New negative easement

[mikeg]

To prevent doubling back between Leyland and Preston on journeys via Wigan North Western the existing easement has been amended with the additional exclusions.

These additional restrictions to journeys permitted by the NFM64 Fares Check, were agreed to by the DfT on 23 December 2014. Passenger Focus had been consulted and oppossed the change.


 Easement changed 2 change(s) in 700033: Journeys to or from Leyland via Chorley may not doubleback via Preston. This easement applies in both directions.

This is a shame, was there a fare anomaly? I say it's a shame but it's good to see Passenger Focus standing up for consumer rights, just a shame they're not powerful enough to persuade the DfT in the face of the almighty ATOC.

Does anyone know the reason for this Routeing Guide change? I'm not familiar with the area, does it make some journeys more difficult now?

 

[yorkie]

FOI the DfT!

And complain to your MP about PF being ignored and the DfT agreeing to unreasonable demands by ATOC.

 

[Bletchleyite]

People don't need to be stopped doing this kind of thing if they are genuinely doing it. There simply needs to be a more expensive routed fare added.

I still call on LM to add a Bletchley to Euston route Milton Keynes Central fare, for example. It should be at the same fare as MKC-Euston rather than a bit lower as Bletchley is normally. You can achieve the same thing as a season ticket by just buying one from MKC, but it doesn't work for walk up tickets, where you have to pay a return to MKC *and* a ticket from there purely to use the fastest journey at certain times of day.

Neil

 

[kieron]

Does anyone know the reason for this Routeing Guide change? I'm not familiar with the area, does it make some journeys more difficult now?

I'm not sure it is. While this easement denies travel via Preston, I can't see anything specific which allows it. As such, this may just be a booking engine anomaly.

Leyland-Wigan seems to have basically an hourly service, but northbound trains are more frequent than southbound ones early in the morning and late at night. Leyland-Chorley has two trains an hour, so there are more trains to Preston than Wigan from Leyland throughout the day.

As for the reason, I suspect it has something to do with the fact that TPE now have trains via Wigan. If they requested the original easement (for whatever reason), they may have asked for it to be extended once they noticed people with Leyland tickets boarding their trains at Preston again.

 

[SickyNicky]

On a positive note, it's nice to see proper explanations for easements and that someone, somewhere has actually realised that such things do need to go through PF and the DfT.

@kieron: The situation came about because on many flows the NFM64 fares (which electronic booking engines use to do the fare check) were the same price or cheaper from Preston as from Leyland, whereas now Leyland is often cheaper. So the fares check passes. Because booking engines don't care about double backs in the leg between the origin and the first routeing point (or the last routeing point and the destination), it wouldn't be rejected as a double back, either.