Fares Bath Spa to Chertsey...

[whole diary]

[Mark A]

... via Salisbury, are astronomical. Putting aside the current poor connections to support the trip, particularly for the return journey at Salisbury, here are the fares, along with the fares Bath Spa to Weybridge:

Bath Spa to Chertsey: £236 anytime return, £100.80 off peak.
Bath Spa to Weybridge is £78:30 anytime return, £52.30 off peak.

The rail route from Weybridge to Chertsey can't be more than 4 miles, so, for that leg, the peak time passenger who doesn't discover split ticketing will be paying around £20 a mile - so that might actually be the most expensive piece of railway line in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom).

This is going to be because SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) have no set fares Bath Spa to Chertsey despite origin and destination being on their network. Why, is another matter.

Mark

[CyclingSid]

The rail route from Weybridge to Chertsey can't be more than 4 miles

or about 3 miles if you walk or cycle it.

[stuving]

The fares are not quite that bad. The £236.60 fare is ANY PERMITTED, but there is a GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)-priced NOT VIA LONDON fare of:
To Weybridge: £178.60 pk, £80.40 off-pk, £60.10 SOP^▸ (Standard Operating Instructions) [SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) £86.20/£52.40/£49.00]
To Chertsey: £160.00 pk, £71.30 off-pk, £54.00 SOP

So still about twice the SWR day return fare, even for the open returns given here.

So it seems that part of the "logic" of this is that Weybridge can be reached via the main line from Woking, but Chertsey needs an extra change so travel via Reading and Virginia Water is better. Certainly it's quicker, and OJP^▸ (Online Journey Planner) finds it most of the time even in preference to via Paddington. Via Salisbury is slower still; of course coming back is particularly slow where it hits one of those long waits at Salisbury - so much so that one journey is sent via Waterloo.

For some reason, when asked to route via Salisbury the OJP quotes the ANY PERMITTED fares for what is obviously a NOT VIA LONDON routing. That does look wrong, and would be worth challenging with NRE^‡(resolve).