Ticketing Ideas to Fit Modern Working Patterns

[Whattraintoday]

A large percentage of commuters have flexible working available to them* although not all take this up.

Annual season ticket prices are roughly based on 400 single journeys i.e. 200 returns

For conventional working a season ticket therefore makes sense, but even one day a week working from home immediately removes the financial advantage, leaving convenience as pretty much the only selling point.

What then can the TOCs / DfT do with tickets (season or otherwise) to encourage people to commute by rail?
These would presumably fit into three categories:

1. - Financial incentives
2. - Convenience
3. - Additional benefits

Different benefits would be preferred by different users, for some the ability to trip-chain is preferred, for others it might be free / discounted parking at their railhead station.
Revenue protection needs to be considered as well as the costs of implementation.

It's unlikely therefore that a single solution would work for everyone, but my ideas are:

• - '4-in-5', '3-in-5' & '2-in-5' tickets.

These would be e-tickets on an app where you buy a large number of tickets in advance (effectively a 21st c. carnet) at a discount which increases based on whether you're buying for 2, 3 or 4 days a week i.e. 200, 300 or 400 singles. The discount would not be the same as a full season ticket, but as a season ticket allows travel 7 days a week it's perhaps not going to be much more expensive.
These tickets would offer both financial benefits over individual tickets as well as the convenience of a season ticket. They would be ideal for those whose flex day isn't always the same each week and those working a shift pattern that doesn't divide by seven.
Suffers the same revenue protection issues as carnet tickets (or singles) and would need smart readers issuing to staff with a connection back to a database to 'cancel' the ticket.

• Contactless pay-as-you-go ticketing.

Similar to Oyster or contactless on the Tube this could allow a retrospective discount / refund to be applied based on the number of journeys taken.
It would however require substantial investment in barriers and revenue protection due to the lack of up-front payment. Taking payment on-board would suffer the problem of not being sure where the user got on.

• Zonal season tickets with buses / metros included

These already exist in many areas, how can they be improved to align with flexible working?

Anyone got any other ideas (or can see glaring errors with the above)?


*(58% of all workers not just commuters according to this survey: https://www.powwownow.co.uk/smarter-working/flexible-working-statistics-2017/)

 

[Terry Tait]

Tickets only require one process, first of all get rid of all railcards and do away with peak and off peak then set fair ticket prices for All, not just the chosen few.

 

[MotCO]

What about a mutli-day ticket? That is to say, you buy a ticket for say 30 or 90 days, and you can use them on any day for 30 or 90 days' worth of trips. A bit like a carnet, but better.

 

[Whattraintoday]

What about a mutli-day ticket? That is to say, you buy a ticket for say 30 or 90 days, and you can use them on any day for 30 or 90 days' worth of trips. A bit like a carnet, but better.

Would that be like a ticket with places to punch holes to cancel? - not sure how a paper solution would work with ticket gates.
I guess it would be better implemented as an app-based solution.

 

[Whattraintoday]

Tickets only require one process, first of all get rid of all railcards and do away with peak and off peak then set fair ticket prices for All, not just the chosen few.

But how do you define a 'fair price'?
If it's one price for all, irrespective of the time of day or frequency of travel then it would negatively impact certain groups of users.
It would also result in even more defined peaks with increased overcrowding and could well reduce leisure travel outside of those peak times.
If we're assuming a desire to encourage modal shift to the railways, flat rate pricing sounds fair on first glance, but has a lot of unintended consequences.

 

[MotCO]

Would that be like a ticket with places to punch holes to cancel? - not sure how a paper solution would work with ticket gates.
I guess it would be better implemented as an app-based solution.

Yes, I was thinking of some sort of 'intelligent' ticket

 

[yorkie]

Tickets only require one process, first of all get rid of all railcards and do away with peak and off peak then set fair ticket prices for All, not just the chosen few.

Good luck providing sufficient capacity to cope with demand at peak times!

 

[gordonthemoron]

what about night shift workers who go to work one day and come home the next?

 

[Whattraintoday]

what about night shift workers who go to work one day and come home the next?

They'd certainly need flexibility - I don't think they're well catered for by current Day Returns.

Again, a carnet-style approach would seem to work where each journey is deducted separately from a pre-paid pool.
But if a "Day Return" equivalence / cap was built in, it would be a good idea to consider a 'Day' as being a rolling 24hr period.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

GWR already offer three-day season tickets in Devon & Cornwall. The validity section of the ticket says "MON, TUE & WED", or "MON, TUE & THU", or... you get the idea. Rolling these out nationwide would be fairly simple.

There is a good case that the railways' unwillingness to offer reasonable ticket pricing for part-time work is effectively sex discrimination, because women are the majority of those in part-time employment (73%!). I would love someone to bring a test case on this.

 

[edwin_m]

GWR already offer three-day season tickets in Devon & Cornwall. The validity section of the ticket says "MON, TUE & WED", or "MON, TUE & THU", or... you get the idea. Rolling these out nationwide would be fairly simple.

There is a good case that the railways' unwillingness to offer reasonable ticket pricing for part-time work is effectively sex discrimination, because women are the majority of those in part-time employment (73%!). I would love someone to bring a test case on this.

But as mentioned above many people working part time from home need to switch their days occasionally to meet either business or domestic commitments. So we should really be moving towards a smartcard that offers a defined number of journeys, possibly valid indefinitely rather than having to take a specific number each week or lose them. So for example 220 return journeys might be offered at the same price as an annual season, being the typical number of work journeys taken in a year by a full-time employee, with similar equivalents for monthly and weekly.

This would need at least validators on each station, touch in as a minimum, but many of these are sprouting up as part of regional smartcard schemes. The difficulty is probably to get all the TOCs to agree to the principle and pricing strategy, and adopt a common system for consistency of marketing and to cover multi-operator journeys.

 

[HSTEd]

Good luck providing sufficient capacity to cope with demand at peak times!

Well the argument would be that crowding controls itself.
Usage of the trains will level at what level of crowding people are willing to accept to use that train at that time.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

But as mentioned above many people working part time from home need to switch their days occasionally to meet either business or domestic commitments. So we should really be moving towards a smartcard that offers a defined number of journeys

Yes, we should, but the perfect is the enemy of the good. Given that the sclerotic rail industry has otherwise managed to make precisely no progress except for a couple of overpriced carnets, rolling out a simple, achievable scheme seems a good first step.