As an aside, why does the system allow split tickets anyway? Can anyone explain the logic behind it?
Do you mean "why are you
allowed to be split tickets" or "why can it be
cheaper to buy split tickets"?
In the first case, there would be no legal grounds for
not allowing them.
In the second case, it typically comes down to one of two things:
- Making a same-day return journey on a journey that is too long to have a day return fare. The difference between an anytime open return and a single is usually a lot higher than the difference between an anytime day return and a single – which, to an extent, is understandable because you're getting a more flexible ticket, but at the same time is not really defensible when there isn't the option for a cheaper but less flexible variation. But what it does mean is that it can be a lot cheaper to buy two or more day returns than one open return, even with the same peak-time validity, if you are coming back on the same day.
- If you are looking to buy Advance tickets but there are no cheap tickets available for your whole journey, you might still be able to get a better price by breaking it into sections, if there are some flows that make up the journey that still have cheaper tickets available.
I do think that the price hike when you move outside the "day return" phase is crazy, and should be streamlined. Why is it that a 50 mile journey from Wakefield to Derby costs 3 times as much as a 30 mile journey from Wakefield to Chesterfield on the same train? I don't subscribe to the idea that pricing should be strictly mileage based, but it should be more proportionate than that. But as for Advance tickets, the whole system is completely b0rked and is run for the benefit of the industry and the passenger just becomes a pawn in their game to extract maximum revenue from the system.
