Operator specific tickets - how long will they remain available?

[A0]

There's no reason to encourage people onto slower services, as providing capacity on slower services is more expensive because there are more diagrams to maintain frequency. Ideally, everyone travelling from London to Birmingham would use Avanti. Were that the case, LNR could run 4-car north of Northampton, which would free up 350s to provide more capacity by running more 12-cars south of Northampton where the service is busier. Or with the coming of the 730s, it'd be 10 car south of Northampton and 5 north of it.

The only reason to have a cheaper option is to widen the market (i.e. for people who need flexibility and can't afford Avanti fares). But you don't need both Chiltern AND LNR for that, and you can do route High Wycombe for Chiltern. (Though equally it shouldn't be competing with Avanti, it should concentrate on its own markets and incidentally offer cheap fares, which means making the Birmingham services slower).

Bit in bold - which is a pretty crap offer to people from the likes of Gerrards X, Beaconsfield, High Wycombe or Princes Risborough - basically saying 'we're going to slow down your journeys to Birmingham so we don't compete with Avanti' when none of those places are anywhere near a place they could use Avanti and benefit from a quicker journey.

 

[Krokodil]

Which, notably, Avanti have already done on the day which was a massive problem - Fridays - even in the morning peak (LNER have done it too but evening only). Thus it isn't an issue on Fridays any more. This notably is permanent, not experimental.

Point of order, wasn't it Virgin who removed Friday peak restrictions?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Point of order, wasn't it Virgin who removed Friday peak restrictions?

I'm not 100% sure, I thought it was more recent than that, but it could have been Virgin at the end of their tenure.

Either way they've gone and I'd think are unlikely to return.

 

[LowLevel]

I wish they'd hurry up and get rid of them. It sounds awful but I stopped bothering a long time ago between Liverpool and Manchester in particular because there are huge numbers of slightly cheaper Northern Only tickets and not unreasonably they say "Anytime" and people think they're in the North.

I recently had a train with 130 passengers on it and I stopped bothering when I hit 20 Northern Only tickets with the same slightly confused look when I attempted to explain why their £2 cheaper ticket was no good. A ticket check that would have taken 10-15 minutes elsewhere took 30.

Northern don't give a toss as they also get a slice if I smack the passengers up for an any permitted ticket.

I know most of my colleagues are either the same, or making significant amounts of commission by being ruthless.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Even if nothing else changed, I think there would be significant benefit in a rule along the lines of that an operator specific ticket of any kind (including any Advance fare) may only be introduced if it is discounted by a minimum of 20% or a minimum of £10, whichever is larger, from the relevant interavailable fare. They make sense for long distance flows (which the £10 would deal with), not for local ones, and local Advances are just an utter pain.

 

[PG]

You can blame the government for that one.

I do

 

[Dr Day]

Could be complex behind the scenes, but it would also help if operator specific tickets could be more easily excessed to the applicable inter-available fare rather than a whole new ticket being required.

 

[geoffk]

I think it's likely it'll disappear for local journeys (to enable contactless) but that it'll become the only option for long distance journeys (which in time will probably move to Advance only, e-ticket only).

(Note: journeys, not TOCs, before this heads down the "but we can't segregate in the UK" line)

Huddersfield to Deighton (a 4-minute journey) is the most ridiculous operator-specific fare I've come across. With the DfT now taking the revenue risk there's no benefit to operators keeping these tickets at all, is there? I would get rid of them all (apart from advances obviously and any special offers like Club 55, if that still exists) and replace them with a premium for Inter-City services, which is (or was) commonplace on the continent.

 

[PG]

With the DfT now taking the revenue risk there's no benefit to operators keeping these tickets at all, is there?

You'd think so, I guess it depends on how much longer DfT keep taking the revenue risk?

 

[Kite159]

Huddersfield to Deighton (a 4-minute journey) is the most ridiculous operator-specific fare I've come across. With the DfT now taking the revenue risk there's no benefit to operators keeping these tickets at all, is there? I would get rid of them all (apart from advances obviously and any special offers like Club 55, if that still exists) and replace them with a premium for Inter-City services, which is (or was) commonplace on the continent.

Especially when the Northern trains are very limited between those two stations and will get withdrawn in May (unless they are planning to stop the Huddersfield - Brighouse - Bradford trains there).

Most ridiculous Operator specific ticket in my eyes must be the TfW only fares between Manchester Oxford Road & Piccadilly (https://www.brfares.com/!faredetail?orig=MCO&dest=MAN&rte=270&tkt=CDR)

 

[Dr Day]

Most ridiculous Operator specific ticket in my eyes must be the TfW only fares between Manchester Oxford Road & Piccadilly

Probably not ridiculous to Welsh Govt who will be looking to maximise the revenue they keep rather than have to share with DfT.

 

[Krokodil]

I'm curious as to how many of those are sold. I'd like to bet that most people buying a ticket from MCO to MAN are doing so purely so that they can get through the barriers and then go on to another destination.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

I'd like to bet that most people buying a ticket from MCO to MAN are doing so purely so that they can get through the barriers and then go on to another destination.

Possibly. Or maybe they have a (different) TOC specific advance ticket onwards from Manchester Piccadilly.