Season tickets monthly vs yearly

Mark_Hewitt

I'm planning to start getting the train to work rather than spending money on diesel for my car. It's from Chester-le-Street to York (a fair distance)

Now the national rail website says a months season ticket is £397 (£4764/year) but if you buy a years it is £4140. A substantial saving, or is it?

You don't have to buy a monthly season for a set length of time, it's anything over a month and you'll get it at the same rate pro-rata. This means for example if your season ticket is due to run out on a Tuesday, you don't have to buy a new one on Wednesday, you simply buy it to run up to the Friday, then between each monthly ticket you miss out the weekend, which is two days you aren't paying for.

Now in my job I get six weeks holiday, which if I'm smart about when I take my holidays, I won't be paying for train travel during those six weeks either.

I've done some rough calculations, so my figures are not precise to the penny, but it works out that taking all this into account I could pay £3,980 a year buying my tickets monthly, as opposed to £4,140 for yearly, a saving of £160, probably more if you consider that the £4140 has to be paid up front.

So the actual real cost per month is £332, and not the £397 they state on the website.

pebblespop

i have an annual ticket and i just find it easier as you don't have to queue to buy tickets etc.

work gave me a season ticket loan so it comes straight out of my wage and doesn't feel like i am actually paying for it!!

Andy_L

I'm looking at season tickets for commuting into London &, as you say, by the time you've taken of holiday it's a marginal saving.
As pebblespop says it's more the convenience of not having to remember to renew, although I would say you're insulated from any fare rises over the year if you go annual

MX5huggy

There has been 2 posts about lost season tickets reciently, in both cases they had lost the ticket twice and the train company would only issue 1 replacement so they had to buy a new one. One was quite luckly as they only lost their monthy one where as the other had lost an annual ticket twice, a very expensive mistake, I would therefore go monthly.

Mark_Hewitt

MX5huggy wrote: »

There has been 2 posts about lost season tickets reciently, in both cases they had lost the ticket twice and the train company would only issue 1 replacement so they had to buy a new one. One was quite luckly as they only lost their monthy one where as the other had lost an annual ticket twice, a very expensive mistake, I would therefore go monthly.

Considering I have a disturbing knack of losing train tickets. (I've had to buy replacements several times due to losing my return ticket!!) That's probably wise.

Debt_Free_Chick

Mark_Hewitt wrote: »

I've done some rough calculations, so my figures are not precise to the penny, but it works out that taking all this into account I could pay £3,980 a year buying my tickets monthly, as opposed to £4,140 for yearly, a saving of £160, probably more if you consider that the £4140 has to be paid up front.

So the actual real cost per month is £332, and not the £397 they state on the website.

Yup - I have this issue. Bear in mind that 12 monthly tickets are likely to get you only 48 weeks travel, whereas an annual ticket gets you 52 weeks.

I tend to do the comparison using the normal day-return fare. In my case, the annual season ticket buys me more "days" travel that the monthly ticket, over 12 months - taking into account holidays. It's marginal, but then I also get an interest free loan for an annual ticket, from my employer, which "clinches" it.

Weekly, monthly and annual tickets generally show a discount over eachover and over the day rate, which is why I tend to do the comparison with the day return fare, so that you are "on a level playing field".

HTH

Cardelia

Debt_Free_Chick wrote: »

Yup - I have this issue. Bear in mind that 12 monthly tickets are likely to get you only 48 weeks travel, whereas an annual ticket gets you 52 weeks.

Erm... by definition, 12 monthly tickets will get you 12 months of travel. If you get an annual ticket running from the 1st Jan to the 31st December, you can also get 12 monthly tickets which start on the 1st Jan, 1st Feb, 1st March etc. all the way to the 1st December.

I tend to do the comparison using the normal day-return fare. In my case, the annual season ticket buys me more "days" travel that the monthly ticket, over 12 months. It's marginal, but then I also get an interest free loan for an annual ticket, from my employer, which "clinches" it.

Weekly, monthly and annual tickets generally show a discount over eachover and over the day rate, which is why I tend to do the comparison with the day return fare, so that you are "on a level playing field".

I look at the overall yearly cost, which is the only level playing field. And unless you travel a lot at weekends, or have irregular holidays (i.e. lots of odd days off, rather than chunks of time), many people will find that it's cheaper to buy monthly season tickets instead of annual ones. Whether the saving is worth the hassle of buying extra tickets is something only you can decide - for me, I'd rather save the money.

The key is knowing that you can get a monthly ticket for any amount of time you like, as long as it's longer than a month. For my journey, a standard yearly ticket from the 5th January 2009 to the 4th January 2010 will be £3120, but my standard monthly ticket costs £300. I bought a ticket on the 5th January and extended it by 2 days so instead of expiring on the 4th February (Wednesday), it expired on the 6th Feb (Friday), costing £320. This meant I didn't have to get another one until this morning, so I didn't pay for the weekend just gone - days which I didn't use the train. I bought a new ticket this morning but instead of it expiring on the 8th March, I extended it to the 20th March (costing £420). I'm going on holiday for a week on the 23rd March so I'm not paying for the 21st and 22nd (weekend), the 23rd-27th (holiday) and the 28th and 29th (weekend). Therefore, I don't need to buy another monthly until the 30th March. Except I won't, because my work closes on the 8th April for Easter (reopens 15th). So I need a weekly from the 30th March to the 8th April, which costs £111.

From the 5th January to the 14th April is 99 days. That cost me £841, but I didn't pay for 17 of those days because I worked my tickets around the days I'm not travelling on the train. If I'd bought an annual ticket, I would have had no choice but to pay for all 99 days. The equivalent cost for those 99 days would have been (99/365)*3120, which works out at £846. When you go through the rest of the year, structuring the tickets around events such as weekends, summer holidays, christmas holidays, even bank holidays, you save a lot more money.

AP

As a general guide, the pricing of season tickets takes the following patterns:-

A 7-day season ticket is usually 4 times the cost of an Anytime Day Return.
A 1-month season ticket is 3.84 times the cost of a 7-day season ticket, rounded to the nearest £0.10.
An annual 12-month season ticket is 40 times the cost of a 7-day season ticket.

For season tickets of at least 1 month long, you can have it in 1 month and 1 day, 1 month and 2 days, etc., or any other duration you like. Each additional day is calculated at 1/29.5 the cost of a monthly season ticket. This is useful to time the ticket to end on a Friday (in particular Friday before bank holiday weekend) and then start it again the next Monday (or Tuesday after bank holiday).

I hope you'll find this useful in deciding what duration of season ticket you need to suit your own particular circumstances.

gner_ex

Also bear in mind that if you live in the former Network South East area (the "south east" region essentially) you can get a Gold Card with an annual season - how much value this is to you depends entirely upon your particular circumstances.

To the Chester-le-Street to York chap - its worth remembering that you can use this season to make short journeys, i.e. Chester-Northallerton, Durham-Darlington, etc etc - again how much use this is to you depends upon your personal circumstances.

Its also worth pointing out that Chester le St-York is the same price as Chester le St-Cattal or Chester le Street-Sherburn in Elmet. Therefore if you occasionally travel to Harrogate or Leeds it is worth getting either of these tickets as you'll only need to buy a Church Fenton-Leeds ticket instead of a York-Leeds ticket (and can still travel on the non-stop train). Confused?

Mark_Hewitt

gner_ex wrote: »

Its also worth pointing out that Chester le St-York is the same price as Chester le St-Cattal or Chester le Street-Sherburn in Elmet. Therefore if you occasionally travel to Harrogate or Leeds it is worth getting either of these tickets as you'll only need to buy a Church Fenton-Leeds ticket instead of a York-Leeds ticket (and can still travel on the non-stop train). Confused?

Interesting! I suppose it's the same way that a Durham - York ticket is the same price as a Chester-le-Street - York ticket.

Although I did think that in order to buy a Church Fenton - Leeds ticket you would have to be on a train which stopped at Church Fenton?!

AP

Mark_Hewitt wrote: »

Interesting! I suppose it's the same way that a Durham - York ticket is the same price as a Chester-le-Street - York ticket.

Although I did think that in order to buy a Church Fenton - Leeds ticket you would have to be on a train which stopped at Church Fenton?!

Not necessarily, provided one of the two tickets is a season ticket and the other one is not. This is specifically allowed under Condition 19(c) of the National Rail Conditions of Carriage.

19. Using a combination of tickets
You may use two or more tickets for one journey as long as together they cover the entire journey and one of the following applies:
(a) they are both Zonal Tickets (unless special conditions prohibit their use);
(b) the train you are in calls at the station where you change from one ticket to another; or
(c) one of the tickets is a Season Ticket (which for this purpose does not include Season Tickets or travel passes issued on behalf of a passenger transport executive or local authority) or a leisure travel pass, and the other ticket(s) is/are not.
You must comply with any restriction shown on the tickets relating to travel in the trains of a particular Train Company or Train Companies (see Condition 10).
If you do not comply with this Condition, you will be treated as having joined the train without a ticket and the relevant parts of Condition 2 or 4 will apply, either to the entire journey, or from the last station where the train stopped at which at least one of the tickets was valid.
For the purposes of this Condition, a “leisure travel pass” means any multi-journey ticket (excluding Season Tickets) valid for:
(i) at least 7 consecutive days; or
(ii) at least 3 days in a period of at least 7 consecutive days and includes rover tickets, travel passes, flexipass tickets and BritRail passes