My son needs a season ticket. Falkirk - Edinburgh

Seanybhoy68

My 18yr old son has just secured his first job. He needs to travel from Falkirk to Edinburgh for the next 4yrs. 

Has anyone had any experience with season tickets? The advice on here seems to be season tickets down south not Scotland. 

My next-door neighbour thinks if he has a Santander account he'll get a discount. 

Advice appreciated. 

Keep_pedalling

An annual season ticket would be the cheapest way to travel. He should ask his new employers if he could fund this through payroll to avoid the large upfront costs.

https://www.scotrail.co.uk/tickets/annual

Emmia

Season tickets are available for that trip, but whether they're worth doing will depend on how often, and when your son is travelling. 

An annual season ticket, Falkirk - Edinburgh is £2,404.00 or a monthly is £230.80 - which is probably the best option if he needs to travel 4 or 5 days per week.

The National Rail Enquiries website has a season ticket calculator.

I'm not sure about a "santander" discount - does his employer offer season ticket loans to help spread the cost of the annual ticket?

Emmia

On the Santander discount, your neighbour is right that they offer a 16 - 25 railcard with their accounts which your son is eligible for, but this discount only applies to daily fares, and not season tickets. 

https://www.santander.co.uk/about-santander/media-centre/press-releases/santanders-free-four-year-railcard-supports-students

The discount railcard can also be bought for £30 a year without a Santander account. 

tafelmoneysaver

Get him a Young Scot card, and he'll get free bus travel for those 4 years. There's a regular service along that route.

https://young.scot/get-informed/young-persons-free-bus-travel/

martindow

Assuming that it works the same way as in England, you can get season tickets for odd lengths of time - so you can buy one for a month and few days for instance to finish on a Friday before a bank holiday weekend.  The extra days are charged pro rata so you don't need to pay for days when you won't be needing to travel.

Herzlos

Yeah I think you can buy a season ticket for any arbitrary figure and get a discount based on the smaller block. So a 6 week ticket will have the same pro-rate cost as a 4 week ticket.

It's also worth noting that the season ticket prices to up in January, so it may be better to buy an annual ticket in December to maintain it at the old price. You won't get to see the new price until it's too late though.