LNER To trial simpler fares

[whole diary]

[stuving]

SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) don't do off-peak tickets as such. But if you are over 60 or under 27 you can get a découvertes ticket at 25% off, valid for any TER journey beginning in a période bleue. You may need a show a pièce d'identité, though what works (other than a passport) I've never found out. And they don't price returns at all, you pay for two singles. TGVs^▸ (Train a Grande Vitesse) are different, of course, all reserved seats and dynamically priced.

On one occasion I was buying a return ticket from Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie to Nantes, and  the ticket machine wasn't working so I had go to the guichet. The machine leads you through all the choices one by one, but asking for a ticket calls for more preparation. Having asked for my aller-retour à Nantes découvertes senior he asked me when I was coming back. I said 18:00 or 19:00, as I intended to get the first train in period bleue  - which starts (generally) at 18:30. I'd not checked the train times, but they were in fact at 18:10 and 19:10, and he inferred I meant between the two so sold me an undiscounted ticket for the return journey. Of course, if I wasn't sure, I should have got just a single - though that means relying on finding a machine free at Nantes (or worth queueing for), which can be hard.

Incidentally, last September that machine had stopped selling découvertes tickets - that step just left out of the process. The same week the validity of TER tickets was reduced from a week to a day (to reduce fraud), which removed one option for using a full-price ticket later. The validity had only been a week since 2014 - before that it was 61 days. I looked at a machine in Rennes (Brétagne region), and that still offered découvertes tickets. So you don't need private TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) to get such differences in the system - devolution will do it at least as well (or badly).