Flexible seasons - practicalities and questions

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Another example - this one from the Ipswich Star

Ipswich commuters get one of the worst deals in the country on new rail "flexi-tickets", new figures have showed.

The new tickets are aimed at passengers who only travel to the office a handful of times a week following the coronavirus crisis.

It is designed to encourage people who who split their work time between home and the office to use public transport, with having to pay for season tickets.

But statistics show the savings for commuters in Ipswich travelling to London are likely to be minimal.

For example, a ticket which offers eight journeys in 28 days costs £547 - compared to a monthly season ticket which offers travel for a whole month for £684.

That means people would save less than 20%.

[grahame]

Shock, horror, amazement ....  

Three months after “flexi-season” tickets were introduced on the railways, there is little evidence of these much-promoted fares making much difference.

From the Independent

[grahame]

Article in the Financial Times -

With many people still working from home until recently, thousands of commuters are only now starting to grasp the problems with this new system.

Emily Yates, co-founder of the Association of British Commuters, says: [snip]“The only conclusion is that flexi tickets are a manipulative pricing trap, designed to upsell passengers back to season tickets.”

Well worth a read - lots of data and research there though I thing that our readers and contacts are WAY ahead of the game if - as the author says "commuters are only now starting to grasp the problems".    Flexible seasons ARE useful ... but only for a tiny sector of people (I spoke with one the other week - long chat and actually the Flexiseason worked out best) and as Emily suggests look designed more to lure passengers than to provide value.

[ChrisB]

paywalled.,...

[grahame]

paywalled.,...

Shame - after the help I gave (without being paid  ) to the author in putting it together!

[Tim K]

I agree it's a well-researched article and matches what I found when looking into flexible tickets.  I've adjusted my travel times to try and get the cheapest train, and use split tickets where possible

I'm a FT subscriber, so this link will allow 3 people to read the article without a subscription: https://on.ft.com/3HZ7ddw

[ChrisB]

Thank you for this.

I suspect this will be covered in "The true cost of Train Travel" tonight on ITV1 at 1930

[Richard Fairhurst]

You can get round the FT paywall by opening a Private Browsing window, googling the headline, and choosing the "organic" result (i.e. not one in a special highlight box). Or so I'm told.

[Timmer]

I suspect this will be covered in "The true cost of Train Travel" tonight on ITV1 at 1930

Thanks for the heads up Chris. Will watch that this evening.

[ChrisB]

You can get round the FT paywall by opening a Private Browsing window, googling the headline, and choosing the "organic" result (i.e. not one in a special highlight box). Or so I'm told.

I tried that on a previous FT article without  success, but it does on the Independent articles. The difference is that it's free to register on the Indy, but the FT wants your hard-earned

[grahame]

You can get round the FT paywall by opening a Private Browsing window, googling the headline, and choosing the "organic" result (i.e. not one in a special highlight box). Or so I'm told.

I tried that on a previous FT article without  success, but it does on the Independent articles. The difference is that it's free to register on the Indy, but the FT wants your hard-earned

Gentlemen, the FT have chosen with this article to prioritise their revenue over public information - fair enough and they need to earn their money.  So let's go easy on telling everyone - even members of the public here as guests - how to circumvent that.   The author has joined the forum, and I'm sure she'll share and quote bits if she wishes.

[Timmer]

A word to the wise. I went looking for an article that was behind a paywall via a google search using the article title, finding it on a site that had scraped it and ended up infecting my iPad. Won’t be doing that again!