With these ever increasing issues of the validity of off peak tickets, I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that simplifying fares by having a very limited set of ticket types. Advance fares for a specific train that are cheaper to encourage use of quieter trains, and single/return fares that are valid on a specific day or for longer distances few days so you can have break of journey on the way. The single and return fares would be set at around the current off peak fare prices (ie same as the recent Scotrail trial but done nationally).
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We should abolish peak restrictions
- Thread starter smsm1
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I would be up for that.
The problem is, I don't think everyone would be happy for tax rises to pay for the reduction in revenue and uplift of capacity.
I would agree with it, particularly as the captive business/commuter market peak fares were designed to exploit are now a lot less captive. It would also fix the anomaly of peak trains running almost empty with the first off-peak being rammed.
It's the sort of thing that a sensible, forward thinking country not in thrall to the motor lobby might do. So it will never happen here.
It's the sort of thing that a sensible, forward thinking country not in thrall to the motor lobby might do. So it will never happen here.
A straightforward idea (so it's unlikely to happen!).
My local line is Stevenage to London. Current fares:
Anytime Day Return £27.60
Off Peak £21.80
There are many commuters to London who have to pay the Anytime fare (12 car trains full and standing). I'd love the price to be reduced to £21.80 but where is the missing revenue going to come from?
There are no Advance fares for this journey, nor should there be really because it is a 'turn up and go' service with a fast train every 15 minutes, 2 semi-fast and 2 stoppers an hour.
Through more people travelling overall due to the simpler fares.
Where trains are full and standing there needs to be a way to increase the service through either longer trains or more likely in this case through more frequent trains.
Even now we are limiting the amount of revenue possible as we have hit the capacity limit and so should be increasing the number of trains somehow even before reducing the fares to close to the off peak level.
We need to have modal shift from the car to public transport, but public transport capacity will need to increase.
Personally, I'd come into the office a lot more often if the price wasn't so eye watering.
And people don't like being crush loaded. I think that's far more of an incentive to time shift than exorbitant fares.
I'd rather get a much earlier service - say around 0700 - but that costs the same as getting one at 0800 so why bother? Both are carrying fresh air.
So instead, I (generally) get on the first, absolutely rammed, off-peak trains of the day and save £20.
The incentive is totally the wrong way around for capacity management. Might as well use that capacity and use it efficiently, than try and extort peak time fares that people aren't willing to pay because they can work flexibly and save the cash.
Indeed, it could be argued peak time fares are really quite regressive as they penalise those in a lower income bracket who have jobs where they have to be present every day, and are forced to pay through the nose for the privilege.
Though that theory doesn't seem to have worked with the ScotRail trial.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Commuters don't pay Anytime fares. They buy season tickets. Usually a day on a monthly season ticket is similar to or sometimes even less than the cost of an Off Peak Day Return.
Anytime fares are primarily paid by people travelling on business expenses, hence why their price was traditionally elevated. These days they are also paid by people who go to the office 2-3 days a week, and there's no good reason to apply that "tax" to them.
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More people did travel, just not enough more to make it revenue neutral. But it will have been a factor that ScotRail has been going through a very bad time the past couple of years in terms of service quality.
Or not! My employer has a pretty blanket ban on them unless you've got a good business reason (it's at your discretion, naturally).
They'd prefer to pay the extra night in a hotel, which can often end up cheaper anyway.
The increase did happen, and if made permanent more people would have made the shift. Many won't make the shift for a trial. It takes a long time to get people to shift their travel pattern for a commute.
Lots do! I know this is anecdotal, but through observation at St Albans, I would say the majority of commuters are using contactless payment rather than season tickets. The single contactless fare is as near as makes no difference half the anytime return. Im sure that St Albans is not unique in this respect.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Is there capping based on the weekly/monthly season on this route?
LittleRedTrain
Member
I know it's not universally popular, but I'd even go so far as to abolish return fares, and move everything to single-leg pricing (with singles set at about half the price of the current Off Peak Return).
You then just end up with two very simple ticket types: 'Fixed Single' and 'Flexible Single'.
That makes it a lot easier to combine a fixed ticket one way and flexible on the return, or to have triangular/multi-leg journeys without feeling like you've been ripped off.
Possibly even move to undated flexible singles that have to be 'activated/validated' before travel as used in many other countries, and attempted with the 'flexi-season' here.
That way if you want a return, you can buy the two singles in one go, but only activate the return half on the day you plan to travel.
You then just end up with two very simple ticket types: 'Fixed Single' and 'Flexible Single'.
That makes it a lot easier to combine a fixed ticket one way and flexible on the return, or to have triangular/multi-leg journeys without feeling like you've been ripped off.
Possibly even move to undated flexible singles that have to be 'activated/validated' before travel as used in many other countries, and attempted with the 'flexi-season' here.
That way if you want a return, you can buy the two singles in one go, but only activate the return half on the day you plan to travel.
Recently introduced for KeyGo PAYG (weekly cap) but not for contactless PAYG which is done through TfL.
In any event, the weekly is more than 4x the anytime fare, so anyone travellimg 4x a week or less (ie almost everyone) is better off paying PAYG, and that is at the anytime rate.
I would scrap all afternoon "peak" restrictions, everywhere. And, yes, I know they've been in place for a long time in London. But too many people don't understand them properly, a significant number of whom are railway staff.
In Northern-land they're a pain, and people are given penalty fares when they should be excessed. Maybe that'll improve now there's been some publicity, but I'm not convinced.
The alternative is the London approach in which you pay as you go and there's no major issue. So introducing the equivalent of London's system in other places where there are afternoon peak restrictions might be OK. But it's taking for ever, it's promised repeatedly but just doesn't happen.
Morning peak restrictions are well-established and I'm happy with the idea of paying more to travel before, say, 09:30.
In Northern-land they're a pain, and people are given penalty fares when they should be excessed. Maybe that'll improve now there's been some publicity, but I'm not convinced.
The alternative is the London approach in which you pay as you go and there's no major issue. So introducing the equivalent of London's system in other places where there are afternoon peak restrictions might be OK. But it's taking for ever, it's promised repeatedly but just doesn't happen.
Morning peak restrictions are well-established and I'm happy with the idea of paying more to travel before, say, 09:30.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Weekly seasons have for a long time been poor value on many routes, basically only offering the convenience of not having to buy each day and free weekend travel if it's useful. However I'm genuinely surprised to hear that regular commuters aren't using monthlies on that route, as the discount they offer is very large on most routes - is it not on that one? On the WCML it takes a day's travel down to below Off Peak for travel 5 days a week, but is still if I recall cheaper than Anytimes for 3 days. And you can add Flexi Seasons and Network Railcards (single in, discounted single back) to the mix too.
Quite bizarre if a lot of people are paying well over the odds - I guess that's where the simplicity of contactless wins out.
87015
Established Member
You might need to check actual prices, the season ticket calculator on NRE for Bletchley-Euston even giving a generous five days per week travel comes out at over the off peak price per day for both weeklies and monthlies
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
To be fair the Off Peaks south of Bletchley have just been reduced because with Oval they have gained an evening restriction they didn't previously have and the Super Off Peaks have gone. I think from memory the reduction is around 20%. The last time I compared it, the three step fares were still in use.
However looking at BLY-EUS...
Monthly £544
Anytime Day Return £48.60
There are other dodges like Network Railcards to bring that down a bit as it's single fare priced, but using those simple figures (because most people won't think of Railcards) your break-even is just over 11 days a month. Thus for 3 or more days a week the season makes more sense.
If you do single in, NSE single back that's down to £40.45, or about 13 and a half days per month, so the break even is between 3 and 4 days per week depending on the length of the month. If you're willing to hang around in London a bit longer and come back after 1900 it can be a lot cheaper, but few commuters will be willing to do that.
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Kite159
Veteran Member
Good idea, make the flexible single the same price as the current anytime single, doing away with any price cap offered by the 'off peak' flexible single to allow the fixed single to be charged up to 99% of the new flexible single price on trains which are expected to be busy.
Similar to the cash grab by LNER where it's cheaper to buy to Blaydon or Uphall rather than to Newcastle or Edinburgh.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Good idea if you are a TOC, bad idea if you are a passenger.
I have said of the LNER "trial", though, that a more reasonable Anytime and abolishing Off Peak might work, say if London-Edinburgh Anytime Single was priced around £130 rather than £200 (if you look at the actual fares this is where they seem to go to when it's busy "off peak"), or London-Manchester at about £80 rather than £180. Though that's still an increase. There is that halfway house between "abolishing peak restrictions" and "leaving things as they are" which is worth investigating.
If that were doable, it would happen without the cut in price, to help pay for the extra spending.
When I was commuting 2-3 days per week (other days work from home) I was using anytime ticket. Season tickets and flex season (whatever the specific name for them was) were more expensive than the anytime tickets. The flex season had a limit on how long you had to use the ticket, which meant you had to be travelling at least 3 days a week within the ticket period for it to work out cheaper. If the flex season could be used over a longer period it would have worked out cheaper especially once holidays are taken into account.
The local bus companies have bundles of 5 day tickets at roughly the cost of 4 day tickets and you have a year to use them, which for the local area makes them worthwhile as have a long time to use them.
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Or more effort should be happening to make it happen, or adding other new lines. Oh wait take a look at HS2...
Mgameing123
Member
I agree! Peak fares only make public transport more confusing for first time users and so do railcards. We should just sell a standard ticket and use advance tickets to spread the loads of passengers evenly. We could even make a nationwide smartcard valid on all public transport in the UK.
Peter Mugridge
Veteran Member
Be careful.... that's exactly what LNER's Unfairs Trial does...
On this route you need to travel 17 days or more to make a monthly cheaper than PAYG. Not many will do that in a typical month. Monthly is £421, Anytime return £26.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
That's a very good value Anytime given the season price. I'd actually settle for all Anytimes being reduced to that sort of low multiplier, just as a loose disincentive to travel at busy times rather than as a means of whacking people for extra money who can't travel at a different time.
Away from London, the multipliers do tend to be quite small, somewhere not dissimilar to that one. And the InterCity ones are ludicrous, over three times in Manchester-London's case.
It’s political will, not effort. It’s basically out of the hands of the industry, as a compelling case (not yet made) would fall on deaf ears.
Not having peak fares only makes the off peak fares seem expensive, because there is no benefit for travelling later.
I'm not entirely convinced by that argument. Certainly the difference will make off-peak seem a bit cheaper by comparison, but people will mainly be referencing their own income and outgoings, particularly if the peak/off peak differential were abolished.
They were actually abolished (on the SR anyway) in the late 60s and remained abolished into the mid 80s to my knowledge.
I would agree - morning peak only restrictions are relatively simple to understand; they are standard across Germany for example.
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