Petition to ATOC to release NFM

[PFAS]

We need your support:

We have setup a petition for the Prime Minister to release the National Fares Manual to the public free of charge.

More information can be found here: http://www.penaltyfareappeal.co.uk/wordpress/?p=703

The petition can be found here: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/NFMFREE/#detail

Many thanks in advance.

If a Mod/Admin could make this sticky would be great.

 

[SWT Driver]

Why? 99.9% of general public wouldn't be able to make head nor tail of all of the codes, references & abbreviations.

Pointless when you can get it by doing it on NRE.

 

[krus_aragon]

Why? 99.9% of general public wouldn't be able to make head nor tail of all of the codes, references & abbreviations.

Pointless when you can get it by doing it on NRE.

In a similar vein, why put legislation up free of charge at opsi.gov.uk when 99.9% of people won't be able to understand it? Better to direct people to the Citizen's Advice Bureau, or a lawyer.

I think it's the principle of access, and (as far as they can be understood) clarity in fares.

 

[Railjet]

Why? 99.9% of general public wouldn't be able to make head nor tail of all of the codes, references & abbreviations.

Pointless when you can get it by doing it on NRE.

Where else apart from the NFM can I get all the restrictions laid out in black and white, and easily accessible? It's akin to restaurants not displaying their menus and prices outside - a practice outlawed in most civilised countries some time ago.

 

[SWT Driver]

So do you know what every single abbreviation means?

Do you know how HEAVY just one of them is?

The answer is probably NO, besides what's inside could more than likely be classed as commercially sensitive information & NOT for pubic use, just like PTANs, WONs & PONs, which are all for internal use only.

 

[dan_atki]

So do you know what every single abbreviation means?

Do you know how HEAVY just one of them is?

The answer is probably NO, besides what's inside could more than likely be classed as commercially sensitive information & NOT for pubic use, just like PTANs, WONs & PONs, which are all for internal use only.

Fares manuals are no longer printed and released as 7 telephone directories. The 'sensitive' information has since been made available to staff via a password protected website. Bear in mind it was always possible to buy these from TSO anyways: http://www.tsoshop.co.uk/bookstore....ok&ProductID=9780117911369&From=SearchResults.

Current fares information such as that being requested here is available for purchase: http://www.tsoshop.co.uk/bookstore.asp?Action=Book&ProductId=9780117068407. The program is useful and normally explains what each abbreviation means.

This is an official ATOC release of the fares information, which is distributed to travel agents, released on the proviso that ATOC take no liability for the information nor provide support for it.

The argument of the petition is why people should have to pay for this information when I believe the original argument was that there would be a small cost to 'cover administration and production' or something similar, and not for the software itself. Does it cost £10.36 to put the software onto disc?

I believe the purpose is to get the price to be more in line with what it would cost to produce the disc (for those who want a hard copy) or to have the software available for download as was the case when ATOC accidently leaked NFM95.

 

[yorkie]

So do you know what every single abbreviation means?

The Avantix program says what the abbreviations mean.

Do you know how HEAVY just one of them is?

If they make it available online then the weight of the printed manual is not relevant.

The answer is probably NO, besides what's inside could more than likely be classed as commercially sensitive information & NOT for pubic use, just like PTANs, WONs & PONs, which are all for internal use only.

What do those abbreviations mean?

I don't see how the NFM can be classified as "commercially sensitive". All the restriction codes etc are in the Avantix CD-ROM, which is publicly available for an administration fee. It would be easy for them to avoid the hassle of CDs and just put it on a server for people to download. They are not charging for the data but for the overhead costs of producing and delivering a CD. The charge for the CD is roughly in-line with the admin charge for changing a ticket.

There are some pieces of info that do not appear to be in the CD-ROM, such as evening peak restrictions out of Paddington. Are these what you mean by "commercially sensitive"? If so, is that because RPIs like to charge excesses that customers are unaware of, and by making the information secret, they are able to do this to unsuspecting customers? The fact that this is allowed to happen is an absolute disgrace and should be resolved immediately.

There should be no secret rules in the NFM that only one party that enters into a contract is made aware of.

It's only the rail industry that has secret rules and then tries to treat people like pieces of dirt if they do not abide by their secret rules. No other industry does that. Why is this?

 

[hairyhandedfool]

Are the "free" catalogues you can pick up actually free? When you get a phone contract is the phone really "free"? No, it is paid for by other means, you just don't see it, so if the NFM is "free" to everybody, who will pay for it? You can bet it won't be ATOC or the TOCs, they will pass the cost on to someone else.

So, Should the NFM be free? IMO, no, it shouldn't.

The fee for the NFM doesn't just cover the cost of materials, it must cover the cost of hiring people to create the program, and the people to burn it to CD, etc, etc, and it's not like thousands of none railway staff are getting copies on a regular basis is it!

If you want to know if a SVR is valid for the 0930 from Bogner, there are plenty of ways to find out for free.

 

[yorkie]

That's a ridiculous argument. Does it cost more to provide fares information in the form of the Avantix program, than it does to provide information in the form of a SQL database with a web front end, like the booking engines? I think not. In fact, the opposite is likely to be the case. So the whole argument is completely flawed. If you compare the data format to other means, such as phoning NRES, then again I fail to see how it can cost the rail companies less to pay someone to tell you by 'phone than it costs to let you download a program. Even if they are exploiting people on a minimum wage in a developing country, it will cost more surely.

Are you suggesting that we should be charged to use Thetrainline & Atos Origin sites to look up fares? If not, then why should we pay to use Avantix Traveller?!

 

[bluenoxid]

You still have to consider the costs of running this front end a long with managing the confusion with a help point.

 

[Mojo]

You still have to consider the costs of running this front end a long with managing the confusion with a help point.

It wouldn't be like that though, the idea would simply to be to release the software for free download rather than a > £10 charge.

 

[bluenoxid]

It's still a significant server to run for such a download that has to adapt to various downloads especially at the peak change. Such a complicated document in the public domain has to be supported properly. I feel the main reason that PFAS want it in the public domain is to torpedo the T&C's that currently restrict them

 

[yorkie]

This program already is in the public domain, so no additional support is required if it is available as a download. What is in dispute, is whether or not it should only be available as a CD-ROM with a £10 admin charge applicable, or if it should be available via a download. It's a very small program, it is only about 15MB or so, hardly justifies a 750MB CD!

 

[embers25]

As many of us have CLEARLY demonstrated in numerous fights with ATOC and the TOC's, many train companies (SWT being the worst) haven't trained staff on the correct restrictions, refuse to acknowledge their staff are wrong and try to sell you overpriced tickets. How many times do we write on here of cases where ticket machines only offered the peak fares when off-peak were valid. Also I always have to remind West of England guards (the most clueless and stubborn of all guards) that Exeter line trains have (at least did till the new hourly timetable and may not now) special relaxed restrictions such as off peak returns and travelcards being valid for use on the 0642 etc. Not only that I have to quote them the correct restriction code to use. Without Avantix telling us this and giving me those codes to relay I would be massively overcharged due to poor SWT training.

We SHOULD be able to use nationalrail.co.uk or one of the TOC's websites but these are riddled with errors on routings and validities. If we are lucky enought to live near the station we could queue up and ask at the station but certainly in SWT land they have made drastic cuts in booking office hours and most staff are completely untrained in ticket restrictions yet profess to be experts (YES I mean you amongst many others Salisbury and Woking ticket office staff and station management teams). We could call the TOC and speak to their customer service managers but SWT's didn't even know and refused to acknowledge you can break most outward portions of off-peak period returns overnight.

Try going to Woking and buying a ticket to Dublin or Belfast without first looking up the code in Avantix to give them. I've yet to find one person there that could locate it and often they find a ticket using the wrong ferry company which would be a very expensive mistake for me. Try buying a ticket to Waterlooville using the soon to be cancelled railbus (didn't SWT have a franchise commitment to run railbuses?). No-one except Guildford and Petersfield know how. I only found out because someone on here told me it's in avantix missing an "o". Without avantix to find the correct codes I could never buy that ticket as station staff don't care.

I agree in an ideal world we shouldn't need free fare manuals openly available but this world is far from ideal and open access is the only way to stop the companies ripping us off.

As an aside slightly related, fGW now have invented a new way to rip people off. Whilst I applaud them whole heartedly for introducing single fares at up to half the return fare when you go on their website and try to buy a return ticket it offers you two singles now which can be a real rip off. For example Didcot to Bath Off Peak Day Single is £14.40. Type in the details stating out and return the same date and instead of producing the correct return fare of £14.50 it tries to sell you 2 singles at £14.40 each. It's only if you scroll up the page and select the flexible return option or down the page and select slower routes that you get the £14.50 option. How many people would expect to have to do that for such a simple journey?? Net result fGW make an extra £14.30 on each return trip!

 

[yorkie]

embers25 - Yes, good post. I am fortunate in that at places like York, the ticket office staff are very good. However you are quite right in that people at other stations are rather less fortunate. And we shouldn't have to go to a station anyway. Should we have to phone NRES? I don't think so, especially as the people you talk to are just reading off a script anyway.

Net result fGW make an extra £14.30 on each return trip!

...or people may choose to drive instead!

 

[A60K]

It's still a significant server to run for such a download that has to adapt to various downloads especially at the peak change.

If it's only 15mb then it's less than half the size of the NRT, and Network Rail's site doesn't seem to have crashed under the load of people downloading that.



--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Actually, just thinking about this again: the Avantix Traveller NFM software is already on the ATOC website, as Rail Appointed Travel Agents download and use it.

The only reason we found out about the software originally is because ATOC forgot to apply password-protection to the page when they uploaded NFM98 I think it was, a couple of years back.

So basically all they need to do is remove the password-protection from that page again!

 

[bluenoxid]

You'll need to upgrade the servers to handle it anyway and link it to trains which the fares manual will not do.

There is going to be a cost. It might not be big, but there will be.

 

[Mojo]

It doesn't need to be "linked to the trains." Just provide a link to download it (rather like many of the previous copies have been distributed), and that's it.

 

[tony_mac]

A single fare lookup on National Rail takes 250-500k, and quite a lot of processing time compared to a download.
It would take at most 50 lookups, and probably much less, before it actually reduced the load on the servers.

 

[TrainBrain]

It's worth noting that, in comparison, one of the airline industry's fare tools is open for scrutiny and analysis at http://matrix2.itasoftware.com/. I've never played with NFM, but I assume it's similar - there's also a bundle of codes you need to know (or find) to create different fare types. ATOC can take some lessons from this.