Great Western Coffee Shop

Here we go again ...

From The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/may/08/rail-industry-prepares-for-season-ticket-cull-in-fares-shake-up)


"There's a problem. Let's study it.  Then we will be able to say we looked into it.  And we may make some cosmetic changes to help convince people we really do mean to sort it out."  Sorry - I shouldn't put words into people's mouths. Perhaps this time they will sort it out!

Selected quotes from that article which fuel my cynicism

Quite a lot of media about this today on Breakfast from the BBC and Radio4 and a large amount on Twitter, which brought this to light.
https://www.raildeliverygroup.com/media-centre/press-releases/2018/469773920-2018-05-08.html
Also this on YouTube
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=3grTXFcvBbs.

https://www.britainrunsonrail.co.uk/fares.

Further item from KPMG. https://www.raildeliverygroup.com/files/Publications/2018-05_towards_a_future_fares_strategy.pdf

Oh goody, yet another consultation. We're so good at these in this country but not so good at taking action.

I am sceptical because:

a) there are suggestions that they might introduce new fares (making the system even more complex); and
b) there are suggestions that they might introduce an app to help you find cheap fares.  With a simplified system that would not be needed.

What is needed is a move to a simplified system.   If the system doesn't permit a grand tearing up and starting again, how about as and when franchises are renewed introducing the following:

1, singles at half or little more than half the price of the return,
2, a standardised definition of peak and off peak. Then ticket names using those words would then be comprehensible.
3, an overall pence per mile cap (with appropriate exception for very short journeys).  Inflationary rises would very gradually start to butt up against the cap meaning that with time the cheaper fares would rise more than those already very expensive and the cost differential that make the hassle of split ticketing worthwhile and inspire distrust in the system would diminish. 
4, standardised formula relating the price of seasons to singles, and the price of first to standard.
5, standardised validity for railcards (wrt minimum fares, availability on first class and advance tickets etc)

From the BBC - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44032015




Good to hear Mick Cash giving some good solid constructive feedback as usual.

The RDG press release suggests a complete ripping-up of the 1994 structure rather than tinkering and adding as has been the case subsequently, although this remains to be seen.

So national and regional railcards, rovers, rangers, off-peak day returns, season tickets, split ticketing or through ticketing and fares to any destination could all be consigned to history or radically altered.

Ensuring this is 'revenue neutral' will not be easy, and ease or elimination of current regulations would have to have offsetting benefits.

However, those winning will be silent and those losing vocal.

I don’t trust Mick Cash to “do the right thing by passengers” either.  It isn’t what he is there for.

Paul

Which is why it is highly improbable than any politician or political party will support it.  Vote looser!

I would certainly welcome simplification, and have previously suggested a simplified fares system whereby only three different fares would exist for any given journey.

To me it seems self evident that relatively high fares should be charged for peak time travel, and that lower fares should be payable at less busy times.
I see no merit in charging reduced prices for advance purchase of tickets for trains known to be overcrowded, nor for punitively high fares for walk up travel on lightly used services.

Tickets could be purchased in advance if more convenient, but this would not alter the fare payable.

Not so certain about unified times for off peak travel, since this could vary in different areas.

Peak tickets=the most expensive, and valid on services known to be busy. primarily rush hour commuter services, but also applicable at other times known to be exceptionally busy.

Off peak tickets=The mid priced ticket and applicable to most journeys outside peak times.

Super bargain= very cheap and only applicable to a minority of very lightly used services, mainly very early morning or late night services, or trains that are run primarily to get the train to the correct place, with carrying passengers being secondary, possibly including rush hour journeys made against the main flow of traffic.

TOCs could designate trains as peak, off peak, or super bargain as they fit, subject to two overriding rules.
Firstly, no more than 25% of services may be designated as peak. And at least 25% have to be super bargain.

Secondly, alteration may only be made at timetable changes, not at random times.

First class fares would be higher, but otherwise subject to exactly the same rules.

All tickets would be valid by any reasonable route, unless marked otherwise ON THE TICKET. Any such restrictions must be clear and simple.

In general there would be no more "train specific" tickets, though this  would occur as a by product on lines with a very limited service. With only say 3 trains a day, there might only be one off peak service.

This is probably too radical to introduce in the near term, but perhaps they could work towards it by  degrees.

Wider availability of carnets, for those who don't work a regular 5 day week.

Making it revenue neutral overall is a big enough challenge.  If it has to be revenue neutral for each operator then that becomes even more difficult.  And if it isn't revenue neutral for an operator they will need compensation.  That is why I suggested that it would be easier to introduce as and when franchises are renegotiated.

Carnets are good but they are only a good idea because they correct a perceived unfairness/imbalance caused by the current imbalance in price between seasons and walk up fares.  If we simplified the current system to remove the effective subsidy of those on season tickets, the need for carnets would disappear.   

I do not see why regular travellers should not get a MODEST discount by way of a season ticket, but I feel that the present discounts are excessive for generally peak time travel.
Weekly seasons IMHO should be priced at about 4.5 times the price of a peak hour day return.
Monthly season at four times the weekly rate and annual seasons at 11 times the monthly rate.

Season ticket holders not only pay the lowest peak time fares, but also seem to expect special treatment. ISTR several calls on these forums for priority boarding or other special privileges for season ticket holders.

(I think that I enraged a season ticket holder on a busy FGW* service. They expected me to give up my reserved seat for them because they "had paid thousands of pounds". I not only declined, but also stated that in my view, that season ticket holders should be required to stand if full fare passengers wanted the seat)

*as they were known at the time.

I wonder what they mean by "regulations". They give the impression that they (the TOCs) can't change the fares structure at all unless these regulations are rewritten, and rather blur the distinction between the two things, which I suspect is a bit misleading.

I can think of two things they may mean. The first is the way DfT control fares, in practice fare increases. The point has often been made before, that reducing the number of alternative fares while keeping revenue the same must involve increasing some and decreasing others so as to merge them. Not only would this create the usual hysteretic (and hysterical, come to that) customer response, but DfT would have to alter the current fares increase regime.

The other set of regulations is the Rail Settlement Plan - or rather its Ticketing and Settlement Agreement (https://www.raildeliverygroup.com/our-services/b2b-services/ticketing-settlement.html) (the RSP itself is an organisation). This describes how fares can be changed, and that includes creating or removing particular fare types. Existing fare names (e.g. rover and ranger as well as day, off-peak, sleeper, etc.) have fixed definitions, but in a schedule not the regulations per se, and changing those is much more difficult than inventing new ones. The TSA is cited in every franchise agreement, and includes many things that TOCs can do in principle, but DfT can forbid. It's very general, so almost everything can be altered, provided all the TOCs concerned agree and DfT approve (conditions that may be hard to meet).

The fares system (or structure) is, I think, distinct from these rules, and really that's what they should be consulting on - and most respondents will understand it that way. The regulations, or DfT's instructions within the current ones, just need to allow whatever changes are to be made.

From what I have seen, although it is the fare structure that has the public focus, it is the TSA at the heart that will be the real centre of this consultation - references to outdated requirements, large banks of fares, principles orientated around purchase of bits of card in person from offices etc. However, I guess the consultation itself, rather than this limited forward publicity without any detail is what is needed to judge.

agree with all of that.  Once we have fully moved to smart ticketing, you could abandon seasons completely and simply use the technology to allow a modest discount to frequent users. 

Southampton to Waterloo 7 day season at £142.50 is  somewhat less than twice the Anytime Day return, £84.60.
So is the season far too low, or the day ticket far too high? 

I’ve made the same point about seasons being a complete bargain.  One afternoon peak when a chap scored an own goal on a packed service out of Waterloo.  He was wondering aloud to his apparent colleague why non season ticket holders were even allowed on the service.  I really don’t think they had any idea how much day ticket holders had paid...

Paul

Without season ticket travellers, it is doubtful the railways could survive.

The balance between walk on, peak, off-peak, season tickets is a difficult subject, but I'd suggest …

• allow annual season tickets for bus and train be tax deductable
• set all rail fairs to be fix by formula
• have a clear sensible definition of peak/off peak

The government allow people to buy bicycles tax free to help with commuting, why not bus and rail tickets. Say to a £3000 limit?

All fairs should based on stations used start, interchange and destination and the length of journey.

All fairs should be based on train quality. A 300km journey on HST or IET is nice, but on a rickety bone shaker to Penzance is another story.

All fairs should be based on Peak,Non Peak loading.

Not an easy task, but somehow the nonsense of split tickets and comparing two journeys of the same length being vastly different costs must be eliminated.

Slow, stopping, all round the houses and therefore longer distance service (eg Southampton to Victoria via Horsham), to cost more than the direct services?

So that probably rules out a purely mileage based fare. (Not ‘fair’.)

Paul

I would base my "3 different fares only" between any two points LOOSELY on the mileage.

So for example Paddington to Slough, would be about the same fare per mile as Paddington to Reading.

I would not prohibit split ticketing, but in most cases nothing would be gained thereby.

Some fundamental issues

1. While a high proportion of tickets are paper and issued at stations, you need multiple tickets (seasons?) to keep the number of staff or machines to sell tickets at a sensible level.

2. Where you have a ticket that's a bulk buy and valid for as many journeys as you like at any time of day, mixed with other tickets that are for one or two journeys each and vary in price depending on time of day, you're going to create anomolies.

3. Why are return tickets always issued for the same time of day (peak, off peak, super off peak) in both directions when many people want to travel out and back at different busyness times?

4. Why have tickets that are peak all the way when people can set off in the peak but arrive at their destination long after the train has been abandoned by most people?

5. Why change a system to something different that's overall income neutral?  You'll upset a lot of people (those the price goes up for) for a long time, but only get brief thanks for those for whom you make a saving, and you're likely to distort the industry loading "calculations" that have years of experience behnd them an have been tuned - with services stregthened where possible based on that experience, and fare break points set to help smooth out those peaks?

I do like the idea of a simpler system, based on the travel distance by the shortest land method from start to finish, plus a fixed ticketing and station use charge, and allowing for any reasonable route to be taken. And I suspect that a system could be produced with railcard / loyalty levels that encourage those who use public transport a number of times to be encouraged to keep using it, even on other routes.  Whether it would be managable when it takes 2 minutes 30 seconds to buy a "quick ticket" from the machines at Chippenham, and nearly 4 mnutes to collect an online order (we have timed it!) is another matter ...

I will be contributing to the public consultation along the following lines (but have no great expectation that anything much will change):

1) All National Rail fares should be priced using the same base Off-Peak pence per mile multiplier so that the cost of a journey is entirely related to the distance travelled. These distances should be measured along the course of the existing railway so no mucking about with discounts for unavoidable 'doubling back', etc. (which if the rail industry has analysed their extensive 'actual journeys made' data properly shouldn't be required very often any way). The brand new ticketing system will be programmed to select the most direct (i.e. shortest & therefore cheapest) route.

2) Passengers purchasing tickets will be asked:
i) From which station are you departing?
ii) At which station are you leaving the train?
iii) Are you travelling First or Standard class?
iv) On what date are you starting your journey?
v) At what time are you starting your journey or at what time do you wish to arrive at your destination? (Ticketing system will produce a selectable list of services based on the response. Once the outward service is selected the passenger will be asked if a 'return' ticket is required and if so will run through the same script again.

Because all fares are solely distance related the nonsense around whether a break of journey is permitted ceases - the passenger just buys two single tickets covering A>B & B>C as appropriate. They would obviously be able to do the same on the return journey.

3) The railway system would be divided into wholly Peak (if deemed appropriate), partially (TOD limited) Peak and wholly Off-Peak segments. During the ticket purchasing process the system would calculate the total cost of the journey by adding together Peak and Off-Peak segments. The system would warn/advise passengers if any part of their proposed journey was priced at Peak rate and give them the opportunity to reselect the service. The prospect of having to pay £260 for a return journey between DIG & PAD when only the outward RDG>PAD segment was actually classified as a 'Peak' service would cease.

4) There would be only one basic ticket type and, where possible, reservations would be provided/available via a clickable train seating diagram. Each ticket would only be valid on the initially selected service(s).  Passengers would be warned if they would have to stand. 'Advance Purchase' and other discounted tickets would not be available because the price for a particular point-to-point journey would be the same regardless of how far before the date of travel a purchase was made. In the event of a passenger missing a booked service through their error the itinerary could be changed for a small fee; obviously messed up itineraries due to late running connections could be changed for free.

5) Season tickets would obviously still be available - under the same general terms as currently exist but also priced on the basis of distance travelled.

6) Railcards subject to a thorough review with a probable reduction in the range available and ALL cards requiring photo ID.

There are probably loads of other things I will think of later but I have to say that the main reason I don't think significant changes will happen is because the ticketing system I would like to see would require the support of very good IT and history tells us that the government are absolutely cr*p at that sort of thing. 

There seems to be a fair consensus here already that Season Tickets are too cheap.

It's a dangerous assumption. Increasing the price of Season Tickets has wider economic and political implications. Commuters could be priced off the railways and into their cars. Higher Season Ticket prices, but less people paying them could mean a lower overall revenue, seriously affect the finances of the railways, This could mean greater government subsidy, cuts in services, or fares increases for all.

A government, particularly of the blue hue, is unlikely to countenance even a modest rise (beyond the annual RPI+n formula) in Season Ticket prices. Far too many of their natural electorate live in commuter land.

I agree with your analysis.  Perhaps if we look at it another way.  Compared to season ticket prices anytime fares are too high. After all it is the season ticket prices that have been fixed most firmly to RPI. It is other fares that are not regulated (Anytime Tickets) that have got out of hand. If government will not support raising season ticket prices then the other way is to bring other fares more into line with them.  Of course then they will not be able to make it revenue neutral, but then why should I subsidise other people's long distance commute?

On general social grounds, I see no harm in subsidising commuting by rail or other public transport, but only up to relatively modest distances.

If someone commutes from Lewisham into central London, then a subsidy is reasonable IMHO, to discourage driving which carries significant costs to society in general.
If however someone commutes from Taunton to central London, then that is a lifestyle choice and should be less subsidised.

Ideally people should live within walking or cycling distance of work, but that is simply impossible for most in London, hence the need for the state to provide affordable public transport. It is part of a major city, just like paved streets, litter bins, a police force and so on.

Hear Hear.

There seems to be an antipathy from certain quarters in the Rail "Community" towards their most bread and butter and reliable customers who travel daily on season tickets for which they shell out many thousands of £ per year.

In virtually every area of life, if you buy in bulk and/or up front, that will attract a discount - be it a season ticket for a football club or a pallet load of widgets - this is distinct from a "subsidy", the suppliers margin is slightly lowered however he has the certainty of the funds immediately for his use, rather than a trickle throughout a given period, and the customer is (or feels) obliged to use the service or product.

By all means if you wish to reduce rail revenue, increase traffic on the roads, and reduce even further the supply and efficiency of essential workers in the Capital, with the consequences for services and the economy, make this suggestion the plank of your response to the consultation, however the elephant in the room is fares that are already sky high for a poor, unreliable and ridiculously overcrowded service.

...................of course in the interests of consistency, I am sure that those advocating the removal/reduction of "subsidised" fares will be starting closest to home by setting an example, and demanding that rail industry employees lose their subsidised free travel?  ;)

Maybe traditional season tickets for longer journeys could be replaced by extended carnets, eg instead of selling an annual, sell 500 single either way journeys, with the appropriate discount. The argument would be that these are not currently used by most outside of working time apart from occasionally, and if they had a two year rather than one year validity this would also take care of the 'part-time' season concept. They could if desirable also have entitlement to discounts on other trips etc as at present.

Totally impractical in a paper-ticket orientated environment; perfectly possible in an electronic personal account one.

Might look a good argument from places like Taplow and Maidenhead (where the discount is from 41p a mile to 25p a mile - 40% discount). But from Swindon where the Anytime fare is 86p per mile reducing to the same 25p per mile with an annual season (a 70% discount) it sounds like someone is having a laugh at our expense. That's even a 30% discount on the Super Off Peak fare (36p per mile). 

Its not as if even the shoulder of peak trains from Swindon are running empty as those trying to board at Didcot and Reading will attest. The major traffic from Swindon in the peak is not daily commuters but those like me who are visiting London occasionally (often several times a month - I will be doing it twice this week) for meetings. 

So lets make the per mile peak fare 41p per mile with a 40% discount and base all the other fares on that.  Then we are all equal to you!

Just addressing this one, perhaps rather minor, point: It's not quite as simple as that! You can't just buy a bike and claim it as an expense against tax. You have to get it through your employer, who has to be signed up to the relevant scheme. Most employers will not be, though probably most large ones are. You can then buy a bike up to £1000 and claim against your income tax. (You can buy a more expensive bike but that's the claim limit.) Legally the bike then belongs to your employer and after a certain time (I think it's 3 years) you are theoretically supposed to return it to your employer, to do with as they want (eg sell it back to you). In practice most do not want to have to deal with secondhand bikes (they aren't worth much, pain to sell, etc) so treat them as belonging to the employee.

A very brief excursion into the world of basic mathematics seems to indicate that the current pricing of season tickets is completely illogical; considering only annual tickets and assuming one return journey each & every day of the year (other calculations are available) the pence per mile costs for a very small subset of GWR trips to/from Paddington are as follows:
SLO 19.7, MAI 17.6, RDG 19.9, GOR 13.7, DID 13.2, SWI 15.6, APF 12.7, OXF 11.1

Do Reading commuters realise they are apparently being taken to the cleaners? Do the people of Oxford know where the GWR bodies are buried?  :)

It would be very easy to find loads of other similar anomalies e.g. annual ticket NBY<>PAD being about £500 less than RDG<>PAD; any meaningful fares review has to sort out this nonsense.

I have seen suggestion that there is a logic on London season tickets - relating to macro planning, encouraging London's workforce to live in places that the overall country's plans would like.   Aren't there tables of season ticket price + average mortgage price somewhere, so that judgement is made on cost of living?   

I seem to recall that the Medway towns - Rochester, Chatham and Gillingham - came out well on this calculation.   Swindon - long way out, but plenty of scope for people to live - is priced at a very low rate per mile for season tickets; alas, its a high rate per mile for others, bearing in mind that prices were pushed up when those lovely new HST125 trains came in, and the differential has never been removed.

No discussion that I have seen on this thread yet of day return v period return - again on the Swindon one it strikes me as a surprise with changing travel patterns that there isn't a Swindon to London day return ... except that to introduce such a ticket would mean bring in a new day fare at a somewhat lower level than the current period fare, and although that might be in the passenger's interest, it would not be in the interests of the rail industry.

On the subject of increases, whether RPI + n or whatever. If we are talking about encouraging people to use public transport, an extremely radical proposal is that RPI + n can only implemented when the Fuel escalator is operating. The Fuel escalator has been "cancelled" for how many years, whereas the rail fares carry on rising making public transport increasingly less affordable in comparative terms.

From a personal point of view, there are certain anomalies or flexibilities in the current system which I find it useful being able to do RDG-PMH either via GLD or BSK, wouldn't particularly want to lose that. Unfortunately my cycle legs don't tend to make an Advance return leg possible, lack of predictability.

That is a terrific idea.

A very good point.

One way to do something like this would be to drop RPI and instead use an inflation measure that more closely follows the cost of driving. The HMRC allowed mileage rates for expenses perhaps.

Yes, a good idea, Sid.

As you are doubtless aware , SWR has ordinary off Peak  tickets which can be used for peak trains out of London. Only super off peak are restricted.

I have options  for getting to London other than SWR, ( EG Newbury to Paddington instead of Basingstoke  to Waterloo )but I never use them because of the likelihood of needing to return in peak time.
Presumably GWR don’t want my business just after 4.00PM, so they don’t get it.

"The Consultation is on" - topic split to talk about the consultation at

http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=19894.0