Flows that appear to have no regulated fares

[mikeg]

Doing some late night compare and contrast on fares increases by TPE I noticed a shockingly bad value ticket is going up even further.

Northallerton to James Cook is increasing from £16.10 SDR to an astonishing £16.40 SDR. Is it the case that this fare is not regulated? There's no SVR but I thought where there was no SVR the SDR was the regulated fare for provincial services? Or has fares regulation been breached by TPE?

 

[AngusH]

Forgive me, but are you being ironic or is there a typo in your message?

(That increase appears to be only 30p)

?


edit: I have re-read the original message and have more thoughts in a new post below.

 

[_toommm_]

It's not even a 2% increase, like Angus said, is it really too too big of an increase - I can think of many more at 30p or greater in The People's Republic of South Yorkshire alone.

 

[AngusH]

Having re-read the original post, I think I focused on the increase,
rather than the actual problem, which is that the fare is high for the distance.

I think the increase of about 1.9% is less than the regulated cap, which is 3.6% currently I think?.
So assuming that's correct, it seems to be within the regulated increase.
And less than the average for regulated fares which was 3.3%.

I'm not sure they're doing much more than covering inflation
(Consumer Price Index is about 2.3% to 2.5% currently, Retail Price Index about 3.3%)

I wonder if the high pricing is historical to remove a local-ish
journey travel from the east coast mainline somehow?

Someone with more knowledge may appear

 

[robbeech]

Local travel on the east coast mainline is very expensive in places. Adjacent stations are not so bad (although Doncaster to Retford and Retford to Newark* are both £12) but doing 2 stations like Newark to Doncaster pretty much doubles the price at £23. And £28 Retford to York although I appreciate this is a little further.

*given the poor 1tp2h service you’d rather hope prices weren’t inflated this much.
* 6 hours between northbound trains on a Saturday

 

[mikeg]

Hi, I think you guys have misread my post:

The fare is already extortionate as are many fares from Northallerton to Esk Valley locations for the following reasons:

• The current prices from Northallerton to Middlesbrough are £8.90 CDR and £11.80 SDR.
  
• The MBR to JCH fare is then only £2.00 CDR or £2.40 SDR meaning a substantial saving is always made by splitting
  
• The CDR from Thirsk to James Cook at current prices is £13.70 CDR and £17.10 SDR, and thus undercuts this fare 'off peak'

Furthermore I believe this SDR actually already increased by close to the maximum permitted amount in January. Has anyone any access to the relevant versions of Avantix Traveller or similar to confirm this?

 

[Hadders]

Thirsk to James Cook in Avantix NFM 28 was:

SDR £16.60
SDS £14.50
CDR £13.00
CDS £12.90

 

[mikeg]

Thanks Hadders. Was actually the NTR-JCH fares I'm more interested in. Notably the THI-JCH SDR is not going up, presumably because this is a regulated fare? I just wanted to know how come all fares NTR-JCH are going up twice and is this by more than the amount permitted by fares regulations? Not that I'd ever buy a NTR-JCH ticket...

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

This FoI request details all the flows which are regulated and the type of fare which is the regulated one for each flow. You should be able to work out what, if any, fare is regulated.

 

[Paul Kelly]

Surely that can't possibly be a regulated fare as the station was only opened in 2014, and regulated fares are based on those that existed in the fares database at the time of privatisation?

 

[mikeg]

So wait... They can increase fares by as much as they like for new stations? That seems bonkers. I'd have thought the fares were regulated from their creation going forward in the case of new stations.

Edit: it seems. Northallerton to Marton is also going up. Surely that fare existed pre privatisation? I'll look in the nfm64 when I get back home.

Further edit: Seems a very reasonably priced fare of four quid existed for an SDS for NTR-MTO.