MSE News: Cheaper train fares on the way with planned ticket overhaul

Legacy_user

Train travellers should be able to more easily pick the cheapest fares for their journey under proposals for a shake-up...

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'Cheaper train fares on the way with planned ticket overhaul'

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Herbalus

Cheaper fares on the way....

What a load of rollocks.

Splodgetts

All this will do is highlight the cheap fare loopholes and allow the train companies to close them! Genius for them, bad news for us. Marketing nonsense when they say 'easier and cheaper'. No such thing

bill1944uk

I will believe when I see it. My sister and husband wanted to visit me just for the day on on Friday to take me for a birthday meal. When they went on the Trainline and tried booking tickets for the times they wanted the price was £863 return from Ipswich to Manchester.
How can that be? They could have booked 4 return flights to Spain for that price. Why do we get ripped off in this country. Do they think there are people stupid enough to pay that price?

spikyone

As others have noted, this won't see prices brought down. In the case where split ticketing is currently available, train companies will simply increase the prices of those cheaper journeys. I actively avoid using trains in the UK - they're slow, frequently late, and unless you live next to a station and are travelling to somewhere that's next to a station, the extra inconvenience and cost quickly becomes prohibitive. That's before you consider the cost of travelling with others.

yorkie2

Fares are becoming more expensive and complicated over time.

I can't see a return to more simple fares , at least not at affordable prices.

Companies are able to increase fares at different rates and this can cause many anomalies . They are increasing in frequency all the time

cookie365

bill1944uk wrote: »

I will believe when I see it. My sister and husband wanted to visit me just for the day on on Friday to take me for a birthday meal. When they went on the Trainline and tried booking tickets for the times they wanted the price was £863 return from Ipswich to Manchester.
How can that be? They could have booked 4 return flights to Spain for that price. Why do we get ripped off in this country. Do they think there are people stupid enough to pay that price?

I expect 4 return flights to Spain where you could just rock up at the aiport on any day and at any time you liked, without giving the airline any notice at all until you showed up at the departure gate, might cost a bit more than £863.

Pincher

If they want people to use public transport instead of cars, they will have to do better.

I look forward to electric driverless cars, integrated with a mobile app that just "gets you there".

Potentially, you don't need "scheduled" trains. The system simply packs you onto the next train going in the right direction, and gets you to change trains if necessary.

E.g. why do you need a train that goes Euston to Edinburgh, why not just London to Manchester, then change trains for Manchester to Edinburgh?

It does require an integrated approach to transport, which is why I need to take over the planet, and create a Pincher Empire that is run efficiently in my name.

jbuchanangb

The Anytime return fare Ipswich - Manchester for 2 adults is apparently £894. Using Advance purchase singles it can be done for £110. Journey time is over 4 hours each way. (Via London). As with flights to Spain, booking in advance on specific journeys saves a lot of money.

It can also be done for £134 via Peterborough but takes longer.

Those were for booking a few weeks in advance, but even booking today for travel tomorrow, you could do the trip for £188.90. (out via London, return via Leeds and Peterborough) or for £231 (both ways via London, with many different choices of timing)

I hope next time such a day trip is contemplated someone can find a decent deal.

yorkie2

jbuchanangb wrote: »

The Anytime return fare Ipswich - Manchester for 2 adults is apparently £894....

Which is insane, but another way to reduce the price would be to "split". There are websites that will do this automatically (as recently reported in the media)

If you absolutely had to depart from Ipswich really early, and Euston really early, it may be cheaper to buy a Season ticket to Manningtree (about £27) and then a string of singles or returns for short distance tickets (the train wouldn't need to call at any of them), though that would require some manual research to find the best "split" points.

A Manchester-London passenger who needs to travel at peak times both ways, on flexible fares, returning a different day but between a week can get a Season to Stockport then a strong of Anytime Return (SOR) or Anytime Day Single (SDS) fares:

Manchester - Stockport (7DS) £21.70
Stockport - Rugeley (SOR) £22.20
Rugeley - Rugby (SOR) £20.60
Rugby - Bletchley (2xSDS) £13.90 each way
Bletchley - London (2xSDS) £19.00 each way

Total £130.30

Compared to the Anytime Return fare of £332.

A saving of nearly £200

The Department for Transport want people to pay higher fares because this reduces subsidy, and they are happy for Virgin Trains to charge £200 extra to have all the above validity on a single piece of paper.

Smidster

The headline of this is completely misleading - rail fares will, categorically, be more expensive after any "simplification".

I recently did a survey for Virgin West Coast and it inferred that they were planning on reducing the number of ticket options and while some of the perceived complexity would go the cheapest tickets would no longer be available.

Always seems to be the case that it is the savvy who pay the price when a system is deemed complex.