Can fare depend on time of ticket purchase from the guard?

[whole diary]

[RichT54]

Does the fare for a journey depend on the time the ticket is purchased from the guard, rather than the time the train leaves the station?

Here are the details of my last 3 journeys for a Sandhurst to Reading return, with a Senior Railcard :

24/02/22 09:26 £4.75
04/03/22 09:31 £4.40
09/03/22 09:26 £4.95

All 3 outbound journeys were on the same service which is scheduled to depart from Sandhurst at 09:26.

When I looked on the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) website, the fare was shown as £4.75 up to the end of Feb and £4.95 from 1st March. Those prices match what I was charged on the 1st and 3rd journeys. However, on the 4th March, the guard didn't get to me until after 09:30 and the price was lower than I expected. The guard checked their machine and said it was correct.

So does the price really depend on whether you buy the ticket before or after 09:30?

Perhaps I should get on the first carriage on the assumption that it would take the guard longer to get to me

[plymothian]

The 4.75 -> £4.95 difference is due to the 1 March fare increase

The £4.40 / £4.95 difference is due to there being 2 CDR^▸ (Off Peak Day Return [ticket type] (formerly 'Cheap Day')) fares - one route 'Any Permitted' priced £4.95 with SNR, one route '.' priced £4.40 with SNR.

Route '.' are tickets that have been simplified due to there being only one way of getting between two stations.

Any Permitted tickets have a W2 (09.14) restriction and '.' have a W1 (09.29).

Therefore you can see you bought your ticket just either side of the time restriction.

The guard should be selling you the ticket from the time the train was scheduled to leave the station, but in practice most will just sell from the time they get round to serving you.  Therefore technically by hiding from the guard until after 09.30 you would officially be intending to avoid paying the correct fare, but in practice unless an RPI^▸ (Revenue Protection Inspector, or Retail Price Index, depending on context) or someone is being very overly keen, no one will notice.

[froome]

I have had the opposite situation happen to me some years ago. I went to the station to catch a train timetabled to leave after 09.30 and a train came in (after 09.30 at roughly the time the train I hoped to catch was due) which turned out to be a late running train that was timetabled to arrive before 09.30. On that occasion, the guard would only sell me an anytime fare ticket, because he said, the train was due to arrive there before 09.30.

[johnneyw]

Tomorrow, it will save me £7.55 to catch my train from Montpelier in Bristol rather than nearby Redland.
The 09.28 Redland to Taunton (via Temple Meads) train ticket costs £19.00 day return with railcard but the same service 2 minutes later from Montpelier is £11.45 for an off peak day return.  From where I live it's no problem as they both take very nearly the same amount of time to walk to.

[grahame]

Tomorrow, it will save me £7.55 to catch my train from Montpelier in Bristol rather than nearby Redland.
The 09.28 Redland to Taunton (via Temple Meads) train ticket costs £19.00 day return with railcard but the same service 2 minutes later from Montpelier is £11.45 for an off peak day return.  From where I live it's no problem as they both take very nearly the same amount of time to walk to.

You could, of course, split at Montpelier 

A classic example of a system which is designed around a set of parameters at variance with the structures it sells use of.

Looking wider in this thread, the rules about off peak v anytime tickets apply to the train's scheduled time.  That way, it means that if a train is delayed so that it leaves late and just into the evening peak, the RPI^▸ (Revenue Protection Inspector, or Retail Price Index, depending on context) / train manager can't go through requiring everyone to purchase an upgrade.   Just imagine "Sorry sir, that off peak single at £54.80 is  Not valid to depart   LONDON PADDINGTON   1641–1829   on GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) ...  this train left at 16:43 (it's the 16:33 running 10 minutes late) so that will be an extra £57.00 please".. The rule DOES mean that on an evening of late running trains, there may be departures after 18:29 which the off-peak ticket is not valid on.

In my view, the 'fair' rule would be that off peak tickets are to be valid on trains that actually depart outside the peak hours OR are scheduled to do so. But I expect someone will tell me that's too complicated or causes other problems ...

[froome]

Tomorrow, it will save me £7.55 to catch my train from Montpelier in Bristol rather than nearby Redland.
The 09.28 Redland to Taunton (via Temple Meads) train ticket costs £19.00 day return with railcard but the same service 2 minutes later from Montpelier is £11.45 for an off peak day return.  From where I live it's no problem as they both take very nearly the same amount of time to walk to.

A similar example from senior bus passes:

I have stayed in Arnside in Cumbria a few times, which apart from its station, has just one bus route, linking it to Kendal. The bus is very well used by those wishing to shop there, but after the senior bus passes were introduced, the bus company revised the bus times (as part of cuts to the services) which meant that the only bus in the morning then left at just before 9.30am, which was their time for the bus pass to be valid. So the bus pass wasn't valid on the service for those getting on in the village centre. The passengers not surprisingly weren't happy, and eventually the drivers agreed to allow passengers on, drive for 2 minutes to the nearest stop outside the village, and then ask them to swipe their cards on the machine, by which time it was just after 9.30am. Maybe your guards could do the same. 

[grahame]

... the only bus in the morning then left at just before 9.30am, which was their time for the bus pass to be valid. So the bus pass wasn't valid on the service for those getting on in the village centre. The passengers not surprisingly weren't happy, and eventually the drivers agreed to allow passengers on, drive for 2 minutes to the nearest stop outside the village, and then ask them to swipe their cards on the machine, by which time it was just after 9.30am. Maybe your guards could do the same. 

Here in Wiltshire, there's a number of concessions allowing passengers on very infrequent routes to board on the ENCTS^▸ (English National Concessionary Travel Scheme. Bus passes for senior/disabled persons) passes before 09:30 - a "thank you" for the folks who have set that up.

We have also had situations where passenger wanting to start their journey shortly before 09:30 on other routes have joined the bus, paid a fare just to the first stop beyond where the bus is at 09:30, and have then got off and straight back on.  And that is an allowed and legal / without bending the rules way of doing it.  In one particular location, it was highly dangerous as at times it felt that the whole bus was unloading onto a tiny paved bus stop on the side of a narrow rat-run road with overgrown hedges ...

Our real solution (where we live) should be for ENCTS passes to be accepted from 09:00.  At first glance, that looks like it's shifting the problem half an hour earlier - in some ways it is, but it also reduces the problem as it helps even out the crowds of us pensioners - better for bus loading and economics as the vehicles tend to be quiet after the school run before getting busier with seniors from 45 minutes or so later.