Regulated vs Unregulated Fares

[J4ck100]

Hi all,

I am looking at moving to the Wessex area and a big part of my property search is looking at which rail stations will accommodate my thrice-weekly commute to London Paddington.

I am informed that fares from Swindon are unregulated, whereas fares from Didcot Parkway are regulated and therefore quite significantly cheaper on a like for like basis.

Is there a definitive list of regulated vs unregulated fares out there, or indeed a good way to compare pricing from different stations?

Thanks,

 

[jfollows]

https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/what-are-regulated-fares.260754/#post-6575754 may or may not be helpful

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 31 Jan 2024 ==

Your information is not quite correct in that there are regulated fares from both Swindon and Didcot but it may be that the tickets used are for different fare types. A lot of people comment that splitting fares at Didcot saves money, which I think comes from Didcot being in Network South East in the past with correspondingly lower fares which still show up today.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 31 Jan 2024 ==

https://www.brfares.com/!home is your resource for looking up fares

 

[Watershed]

Some fares from both Swindon and Didcot to London are regulated, but the set of regulated fares varies depending on the exact journey. The Department for Transport released a list of regulated flows following a Freedom of Information request in 2012 in case you are interested in the details. I doubt the list has changed much in the intervening period for this part of the country.

In reality, in the current environment I'd say regulated fares are a moot point; almost all train companies now operate under management contracts where they simply do as they are told by the DfT. That includes making some pretty radical changes to fares that were historically regulated - see for example LNER's abolition of all Off-Peak fares on certain key flows. So just because something is a regulated fare now doesn't guarantee that it will stay regulated (or reasonably priced) in future. The government has varied the annual fare increase to be notably more or less than inflation, depending on the political mood music of the day.

Coming back to your situation, it's true that Anytime Day Returns from Didcot to London are regulated fares, whilst there is no equivalent regulated Anytime fare from Swindon (and Anytime fares were thus increased significantly above inflation in past years). However, season tickets from both are regulated - so if you are a 4 or 5 day a week commuter, that somewhat dampens the impact. It's only if you're a less frequent commuter that the higher cost of Anytime fares makes Didcot better value.

You can easily see all the fares between two points by using BR Fares - this is the set for Swindon to Paddington whilst this is the set for Didcot to Paddington. You probably only want to consider the fares labelled walk-up, since Advance fares are offered entirely at operators' discretion and their availability or price can be changed at any time.

 

[J4ck100]

Thanks all, really helpful insight.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

A reminder that BR used market pricing for 20 years and hiked fares on many routes, especially those with improved services.
Swindon (and Didcot) came under that policy because of its excellent HST services.
Meanwhile fares from places like Worcester, with mostly slower and stopping services (and part of Network Southeast) had lower increases.
Intercity routes generally had repeated high fare rises (still visible today).