's Simpler Fares trial - all from a nationalised operator being held up as an example of how the railway should be run.

What the industry doesn't do well is education of customers or staff. Every off-peak or super off-peak ticket has it's restriction code clearly displayed on the ticket with instructions on how to look it up. Despite this we regularly see confusion or disputes about the use of such tickets.

One thing the LNER trial misses is that you can electronically rebook the new 70 minute ticket but not an Off Peak/Super Off Peak. The optional ability to do this, including releasing the reservation and booking a new one where applicable, would do a lot to make these tickets easier to use by those not used to them, and could include the ability to excess (in effect refund and replace) to a different appropriate ticket with the cost to change clearly displayed where the one held isn't valid for the intended change.

This is a basic expectation for air travel, whose ticket rules are often far more complex than rail!

With almost all tickets sold online, if you had something like this in place the complexity would barely matter.

 

[jon0844]

Obviously this thread is about rail fares and complexity, but I'm going to comment on Boots and say that, while obviously great you can get such discounts, I don't like all the hoops you need to jump through to save money - and still get to leave the store wondering if you paid the lowest price for the goods you wanted.

Many stores have similar schemes and methods that requires you to do a lot of research and planning - and you feel like it's a game.

Wouldn't most people just want the individual items priced lower instead?

But the shops rely on people not working any of this out and ignoring the deals (intentionally because they're in a rush and can't be fussed, or they simply don't notice and no staff help them).

Worse still you now have prices inflated if you don't have a loyalty card, and soon we'll see prices changing at different times of the day. Crikey - Boots might soon have peak and off peak periods to contend with too!!

So will the railway get more simple or will retail get more complicated?

 

[Wallsendmag]

One thing the LNER trial misses is that you can electronically rebook the new 70 minute ticket but not an Off Peak/Super Off Peak. The optional ability to do this, including releasing the reservation and booking a new one where applicable, would do a lot to make these tickets easier to use by those not used to them, and could include the ability to excess (in effect refund and replace) to a different appropriate ticket with the cost to change clearly displayed where the one held isn't valid for the intended change.

This is a basic expectation for air travel, whose ticket rules are often far more complex than rail!

With almost all tickets sold online, if you had something like this in place the complexity would barely matter.

Why can't you? You can cancel your reservation and book another one very easily on the app or web. As for rail tickets being too complex, yes definately.

 

[chrisjo]

Something else needs to factored in but I've no idea where!

When you go to Boots to buy your 3 for the price of 2 vitamins, you will almost invariably find that there are only two packs on the shelf and the staff will claim that they have no more out the back.

 

[michael8]

Overall a very good article, but I will add my name to those unconvinced about what is said about PAYG.

There is no risk of prosecution as long as you remain within the Oyster area if you're using Oyster, or the Contactless area if you're using Contactless. If you go beyond the boundary and get checked, then you absolutely can be Penalty Fared or prosecuted. Moreover, the expansion of both areas beyond zone 6 makes it much tougher for people to be sure where the boundaries are.

The lack of cognitive effort when using PAYG also comes at a price: you're often overpaying. Not on that Walthamstow to Richmond journey, admittedly, but if you were breaking your journey in central London or making multiple journeys in a day on a Saturday or Sunday and you do this regularly, you are probably overpaying compared with getting a Network Railcard and buying a Day Travelcard for £11, as opposed to paying the Zones 1-4 cap of £12.80. And there are lots of better examples of journeys where, even for single or return journeys, it is cheaper to buy a ticket than use PAYG, especially but not only if you are using a Network Railcard.

If you are bothered about paying the going rate rather than being ripped off, the existence of PAYG greatly increases complexity, because you have to establish if it's better to use PAYG or get a ticket (or a combination of the two). And, in large part because of the introduction of PAYG, you need to take into account that off-peak day return fares for journeys wholly within London have been withdrawn, so you need to also consider starting or finishing short on an off-peak return ticket that straddles the zone 6 boundary, as it can be cheaper to pay a slightly higher distance-based fare in order to benefit from the Network Railcard discount on an off-peak fare (possibly similar to buying the extra packets of paracetamol).

Just as, if you're bothered about paying the going rate for vitamins rather than be ripped off, you probably need to check the price in more than one shop. Ideally, I would want to find somewhere that doesn't go through the ridiculous charade, described in the article, of pretending to want to charge you £16 for something that's obviously only worth a fraction of that amount. It's interesting to me that in the transaction described, the author wouldn't have been told by the member of staff how to reduce the unit price had he not been prepared to pay a unit price of £16 for some vitamin tablets, which he obviously was because he took them up to the counter. I can honestly say this is not something that would have happened to me! I don't think I agree with the notion that Boots' ridiculous pricing strategy doesn't put off customers: it certainly puts me off! I'd much rather get vitamin tablets from Aldi or Lidl, who aren't going to charge £16 a tub and who are also much less likely to have a multibuy offer. I would pay extra to have a sensible price displayed up-front on the shelf-edge ticket, rather than have to jump through hoops before we can get down to a sensible price.

I do understand it's difficult, though, as for the railway at least, the silly prices have to exist so that feckless or confused people, foreign tourists and businesses can pay them.

Agree - the Boots article makes no sense to me - it seems a horrible way to get a decent price for a product.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Why can't you? You can cancel your reservation and book another one very easily on the app or web.

But you have to use it differently if you have a walk up than if you have an Advance. If you want to truly simplify, the UX needs to be the same for both, just showing the cost to change (which will often be £0). Think about it from the point of view of a true novice.

An experienced user of course knows they don't have to change online if they don't want to, but with regard to designing the 70 minute product LNER are absolutely right that most people want that reassurance (and to be simply told what it will cost if they want to step outside those parameters rather than "computer says no"). The product has flaws, but personally I'd see no issue with adding it to the range (rather than removing the Super Off Peak) and I think a fair number of people might actively choose it if priced right.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 29 Oct 2025 ==

Agree - the Boots article makes no sense to me - it seems a horrible way to get a decent price for a product.

Aldi/Lidl would argue that just having a reasonable price for one product is the right way. BOGOFs and the likes are very rare at those supermarkets, and in most cases though not quite all products are only sold in one size.

 

[michael8]

I've copied this from @styles comment: "Just give me my vitamins at a decent price please." which I think sums up what is wrong with just about every retail offering today. For simplicity, I will lump in rail tickets with this.

There's nothing wrong with paying a fair price for something. There are those who 'shop on price' and of course everyone likes a 'bargain'. Regarding the Boots example, some would prefer not to faff about, pay a reasonable price and crack on with the rest of the shopping.

I was in Tesco earlier on. A chap had forgotten his Clubcard at the self service. He asked if I wanted free points so scanned mine. The staff member nearby had no other solution for him. He got the clubcard prices, I got a few extra points.

Loyalty should be rewarded but when it he gets to doing mental arithmetic to work out the price per weight to see whether that deal is actually a saving, it's a little out of order. This is how I feel about rail fares.


Make every ticket a fair price. Get rid of all Railcard, discounts, advance bookings. Work out how much money is needed to cover overheads then set a per mile price regardless of service or time of day. Of course, first class and sleepers should cost more, but a basic commuter service should be the same price countrywide. Why can't this be done? Madness really.

If a basic commuter service cost the same price countrywide, there would be queues outside the station for the more popular routes. This is why prices seem arbitrary - they are set to actually ration the service so there is a reasonable chance of getting on the train. The NHS is rationed by waiting time, the railways are rationed by cost. If they stopped being rationed by cost (ie. uniform fares as you suggest, or free - makes no difference), it would need to be rationed by waiting time. It's as simple as that, and something that not many people seem to understand - ticket prices are a deliberate way of manipulating passenger load for our own benefit.

 

[Bletchleyite]

ticket prices are a deliberate way of manipulating passenger load for our own benefit.

They perhaps used to be that, but now they are a deliberate way of maximising income for the railway's benefit, not what you suggest.

 

[Belperpete]

He is comparing apples with oranges. If he had gone to one of the self service tills in Boots he wouldn't have got the advice, and I suspect that many staff at a manned till wouldn't have spent that much time if there were a big queue waiting. Whereas if he had gone to a ticket office rather than a TVM he may have received equivalent advice.

 

[Lewisham2221]

There are so many ticketing sites these days with good fares comparison functionalities that it's hard to argue that the end results are confusing in terms of choice.

And those sites and apps all offer fares based on journey planner inputs, which generate valid itineraries which surely remove even more of the confusion - just follow what it says?

That said, I think some restrictions on off-peak tickets are confusing, or at least very badly worded - to the point of confusing.

However, my theory is that when people say that rail fares are confusing, what they actually mean is they don't (or don't want to) understand why there are different fares available. Why will it cost £25 to travel on the 08:45 train, but only £15 to travel on the 08:55 train? It's actually very simple and logical - the former is an Anytime fare, and is travelling on an intercity service - arguably more comfortable environment, more onboard facilities, less stops and a quicker journey time. The cheaper ticket is a "booked train only" advance, using a local service with more stops, a slower journey time, fewer onboard facilities and an arguably less comfortable environment. It's a concept that most people seem to understand when it comes to airlines - cheapest fare = no frills, no flexibility; higher fare = more frills, more flexibility. Perhaps it boils down to usage? People travelling a long distance are going to want to use an intercity operator and draw comparisons with airlines, whilst people making shorter journeys are more likely to draw comparisons to a bus and aren't massively fussed about whether they get the intercity option or the regional/local option (if such a choice exists for that route)?