Why doesn't Trainsplit find this split?

[Dirty_Mac]

I was looking up Liverpool Street to Cambridge itineraries and saw that on 2 November, an advance single for a direct service costs £17.50. However, a connecting service taking an earlier Stansted Express to Tottenham Hale and rejoining the Cambridge train there only costs £8. I then looked up tickets from Tottenham Hale and saw that it only costs £7.50 for an advance single to Cambridge. Given that an LST to TOM single only costs £7 and it's not pickup or set-down only at TOM, why wouldn't TrainSplit suggest a split of an anytime day single to TOM, then an advance single to CBG?

 

[Watershed]

TrainSplit can't perform an exhaustive search when it comes to Advance ticket splits. This is because, like all retailers, they are limited in terms of the amount of requests they are allowed to send to the industry reservations system (which is used to determine Advance ticket availability).

As I understand it, TrainSplit checks for Advance splits at certain locations using a predetermined logic, but this won't always include the best possible locations. Now that you have raised it, I'm sure it can be fixed for this particular instance.

However, the wider issue of limitations on availability queries will remain and there seems to be little prospect of this changing soon, even though it's currently a major blocker to improving the awareness of good-value fares and potentially increasing the industry's revenue.

 

[saismee]

However, the wider issue of limitations on availability queries will remain and there seems to be little prospect of this changing soon, even though it's currently a major blocker to improving the awareness of good-value fares and potentially increasing the industry's revenue.

Although it's not necessarily relevant to this thread, I think a fares reform would (and should) come before increasing any rate limits on querying ticket availability... as fun as split tickets are for enthusiasts!

 

[Watershed]

Although it's not necessarily relevant to this thread, I think a fares reform would (and should) come before increasing any rate limits on querying ticket availability... as fun as split tickets are for enthusiasts!

Split tickets is only a small part of the picture. The issue is that retailers can't build a picture of when the cheapest trains are, to suggest things like "travel 1.5 hours earlier for £20 less instead" or provide a calendar view of pricing.

Innovative features like RTT's DayTripper are currently limited to suggesting walk-up tickets when Advances would often offer much better value. Trainline provide a calendar view for popular routes - but this is only possible through cached data, made available due to their scale.

Being able to offer these things is a big sales opportunity in aviation, hotels etc. and fills a lot of underutilised capacity there - the same goes for railways in the continent, and on Eurostar.

There's no reason why the British rail industry should be the outlier. With modern cloud hosting, the cost of handling the increased number of requests would be negligible in the scheme of things.

 

[yorkie]

I was looking up Liverpool Street to Cambridge itineraries and saw that on 2 November, an advance single for a direct service costs £17.50. However, a connecting service taking an earlier Stansted Express to Tottenham Hale and rejoining the Cambridge train there only costs £8. I then looked up tickets from Tottenham Hale and saw that it only costs £7.50 for an advance single to Cambridge. Given that an LST to TOM single only costs £7 and it's not pickup or set-down only at TOM, why wouldn't TrainSplit suggest a split of an anytime day single to TOM, then an advance single to CBG?

Trainsplit can't search for splits at every location.

If we are informed that the forum's site is not finding the optimal splits, then if we are given a link to the search, and details of a relevant itinerary where the issue occurs and what fare(s) are offered and what fare(s) should be offered, then we can ask the relevant people to make the necessary adjustments.

Although it's not necessarily relevant to this thread, I think a fares reform would (and should) come before increasing any rate limits on querying ticket availability... as fun as split tickets are for enthusiasts!

Good luck developing a system where it is never cheaper to split or go further, but if anyone would like to submit a proposal, please do so (by creating a new thread - if there isn't one already - in the appropriate forum section, i.e. Speculative Discussion)

 

[Cloud Strife]

There's no reason why the British rail industry should be the outlier. With modern cloud hosting, the cost of handling the increased number of requests would be negligible in the scheme of things.

It's frankly bonkers that such a restriction even exists in this day and age. If we assume 10,000 highly complex queries based on Thurso to Southend, without caching, then the cost is only around £5 for 10,000 searches by a user. But some of this is already reduced through caching and knowledge of certain fixed price fares, so the actual cost to the railway to provide fares data might be around half of the total as they'll only need to provide fares data for advance fares, not walk up fares.

From some fairly quick number crunching, I'd be surprised if it would cost the railway more than £100,000 yearly to remove any limits by retailers.

 

[DeverseSam]

Just £3.10 for contactless from Liverpool Street to Tottenham Hale

 

[Mike@Raileasy]

Split tickets is only a small part of the picture. The issue is that retailers can't build a picture of when the cheapest trains are, to suggest things like "travel 1.5 hours earlier for £20 less instead" or provide a calendar view of pricing.

Innovative features like RTT's DayTripper are currently limited to suggesting walk-up tickets when Advances would often offer much better value. Trainline provide a calendar view for popular routes - but this is only possible through cached data, made available due to their scale.

Being able to offer these things is a big sales opportunity in aviation, hotels etc. and fills a lot of underutilised capacity there - the same goes for railways in the continent, and on Eurostar.

There's no reason why the British rail industry should be the outlier. With modern cloud hosting, the cost of handling the increased number of requests would be negligible in the scheme of things.

Well said! The Jacobs research commissioned by the IRR conservatively estimated that giving retailers access to ADS - an availability feed from RARS - could unlock £500 million in incremental annual revenue. That’s roughly a third of the current industry deficit. Discussions are underway but the sector has a real chance to get ahead of the curve.

Things are changing but the current RDG standard enforces a look to book ratio of 10:1, while flights operate at around 25,000:1 and that figure is rising. Rail needs to catch up and with ADS it can.

Jacobs also highlighted the commercial potential of pushing real time pricing and flexible search tools, like Daytripper’s “anywhere” feature, now one of the most popular search terms on flight and holiday platforms.

With ADS, retailers wouldn’t need to query RARS for every search. Instead, they’d maintain a local view of availability, dramatically reducing load and cost on the central system, which would be reserved for validate and book functions.

Right now, 23% of users abandon their search when shown a fare and around half the passengers on long distance trains aren’t travelling at their preferred time, date or even destination. With ADS and weekly or calendar based availability views, it becomes far easier for both groups to find quieter, cheaper and more suitable services, boosting conversion and improving the overall customer experience.
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