Timetable oddity between Tring and Cheddington

[Nippy]

I will start this off by saying that few people would do this journey but here goes.

I was travelling on London North Western today and noticed that off peak you can get from Cheddington to Tring direct in 5-6 minutes at £4.80 single. However, if you want to go from Tring to Cheddington there is no direct service and you have to travel via Hemel Hempstead or Bletchley with no fare offered. I just found this a bit odd.

 

[30907]

I will start this off by saying that few people would do this journey but here goes.

I was travelling on London North Western today and noticed that off peak you can get from Cheddington to Tring direct in 5-6 minutes at £4.80 single. However, if you want to go from Tring to Cheddington there is no direct service and you have to travel via Hemel Hempstead or Bletchley with no fare offered. I just found this a bit odd.

Is this in the permanent timetable or something Covid-related? ISTR Cheddington isn't the busiest of stations so as a temporary measure....

 

[Starmill]

It is very very odd, but it is probably no more odd than the pre-2019 situation where the semi-fast Down train only ran to Milton Keynes Central and the stopping one ran through to Northampton.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 9 Oct 2020 ==

Is this in the permanent timetable or something Covid-related? ISTR Cheddington isn't the busiest of stations so as a temporary measure....

Cheddington is fine. The issue is that the stopping train between London and Milton Keynes Central can't stop at Tring on the Down, though it does on the Up.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I suspect there are plenty of "skip stop" situations where this sort of thing is the case. Bit odd that they haven't put a fares easement in, but in the unlikely event of being checked (given the hide-away guards on the south WCML) I can't see anyone would have an issue with using an Any Permitted Cheddington-Tring ticket via the double back, provided you don't try to pass the barriers at Hemel or Bletchley. Only really an issue if anyone (assuming anyone does the journey at all) wants to buy it online, which they probably won't.

 

[Starmill]

I suspect there are plenty of "skip stop" situations where this sort of thing is the case.

Timetables aren't generally written with the customer in mind. I know someone who recently started a job as a trainee train planner who was given a stakeholder briefing which put the relationship with the customer as lower in priority and 'one way' i.e. just through customer information with no route the other way around.

Bit odd that they haven't put a fares easement in

Again if an easement is ever added it's usually as a result of third party pressure. It won't be anyone's job to examine the plan for its effects on customer channels such as journey planning, as The Planner on here has pointed out a few times.

The reality is very likely that nobody at the company has time to deal with the matter and have therefore probably not noticed, and anyone making the journey is just doing so without paying anyway. And most people who want to go to Tring won't be going to Tring station anyway.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Timetables aren't generally written with the customer in mind.

To be fair, the south WCML timetable is written with the customer in mind - the customer, in probably well over 90% of cases, wants to go to London Euston, possibly Harrow or Watford, or Milton Keynes (or places reachable by changing at those).

I doubt very many Cheddington<->Tring tickets are sold if any, regardless of this quirk.

The south WCML isn't really like the Tube or Merseyrail or anything like that where you get a lot of intermediate local journeys, it's about going to London. Even within MK the mentality is such that the train is for going to London - you don't get anything like as many intra-MK journeys as you think you might, people go by bus, drive or cycle.

 

[SargeNpton]

I will start this off by saying that few people would do this journey but here goes.

I was travelling on London North Western today and noticed that off peak you can get from Cheddington to Tring direct in 5-6 minutes at £4.80 single. However, if you want to go from Tring to Cheddington there is no direct service and you have to travel via Hemel Hempstead or Bletchley with no fare offered. I just found this a bit odd.

I can't comment on the state of the timetable but wonder why you suggest going via Bletchley when the place to change trains would be Leighton Buzzard.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I can't comment on the state of the timetable but wonder why you suggest going via Bletchley when the place to change trains would be Leighton Buzzard.

That's what NRE tells you to do! I think the relevant train doesn't stop at Leighton - the stopping patterns are a bit quirky because it's all about maximising capacity to/from London.