One stop, big price difference

[pdq]

Hi,
I've been looking at fares between Penally (PNA) and Dewsbury (DEW) travelling north at 9am on a weekday and returning a few days later also at 9am. There appears to be a split at Hudderfield (HUD) giving nearly 25% off.

For off peak returns, PNA/DEW is £123.50 and PNA/HUD is £89.10; a couple of DEW/HUD singles are £5.40. All trains stop at HUD so no problem with the split.

How come there's such a difference in the direct ticket price just to travel one TPE stop further? Is it zonal in some way? It looks like PNA/MAN is the same price as PNA/HUD, and PNA/DEW is the same as PNA/LDS.

Are there any other sensible splits that anyone's aware of?

Cheers.

 

[SickyNicky]

How come there's such a difference in the direct ticket price just to travel one TPE stop further? Is it zonal in some way?

Yes - spot on. Ticketing usually works in clusters of stations so if you happen to want a ticket to the first station in the next cluster, the price will often go up disproportionally.

For this journey, splitting at Huddersfield would appear to be the cheapest option (without using ticketing loopholes).

 

[pdq]

Just been playing with the journey planner. It looks like Mirfield / Ravensthorne is the cut off point between the two prices.

Are there any more extreme examples than this, where a ticket covering less than two miles more costs an additional £34.40?

 

[SickyNicky]

http://www.brfares.com will tell you exactly what stations are in each cluster. For this example, put in origin Penally and destination Dewsbury. Tick "expert mode" and click "Query Fares".

For each of the fares it will show you what stations are included in the cluster.